December Days 29 - A Thing I Have Noticed

[silveradept]

[It's December Days time! There's no overarching theme this year, so if you have ideas of things to write about, I'm more than happy to hear them.]

An observation, and perhaps a request for help.

For as much time as I have spent in places with art and statuary of fairies, dragons, and other mystic creatures, I have yet to find an artist in stock who doesn't depict their dragons in one of two ways

1. Fierce creatures of elemental destruction, whether armored or angry or otherwise upset or in aggressive poses intended to show off their status as apex predators, guardians, or, in some cases, the shackled mounts of other Fae creatures (which horrifies me to think of them as involuntary mounts).
2. Cute creatures of rounded lines and cartoonish proportions, often small, sometimes not much bigger proportionately than the other entities they are with.

Call it some sort of mental thing for me, if you like. As much as I give grief to all the other things in the Dragonriders of Pern that deserve every bit of it, it is a series that has managed to balance the majesty and size and power of the dragons involved while making them helpful to the people they are around. (Admittedly, the required telepathic bonds are still a form of shackles.)

I can't seem to find an artist who is able to make their dragons properly powerful and respected without making them hostile. My conception of dragons may be very different than anybody else's, but I'd like to believe that this is really just a small world problem and I haven't made the right connections yet.

That's a thing I've observed. Make of it what you like.

Comments

[cxcvi]

Reminds me on a thread on Reddit about alternative dragon hoards. This comment and its reply stick in my mind as a more colourful picture of who dragons are. The rest of the comments are also interesting, although probably more in a "I want to make my D&D game more interesting" way.

Speaking of: I had plans at one point to run a D&D campaign where the dragons were more than just expendable slaythings. My vision of this was that they are few and far between, and believed by many to not even exist at all. Each one would have their own... details, both large and small, and their own area of interests. The first one I had planned for the party to meet was a dragon that collects beer, and his icy nature providing a suitable environment for the storage of the many brews of the different lands. Sadly, I never had the chance to run the game, due to a strong undercurrent of distaste with the gaming groups I was a part of at the time... but the idea has not left me.

Because dragons are people, too. And yes, some of them are assholes who just want to watch the world burn (or perhaps be a little more pro-active with their desires). But not all of them?

I'll ask around, given as I'm interested in seeing a more... full-flavoured portrayal of dragons myself.

[cxcvi]

Two plausible suggestions, from an art-focused elsewhere:

1: The dragons on the front cover of the Inheritance Cycle (4 books, starting with Eragon). John Jude Palencar's dragons look wise and majestic, and kinda remind me of those paintings of ancestors that you see often in the homes of the wealthy.

2: Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons. Various artists, various different types of dragon. Harder to find good photos of what the art inside looks like.

[silveradept]

The Inheritance Cycle covers aren't bad, but I might be reading a little bit of anger into the dragons there.

I'll have to look inside the Dragonology books and see if their illustrations are any better. Thanks for the suggestions.