The Draconic Wizard Workshop

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Stepping Into the Dragon's Clawprints

by Goratrix bani Tremere

Originally posted here on August 13, 2023.

About a year and a half ago, I wrote a prompt response on the Fictionkind Dreamwidth entitled "Mythology: In the Dragon's Image." I wrote about feeling draconic but not quite like a dragon, lacking somewhat in identity. I attributed this identity to both my husband, Tremere (a dragon in many senses of the word) and my BPD, which made my identity fluid enough to mold around Tremere and come away with the impression of scales on my skin. I described myself like clay pressed against him and allowed to solidify, leaving me scaled even when I stand on my own. And yet, it was a negative, an impression, a mold--draconic but not wholly.

I believe I now understand this identity, at least in part; I am a dragon in an archetypical sense. I am the idea of a dragon, the shape of one. I am still myself and my own form and shape within, but my draconity is like a projection, an extension around me. I am a dragon because I have been shaped to be one, because my form is scaled, winged, and horned, clawed and fanged and firebreathing. I have no noemata because there is no noemata to have outside of what I look like--I am not 'kin with a specific dragon, nor even a species, necessarily--it is the idea of the dragon, the shape of it, the meaning behind the beast.

I am a dragon because the dragons in my life have left their mark on me and reshaped me in their image. Not just Tremere, although he was first and most potent, but Tanix, too. I have co-fronted with him for perhaps 90% of my time here, over two years. Of course I have been changed by long and consistent exposure to him. He has brought out the draconity resting just under the surface of my mind, set there by Tremere long ago.

And how I revel in it! How I love to embrace my broad ear-fins, my long grasping claws, my lashing tail, my four eyes, my bizarre diaphanous wings. How strange my shape is! How mine it is!

And yet, it is no more or less truly my shape than my own face. I am still the vampire, the man who was once human, and identify with that, although I have little interesting to say on the species of it all.

I previously did not feel right calling myself a dragon. I didn't have the solidity, the specificity, the backing that the others did. Tanix, Serinoth, Keladarn, Anadoxion, all the others in my system--they are very specific dragons. I never was. I'm just the shape and concept and feeling of one. But now.... well, thanks to Vyt's panel on archetropy during the first day of Othercon (the first panel! The first panel!) I now know how to approach this. I know what to call it. I know that it is something that can be explored and discussed, not just looked over my shoulder at with a confused wince.

How pleased, how grateful, how intrigued I am.