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Good News for People Who Like Bad News
01-18-24
Dear False Positive Readers,
This is Ashley Walton, Mike’s sister and editor of False Positive. I have really terrible, awful news and a tiny bit of good news.
You might have noticed it’s been a couple years since we’ve posted anything on this website. Well, brace yourself for the saddest update I’ll ever share.
He better hope he got some sort of healing or limb-reattachment power from that dragon…
He’s a Ronin trying to regain his honor, Bushido means he doesn’t care how he kills the dragon,even if he sacrifices life and limb to do it.
i hate to bring this up, but there’s a huge difference between Asian’s dragon, and west-culture dragon. which is about noble, and evil. Asian dragons are NOT lives in a cave, don’t even lay eggs. and they do not fight with mortals. they are God-like creature of rain, cloud, and sea.
they were symbol of wisdom, authority, and the king.
It’s really brilliant art but it makes me keep wondering about this ‘difference’. i mean this art is ‘looks like’ about Asian culture(dragon is looks like one, and knight is samurai), but it’s just west-culture’s view – the knight(Samurai) come to dragon’s cave. and hunt it.
I know I have to wait till the art is done- nobody knows where this is going. but if it’s just about hunting dragon, I’m gonna really disappoint.
well that’s all, but still good arts. keep on it.
Very good observations, glad someone said it. In Asian culture dragons are guardians, benevolent celestial beings. I was trying to avoid reading appropriation into this but if you wanted a Western style dragon story, use a Western dragon. Using an Asian dragon is to use an image that has much cultural baggage attached to it, which you have somewhat of a duty to honor. Otherwise no matter how good you are, you are just one more Western artist taking from Asian culture to reinterpret it through your own cultural lens with no respect to the original.
“with no RESPECT to the original?”
you must be referring to the TRUE ‘original’ myths about the nature of dragons. respect is hugely subjective.
what sort of expectations of respect are you demanding? you’re talking about make-believe.
since when have any myth makers been acountable to prior mythology? unless you are religious zealots discussing dogma (still make-believe) or modern copyright laws.
there is a very, very long tradition of embellishments when storytellers borrow or build upon what has come before to create something new and surprising to entertain.
I think this dragon is inspired by the mythology of all dragons and isn’t beholden to a specific preexisting myth of an Asian dragon or a Norse dragon or Tolkienian dragon.
The Middle Eastern dragons were really, REALLY bad, and very early East Asian ones may have been not as nice as the latter ones (usually) were too …
@New_ton
It’s a fckn dragon, with ronin. It may not be historically accurate, but it’s cool enough for me not to care. Though the guy might be screwed, ancient meds ain’t the best.
Plenty of room in myths for different versions and they are out there. Just study them sometime. I liked what was done for dragons, rhuks and cyclopes in “7th Voyage of Sinbad.” Oh and don’t forget Sinbad himself! (The snake woman was a version of the Naga too.)