Steal the Book Title

[tuftears]

Maybe I've posted about this before... But Steal the Dragon is too good a title for the book it's on.

Seriously, what's up with that?

A. Nothing gets stolen in the book description.
B. No dragon is involved.

Every time I see this book title, I imagine the book it should have been.

Point the first. Something has to get stolen... I don't mean breaking in to free captive or enslaved dragons. That's 'Free the Dragon', still a good idea but very different. I mean that it should fit the 'caper' model: a thief or other scruffian is presented with a problem, we as the readers are informed of the various difficulties, the thief assembles his or her resources, and proceeds with the heist. Nothing ever goes entirely as planned of course...

Point the second. There has to be a dragon. Don't just nickname an aircraft or spaceship 'Dragon'. It doesn't have to be an intelligent dragon; in fact making it intelligent raises completely legitimate questions of ethics and morality, legal status of monsters notwithstanding. It does have to be big, winged, scaled, and possessed of enormous destructive force and a temperament to suit. In other words, not the most cooperative thing in the world to steal.

I can even imagine the opening line of the book.

"I don't do livestock," the greatest thief in the world said. She ignored the aide's nervous tittering. "Artwork, bullion, documents, artifacts historical, magical, and religious, if it's portable and worth something to someone, I'll steal it. But I don't do people and I don't do beasts."

Comments

[dracosphynx.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd probably do it as a sentient AI warship named the Dragon.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I'd buy that. ^_^

[dracosphynx.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Actually, I might shake it up and perhaps make it more of a new top-secret AI interceptor/drone, and have the theft be accomplished by the thieves stealing the support ship that was used to ferry it around to testing areas. Set it up so the AI knows it's been stolen, but still has to obey the commands/objectives from the console in the support ship, plus it needs the support ship for repairs/maintenance/etc. However, the thieves cannot actually get in it because they lack clearance. So try to set up a more complicated, conflict laden relationship.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

It's a reasonable premise but, bigger would be better to fulfill the name 'Dragon' as opposed to 'Drake' or even 'Wyvern'. ;)

[rowyn]

I love the "AI knows it's stolen but has to obey certain commands" bit, and the ensuing complex relationship. You should write this!

[archangelbeth]

*would like the next sentence, plz*

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Me too, now we just need to convince someone to write it. ;)

[archangelsmom.livejournal.com]

I nominate YOU/!

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

We should team up and make dracosphynx write it!

[archangelbeth]

For certs not ME, so dracosphynx it is! ^_^

[rowyn]

*seconds this nomination*

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

I can imagine this as some sort of twist on the typical fantasy RPG cliches. You know: Group of adventurers, goes into dungeon, somehow there's a big dragon guarding a horde of gold in the middle because ... because ... because it's fantasy and we just expect that sort of thing somehow (and because JRR Tolkien set the standard once upon an age ago).

So the big thing is to go there, slay the dragon, take the gold, right? Maybe rescue a chained-up maiden if we're veering far afield of Tolkien and going more toward medieval-ish knight-vs.-dragon cliches.

But no, I'm not here for the gold. Scratch that. I want the DRAGON.

My inner 12-year-old can so sympathize with that. Having my very own dragon as a pet or riding beast or to play video games against (depends upon the type of dragon) would be nothing short of AWWWWWWESOME. But then I start getting boringly fixated upon all the complications that would arise in the care and maintenance and keeping-under-control and liability issues of having a dragon who might or might not be prone to setting stuff on fire and/or eating anyone/anything readily to hand (claw?) when it gets peckish.

Going the Mirari-esque route, I can envision a storybook setting, a la Narnia, where some benevolent and ridiculously powerful benefactor (whether God-proxy lion, ancient fairy, or somewhat insane inventor/explorer who has discovered/created the extradimensional gateway) who for whatever reason entrusts a group of CHILDREN to save Fantasyland (they have the Power of Imagination, they're the Chosen Ones, or This is a Riff on Young Adult Fiction So It's Just a Derivative Trope So Don't Think Too Hard About It). The expectation is that they befriend the happy little munchkin-folk, take up their Magical Artifacts of Goodness (or befriend their magical companions/fighting beasts, depending upon the sub-genre), and head toward yonder Place of Evil and defeat the Terrible Dragon and bring peace to the land.

And then someone has to go and complicate things by wanting to keep rather than kill the dragon. So that this isn't just pointlessly sappy, this is no poor sniffly misunderstood Dwagon Who Just Wants to Be Fwiends, but an honest-to-goodness dangerous terror. (HOW terrible? Hmm. That depends. I think a little poorly of stories where we have Nominally Bad Creatures who ACTUALLY eat people but it's "nobody WE know or care about," and it all happened Off-Camera, so it can easily be forgiven -- versus if we actually SAW who he ate, we'd have to kill him, because putting a face on it makes the crime real. All it takes is a little Fridge Logic to make that narrative fall apart. Ditto for anime series where the villain kills a bunch of innocents early on, but by the time we reach Episode #108, the villain has his own fandom, and we just conveniently forget all that transpired before.)

Anyway, just brainstorming.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

This is exactly the sort of thing ursulav's D&D party (http://www.redwombatstudio.com/category/dd/) would do, rescuing the dragon because every living thing that isn't irredeemably evil deserves a chance. };)

Their adventuring party now has a castle filled with various... rescuees, I'm given to understand.

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

MLP Time Loops had an interesting variant on that };>.

(The core premise is a groundhog-day loop that lets the main cast get ridiculously powerful, and bored. There are occasional "fused loops" as a crossover excuse, and the entire set-up is a justification to put together a nominally-consistent anthology of entertaining short stories. It worked quite well.)

So, we wind up in another Tolkein fused loop, with various female ponies and other non-human or non-male characters staring down the Nazgul. The result:

Half an hour of what could only be called nazgul volleyball tore up the Pellenor Fields more than an entire week of occupation by an orcish army.

Amazingly, in all the fight the lizard-like flying creature wasn't harmed. A yellow pony of Rohan led it meekly away from the field of battle, telling the creature, "You're not really a bad wyvern, are you? You're very sorry about the trouble you've caused, aren't you? That's all right, you don't have to go back to that nasty Mordor place..."

=^.^=

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Must be Fluttershy. >_>

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

Yes. It's derived from a similar line in-show ("Dragon Shy"). It was along the lines of "You're not a bad dragon, you just made a bad decision."... Delivered after scolding a dragon the size of a mid-rise apartment building until it broke down and cried. Fluttershy is timid and weak... right up until her Mama Bear reflex is triggered.

Don't mess with Fluttershy =^.^=.

[archangelbeth]

You can have a Terrible Dragon who doesn't eat humans (at least not by choice), but who can decimate livestock -- which is pretty terrible if you're a shepherd and there goes all your wool. *burp*

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Random title idea: "The Dragon's Treasure."

(The trick: It's not possessive. It's a contraction. ;) )

[rowyn]

*laughs*

I do really like the idea of the most valuable part of a dragon's hoard being the dragon. :D

[tcreynolds]

I also greatly dislike misleading book covers and titles. It seems to be a popular trend to put animal pictures on the cover, or have the title of the book sound like some great animal drama. Then you read the inner cover blurb and it has nothing to do with animals, there isn't a single animal in the story, and I just can't even!

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

But at least they got you to pick up the book and look at it, amirite?

[tcreynolds]

Yeah but all it did was piss me off ;)

Sometimes I would look at the cover and the picture and I would start to get images of what the story *could* be, which was infinitely more interesting (to me anyway), but they were half-baked and nothing I wanted to take home and finish cooking, if you know what I mean.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I totally know the feeling. ;) I still ponder 'Steal the Dragon' as a book now and then.

[rowyn]

I remember getting tricked by this so many times that I was highly suspicious that Watership Down would not actually be about rabbits. And delighted that it was. :)

[kelkyag]

That got me thinking of "the dragon" as being artwork or artifact, or a bejeweled sculpture like the Maltese Falcon, but that direction doesn't fill your want for an actual teeth-and-scales dragon.

(Following your trail of breadcrumbs from rix_scaedu's.)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

While it's true that would meet the requirement, it substantially reduces the difficulty of the heist. ;) The more difficult the heist, the better the story, IMO!

[kelkyag]

When I was a moppet chewing my way through the fantasy section of my local library, one series I read featured humans raising & breeding semi-domesticated dragons as (among other things) pit fighters, pets, and food. The protagonist steals a baby dragon to train as a pit fighter fairly early on ...

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Pretty sure those were the Jane Yolen books, collectively known as the Pit Dragon Chronicles. ;)

[kelkyag]

<looks up> Yeah, those! I'm surprised that description hits so few books.

[kelkyag]

Hmm. The dragon sculpture being stolen is a golem that guards [other treasure] (and is only part of the defenses). The person hiring the thief who (attempts to) steal it doesn't want it, they just want it out of the way so they have a better shot at the rests of the treasure; bonus points that this makes the hired thief a more obvious target to the owner of [other treasure].

Still not there. :)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Yeah, one has to figure why hired thief doesn't go on to steal the rest. ;)

[kelkyag]

Hands already full with the dragon? Other defenses? Dunno! This is part of why I am not an author. :)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's definitely not an easy problem. That's part of why it's so interesting, if it were obvious, there'd be no story. "Steal the Treasure" -- that's not a book title, that's a thief's motivational poster. ;)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Actually it came to me... The treasure may not be what the thief would recognize as treasure. Several scenarios:

The dragon statue is the key to an actual live dragon. Who controls the statue can waken the actual living dragon from its rock-like slumber, where it's pretending to be part of a mountain range. No one tells the thief this, of course, so it comes as a complete surprise when massive earthquakes interfere with her getaway plans.

The dragon statue is in a museum. The other artifacts around are just ancient historical things, of no monetary value to the thief without a collector who's actively interested in them. (have you ever tried to fence a 10,000 year old stele?) The dragon itself however is of great interest to the collector.

The dragon is the guardian to a city. Legends say it will come to life when the city is threatened. With it out of the way...

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

The "treasure not recognized as treasure" bit has been done a few times, in various ways =^.^=.

The one that comes most immediately to mind was from "The Wizardry Compiled" (second in the "programmer from silicon valley winds up in a magical world" series). An apprentice with a grudge against "Wiz" (the programmer) ends up dismissed, and decides to raid Wiz's notes to turn them over to the bad guys on his way out.

He takes formulae for several important spells, but dismisses the most important document as "the same tripe he foists off on his students".

This was a tome nicknamed "The Dragon Book", detailing the underpinnings of his personal magic system. =^.^=

[kelkyag]

rix_scaedu seems to be way ahead of us on this one, and square on your #2 scenario. Yay sic'ing the problem on an actual writer!

I really like the sculpture as a critical component in waking/contacting/something a very large dragon, though, too, possibly in combination with the [area] guardian option. Then perhaps it's not in a museum, it's in a military installation ...

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

I imagine it to be a Dragon shaped gemstone worth millions and has been stolen with Sherlock Holmes investigating the case.