Dichotomy

[frameacloud]

Comic for August 27, 2006. Today's comic is actually two pages long, making amends for the missed comics on January 30 and February 20. I've been tinkering with the script on this one for a long time; the first page was made last week, and the second page was made today.

Yay for the first appearance of mister non-stereotypical vampire. Psychic vampire, at that.

Footnotes from the comic pages:
* See examples of human-and-dragon friendships and heroic dragons in Greek and Roman natural histories, such as The Natural History of Pliny the Elder, Book viii, Chap. xxii (after Democritus) and Aelianus de Natura Animalium: Book VI, Chap. 63; Book VIII, Chap. 11; Book X, Chap. 48, and others. All are cited in Charles Gould's Mythical Monsters (1886) which was republished as Dragons, Unicorns, and Sea Serpents (2002).
** See the chapter on unicorns in Charles Gould's Dragons, Unicorns, and Sea Serpents. I don't have to identify specific antiquated sources that he quoted in this case, because virtually all of them ended up saying unicorns are "fierce" or "ferocious." I'd intended to make a tally of it.

[Edit 2017-04-03: Updated link.]

Comments

[frameacloud]

Well... hoarding information or collecting books is one thing, but it differs from the myths about dragons guarding gold.

It has more to do with the idea of dragons being wise (...which was in some myths and not others) and has different motivations, which themselves varied in the myths.

Some of the Greek and Roman myths had it that the gods had made it the divine duty of dragons to guard treasure, such as in Aesop's "The Dragon and the Fox," which is a bit different from anyone whereas in the Norse epic that was made into the Ring of the Nibelung, dragons such as Fafnir protected treasure only out of greed. In both of those cases, the dragons were just hanging onto the treasure without doing anything with it. The treasure-hoarding thing isn't something that I relate to very much, personally.

Aside from that: twelve books for one class!? Holy crap! Here I was complaining so much about how one of my classes had five books, which I thought was about the limit. It was more than enough to have to carry them to school each day along with the books for the other classes. Hopefully that teacher of yours doesn't insist that you bring all twelve books with you for every class.

[kistaro]

Hanging onto stuff for no useful reason doesn't make any sense to me, I agree. It's just that I've got a strong disinclination to get rid of anything that is useful, and I have been known to have surprisingly broad definitions of "useful" before...

Fortunately, the 12 Philosophy books aren't textbooks, they're just... books. Normal books. But yeah, that's sort of a lot of them. That pacing is about one book a week, so it probably means I'll have to take one or two books to each class, but no more.

[draco18s.livejournal.com]

Hanging onto stuff for no useful reason doesn't make any sense to me, I agree. It's just that I've got a strong disinclination to get rid of anything that is useful, and I have been known to have surprisingly broad definitions of "useful" before...

Indeed! Just looking around my appartment I have a broken knife, still usable because I turned the blade around so that it worked. I should throw it away because I got new knives recently, but it still sits there.

The other half of the problem of hoarding may be that dragons tend to be lazy (viable truth?)--I myself have half the floor of my appartment full of stuff that hasn't been unpacked yet--and another 8 boxes or so at my parents house, two of which haven't been unpacked from moving into the house that we moved out of to be where we are!

[frameacloud]

Eh... I wouldn't say that dragons tend to be lazy. I wouldn't say it about myself, at least. I've always envisioned dragons as being creatures of constant motion.

As partly pointed out in the comic, the interpretation and adoption of particular traits from an archetype can be subjective and up to an individual otherkin or therianthrope to such an extent that one person's version of "dragon" (or "unicorn," etc) can be radically different from that of the next.

[draco18s.livejournal.com]

Indeed. "Contant motion" doesn't describe me--human or dragon! Unless you count the fact that I "vibrate," that is I have some portion of my body moving when I'm sitting down--it's probably where all the sugar I injest goes. But mentally I'm REALLY lazy. School owes me upwards of $14000 and I've been very lax in getting to the people who have the authority to refund it--mostly because the mental effort arguing with an institution that is known for having more red tape than any other is exausting just contemplating.

[soli-kareien.livejournal.com]

While I am certain that it is nearly impossible to tell rather or not a dragon is mammalian or reptilian, that factor can be taken into accord. In the latter case, it could be assumed that laying on a warm rock in the sun for an hour in the morning could qualify as lazy.

I once had an iguana, most of time that I took a peek at him he was busy basking in the warmth of the nearby lamp. Usually though, later on in the day he was quite busy if I got him out of the terrarium. Kind of like myself, I'm lazy like no other; but if you get me out of the house it's kinda difficult to keep me still. I'll admit, I'm a lazy lizard, mostly just because I'll never fore-go the chance to be lazy. ^.=.^

If dragons are generically cold blooded, then it can be said they are "lazy" when they need to be. I don't know many dragons that could pass up a warm rock. :P