I just watched about a quarter of "How to Train Your Dragon." Unfortunately, I made the mistake of reading the book first. I did keep my expectations prety low, but I had hoped that I would at least be able to recognize the story. I was quite disappointed, because the book showed the book as nasty, selfish creatures that had to be tamed by brute force, as opposed the the love-at-first-sight telepathic bond, and I had hoped that Dreamworks would be able to work with that; that they would like the gruesome and unromanticized view of dragons instead of the ponies. Alas, it was not to be.
No, seriously. Ponies. Dragons have been receiving the same sort of treatment for a long time. They are that beautiful creature who will carry you around and do anything for you because he loves you and you have a telepathic bond.
The funny thing about the dragonrider subgenre is that it is propogated almost solely by women. Yet most of the protagonists are male. It is as though girls are not expected to like dragons, even though the number of female writers in the subgenre begs to differ. Men, on the other hand, write more about dragonslaying than dragonriding.
What does this say about the sexes? Girls are more interested in having relationships, boys are more interested in killing things. So what else is new?
Girls like big scaly flying monsters is new. Girls don't just want oddly proportioned pastel equines. Girls like cool as much as cute. Why is this so hard? Why does this have to be disguised so much that McCaffery's weyrs are exclusively male except for the token chick, Goodman's Eona even has to disguise as a boy to become a dragon-whatever (okay, I haven't actually read that one. You know how I feel about Crossdressing Epics). In Eona's case, anyway, it seems like it should be the other way around.
Apparently, this concept is quite hard to grasp. Well, I guess I'll add "female dragonrider" to my list of ideas for stories I may or may not ever write.
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