Dragons can breathe fire and live for ages and fly; all cool as hell things if they weren't hoarding wealth and killing peasants, the rich are just lame leeches
Branson's spaceships are a)barely even spaceships and b) somehow manage to explode more than Musk's despite him only making like 3 of them.
See thats the problem. He needs money to do it, but dragons can do all the cool stuff without their hoard. So they can become kickass class traitors who burn castles and eat monarchs, but a billionaire class traitor will just get his money taken and then he's just a regular class traitor.
After the revolution, Richard Branson will be the only billionaire who we keep.
My plan for him is to have this sort of zoo but he's the only attraction.
Imagine the children's joy in seeing him, “Wow were they all that majestic?" they'll ask and you'll laugh for a bit before responding, “Oh no, no, no. He's the exception, there are a lot of good reasons why we got rid of the rest of them."
Depends on the dragon. Sirrurg and Hualpa are pretty based, Lofwyr is just a firebreathing Jeff Bezos. Don't ask me about my opinions on Ghostwalker, it's better if we don't talk about that desaster.
Nah, dragons are actually intimidating and strong.
The rich are just a bunch of frail, sheltered dumbasses that require an entire system to protect them. You take away the imaginary power we give them and they are nothing. But a dragon can still breathe fire and level a city even without their gold.
Yeah. We tell kids stories about monsters who hoard vast sums of wealth, and are always trying to get more and they don't care who else has to suffer as long as they increase their hoard. They don't care who they hurt to get it and even though a fraction of a percent of their hoard could feed and clothe people actually starving, they respond to any attempt to make this happen with anger and violence.
We really shouldn't tell kids monsters don't exist. We should tell them instead they're metaphors for the people running the world.
Nah, dragons merely hoard gold, the rich instead hold the means of production hostage and thus continuously rob us of the fruits of our labour
Counterpoint: Adult Dragons have 19d12+133 HP but a single adult Rich can be defeated with a single 2d10 ammunition.
PG128 of the DMG tells us that you can construct a trading post with 5000GP and 60 days of downtime.
In terms of raw materials used a guillotine should be SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper, and in terms of construction costs would not take nearly as long to build.
Beowulf is the OG example of ruling class property relations between man and dragon: "Place symbolism and land politics in Beowulf" dro.dur.ac.uk/6837/1/6837.pdf
"In the Anglo-Saxon Maxims, the aphorism ―holding land he is hated, giving much he is much loved‖ is sometimes seen as indicative of land-politics of the period."
"there are only two instances of the verb ricsian, derived from rice, which means to rule. But these are not used of humans. It is used to describe the dragon ruling over the hoard (2211), and earlier, of Grendel effectively ruling over the hall until Beowulf arrives (144). In both instances a monstrous rule is opposed to a heroic leadership of the homeland—in the case of the dragon the lines in the poem come immediately after the invocation of Beowulf‘s role
While technically true, we live in a society :sus: that sees dragons as majestic, near-sacred beings of great wisdom. Comparing these aspirational figures to the pathetic murderous vampires that own everything seems counterproductive to me in terms of messaging. Some kind of undead might paint a better picture; personally, my favorite metaphor is Warhammer's Flesh-eater Courts.
Wiki: Flesh-Eater Courts are the courts of madness that serve and are bound to the vampires known as the Abhorrant Ghoul Kings. Most of them are Mordants, former mortals starved by famine and desolation that trapped themselves within a horrific delusion. They are utterly convinced that their cannibalistic feasts are splendid and grandiose visions of nobility.[1] Their job is to gather feasts made from the flesh of the living and the dead and prepare such flesh to be fit for their lord's culinary pleasure.[2]
Yeah this is true because dragons are ho- I mean, uh, they are a representation of the Scarlet King's glory.
All monsters are metaphor for something that people fear in real life.
Dragons are a proxy for those with wealth becoming tyrants.
Zombies are a proxy for uninformed masses causing chaos, OR as a proxy for a plague (or you can also read them as a proxy for "immigrants ruining our society" but like.. ick...)
Vampires though are definitely a proxy for a rich foreigner who takes over a society and pushes their values onto it, there's not really another way round that.
Werewolves are a proxy for unknown illnesses (again) or just a general fear of change.
Swamp monsters are not a proxy and are real and you should fear themVampires are "old money" nobility you can't get rid of because you didn't kill them the right way 200 years ago.
I can definitely see that interpretation. Although so much traditional vampire fiction has a reliance on a foreign accent, I've always found it a bit sus.
