About: Shoulder-Sized Dragon   Sponge Permalink

An Entity of Type : owl:Thing, within Data Space : 134.155.108.49:8890 associated with source dataset(s)

In folklore, both Eastern and Western dragons are invariably gigantic. In modern fantasy, however, it's common to see miniature draconic creatures as well. These are usually around the size of crows or hawks, but otherwise resemble standard Western dragons. They can almost always fly, but they may or may not be able to breathe fire and/or use other magical abilities, and like their larger cousins, they may or may not be sentient and able to speak. They're mostly harmless and usually rather cute -- Reptiles Are Abhorrent almost never applies. Settings that have these critters usually have full-sized dragons as well; occasionally, the Shoulder Sized Dragons may even just be ordinary dragon hatchlings that have not yet attained their full size. More commonly, though, they're a separate but pr

AttributesValues
rdfs:label
  • Shoulder-Sized Dragon
rdfs:comment
  • In folklore, both Eastern and Western dragons are invariably gigantic. In modern fantasy, however, it's common to see miniature draconic creatures as well. These are usually around the size of crows or hawks, but otherwise resemble standard Western dragons. They can almost always fly, but they may or may not be able to breathe fire and/or use other magical abilities, and like their larger cousins, they may or may not be sentient and able to speak. They're mostly harmless and usually rather cute -- Reptiles Are Abhorrent almost never applies. Settings that have these critters usually have full-sized dragons as well; occasionally, the Shoulder Sized Dragons may even just be ordinary dragon hatchlings that have not yet attained their full size. More commonly, though, they're a separate but pr
dcterms:subject
dbkwik:all-the-tro...iPageUsesTemplate
dbkwik:allthetrope...iPageUsesTemplate
abstract
  • In folklore, both Eastern and Western dragons are invariably gigantic. In modern fantasy, however, it's common to see miniature draconic creatures as well. These are usually around the size of crows or hawks, but otherwise resemble standard Western dragons. They can almost always fly, but they may or may not be able to breathe fire and/or use other magical abilities, and like their larger cousins, they may or may not be sentient and able to speak. They're mostly harmless and usually rather cute -- Reptiles Are Abhorrent almost never applies. Settings that have these critters usually have full-sized dragons as well; occasionally, the Shoulder Sized Dragons may even just be ordinary dragon hatchlings that have not yet attained their full size. More commonly, though, they're a separate but presumably related species. Why? Well, when it comes to Badass Adorable Non-Human Sidekicks, it doesn't get much better than a pint-sized version of Smaug. In any work where these creatures exist, one of them will be kept by a major character as a pet, Familiar or Bond Creature. The trope name comes from the fact that they are almost invariably found perching on their human companion's shoulder in the Parrot Pet Position. As far as we can tell, the Ur Example of this trope is found in Ursula K. Le Guin's 1968 novel A Wizard of Earthsea, in which tiny "dragon-lizards" that can be tamed as pets appear briefly. The Trope Maker, though, is probably Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey, published three years later, in which the Shoulder Sized Dragons play a much bigger role. Subtrope of Our Dragons Are Different, Instant Awesome, Just Add Dragons, and Cool Pet. See also A Boy and His X and Loyal Animal Companion, as well as Fun Size. Examples of Shoulder-Sized Dragon include:
Alternative Linked Data Views: ODE     Raw Data in: CXML | CSV | RDF ( N-Triples N3/Turtle JSON XML ) | OData ( Atom JSON ) | Microdata ( JSON HTML) | JSON-LD    About   
This material is Open Knowledge   W3C Semantic Web Technology [RDF Data] Valid XHTML + RDFa
OpenLink Virtuoso version 07.20.3217, on Linux (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu), Standard Edition
Data on this page belongs to its respective rights holders.
Virtuoso Faceted Browser Copyright © 2009-2012 OpenLink Software