Let's talk about Dragons

[AnubisRaven]

Think of a show, book, game, or movie that involves dragons. Maybe it's Dragonheart, Skyrim, or Reign of Fire. It could be Game of Thrones, Dark Souls, Merlin, etc, etc.

 

The things I just listed, plus many more dragon stories/movies/shows/games, have one thing in common. In each of them, dragons are either extinct, going extinct, or returning from extinction. From what I gather, in Dark Souls, there was some dragon war that killed off pretty much all the dragons. In Skyrim, of course, the dragons have been extinct for many, many years. Draco from Dragonheart is the last of his kind, in Game of Thrones, dragons have been extinct for hundreds of years. In Merlin, Uther hunted all the dragons, and the only one left is the great dragon, in Reign of Fire, dragons were all but extinct until miners woke them up again, in Eragon, dragons are almost extinct, in The Hobbit, Smaug is the last known dragon, in the Fire Within series, dragons have been extinct (except for the clay ones) since medieval times. The two iconic portrayals of dragons in the media that I can think of that don't have this whole thing going are the Monster Hunter series (Where pretty much EVERYTHING is a dragon or a wyvern) and the Dragonriders of Pern.

 

I could go on and on, but still, the point remains. Why is it that in everything involving dragons, at least most things that have come out in the past twenty years or so, seem to be set in worlds where dragons are dying out or returning from extinction? It's an interesting trend I've noted, and one that seems like it could make for an interesting discussion.

Edited December 8, 2012 by AnubisRaven

[frakle]

Dungeons and Dragons is rather popular and doesn't follow this trend.

[Maharg67]

Dragons of Pern, Anne McCaffrey wrote many books based directly on the dragons of that world or indirectly.

 

Shadowrun books had active dragons, a non computer game and novels based on the game.

 

Skyrim itself may, or may not, have existing dragons on the homelands of them being Akavir (I may have the spelling wrong).

 

Dragons do exist strongly in a few other stories; might list some more in this topic in future.

[AnubisRaven]

Dragons of Pern, Anne McCaffrey wrote many books based directly on the dragons of that world or indirectly.

 

Shadowrun books had active dragons, a non computer game and novels based on the game.

 

Skyrim itself may, or may not, have existing dragons on the homelands of them being Akavir (I may have the spelling wrong).

 

Dragons do exist strongly in a few other stories; might list some more in this topic in future.

 

I mentioned Dragons of Pern.

 

It's true that there ARE those sorts of things, that have dragons in them. But still, there is a trend in dragons being either extinct, coming back from extinction, or going extinct. And the debate as to whether dragons may or may not have survived in Akavir (the blades, who started as dragonslayers, started IN Akavir, the Tscaensi or whatever apparently "consumed dragons") is completely different. Not regarding the hypothetical lore, dragons are at least PORTRAYED as having come back from extinction in Skyrim.

[Maharg67]

AnubisRaven, I will get you a list of books, movies etc. that have dragons in them as an on going part of the world.

[AnubisRaven]

AnubisRaven, I will get you a list of books, movies etc. that have dragons in them as an on going part of the world.

 

Could you also provide dates for each? I think the extinction thing with Dragons is a more modern thing, but who knows.

[mhasemore]

I've noticed this trend as well - all too frequent, it seems. I'm rather tired of it, myself... It's actually a source of constant emotional pain for me. I can't get into any new fantasy setting without being told the dragons are always killed off.

[Thor.]

possible spoiler

 

 

:whistling:

 

 

lol i love the dungeon and dragon references in this dlc.

Edited September 1, 2013 by Thor.

[Lisnpuppy]

I read The Lord of the Rings when I was very little and was somewhat perplexed at why these magnificent creatures were all bad. Luckily I soon found the Dragonriders of Pern books, which are more sci-fi than fantasy....but talking, intelligent and wonderful dragons that were friends of humans! I was so thrilled...and to this day I still love those books...and love when dragons are more than just monsters.

 

Even though the wonderful Anne MacCaffery passed away in 2011 her son and other authors have taken up the mantle of Pern. I couldn't be happier and re-read these books a great deal.

 

Dragon things come in cycles....this too shall pass.

[Vindekarr]

Ok, I'm posting this in colour-pen because it's mildly off topic but I feel a great urge to post it anyway because it fits within the greater sphere of the discussion.

 

I read Pern(first couple as a kid, late '90s. It's what sparked my interest in '80s even if I wasn't particularly interested at the time in the exact story itself. The main reasons were just how different it was to the teen-targeted books written since, which were basicaly fairy-tails with robots on them. The Pern books were one of my first introductions to "proper" writing which didn't bellitle the reader's intelligence by writing out all the "mature" stuff, the blood, the lies, the sex, ect, ect. I never became a fan, but I do think Anne MacCaffery was a superb writer, and if it wasn't for her work, I wouldn't have discovered either my love of writing, or the sort of books I like.

 

Now, eye-searing yellow-pen rant out of the way-I agree with everything the OP said. Dragons at the moment, seem to be mostly featured as either extinct, going extinct, or returning from being extinct. The are examples that don't follow this trend, but for the most part, it's how things are going. Now from my perspective as a writer, there are two main reasons. Firstly, you've got the rising popularity of melancholia, secondly, you've got "balance".

 

Balance first. Balance is the art of maintaining continuity in your writing. You need to have continuity or your audience will be unable to suspend disbelief. To make this continuity happen, you need to have characters with set limits as to what they can and cannot do-there have been examples of when a writer hasn't done this, and they were all disasters. Dragons are very hard to balance, either the audience is left wondering how the heck the dragon was defeated because you'd hyped them up as a scaley little demigod, or why the heck everyone was so scared of them in the first place because you made them scaley little punching bags.

 

For my own writing, when I was concepting one of my characters, I had initially designed them as being far superior in ability to a baseline human, but overtime had to revise them down again and again to make things interesting. There is no appeal to a story about a character who can do anything and is invincible, they have to just barely "do it" Otherwise the story is either boring, or you end up doing what Lucasarts did with The Force Unleashed, which is creating a scenario that makes no logical sense, namely a character who can pull a moon out of orbit with his mind, but is very stupid and can't even lift a ship off himself.

 

Secondly, melancholia. It's a particular style that's starting to become popular again. It's waxed and waned, and the last major patches when it was popular were the late '50s and the early '80s. Examples being how War-Hammer, an ultra-dystopian and occasionally rather depressing gothic-horror sci-fi, is suddenly selling millions of copies and near the top of the New York Times bestseller list for sci-fi(and is out-performing Star Wars) War Hammer is not a happy story: It's about betrayal, loss, and mortals making a stand against the gods themselves. It's dark, violent, and contains frequent themes of racism, religious intolerance, and paints a very bleak picture of the future indeed-one in which. "It appears that war is the human's religion, and they are very zealous in making their devotions" -Veldoran

 

War-Hammer is not alone. As a fact, there's dozens of franchises like it achieving a lot of success-Gears Of War is another. This somewhat gloomy art style is very popular at the moment. Central to it is a palpable sense of decline-one effective way to do that is by showing wonderful things falling apart. War Hammer does this by showing the noble, secular, peaceful Empire slowly get turned into a fascist, authoritarian theocracy. Painting dragons-a creature majestic enough to capture almost anyone's imagination-as either lost/forgotten/actually evil you can easily achieve this. It's the same reason why elves are often portrayed as monsters. Take War Hammer's Eldar as an example. Once noble, graceful, Lord Of The Rings type elves, corrupted and driven insane by their own diseased magic.

 

Well I hope that didn't just sound like a load of pretentious bulls***, that's my two cents.

 

EDIT: yellow pen replaced by dignified silver pen, because it really was painful to look at,

Edited September 2, 2013 by Vindekarr