i've been meaning to do this for a little while, but with the last book coming out in about a month i figured it was time to make a thread for one of my favorite book series! anyway, who's your favorite dragon? who's your favorite captain? what do you want to happen in the final book? talk to me about your ships? Spoiler: DIVISIVE OPINION TIME!!!!!! volly is best derg actually i changed my mind my favorite dragon is lady kiyo, aka japanese party dragon i hope she gets to see shakespeare performed live in a fancy theater, i hope that is the true endgame i'm so bad at starting threads heh
I've only read book one, so. My fav dragon is Volly, and my fave cap is Rowland. And also, I drew my ocs!
YESSSSSSSESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS S HELLO MY FRIENDS I FUCKING LOVE THE TEMERAIRE BOOKS LOVE THEM SO MUCH THAT I COMMISSIONED A PORTRAIT OF MY SELF-INSERT DRAGON CAPTAIN OC with my cat (a fat ginger tabby) dragon-ified in the background. i have a big long headcanon about the AU in which i was born in Regency England and became a dragon captain, but uh. yes. sooooooo glad there's other people here who read these amazing books!
oh! also, i once wrote a fic about Temeraire and Laurence as privateers, for a fandom exchange. http://archiveofourown.org/works/4008418
ANYWAY in all my excitement i forgot to answer the question. Roland is the best captain forever, and Levitas was too good for this world. i also love Demane and Kulingile., and i know we probably won't get there because i think there's only one more book, but i would love to see Captain Emily Roland in action.
I'M DUMB I FORGOT TO WATCH THIS THREAD HAHAHA yessss volly defense squad (i don't think anyone dislikes volly i just like saying that) ALSO what a good pair of ocs, i love their faces, especially edith's (her smile is really cute!) so many good ocs! also that is an a+ dragon version of a fat ginger tabby THAT WAS YOU OMG I LOVE THAT FIC (at least like.... 10 of those hits are me... if i'm honest) now to completely swerve off topic, i really want to know more about dragon anatomy. like, i can guess that the japanese waterspout dragons have something like blue whales with the ribbed stretchy skin, but how do they do the heating thingy?? also longwings would have some weird stuff going on in the sections of their bodies where they store their acid i assume, to keep it from damaging them, & what even is up with the divine wind? i want to come up with biological mechanisms for all the things even though they'll probably be wrong because my knowledge of biology is shady at best
A former co-worker of mine was one of the author's beta readers which is how I got into these. Love them.
Resurrecting this thread because I just discovered that my mental image of Tharkay exists irl: http://sartorialskull.tumblr.com/post/145233036554/tony-thornburg Like. look at this shit: Spoiler I couldn't find any pictures of him looking scruffier than in these but it is The Man Himself and I am Pleased. Thank you tumblr dash :D
HELLO ANCIENT THREAD, I am reading this series yet again, apparently it is a biannual thing for me now I’m partway through Victory of Eagles a.k.a. “Temeraire, an old folks’ home, a bunch of punks, and one nerd kick ass all over England” God these books are so good
a while ago i found a fic that had laurence accidentally become a pirate king i have never read temeraire but i have read some of the fic for it and it is very good http://archiveofourown.org/works/6368725
I still need to finish because my reading backlog is excessive! But YES, Napoleonic Wars with dragons. ^_^ Temeraire is delightful and badass and clever and oddly cute and should have all the shiny things. ...Iskierka seems a bit of a pain but is still very fun. I have vague but delightful memories of having run into a worldbuilding-fusion crossover short awhile back discussing Laurence as a Last Airbender-style Waterbender in a traditionally Airbending profession... the things that stuck in my head were the descriptions of his original draw to the sea, the potential and the power of being contsantly in the middle of your element; and Temeraire's sorta watching the back of his fragile non-flying captain.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/2008611 here it's one of esama's works esama does great ideas and great execution of those ideas but so many WIPs
Ducking in as an amateur biologist and a fan of this series although I'm nowhere near up to date - my guess is that dragons are warmblooded so generate lots of heat as animals that large would. As to fire/acid production, I suspect they would come from similar mechanisms - one of the primary theories about how dragons Do The Thing is that they have two glands in their mouth that when combined create something that combusts on contact with air, or in the case of the Longwing breed, something that is highly corrosive. Longwings are mentioned as having acid-producing spurs on the corners of their mouths, right? (I might be remembering that poorly.) It could easily be a pair of glands either side - hell, just regular stomach acid is hells of corrosive, so if they have some way of concentrated weaponized vomit (which some IRL animals do as a defense mechanism - vultures, for example) that doesn't involve the dragon's last meal as a handy bonus then that would be an easy way of explaining how it works. /bio nerd will ramble about how fictional animals do the thing all day if you let him
The firemaking is a bit more complicated (especially with Kazilik, and their steam??) but my bet on the heating water thing would be that the dragon run some sort of mean exogenous reaction inside themselves comparable to the bombadier beetle, which they can use to heat the water? For the acid I second @PotteryWalrus that's probably a hella fucking corrosive substance in glads that have lining comparable to stomach lining it keep it from burning the dragon from inside. I seem to remember that Longwings actually do have to be careful because they can hurt themselves with their own acid if they manage to spray themselves? So it's probably a case of just the inside bits that are regularly in contact with the acid being immune to it. No idea for the fire, it's either homebrew napalm or a flammable gas? There's plenty gases in nature (Hydrogen, methane) that burn like fuck and can be relatively easily acquired inside a live organism.
after some consideration, I don’t think Temeraire is fantasy or historical/alternate history fiction I think it’s sci-fi
just realized that my Laurence face headcanon is basically James Norrington from POTC, but with slightly thinner features and also blond. his voice is pretty close to what I imagine as well have been listening to the Temeraire audiobooks at work and the VA is good, but his Laurence voice is way too gruff and declaratory and his Granby has too posh an accent. and his Tharkay has a slight vaguely oriental accent despite the fact that his lack of an accent is very relevant to his character and is also one of the first things we learn about him :/ the guy's Temeraire voice is good, though. all his dragon voices are :)