"Dinotopia" for Dragons?

YEAR OF THE DRAGON, BABY!!!

This week had Waitangi Day, that Most Awesomest of Days. It’s been a good week, then, though perhaps I ate too much.

I am caught up on Delicious in Dungeon, I finished The Brothers Sun, and I maybe I’m starting the Netflix adaptation One Piece? And I’m re-reading The Mirror of Merlin by T.A. Barron, thinking again of that annotation site I want to make at some point. Hopefully later this year?

Anyhow, this week I read Dragon Slippers and I also saw How to Train Your Dragon recently, so this might be affecting my thinking.

Is There a Dinotopia for Dragons?

Something that struck me after re-reading Dinotopia this past time was how much worldbuilding James Gurney put into the book, which is ultimately an excuse to show off cool dinosaur art. He was concerned with how these creatures he was depicting spoke, lived, ate, read, walked, and took care of each other. I’m not saying that it always works–species from different periods all living side by side doesn’t make a ton of sense, for starters–it still illustrates that Gurney wants this world to work. He’s spent some time figuring out how dinosaurs would function in a society with humans. So I wondered: is there something like this that exists for dragons? Because I don’t know that it does.

The closest I can think of is Dragonology, which doesn’t quite fit the criteria I’m looking for, though it comes close. And it’s quite good! Don’t take this as me bashing it.  The thing is that Dragonology is a study book giving the basics of different kinds of dragons, their habitats, and behavior. It almost treats dragons like a rare kind of animal, except is occasionally references the fact that dragons are intelligent and some of them will even talk to humans, though most of them would prefer us to leave them alone. Some of the spin-offs fit a bit closer–the handbook has more on things like how dragons spend their time, like with riddles, or how to take care of sick dragons (there’s an adorable picture of a dragon chick, Scorcher, with a cold, wearing a scarf).

There’s also The Book of the Dragon by Ciruelo? It goes into the idea that dragons build their lairs in certain ways, and that they actually build households like country estates by old-timey nobles. It kind of doesn’t develop  the idea that well, though.

Look, if dragons are intelligent, and they can talk, and they’re not evil spirits in something like Smaug in The Hobbit, they should have some sort of society, shouldn’t they? How do they interact with other dragons? They have to do that if they want to make more dragons. How do they interact with non-dragons other than burninating their thatched roof cottages? Okay, yes, humans may see them as evil and try to kill them, as humans can be jerks like that, but in a lot of fantasy works, there are plenty of nonhumans out there, too, so what about them? For many writers, the answer seems to be, “They act like wild animals,” which works in something like the Lady Trent series, in which dragons really are animals, albeit intelligent and adaptive ones, but in other books and such where they’re intelligent enough to have a spoken language…. Uh, that seems silly.

For instance, in pretty much every book, paired dragons are ‘mates’. Even if they’re intelligent, in a committed relationship for years on end, they’re ‘mates’. Considering that they’re supposed to be essentially a different kind of people, an intelligent species, using ‘mates’ feels a bit condescending, no? Then again, I do remember one book (I can’t remember the name) where it felt very weird when I read about a dragon introducing his wife.

“Dragons are solitary creatures, though!” Okay? And? There are solitary humans, too, but they often interact with other people. Okay, again, yeah, there’s the appeal of a dragon on his own in a mountain terrorizing a region or something, but if we’re making the dragon intelligent, does he or she squat in the cave all the time? Not talk to other dragons? Not try to visit or communicate with family? And really, not interacting with any non-dragons at all? I’d like to imagine a dragon somewhere who is terrorizing a human valley town, but also hosts the local orc clan’s trading hub or something, because they know no one’s going to start something if there’s a giant honking dragon watching over the proceedings.

Then you have things like Wings of Fire, in which dragons have a pretty complex civilization with plenty of handmade materials, and I don’t know how. How the fudge do dragons craft spears or tapestries or armor? How do they build fortresses and structures? How do they create and write in scrolls? Even if we know they have opposable thumbs, I don’t have a clue how they make the objects or buildings they use.

[Wings of Fire also has the delightful/horrifying thing that humans exist in their world, but dragons don’t think they’re intelligent as they don’t understand their language. Some dragons even try keeping humans as pets!]

So. Things I want more writers to think about in regards to dragons!

-Language: If dragons speak, what language do they speak? This is a thing Dragonology doesn’t specify. I vaguely remember the Fire Within books calling the dragon language ‘Dragontongue’. Ciruelo’s Book of the Dragon says that dragons speak Latin, because it’s the source of languages; it’s not, but I do like the idea of trying to talk to an ancient dragon and then realizing that the only languages he or she speaks are ones from hundreds of years ago that almost no one speaks now.

The language issue also goes to writing? Dragonology uses runes, which is clever because they’re characters that involve straight lines that can be cut–something you could carve into surfaces if you have claws. They’re apparently the same as Germanic/Nordic runes, which is odd, though it does make sense.

Other possibilities: they write with the tip of their tails?

-Etiquette: So in The Invisible Library books, the dragons are inspired by Chinese mythology; there are four Kings and four Queens, and different dragons are aligned with different royal households, which come with strict loyalties and obligations. They’re very polite, and aligned with Order, but that doesn’t make them nice or even Good. But it makes sense that dragons have strict rules of etiquette, considering that if you can physically or magically throw around that much power, your society has to have some sort or reason you’re not throwing it around all the time.

Then again, Skyrim has it so that dragons greet each other by throwing power in each other’s face, but it’s also implied that if you’re that physically powerful, you can take hits like that without much problem. They also for the most part don’t care about insulting or hurting mortals because they’re big honking dragons, and in their minds if you can’t take that then you’re just not worth talking to in the first place.

-Clothing: alright, obviously it would be difficult for dragons to make clothing, but again, if they’re in a world that they share with non-humans, one might think they could buy/compel someone to give them something? It clearly wouldn’t be human clothing, but I remember drawing several dragons in high school that had necklaces/pendants on them. Rings would also be a possibility. If they sit on piles of gold and jewels all day, or if the size of a dragon’s hoard is a sign of status among them, surely they’d want some way to show it off?

Plenty of fiction has dragons with armor? Generally it’s made and put on by non-dragons, like in Inheritance, though I’m curious what materials would be used that don’t make it so heavy that the dragon can’t fly. I think it’s a good opportunity to work out/worldbuild some types of materials that don’t exist in the real world for a fantasy story.

I’m also curious as to how they would put this stuff on? Dragon Slippers mentions dragons putting on collars or moving delicate objects around and I’m not sure how, given that they’re massive reptilian creatures.

And! There’s a story in Nesbit’s Book of Dragons where the baby dragon has to put on his shoes. I’m not sure how that works, but it was always funny to me because in context, it’s this kid trying to trick this dragon into doing something, but the dragon complains that he has to put on his shoes first. I don’t know, it’s weird and random and I love it. What the fudge do dragon shoes even look like? Who makes them? 

-Hobbies: Limyaael had a thing about this, I think? She wonders what dragons do all day in her essay about dragons, and she says the answer can’t be ‘hunting’ or ‘sleeping’. I think she (or maybe it comes up in Paolini’s books?) suggests sculpting? If you can breath fire and are resistant to heat, you can do a lot with molten rock.

What about other things, though? Would they like to hear stories? Would they like to compose anything? There’s a lot they could be doing if they have their own system of writing. I’m curious what dragon music would sound like, too–singing? Some kind of thing that they call ‘singing’ but humans would call noise? Would they have dances? In the air? 

You also have a book like Dragon Slippers where it seems all the dragons have a magic pool in their caves that lets them talk to other dragons, and it’s like all they do when they’re home is sit and gossip with each other. Which is quite funny.

Or heck, what about philosophy? If dragons are sitting around all day, surely they’re thinking about something. The scene in Grendel where the title character meets the dragon comes to mind, although in that case the dragon’s pretty much a nihilist. I’d like a story of a champion climbing a mountain to fight the dragon at the top, only to find out that it’s a dragon equivalent of Confucius or something, who has no interest in hurting anyone.

-Trade: okay, I get that in some stories dragons don’t do anything with their gold, but still–wouldn’t it be interesting if they did? Or they used other things. If you go with the thing from Greek mythology that dragon teeth grow unstoppable warriors, then those would be valuable things for dragons to trade away for more jewels or furnishings or something, especially if they’re like crocodiles who are always losing and regrowing teeth. Scales are often considered pretty valuable in fantasy settings, too.

Then there are stories like Fablehaven where dragons sometimes, on behalf of others, guard treasures. Okay, what do they get out of it, though? Why convince a dragon to sit somewhere and guard something that doesn’t belong to them? Even if dragons have no interest in money to use, then surely there’s something they could be paid with? Knowledge? Food? Better things to hoard? Art to hang up in the lair? I don’t know! But you can figure it out!

 

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I want a book that’s just an exploration of a world with dragons–not just in the sense that they’re big and out there. I don’t want a manual, I want a book that shows off this world and thinks about how it all fits together in a cool and interesting way.

Anyway, happy Year of the Dragon, here’s your Moment of Zen.

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