Queen of Good Things, Honest
When a human, elf, dwarf, or otherwise dies, it's Tuesday. They die by the thousands offhand in a sweeping shot of a battlefield, each unworthy of note. That is what it means to die ignominiously.
When a dragon dies, it is an epic tale of grand adventure and high fortune.
EDIT: Also, those black arrows are sorely overrated. If they're "the only thing that can pierce a dragon's hide," why didn't the first one? All it accomplished was knocking off a scale. Something truly capable of "piercing a dragon's hide" would have gone right through and killed him.
edited 20th Apr '15 12:25:34 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.
Epic adventure and high fortune for everyone but the dragon, it seems.
Queen of Good Things, Honest
That's because the dragon already had the high fortune. Possessing high fortune is the natural state of dragons.
When a knight kills a dragon, it is an epic tale. The sheer impossibility of the feat makes it a story worth telling. People listen eagerly to hear how he has done such a thing, how such a thing could ever be accomplished.
When a dragon kills a knight, it's Tuesday. There's nothing thrilling in that, because it is a Foregone Conclusion. Dragons burn nations, pillage impenetrable fortresses, bring death and ruin to millions in backstory. We don't need an epic tale to explain how it's possible; it's possible because he's a goddamn dragon and the only thing a dragon could do that's legitimately surprising is die.
Thus, the dragon wins in every moment of its eons-long existence except the climax of the tale - which is a pretty good ratio of Winning vs. Not Winning.
edited 20th Apr '15 1:03:50 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.
So basically dragons are the master race and all others should bow and obey to them. Might as well declare Smaug your Fuhrer while you're at it, and march to the triumph of the fire's will.
Okay then.
edited 20th Apr '15 2:38:56 PM by Gaon
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
Queen of Good Things, Honest
Pretty much.
Dragons are naturally gifted to be bigger, meaner, more powerful, etc. than anything and everything else around them. Naturally, they are near-universally dicks, because when the first lesson you ever learn in life is "You are automatically better than everything else that exists," you grow to be an entitled f*ckwad.
Smaug has no qualms taking that treasure because of course he has no qualms taking that treasure. He knows he's a glorious titan of unparalleled awesomeness. He wants the treasure and he exists at the top of the food chain without needing to be a pack animal, which means he has no reason to ever learn respect for other living things. What's going to stop him from seizing it?
We value life because we depend on others. Like most mammals, we work together for mutual survival and it gives us a basis from which we can respect ideals like "Living things deserve to live." Dragons, on the other hand, are reptiles. A reptile's world is divided into Food, Predator, and Irrelevancy - and a dragon has no predator.
edited 20th Apr '15 3:23:25 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.
Lost in Space
Except Man. Man is a predator to everything, on a long enough time scale.
edited 20th Apr '15 3:39:26 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Curiously the praise you sing to dragons brings me to a curious point about them. You claim they are are effectively a Ubermensch Master Race who are so superior to everyone that they need only to obey their own rules, whose prowess and might is unparalled and such they have the right to steal, murder and genocide as much as they see fit.
But, here's the funny part: It didn't matter. Their pride and arrogance will always bring them down to the most humiliating of ends. A long time ago, when Morgoth decided to revolt against the creation of Illúvatar in the War of Wrath and conquer/destroy the world, dragons sided with him. They sided with a Omnicidal Maniac, presumably (if we consider Smaug the standard dragon) because their arrogance led them to believe the gods were unworthy of that world or something similar.
And where did that lead them? A humiliating defeat. An entire air force of dragons died like cattle at the hands of the Eagles and the several Maiar who fought for Illúvatar's side. That day dragons learned their pride would not protect them from the hands of the gods, the arrows of men, elves and dwarves and certainly not from the claws of the eagles. It was such a disastrous affair that (if my memory doesn't fail me), dragon numbers dwindled down to near extinction.
By the time Smaug comes around, these magnificent flying beasts are basically down to nothing. The movies actually outright state Smaug is the Last of His Kind. And how does the last of the magnificent dragons go out? With a literal whimper as a random peasant pierces his chest.
And who inherits the earth? Men, dwarves and elves, the very creatures they treated with such disdain.
It's all very poetic, really.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
Lost in Space
Morgoth created dragons, supposedly. At least, that's the claim made in The Silmarillion. Their nature is more or less innate, stipulating Tolkien's dislike of the Always Chaotic Evil trope, of course.
edited 20th Apr '15 3:55:29 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I'm reminded of a dialogue from one of the Ender's Game sequels, where the Hive Queen boasts about how its intelligence, wisdom, and technology vastly outstrip humans, but then wonders if that means anything when it's on the verge of extinction while humans are conquering the galaxy. Maybe being the best at everything doesn't actually make you the best.
Rollin' rollin' rollin'
...I'm sorry, what? Dislike? Tolkien practically codifed Always Chaotic Evil. Orcs are always evil, dragons are always evil, wargs (or worgs? I can never remember) are always evil. Is there something I'm missing here?
"We're home, Chewie."
This is from our Always Chaotic Evil page:
The makers of the movie trilogy were concerned that the idea of a race being evil by definition seemed racist, claiming that in Tolkien's time, people didn't mind such stuff. Hence, the added scene where Uruk-Hai are created from the earth in Saruman's dungeons. This is not mentioned in the book, but is one of the author's earliest ideas for their origins, as an attempt at the "artificial origin" justification. Tolkien later believed that evil cannot create new life, so the Orcs and other monsters must be bred and corrupted from natural people and animals. Orcs: In The Silmarillion, the Elves theorize that Orcs were Elves tortured and corrupted by Morgoth, and in The Lord of the Rings Treebeard voices a similar theory about Trolls being bred as a mockery of Ents. Both of these are beliefs of characters, which are never directly confirmed by the author. Another idea was that Orcs are generally just Human tribes and are "evil" precisely because of Sauron and Morgoth's magic. After the One Ring is destroyed, they scatter in all directions.
These later explanations of Orcs can be seen as an exploration of institutionalized abuse and slavery. While they may be a "species" genetically distinct from their Elf and/or Human ancestors, their evil cultures resulted from millennia of slavery, Religion of Evil, and deliberate corruption. They are less inherently evil than a race that's been warped by external forces into cannon fodder. Tolkien even wrote "deep in their dark hearts the Orcs loathed the Master (Morgoth) whom they served in fear, the maker only of their misery."
Perhaps the most tragic and frightening thing about Orcs and Trolls is that we can never know what they would be like if Morgoth and Sauron hadn't ruined them, or if any of them were able to grow up in a less cruel culture. They're never given the opportunity to be anything but evil. They're raised in cultures that encourage hoarding and greed and hatred, and the differences between them incite the violent tendencies bred into them by the Dark Lords. In an Orc society, cooperation would reduce your own chance of survival in a dangerous situation (i.e. leave your partner to the wolves and escape on your own). Sauron's propaganda also convinced them that their enemies, particularly Elves, were even crueller than Orcs, to discourage them from ever surrendering in battle.
In one letter, Tolkien points out that some Orcs display courage and tribal loyalty if nothing else, and that they wouldn't have been able to function as well if they were completely evil. And he was generally quite good at giving individual Orcs distinct personalities. In fact, Elrond explicitly states that, in the Battle of the Mount Doom, *all living beings except Elves stood divided*. So it is obvious that there are in fact good (at least for a certain definition of "good") Orcs and Trolls, just that we don't see them.
Rollin' rollin' rollin'
...Oh. I would like to offer my sincerest apologies to the deceased spirit of J. R. R. Tolkien, and I'd also like to offer my sincerest screw-yous to the people who make Dungeons & Dragons, you jerks have no excuse now.
"We're home, Chewie."Another fan theory for the Orcs, based in a off-hand comment from Tolkien about how he felt in WWI ("We were all Orcs then") is that Orc is less of a race, and more of a sort of state of mind, and that if an Orc stopped being a fiendish thug, it'd become something else, an Elf most likely.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
Orc: What are we digging for?
Mr. Sir: You're not digging for anything, you're building character. You take a bad orc, make him dig a hole, turns him into a good orc.
Queen of Good Things, Honest
It's all very poetic, really.
Yep. ^.^ Dragons are so OP that the gods themselves had to step in and deal with them so that lesser races could have a chance.
edited 21st Apr '15 8:51:37 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.
Drake's avatar is a dragon. How do we know we haven't been talking to a dragon this whole time with clear bias toward his own species?
Wait, are implying he isn't a dragon defending his own species? I was operating under that impression this whole time.
I don't about him, but I can confirm that as a member of Durin's folk, I do not look kindly on dragons.
Nothing personal, it's just a cultural thing.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
Neither do I, as an Entei.
Queen of Good Things, Honest
<.< >.>
I don't know what you're talking about....
But if there were a dragon here, he would probably be indescribably glorious.
edited 21st Apr '15 12:01:32 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.Wait a minute. You're a dragon, defending the inherent dragon right to rule. In a thread about the Hobbit. Is this some form of fiendish plot to retake Erebor? DO YOU WANT TO TAKE YOUR HOME!? DO YOU WANT TO TAKE OUR GOLD!? NEVER!Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu!
BARUK KHAZÂD! KHAZÂD AI-MÊNU!
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
I always thought Tobias was, well, a drake.
edited 21st Apr '15 12:27:41 PM by DrDougsh
Of course a duck will say that. Next someone who's human on this thread will say he's actually a human!
Oh, so because my avatar is a duck, I must automatically be a waterfowl, huh? How would you feel if I just automatically assumed you were that... um... whatever it is in your avatar? Hmph.
By the by, ducks can totally defeat dragons
◊ with ou... their cunning whenever they want to. Not that I'm a duck or anything like that.
Alas, a scale would have been missing in the armor and they'd all get hit in that one weak spot by some orc or another. Evolution designed dragons and their cousin, the dragon scale armor, to die ignominiously.
edited 20th Apr '15 10:52:04 AM by Parable