Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Goodbye Fire-breathing Dragons

This is topic Goodbye Fire-breathing Dragons in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by lehollis (Member # 2883) on :

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=494755&in_page_id=1770

I doubt I need to make any comments. No longer will we have to worry about our kids imitating dragons. We can all sleep better now.

Posted by nitewriter (Member # 3214) on :

This would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. It's another step in the "whimping" of America. Some little league sports have been tossed aside because they foster competition and competition may lead to sorrow on the part of the loser. Some have not gone this far - instead they play - but there is no winner so as not to cause hurt feelings to the losers.

Yep, protect those kids. Assume they have no common sense, don't let them compete and (ohmigod) suffer the pangs of loss. Keep them away from fire breathing dragons - the little darlins' may burn themselves up somehow. When you've done all this you will have created the perfect WHIMP. These days the assumpition is people are so inept they can't even find their own butts without a GPS and measures like these make it a certainty.

[This message has been edited by nitewriter (edited November 18, 2007).]

Posted by SaucyJim (Member # 7110) on :

If I recall correctly, me trying to imitate a dragon taught me two important things:

1.) I am not, in fact, a dragon.

2.) Because I am not a dragon, I can neither breathe fire nor spread leathery, clawed wings (or even my twiggy arms) and take flight.

We're becoming sensitive to too many things; in fact, in our minds we seem to be making up things to be sensitive about. Who among us didn't love seeing or reading anything with a dragon in it? I remember watching Saturday morning cartoons, seeing dragons, and immediately running outside to get my friends together for an imaginary game of hunting/being dragons. Those are some of the best memories from my childhood.

All these people seem to be doing are preventing such moments from ever happening again.

Besides, aren't the children's parents supposed to do most of the "don't do that" education? Why should publishing companies and editors take that vital task away from those who have a day-to-day personal exposure to the kids?

Posted by Marzo (Member # 5495) on :

All I can say is wow.

Posted by Hariolor (Member # 7048) on :

Astounding - what kind of message, though, do green cooker elements send to children?

Just wait until some kid melts green crayons or modeling clay onto their parents' electric range. Then we'll just have no cooking whatsoever in books.

And since eating raw foods carries the danger of food-borne illness, we'll have no eating at all. In fact, life is just far too dangerous in general. No more having kids at all, I say, they'll just die eventually anyway, and that's too cruel a fate.

Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :

Well, if we can no longer write about fire-breathing dragons, we can always the elements of sex and violence to children's literature. Funny how those topics don't seem to bother publishers much.

Posted by Vanderbleek (Member # 6535) on :

The only things my parents told me not to do were the ones that would end in my demise (look both ways before crossing the street).

Other than that it tended to be more along the lines of "don't do that again." And, after that, I haven't ever put my hand on a hot pan, played with a wasp's nest, or swung from a branch that was too small to support my weight.

I've noticed an increase in broken bones with kids around my sister's age (about 10) and I think it's because kids don't know how to fall anymore; because they aren't allowed to. I've fallen so many times it's second nature to keep the fragile parts of me (arms especially) safe, and land on something with more padding, like my rear. Apparently other kids don't know how to fall (which I learned by experience) and this increase in broken bones leads to a decrease in chances to fall, which, in turn, leads to less learning. It's a terrible spiral.

(Note: This next part was not thought of by me, but is instead paraphrased by me.)

The cause of this is what is known as "Hysterical Soccer Parent Syndrome" or HSPS. The Hysterical parent assumes two things when something happens; the accident (or incident) is someone's fault, and that fault is never her/his or her/his family. Obviously then, it is the dragon's fault, not the parent's, that the child decided to play with fire, or attempt to fly. Whenever possible, a parent with HSPS will blame things they themselves do not enjoy (TV, music) to prevent their own discomfort. Unfortunately, the only known cure for HSPS is a smack on the side of the head, which is, as far as I know, frowned upon (and perhaps worthy of assault charges).

Posted by Pyre Dynasty (Member # 1947) on :

"Civilization is sterilization,"

--Aldus Huxley, Brave New World

Posted by skadder (Member # 6757) on :

I don't believe in compensating for peoples stupidity. Isn't that what survival of the fittest is about?

If you want to play on the train tracks, sure, why not? We don't need your genes anyway!

[This message has been edited by skadder (edited November 19, 2007).]

Posted by Leigh (Member # 2901) on :

Americans accept sex, drugs and abusing women in rap songs, but not a fire breathing dragon in a childrens book?

My, my, my... How the world has sunk to another pathetic level of political correctness.

They changed "Bah, Bah Black Sheep" to "Bah, Bah Rainbow sheep" in Australia because the government thought it'd racist against African immigrants, though if you think about it, "Bah, Bah Rainbow Sheep" is now being derogatory against Gays. Oh my, how smart the Governments truly are.

Posted by Lord Darkstorm (Member # 1610) on :

When did we get away from "get over it", when our feelings got hurt? People have an obsession with getting offended over everything.

I personally would rather be offensive than offended, but that's just me.

Give me the dragon, and for those who disagree...well, my reply is without a doubt offensive.

Is it just me or are we only a few steps away from burning all the books that offend them?

Posted by Lynda (Member # 3574) on :

This is just another example of how STUPID STUPID STUPID "political correctness" is!!!!! GRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!! How do we stop this idiocy???? I'd really like to know. Maybe we could call down death rays from space on all the complete IDIOTS who are promoting this stupidity!!

Lynda, who is extremely ANTI-PC!!!

Posted by annepin (Member # 5952) on :

This isn't an issue of political correctness so much as one of being over cautious. The publishers aren't afraid of offending someone, only that they will cause children to damage themselves, somehow.

It's utterly ridiculous, of course, and I dearly hope it does not kill fantasy all together. The same argument could be made about a fantasy story involving swords (the Book of Three, for instance). What a tragedy if they decided to get rid of that!

Posted by Corky (Member # 2714) on :

Somewhere I've seen a list of reasons why my generation should not have lived long enough to reproduce that includes such things as

we didn't have seat belts or bike helmets

and so on. I have no idea where to look for it on Google, but if anyone knows where it is, a link here would be relevant, I think.

Posted by Lord Darkstorm (Member # 1610) on :

How do we reach such a state where people allow others to tell us that all these things that were fine when I was young is now bad. It comes from magical math...or political math. It is the ability to take some arbitrary statistic and put it with some number and make it into a percentage that means nothing but sound horrid. If you were to count the number of kids killed or permanently damaged by a bike accident in a town with a population of 1000, I would bet under 10...probably less. Now how many if you expand that out to 1 billion? Now our number can be over a million. Of course when you add in more people, more cars, you up the number of possible accidents, still you are not quite looking at the same numbers anymore. Now this is pretty straightforward, but now they take that number and put it into a percentage. So in the original example we are looking at a fractional percent. But now they will manipulate a few numbers and that 0.1 percent becomes 10 percent. that is a 10 percent (rounded) increase. They make it sound horrible, but it's just one of the effects of expanding population.

What is the cure? Turn off the tv and put books in your kids hands. Make them read twice as long as they get to watch tv or play video games. Fight the evil pc world by raising kids who can think for themselves.

Posted by Kirona (Member # 7125) on :

If it ever happens that I have children, I will specifically find and/or MAKE childrens' books that aren't so sissified. I'm only 18, and I've been a lot more sheltered than most on this site, but modifying a book so that a creature that DOESN'T EXIST doesn't do something that is IMPOSSIBLE to imitate with any accuracy (kids will blow air and pretend they're breathing fire, that's as close as it can get) is just too far. And if a kid manages to get onto the roof so they can try to fly, then once you give the kid a good spanking you should figure out how he/she managed to do something so physically intensive, being as the new thing I keep seeing on TV is an 'educational video game system' so that your kids don't even have to mess with REAL TOYS to learn shapes. Where did the house-climber get those muscles? Surely not from eating vegetables, since that's 'cruel' now too.

Next - sure 'Dora the Explorer' will teach them spanish on their shiny new game-system-slash-babysitter, but when they get to school and can't speak english, they'll still be in trouble in a nation that speaks english with a school system that speaks *gasp* english. Oh, and their parents won't teach them - that's old-fashioned and inconvenient. Let's have the TV do that too.

Now, with the seat belts and helmets and such, yes, people didn't use such things as often. However, even I know that people were more careful in the ways that really mattered back then. People drove only if they 1) knew how and 2) weren't going to be distracted by the radio/ipod/book/laptop/food/drink/makeup.

Oh, and the statisticians also fail to mention that the rise in crashes and fatalities, even in percentages, is closely related to the rise in numbers and percentages of people who now use cars.

My dad will talk about his childhood, and I find the stories funny, but there's something important in them too. Never once was he hit by a car, and never once did anyone he knew get hurt by something like that, and when people were injured from jumping off the swingset or out of a tree or whatever, they cried, put a bandage on it, and continued with life. Now, schools are forced to remove swingsets, causing kids to be all confused when they see one at a park - 'what's that thing, daddy?' - and if someone's kid jumps out of a tree and breaks his arm, that someone immediately sues whoever owns the property that the tree is on rather than telling their kid to not jump out of a bloody tree. Oh, and don't forget the post-traumatic stress treatment that the kid will get, leaving him/her a paranoid adult who breaks down and cries at the sight of a tree.

Posted by Zero (Member # 3619) on :

Well... actually, I had a friend when I was seven. His name was Joey. And--it's a rather tragic story now that I think about it--he had just watched Smaug breathe fire from the cartoon version of the Hobbit. And he thought that was damn spectacular. Five minutes later he somehow got a hold of a gas-powered candle lighter, and a carton of gasoline, and, well, the rest is history. Poor bugger.

Posted by Hariolor (Member # 7048) on :

quote:
"Bah, Bah Rainbow sheep" in Australia because the government thought it'd racist against African immigrants

Why would that be at all offensive, the black sheep were proud, productive members of society. Three Bags Full and all that. Nothing to be ashamed of there.