History Literature / TheFableOfTheDragonTyrant

* ScienceVersusMagic: The mythic dragon goes up against the engineering of many scientists who eventually create a missile that kills it.

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* ConditionedToAcceptHorror: All of humanity has adapted to cope with the horror of the dragon. That said, it wasn't very deep-seated since a few lines from a young child are all it takes to get the ball rolling for everyone to realize the weight of the pain the dragon has inflicted.

* LogicalWeakness: Arguments that death is inevitable and beautiful have never completely subjugated humanity, as they act against our survival instinct and only survive due to our coping instinct. Most people would break down in terror if they confronted death, while the few that don't are questionable in terms of mind. These arguments also use heavy PurpleProse at their core, rendering them ineffective against [[ChilderenAreInnocent naive kids]] who only see in BlackAndWhiteMorality.

->''"We all know that this man had some irresponsible ideas, but his writings were quite entertaining, and perhaps we should be grateful to the dragon for making possible the interesting genre of dragon-bashing literature which reveals so much about the culture of angst!"''

* HardTruthAesop: Well, the fable gives us one of the most extreme deconstructions of this trope in history. Everyone knows the classic Aesop that every child learns as a hard truth: everyone dies at some point, which you can never avoid, and misery makes living forever non-negotiably terrible. Most children shiver at this piercing lesson, but from this fable, you can tell that behind their stern words, Bostrom and CGP Grey are fuming with contempt and hatred at the thought of feeding children something so dangerous. In any case, their words here are probably harder-hitting than the original Aesop itself. With how the fable puts it, sometimes the instinctive answer truly is correct: there is no greater enemy than death, and the greatest evil is the one we paint as good.

* KryptoniteFactor: The dragon's scales are so tough that even the strongest spells bounce off, but a missile of one specific compound is sharp enough to punch through it like tissue paper.

* LogicalWeakness: Arguments that death is inevitable and beautiful have never completely subjugated humanity, as they act against our survival instinct and only survive due to our coping instinct. Most people would break down in terror if they confronted death and the few that don't are questionable in terms of mind. These arguments make use of heavy PurpleProse at their core, rendering them ineffective against [[ChilderenAreInnocent naive kids]] who only see in BlackAndWhiteMorality.

%% For those unfamiliar with the fable, ''awaiting {{Tagline}} selection'' is not our attempt at making some catchy tagline. We would appreciate it for you to add any reasonably resonant tagline you could glean from the text. Remove this message once someone finds something appropriate and passes it through the talk page.
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[[caption-width-right:350:<''awaiting {{Tagline}} selection''>]]

* AnAesop: Accelerated technological progress has made things possible that a StockAesop would consider unnatural. Aging is merely another disease, despite all the otherwise wise people advising us to accept it as inevitable since time immemorial. We must cure aging and not respect it as what gives life meaning. Do not fear to challenge long-standing Aesops once a reasonable doubt to their validity and soundness appears, for you may, in doing so, abolish a primordial fear. "I fear death" are not the words of a coward but only those of a hero.

* AuthorFilibuster: Inverted: an antagonist gives a speech against the author's position before a child calls him out on it.

* BigBad: The dragon, which is a metaphor for [[TheGrimReaper aging as a horrible disease]].

* DontFearTheReaper: Deconstructed with the dragon-tyrant being the reaper. Here, the fable gives AnAesop that we are perfectly justified in fearing death and that sometimes, ''lack'' of fear is more dangerous than fear itself. A society that doesn't fear death will never have enough motive to invent immortality.

* HardTruthAesop: Well, the fable gives us one of the most extreme deconstructions of this trope in history. Everyone knows the classic Aesop that every child learns as a hard truth at some point: everyone dies at some point, which you can never avoid, and misery makes living forever non-negotiably terrible. Most children shiver at this piercing lesson, but from this fable, you can tell that behind their stern words, Bostrom and CGP Grey are fuming with contempt and hatred at the thought of feeding children something so dangerous. In any case, their words here are probably harder-hitting than the original Aesop itself. With how the fable puts it, sometimes the instinctive answer truly is right: there is no greater enemy than death, and the greatest evil is the one we paint as good.

* HumanSacrifice: The people of the kingdom have to feed ten thousand humans to the dragon every day, or it will take them by force. This number gradually grows to one hundred thousand per day as the kingdom's population grew.
* ImmortalityImmorality: Deconstructed when the king's advisors claimed that a world without the dragon would "undermine our dignity." The fable pointedly shows that fear of the "immorality" of ground-breaking science is one of the most dangerous things in the world. The message here is that the denial that comes with HonorBeforeReason will force innocents to pay for the ignorance of the authorities with their blood.

* LifeWillKillYou: ZigZagged. Dying to feed a giant dragon may not seem like natural deaths to us, but it accomplished the effect of aging in this universe.

* LogicalWeakness: Arguments that death is inevitable and beautiful have never completely subjugated humanity because they act against our survival instinct and only stay around because they trigger our coping instinct. Most people would break down in terror if they confronted death and the few that don't are questionable in terms of mind. These arguments make use of heavy PurpleProse at their core, rendering them ineffective against [[ChilderenAreInnocent naive kids]] who only see in BlackAndWhiteMorality.

* MundaneMadeAwesome: One would think slaying the worst evil humanity has ever known with a OneHitKill missile would be anti-climatic. However, the long build-up to that moment, combined with the description, makes it far more spectacular than some drawn-out battle.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: When the dragon-slaying missile is finally about to launch, a man begs him to stop the last train because his father is on board. The king refuses as he does not want to risk the dragon stirring before the missile launches. However, he deeply regrets that he didn't start the decades-long research process sooner. He states that if he had started sooner, the man's father, along with many others, would have survived.

** Despite what people want to tell you, most people definitely feel uneasy at the thought of death. Most of the time, what seems to be fearlessness is actually emotional suppression.
** Not fearing something for which fear is perfectly justified is as dangerous as fearing something you don't need to. Fearlessness towards caused hesitation at a proposal that should make CaptainObvious look confused by just ''[[ExaggeratedTrope how]]'' obvious it is.
** Using belief in an afterlife to justify not fearing death gives people a coping mechanism akin to drugs: people are so addicted to sedatives to nullify pain that they can't fathom sacrificing some comfort to have a chance to heal their genes.

** Secondly, a man begs him to stop a train before launch to save his father. The king opts against it because doing so would risk stirring the dragon and causing the missile to miss.

** Even with magic, a medieval kingdom has no chance of slaying a dragon proportioned to what normal western dragons would be like. The dragon, being immune to the best spells, weapons, and poisons humanity could conjure, burned everything in sight and beat humanity into submission in a CurbStompBattle.
** Humans will always find some way to justify suffering we can't eliminate. We called diseases and famines our punishment from the PowersThatBe, wars a [[WarIsGlorious daring adventure for us to win glory in]], and slavery a [[NotUsedToFreedom benefit for the slaves who could not find their way]]; WhoWantsToLiveForever is no different.

** When an innocent little boy who lost his grandmother to the dragon hears someone try to justify it, he ''immediately'' calls them out on it. PurpleProse will not fool a naive child who only knows BlackAndWhiteMorality: they only see you defending the source of the most traumatic event in their life, which obliterates any goodwill you have in their eyes.

* TragicKeepsake: In the animated version, the queen sits by the king when he presides over the anti-dragon hearing. She never gets seen again, and when reflecting on those the dragon killed, the king looks at a locket picturing her, implying that she was among those eaten.
* WeAllDieSomeday: Deconstructed. The fable portrays this trope as a dangerous idea ingrained in traditions that stop us from seeing just how awful death is and discouraging us to search for salvation, questioning why we even consider this trope heroic.

* HardTruthAesop: Deconstructed. The story takes apart the OlderThanDirt Aesop of WhoWantsToLiveForever to show that the "hard truth" it presents is a hazard, as it halts progress against a plague that few recognize.

* LogicalWeakness: Arguments that death is inevitable and beautiful have never completely subjugated humanity because they act against our survival instinct. Most people would break down in terror if they confronted death and the few that don't are questionable in terms of mind. These arguments make use of heavy PurpleProse at their core, rendering them ineffective against [[ChilderenAreInnocent naive kids]] who only see decay and oblivion.

* MundaneMadeAwesome: One would think [[OneHitKill one-hit killing]] the worst evil humanity has ever known with a missile would be anti-climatic. However, the long build-up to that moment, combined with the description, makes it far more spectacular than some drawn-out battle.

''The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant'' is a short story by Nick Bostrom where a gigantic dragon tyrannized a kingdom and demanded thousands of human sacrifices per day to appease it. Many have tried to slay the dragon, and all have failed. As such, the kingdom submitted to the horror, forced to feed the dragon. Time marched on, and as feudalism became industrialism, the dragon-tyrant lived on and continued to eat and grow. However, as the nation entered the information age, scientists began to push for a new attack; someone had invented a material so sharp it could pierce the dragon's scales. As the scientists and engineers realized the weight of their discovery, they must trek the arduous path of, someday, using it to slay the dragon against all social pressure.

You can read it [[https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html here]].

* BigBad: The dragon, which is a metaphor for [[TheGrimReaper death]] and, more subtly, aging as a [[ThePlague disease]].

* DontFearTheReaper: Deconstructed. Here, the fable gives AnAesop that we are perfectly justified in fearing death and that sometimes, ''lack'' of fear is more dangerous than fear itself. A society that doesn't fear death will never have enough motive to invent immortality.

* LogicalWeakness: Arguments that death is inevitable and beautiful have never completely subjugated humanity because they act against our survival instinct. Most people would break down in terror if they confronted death, and the few that don't are questionable in terms of mind. These arguments make use of heavy PurpleProse at their core, rendering them ineffective against [[ChilderenAreInnocent naive kids]] who only see decay and oblivion.

** The fable aims to induce justified exasperation at the thought of people who know that they will die saying ShutUpHannibal and eloquently speaking that they will FaceDeathWithDignity. They may or may not believe waht they say, but their words are ultimately the most dangerous facade in the world.

** Even with magic, a medieval kingdom has no chance of slaying a dragon proportioned to what normal western dragons would be like. The dragon, being immune to the best spells, weapons, and poisons humanity could conjure, incinerated everything in sight and beat humanity into submission in a CurbStompBattle.
** Humans will always find some way to justify suffering we can't eliminate. We called diseases and famines our punishment from the PowersThatBe, wars a [[WarIsGlorious daring adventure for us to win glory in]], and slavery a [[NotUsedToFreedom benifit for the slaves who could not find their way]]; WhoWantsToLiveForever is no different.

** When an innocent little boy who lost his grandmother to the dragon hears someone try to justify it, he ''immediately'' calls them out on it. PurpleProse will not fool a naive child who only knows BlackAndWhiteMorality: they only see you defending the source of the most tramatic event in their life, which obliterates any goodwill you have in their eyes.
* TakeThat: The fable is a massive slap in the face to every person who has declared immortality a curse, sharply criticizing their coping denial. Bostrom and CGP Grey pointedly bash those people for throwing up barriers to urgently needed action in the name of comfort and acceptance for millenia, right back to ''Literature/TheEpicOfGilgamesh''.

* ImmortalityImmorality: Defied and deconstructed using a ShutUpHannibal when the king's advisors claimed that a world without the dragon would "undermine our dignity." The fable pointedly shows that fear of the "immorality" of ground-breaking science is one of the most dangerous things in the world. The message here is that the denial that comes with HonorBeforeReason will force innocents to pay for the arrogance of the authorities with their blood.

* TakeThat: The fable is a massive slap in the face to every person who has declared immortality a curse, sharply criticizing their coping denial. Bostrom and CGP Grey pointedly bash those people for throwing up barriers to urgently needed action in the name of comfort and acceptance for century after century after century.

%% For those unfamiliar with the fable, ''awaiting {{Tagline}} selection'' is not an attempt at making some catchy tagline. We would appreciate it for you to add any reasonably resonant tagline you could glean from the text. Remove this message once someone finds something appropriate and passes it through the talk page.

''The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant'' is a short story by Nick Bostrom where a gigantic dragon tyrannized a kingdom and demanded thousands of human sacrifices per day to appease it. Many have tried to slay the dragon, and all have failed. As such, the kingdom submitted to the horror, forced to feed the dragon. Time marched on, and as feudalism became industrialism, the dragon-tyrant lived on and continued to eat and grow. However, as the nation entered the information age, scientists began to push for a new attack; someone had invented a material sharp enough to pierce a dragon's scale. As the scientists and engineers realized the weight of their discovery, they must trek the arduous path of, someday, using it to slay the dragon against all social pressure.

%% For those unfamiliar with the fable, ''awaiting {{Tagline}} selection'' is not an attempt at a catchy tagline. We would appreciate it for you to add any reasonably resonant tagline you could glean from the text. Remove this message once someone finds a tagline and passes it through the talk page.

* KillEmAll: Younger children are less at risk, but the old will inevitably die to feed the dragon.

* MoreThanMindControl: The kingdom wholeheartedly believes that the dragon is virtuous and inevitable, reflecting that most people in the real world have [[WhoWantsToLiveForever this mentality towards aging and death]]. The fable deems the mindset archaic and dangerous in the modern world, with genetic engineering to cure aging now on the table.

-->--[[spoiler:The obituary of a scholar of letters on the eccentric spiritual sage that first predicted the slaying of the dragon-tyrant is giving some harsh commentary here.]]
The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant is a short story by Nick Bostrom where a gigantic dragon tyrannized a kingdom and demanded thousands of human sacrifices per day to appease it. Many have tried to slay the dragon, and all have failed. As such, the kingdom submitted to the horror, forced to feed the dragon. Time marched on, and as feudalism became industrialism, the dragon-tyrant lived on and continued to eat and grow. However, as the nation entered the information age, scientists began to push for a new attack; someone had invented a material sharp enough to pierce a dragon's scale. As the scientists and engineers realized the weight of their discovery, they must trek the arduous path of, someday, using it to slay the dragon against all social pressure. [[spoiler: The Dragon is a metaphor for death.]] You can read it [[https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html here]].

* ImmortalsFearDeath: A TropesAreNotBad example: the fable pushes the idea that you should not suppress your fear of death any more than you do with disease. The message is that some fears are okay in the grand scheme of things to guide humanity.

** While preparing the dragon-killing missile, the king's promise to complete it within the decade is an obvious allusion to President Kennedy's moon landing promise.

-->--The obituary of a scholar of letters on the eccentric spiritual sage that first predicted the slaying of the dragon-tyrant.
The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant is a short story by Nick Bostrom. In it, a gigantic dragon tyrannized a kingdom and demanded thousands of human sacrifices per day to appease it for centuries since medieval times. Many have tried to slay the dragon, and all have failed. As such, the kingdom submitted to the horror, forced to feed the dragon. Time marched on, and as feudalism became industrialism, the dragon-tyrant lived on and continued to eat and grow. However, as the nation entered the information age, scientists began to argue for a new attack-one had invented a material sharp enough to pierce a dragon's scale. As the scientists and engineers realized the weight of their discovery, they must trek the arduous path of, someday, using it to slay the dragon against all social pressure. [[spoiler: The Dragon is a metaphor for Death.]] You can read it [[https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html here]].

* AnAesop: Accelerated technological progress has made things possible that a StockAesop would consider unnatural. Aging, for all the otherwise wise people advising to accept it as inevitable since time immemorial, is merely another disease to be cured, not to be respected as what gives life meaning. Do not fear to challenge long-standing Aesops once a reasonable doubt to their validity and soundness appears, for you may, in doing so, abolish a primordial fear. "I fear death" are not the words of a coward, but only those of a hero.

* ArmorPiercingResponse: After two royal officials praise the dragon as a crucial part of the natural order, one boy in the crowd mentions that his grandma died to it. This outburst makes others realize that the dragon is not something they should put with for much longer.
* AndThereWasMuchRejoicing: Everybody is happy that the Dragon is dead.
* BadassBoast: The King gives one at the end of the general meeting.
--> '''King:''' "Let us kill the dragon!"
* BeliefMakesYouStupid: ZigZagged. Religion is, at first, depicted as just one more coping mechanism regarding the seemingly invincible dragon. The King's chief adviser for morality calls it "presumptuous" to try and kill the dragon and all but claims that it's "playing God." That said, a spiritual sage, widely respected for his kindness and gentleness and devotion encourages a child who calls out the dragon. Furthermore, when the dragon-killing missile finally launches, several people, including the King, pray to the sky.

* BittersweetEnding: The Dragon is slain and will never kill anyone ever again, but it is too late for those he already devoured, and many died needlessly due to initial hesitation.
* BrutalHonesty: At the open hearing, held to decide whether or not to kill the dragon, the leading Dragonologist did not downplay the risks of the plan. Instead, she described how her plan would work, how long it would need to be completed, and admitted that there was no guarantee. The court might have rejected her plan had it not been for the child in the hall who denounced the dragon as an evil monster.

* DawnOfAnEra: With the dragon dead, the Kingdom will need to reshape its society. However, they now have time to do things right, and the great specter that hung over them all is gone.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The Dragon is a metaphor for death. It destroys an increasing number of people every year, and those who had family taken away suffer immense anguish. Most people accept it as natural and good until it takes them.
** While preparing the dragon-killing missile, the King's promise to complete it within the decade is an obvious allusion to President Kennedy's moon landing promise.

* KillEmAll: Younger children are less at risk, but once someone reaches old age, they will inevitably die to feed the dragon.

* InformationWantsToBeFree: The scientists try to explain the proposal to everyone, despite the king's advisors worrying that it will cause unrest.
* TakeThat: The fable is a massive slap in the face to the many, many, '''''many''''' people that have declared immortality a curse, sharply criticizing their coping denial for throwing up barriers to urgently needed action in the name of comfort and acceptance for century after century after century.

* HardTruthAesop: Deconstructed. The story takes apart the OlderThanDirt Aesop of WhoWantsToLiveForever and shows that the "hard truth" it presents is exceptionally dangerous, as it halts progress against a plague that few recognize.
* HopeSpringsEternal: Early attempts to slay the dragon initially failed, so everyone but a few WMG-loving sages gave up. However, as technology improved, a technological breakthrough allowed the kingdom to kill the dragon.

* IDidWhatIHadToDo: The King orders the trains carrying the human sacrifices to continue to the bitter end, even after research to kill it has begun. When faced with choices to save additional humans, such as an early launch or recalling the final train, he decides doing so isn't worth the risk that the missile would fail to strike.
* LivingForeverIsAwesome: Reconstructed as the main theme of the story: the fable seeks to show that aging is a disease, not an inevitable part of life, that we could potentially cure within the next generation if we invested our idealism into the urgency of the situation.
* MundaneMadeAwesome: For a final battle against the worst evil humanity has ever known, one would think [[OneHitKill one-hit killing]] it with a missile would be anti-climatic. However, the long build-up to that moment, combined with the description, makes it far more spectacular than some drawn-out battle.

* SadisticChoice: The King faced two of these.

** Secondly, a man begs him to stop a train before launch to save his father. The King opts against it because doing so would risk stirring the dragon and causing the missile to miss.
* ScienceHero: The scientists who developed a material that can pierce dragon scales and built the dragon-killing missile. They succeeded in slaying the beast where armored knights failed.
* ScienceVersusMagic: The dragon, of a magical nature, goes up against the engineering of many scientists who eventually creates a missile that kills it.

* ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules: After hearing a boy's wails on the subject, the kingdom became hellbent on slaying the dragon. People selflessly donate everything not strictly necessary; the king liquidates much of his property to provide funding.
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Subverted. While the wealthy can bribe the press-gangs to delay their fate, they cannot do so indefinitely; perhaps a way to acknowledge that the rich can afford better healthcare?

* SkewedPriorities: Some of the king's advisers think the dragon should be allowed to live because killing it would cause social unrest and destroy dragon-supporting industries. The king himself ignores anti-dragon petitions on two occasions to hunt much less menacing threats like tigers and snakes.
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVsCynicism: The fable is firmly idealistic towards the feasibility of biological immortality. The society portrayed, having been a cynical CrapsackWorld for centuries, manages to painfully claw its way to idealism via the dragon-slaying missile project.

* SoWhatDoWeDoNow: Subverted and defied: after an advisor poses this question to him, the king replies with an eloquent speech.
--> '''King:''' "My dear friends, we have come a long way… yet our journey has only just begun. Our species is young on this planet. Today we are like children again. The future lies open before us. We shall go into this future and try to do better than we have done in the past. We have time now – time to get things right, time to grow up, time to learn from our mistakes, time for the slow process of building a better world, and time to get settled in it. Tonight, let all the bells in the kingdom ring until midnight, in remembrance of our dead forbears, and then after midnight let us celebrate till the sun comes up. And in the coming days… I believe we have some reorganization to do!"

* WhamLine: One of these appears near the end of the story.
--> '''Narrator:''' "As a ball of fire enveloped the launch pad and the missile shot out, the spectators instinctively rose to the tips of their toes, and all eyes fixated at the front end of the white flame from the rocket’s afterburners heading towards the distant mountain. The masses, the king, the low and the high, the young and the old, it was as if at this moment they shared a single awareness, a single conscious experience: that white flame, shooting into the dark, embodying the human spirit, its fear, and its hope… striking at the heart of evil."

* YouAreWhatYouHate: The child at the public hearing who shouted "The Dragon is Bad" went on to be an official who ran the train that fed people to the Dragon, one of whom was his father. Downplayed as he certainly had no love for the job.

''Today we face a different situation. While we still lack effective and acceptable means for slowing the aging process, we can identify research directions that might lead to the development of such means in the foreseeable future. "Deathist" stories and ideologies, which counsel passive acceptance, are no longer harmless sources of consolation. They are fatal barriers to urgently needed action.''

[[caption-width-right:350:The Dragon.]]

->Once upon a time, the planet was tyrannized by a giant dragon. The dragon stood taller than the largest cathedral, and it was covered with thick black scales. Its red eyes glowed with hate, and from its terrible jaws flowed an incessant stream of evil-smelling yellowish-green slime.

->Once upon a time, the planet was tyrannized by a giant dragon. The dragon stood taller than the largest cathedral, and it was covered with thick black scales. Its red eyes glowed with hate, and from its terrible jaws flowed an incessant stream of evil-smelling yellowish-green slime. It demanded from humankind a blood-curdling tribute: to satisfy its enormous appetite, ten thousand men and women had to be delivered every evening at the onset of dark to the foot of the mountain where the dragon-tyrant lived. Sometimes the dragon would devour these unfortunate souls upon arrival; sometimes again it would lock them up in the mountain where they would wither away for months or years before eventually being consumed.

''The misery inflicted by the dragon-tyrant was incalculable. In addition to the ten thousand who were gruesomely slaughtered each day, there were the mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, children, and friends that were left behind to grieve the loss of their departed loved ones.''

* AdaptationDistillation: When CGP Grey adapted the fable as a follow-up to his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C25qzDhGLx8 video]] reconstructing LivingForeverIsAwesome, he cut many of the details to fit it into a short video.

* BeliefMakesYouStupid: ZigZagged. Religion is, at first, depicted as just one more coping mechanism regarding the seemingly invincible dragon. The King's chief adviser for morality calls it "presumptuous" to try and kill the dragon and all but claims that it's "playing God." That said, a spiritual sage, widely respected for his kindness and gentleness and devotion) encourages a child who calls out the dragon. Furthermore, when the dragon-killing missile finally launches, several people, including the King, pray to the sky.

* BittersweetEnding: The Dragon is slain and will never kill anyone ever again. But it is too late for those he already devoured, and many died needlessly due to initial hesitation.

* HardTruthAesop: Deconstructed. the story takes apart the OlderThanDirt Aesop of WhoWantsToLiveForever Here, it shows that the "hard truth" it presents is exceptionally dangerous, as it halts progress against a plague that few recognize.

* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney and ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections: Subverted. While the wealthy can bribe the press-gangs and legislators/civil officers are implied to delay using a RulesLawyer, neither can do so indefinitely.

-->--'''The opening paragraph'''

* AuthorFilibuster: Inverted: an antagonist gives a speech against the author's position, and a child calls him out on it.

* BeliefMakesYouStupid: ZigZagged. Religion is, at first, depicted as just one more coping mechanism regarding the seemingly-invincible dragon. The King's chief adviser for morality calls it "presumptuous" to try and kill the dragon and all but claims that it's "playing God." That said, a spiritual sage, widely respected for his kindness and gentleness and devotion) encourages a child who calls out the dragon. Furthermore, when the dragon-killing missile finally launches, several people, including the King, pray to the sky.

* HardTruthAesop: Deconstructed: the story takes apart the OlderThanDirt Aesop of WhoWantsToLiveForever Here, it shows that the "hard truth" it presents is exceptionally dangerous, as it halts progress against a plague that few recognize.
** Conversely, the story itself could also read as one of these, as it challenges a classic lesson about immortality. Many people will find something like this hard to accept, given that the original "hard truth" on this subject is one of the oldest in the book.

* StockholmSyndrome: After centuries of submitting to the horror of the dragon, people have come to accept it as a necessary and beautiful part of life. Anyone showing this mentality towards anything else will get ridiculed, and yet, in RealLife, this attitude is the confusing norm.

* TakeThat: The fable is a massive slap in the face to the many, many, '''''many''''' people that have declared immortality a curse, sharply criticizing their coping denial for century after century after century for throwing up barriers to urgently needed action in the name of comfort and acceptance.

* TragicKeepsake: In the animated version, when reflecting on those the dragon killed, the king looks at a locket picturing a crowned woman. The implication is that the woman, his immediate family of some kind, was among those eaten.

* YouAreWhatYouHate: The child at the public hearing who shouted "The Dragon is Bad" went on to be an official who ran the train that fed people to the Dragon, one of whom was his father. Downplayed as he certainly had [[NothingPersonal no love for the job]].

* KillEmAll: Younger children are less at risk, but once someone reaches their elder years, they will inevitably get fed to the dragon. Defied when the entire kingdom funds a project to kill the dragon.

* TakeThat: The fable is a massive slap in the face to the many, many, '''''many''''' people that have declared immortality a curse, sharply criticizing their coping denial century after century after century for throwing up barriers to urgently needed action in the name of comfort and acceptance.

The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant is a short story written by Nick Bostrom. A gigantic dragon tyrannized a kingdom and demanded thousands of human sacrifices per day to appease it for centuries since medieval times. Many have tried to slay the dragon, and all have failed. As such, the kingdom submitted, forced to feed the dragon. Time marched on, and as feudalism became industrialism, the dragon-tyrant lived on and continued to eat and grow. However, as the nation entered the information age, scientists began to argue for a new attack-one had invented a material sharp enough to pierce a dragon's scale. As the scientists and engineers realized the weight of their discovery, they must trek the arduous path of, someday, using it to slay the dragon against all social pressure. [[spoiler: The Dragon is a metaphor for Death.]] You can read it [[https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html here]].

* BeliefMakesYouStupid: ZigZagged. Religion is, at first, depicted as just one more coping mechanism regarding the seemingly-invincible dragon. The King's chief adviser for morality calls it "presumptuous" to try and kill the dragon and all but claims that it's "playing God." That said, a spiritual sage, widely respected for his kindness and gentleness and devotion) encourages a child who calls out the dragon. Furthermore, when the dragon-killing missile finally launches, several people, including the King, are praying.

* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: The plot of the story. The dragon, long thought invincible, is slain by a breakthrough in recent technology.

* EldritchAbomination: The dragon; it demanded human sacrifices since the early days of humanity. For a long time, everyone was too afraid to act against it.

* HardTruthAesop: Deconstructed; the story takes apart the OlderThanDirt Aesop of WhoWantsToLiveForever Here, it shows that the "hard truth" it presents is exceptionally dangerous, as it halts progress against a plague no one recognizes as one.

* HopeSpringsEternal: Early attempts to slay the dragon initially failed, so all but a few outliers gave up. However, as technology improved, a technological breakthrough allowed the kingdom to kill the dragon.

* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney and ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections: Subverted. While the wealthy can bribe the press-gangs and legislators/civil officers can delay using a RulesLawyer, neither can do so indefinitely.
* ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem: Double-subverted. The rich and powerful can avoid being fed to the dragon temporarily, but sooner or later, all of them, the king included, will get fed. However, eventually, the king gets fed up and throws all his efforts behind a project to kill the dragon.
* SkewedPriorities: Some of the king's advisers think the dragon should be allowed to live because killing it would cause social unrest and destroy dragon-supporting industries. The king himself ignores anti-dragon petitions on two occasions to hunt much less menacing threats like Tigers and Snakes.

* SoWhatDoWeDoNow: Subverted and defied; after an advisor poses this question to him, the king replies with an eloquent speech.

* AnyoneCanDie: Under the tyranny of the dragon, no one, not even the king, is above dying to feed it eventually.
* AnAesop: Accelerated technological progress has made things possible that a StockAesop would consider unnatural. Aging, for all the otherwise wise people advising to accept it as inevitable since time immemorial, is merely another disease to be cured, not to be respected as what gives life meaning. Do not fear to challenge long-standing Aesops once a reasonable doubt to their validity and soundness appears, for you may, in doing so, abolish a primordial fear. "I fear death" are not the words of a coward, but those of a hero.

* DeathByAdaptation: The animated version has the king hold at a locket with a woman's picture on it, likely lost to the dragon. The original version mentions no family of the king.