Honestly I'm not sure. I'm a cleric of the Porcelain God and there isn't anything in our dogma or scriptures about whether or not dragons used to have feathers. Not really my purview.
I was totally going to reference this myself and you beat me to it.
This is actually sort of similar to my usual character creation process. I start with some basic concept and/or gimmick that's usually a little bit silly, corny, intentionally weird, etc, then I add to it until I've built a proper character around that goofy idea. I made an "anti-edgelord" bubbly church girl cleric that inadvertantly became a badass magical girl and grizzled war veteran. A barbarian that wears clothes made entirely from skunk skins and acts like a wise woodsman calling himself "the striped sage" even though he's mostly full of crap (but really good at hitting things with an axe). A rogue fleeing his home city because he got the sheriff's daughter pregnant while she was in a rebellious phase and slumming it with riffraff (her father is very unhappy). Most recently a druid with the noble background and concept of "rich kid college dropout runaway vagrant hippy chick" that the DM approved "but you're not just a noble you're a full on runaway princess."
You get a clear gimmick to start with that works as an icebreaker with the party and an easy beginning point for roleplaying. You can play up that gimmick as much as you want to, or even hint at it and make it something your character is obviously trying to hide or minimize. Once the gimmick is established you start adding the serious parts you've built up around the gimmick. Conversely you could introduce them as a straight laced, serious character then start hinting at the weird gimmick or just spring it on everybody at an unexpected time to get that wonderful WTF reaction when the other players notice it. Either way it gives you a solid starting point that you can build and develop your character from as they interact with other PCs and the world in general.
Edit: This method also works great for making memorable NPCs if you're the DM. Take the basic narrative function you need the NPC for (merchant, quest giver, distressed citizen, local lord/lady, etc) give them a mildly weird gimmick that will stick in players' minds.
All of that fiery stuff is actually defensive. Those are flares that are launched en masse to divert incoming heat seaking missiles. There's usually a bunch of antiradar chaff getting launched too but it isn't very visible. So it would be providing a bonus to Armor Class. The effect is sometimes called the "angel flare" because from head on all the fire and smoke patterns resemble angel wings (this mage is zoomed in to much to show the full pattern).
There's also nothing saying the dog is going to be any good at it, but I've seen a few humans do worse than I'd expect from a Chihuahua so I guess it would be better than nothing.
Closest any of my recent parties have done to a heist was rescuing an NPC from bad faith indentured servitude in a brothel. It started with the artificer and necromancer invisible and the rogue dressed in drag (I convinced the DM that I should get advantage on impersonating a woman because my character is an elf). The whole thing went pretty much as I expected. The soundtrack would have started with Yakkity Sax (aka the Benny Hill song) and ended with Disco Inferno.
The best part was about five minutes after the fireball threshold was reached, a player who had recently had to drop from the game due to a work schedule change popped into the voice call on her lunch break to see how we were doing. I said her warlock would be proud of us. "What are you burning down now?" "Another brothel!" "Oh, neat!"
Honestly the novelty of titties and dongs wore off after about five minutes. I supported the NSFW initiative as a form of protest but a bunch of comically transparent excuses for posting gratuitous smut is not what I find worthwhile when looking for funny memes. That stopped being endlessly entertaining after puberty ceased to be a new phase in my life.
Considering that a real world new recruit who's only martial experience is about 8-10 weeks of basic training would probably be a second or maybe even third level fighter, first level characters aren't very impressive. If there's an actual zero next to "Experience" on your character sheet you aren't a grizzled veteran and you haven't seen anything rougher than a barfight. You probably lost that fight, too.
It sucks but it wasn't exactly unexpected. I salute you for sticking to your guns and protesting corporate bullshit in the most effective way you could.
Since Reddit is clearly saying that protesting within the system is not permitted, I'm going the only route left which is complete boycott. Unless I hear about them very publicly walking back policies and issuing a convincingly self deprecating apology (and I'm not holding my breath) I will not be using Reddit at all. They get no traffic from me, no demographic information, nothing that they can monetize, just nothing. I only really used it for the memes anyway so fuck 'em.
Also while I totally supported the entire NSFW protest angle I did very quickly grow tired of endless pictures of Kobold pussy and dragon dicks. "Sex positive" is one of those legitimate terms that is most often used by people who want to justify immature behavior. I supported that behavior as a form of protest but very quickly tire of such content when it's flooding a feed. Because I'm not twelve and every single one of those lewd/smut memes I saw was just the sort of juvenile "lookit da nekkids and s3xx0rz" garbage that amused me in middle school with people tacking on comically flimsy excuses to pretend it was serious intellectual content. The protest didn't work and I seriously won't mind if I don't see another goblin boob for some time.
Honestly I'm not sure. Presumably because the player found it amusing, which is why she did a lot of things. Like playing a pink axolotl shifter druid that makes squeak toy noises when hit and refers to the swarm of velociraptors they summon as "my kids" (the rest of us called them "the dinosaur machine gun" because of all the attack rolls at once as they devoured enemies from the ankles up).
A party I gamed with for about a year and a half had a druid who flavored goodberry as magical tomatoes and would offer them to people as a greeting/icebreaker, consolation, celebration, or just if they weren't sure what else to do or say. I'm now hearing "Tomato?" in the squeaky little voice the player used.
Honestly I'm not sure. I'm a cleric of the Porcelain God and there isn't anything in our dogma or scriptures about whether or not dragons used to have feathers. Not really my purview.