THE PACK Message Boards

Moss27 wrote:

Silverclaw wrote: "Spirited Away" has a beautiful eastern dragon in it. And the tv show, "American Dragon" is a guilty pleasure of mine.

Spirited Away was a good movie. I love the dragon, 'cause it's head is a dog. XD

The Asian dragons as river spirits were always a favorite of mine too -- they actually do look like rivers the way they look, fly etc. I didn't think to list one though because I didn't know of any decent anime that featured such dragons.

With the exception of Spirited Away, which I never really thought of as a dragon movie -- just a movie with a dragon in it.

Oooh fun... now we're going to have dragon eggs all over the place. ^^

Well, there is Dragon Wars. That had a Asian dragon at the end. lol

Oooh fun... now we're going to have dragon eggs all over the place. ^^

Aww, didja lay them yourself?

I can't say what I just laid, but I'm not built to lay eggs!

Baphnedia is gonna be a daddy.

i had some of these egg pets back on Gaia Online, too. The site was run by the people who did neopets, though, and they had random pets and not just dragons. I had a toaster once. XD

I'm glad these are all dragons... I'd hate to imagine a toaster popping out of these eggs. Being a father to a kitchen appliance might be... ackward. Breakfast would never be the same.

so I found my old dragons, and they came from elementsgraphics.net from a LONG time ago. I thought they came from neopets, 'cause for some reason, I remember a side bar with neopets stuff... but i guess not. they gave out 5 eggs every month and would hatch at the first of each month, whether or not it was clicked on a lot.

i had 7 pets, but i could only post 4.

Videogames have the best dragons!

The dragons in World of Warcraft are among my favorites. I just got a flying red dragon mount to ride around on. I love that game. The colors of dragons in World of Warcraft are completely different than what they are in D&D-inspired stuff, and it threw me off for the longest time! (Did I mention the game has time-traveling dragons? o.O)

I watched Dragonheart again yesterday for the first time in many years. The ending still makes me teary-eyed, even though the movie has it's flaws. Still one of the saddest and most epic movie themes ever, and no wonder it's been used in many other movie trailers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTKSUlMbp9A *grabs tissue*

I love dragons. I wish I could write a story involving them that was not cliched!

I'm just going to put this here: I'm born under the year of the dragon. Just 2 days off from the year of the GOLDEN dragon.

Berserker wrote:I love dragons. I wish I could write a story involving them that was not cliched!

The reason it's so hard is because the "problem" is also what is often the appeal: long life, wisdom and/or power. Even writers / filmmakers who dumb down their dragons for comedic effect sometimes give into this temptation. Even Qubo's Jane & The Dragon (one of my guilty pleasures, I must admit) couldn't resist making dragon's scales impenetrable to all weapons. . . Except for those that were "forged in dragon fire." *double-faceplams*

Something I've found regrettably refreshing are those writers who turn the attributes you mentioned (long life, wisdom and/or power) on their head and base their stories around the downsides of having a long life, wisdom and/or power.

Baphnedia wrote:Something I've found regrettably refreshing are those writers who turn the attributes you mentioned (long life, wisdom and/or power) on their head and base their stories around the downsides of having a long life, wisdom and/or power.

Like what Twilight did for vampires?

The only one I could really figure out how to work (without being a cliche) would be the long life part, and the only reason I could see that is because I also applied it to the werewolves in my Night Life setting. The easy route would be to go the emo "I'm going to outlive everyone I love" route, but frankly, I prefer a more fatalistic approach: Werewolves don't get sick or grow old -- they only ever die violently. Limited regeneration like that attributed to werewolves -- recovering from sickness, minor injuries and reversing the effects of aging -- is basically a guarantee that, when you finally die, it's going to be in such a way that you would not even wish upon your enemies.

So that might be the downside of old age for a dragon. They're going to live for centuries, but only if they can avoid getting slain.

One of the most profound comments on immortality is quoted from Shadow of the Vampire:

"Dracula hasn't had servants in 400 years and then a man comes to his ancestral home, and he must convince him that he... that he is like the man. He has to feed him, when he himself hasn't eaten food in centuries. Can he even remember how to buy bread? How to select cheese and wine? And then he remembers the rest of it. How to prepare a meal, how to make a bed. He remembers his first glory, his armies, his retainers, and what he is reduced to. The loneliest part of the book comes... when the man accidentally sees Dracula setting his table."

I could see this as a dragon's loneliness. Not that he outlives everyone he loves, but that he outlives life itself, that he is too powerful for life itself.

Berserker wrote:One of the most profound comments on immortality is quoted from Shadow of the Vampire:

"Dracula hasn't had servants in 400 years and then a man comes to his ancestral home, and he must convince him that he... that he is like the man. He has to feed him, when he himself hasn't eaten food in centuries. Can he even remember how to buy bread? How to select cheese and wine? And then he remembers the rest of it. How to prepare a meal, how to make a bed. He remembers his first glory, his armies, his retainers, and what he is reduced to. The loneliest part of the book comes... when the man accidentally sees Dracula setting his table."

I could see this as a dragon's loneliness. Not that he outlives everyone he loves, but that he outlives life itself, that he is too powerful for life itself.

Good point. Though if you think about it, a better question might have been "Do they still buy bread or select cheese and wine that way I used to?"

The most depressing and most frustrating thing I ever had to do in my entire life was coach my mother through the process of transitioning my mother off of an IBM 5150 and onto my 2004 Toshiba laptop with Windows XP. Five years later, the only progress she's really shown is that she no longer asks me "one click or two" ten times a minute. She still gets frustrated by even the slightest glitches or problems, has zero personal problem-solving skills (one time she complained to me that it wouldn't connect -- she forgot to turn the tower on, another time she said "this thing popped up" -- it was the right-click menu), and has an uncanny talent for screwing with my settings without noticing that she's doing it.

I can't imagine what it'd be like to coach somebody that had never seen any kind of computer in their entire life before.

I wonder if there are any dragon forums similar to this one.

There were, and are (though I'm not sure if its dragon forums of mostly therians, like draconity.org, or dragon fan forums). The group I was around about six years ago has, by and large, stopped exploring dragons, for better or for worse. I do have a small draconity board over on the Dreamers of Paradice forums, and its about half goofing-off and half serious...

You know what? It wouldn't be hard to do. Just copy The Pack's forum structure pretty much exactly, except make it dragon-centric.

What should a dragon be?
Dragon Legends & Lore
Dragon Film, Comics, Novels, Etc.
Draconic Artwork
Draconic Fan Fiction
General Discussion
RP forums etc.

The only problem is that there's no inspiration to get things going... no "Freeborn" to form the foundation of the forum. But it's an idea.

I like dragons, especially in art. I'm not a big fan or anything, but dragons have a simular mystery about them as werewolves.

I loved How to Train Your Dragon, but I've noticed that dragons are becoming too dumbed down. That sounds like a silly thing to say, but dragons in general are often depicted more like Pokemon these days; they're too cute for their own good, or are benign and kid-friendly. They have no real meaning anymore in the West. I guess that's what happens when the myths of a society shift away from monsters and magic towards moon landings and computers. Vampires have suffered the same fate.

I plan to remedy that... eventually. :p

Reign of Fire, even though the film was a monumental let down, had vicious dragons in it. Personally I still love, Vermithrax Pejorative, the legendary beastie from "Dragon Slayer".

Morkulv wrote:I like dragons, especially in art. I'm not a big fan or anything, but dragons have a simular mystery about them as werewolves.

They also have more reality. When the early peoples ran across fossilized dinosaurs that were recognizable (most aren't); they created the idea of Dragons to explain them.
Personally, I would prefer having a dragon chasing me rather than something like an Allosaur(ground) or a Pterosaur(flying), I would be more likely to get away from them.

Berserker wrote:I loved How to Train Your Dragon, but I've noticed that dragons are becoming too dumbed down. That sounds like a silly thing to say, but dragons in general are often depicted more like Pokemon these days; they're too cute for their own good, or are benign and kid-friendly. They have no real meaning anymore in the West. I guess that's what happens when the myths of a society shift away from monsters and magic towards moon landings and computers. Vampires have suffered the same fate.

I actually thought of that movie as being more of a middle ground. They could certainly act cute, but even the really little ones were only cute in a "Yeah, man. I'll gnaw your face off" kind of way.

At the very least, HTTYD didn't take away anything from dragons that hadn't already been stripped away by Dragon Tales beforehand. I think that should be a general rule of thumb: If the fan following has survived seeing it brought to PBS, it'll survive anything else that could possibly be done to it too.

awe Dragon Tales is so cute,to this day i like that cartoon.