On Dragons

Dragons -- like their cousins, the sea snakes -- are hermaphroditic but usually use male pronouns. Each lay two eggs in his lifetime. Most were slain during the Fall. They are said to dwell in the deep places of the earth or in the sea. They can make powerful allies but most should be avoided at all costs.

Dragons absorb ambient heat to expel as gusts of flame. Their wings enable them to fly. They are intelligent creatures, capable of speech, though incapable of singing and thus magic. They are immortal unless slain, much like elves and Deep Ones.

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Author's Aside:

This is a dragon. I ripped this off Pinterest. The original artist is unknown. There's some AI involved. If you'd rather I use a hand-drawn image, feel free to send me one.

Something came to me while I was in the tub this afternoon, and the more I think about it, the angrier I get.

Long ago, someone -- probably on Tumblr, if that still exists -- made the observation that billionaires are akin to dragons because both hoard wealth. Ha ha, snicker snicker. Eat the rich because they steal the labor of the working class. Rah rah. Hooray socialism.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for taxing the rich. But this is a false equivalency.

Fafnir didn't steal from the people. He got his wealth the old-fashioned way. He slept on top of a magic ring that generated gold. Heck, Fafnir's only real crime is killing his father. Which is terrible. But he doesn't DO anything bad after that. He leaves everyone else alone so he can isolate over his wealth like the greedy bastard he is until Sigurd shows up to slay him. In fact, it's Sigurd who comes to steal from Fafnir!

#Fafnirdidnothinwrong

Smaug stole a mountain of gold, true, but that's not why the dwarves hated and feared him. They hated and feared him because he took their homeland and killed their kinfolk.

Even Beowulf's dragon didn't steal anything. He found the hoard in a tomb and moved in, declaring squatters' rights. That dragon did jack squat for a good century before some jackass -- probably from Tumblr -- decided to steal his cup. Then the dragon went on a burninating rampage, and Beowulf had to put him down.

Spoilers for a thousand-year-old poem written in a language none of you read.

And while we're on Beowulf, here's something to think about: If we consider Beowulf to be quasi-historical based on the mention of semi-historical figures like Onela of Sweden, it’d be interesting to see if, in a thousand years, high academics will be studying Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter as serious literature.

Both mention history. Both involve monsters. Boom. Literature.

The Nameless One from Samantha Shannon's amazing Priory of the Orange Tree isn't evil because he likes gold. He's evil because he wants to break the world in half and set it on fire.

Even the red dragon from Revelation doesn't come to steal your wealth. He comes to devour the innocent, deceive the nations, and conquer the world.

Dragons aren't slain because they're greedy. They're slain when their greed causes them to hurt people. Greed isn't good. But greed is not the thing that makes the dragon a menace. Rather it's his propensity for destruction and lack of regard for the lives of others.

Now, if you want to compare Jeff Bezos to Midas or Minos or one of the other notable tyrants of myth and legend, be my freakin' guest. The guy's creepy as heck. And yes, Elon did what you saw him do, whether or not he meant it that way. Just so we're clear.

But they aren't dragons. Monsters? Maybe. But not dragons.