History Literature / TheFableOfTheDragonTyrant

* KillEmAll: A literal example: younger children are less at risk, but everyone will inevitably die to feed the dragon. The main StoryArc follows the kingdom's commitment to defying this trope.

''[[SocietyMarchesOn 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 [[ScienceMarchesOn the development of such means]] in the foreseeable future. "[[WhoWantsToLiveForever Deathist]]" stories and ideologies, which counsel passive acceptance, are [[BreakingOldTrends no longer harmless sources of consolation]]. [[DeconstructedTrope They are fatal barriers to urgently needed action]].''

* GoOutWithASmile: Deconstructed. Bostrom wrote this fable to show how aging is ''nothing'' dignified, being the principal cause of almost every degenerative disease in history. CGP Grey's animation includes a shot of the dragon's jaws chomping on people crying in despair and gory bones and tissue pieces, showing how utterly horrendous death is.

* OurDragonsAreDifferent: The dragon here is a classic western one with red eyes and wings made of shadow, which helps given it serves as a metaphor for [[TheGrimReaper death]].

* RedEyesTakeWarning: The Dragon has these.

Once upon a time, a tyrannical dragon demanded thousands of human sacrifices per day from a kingdom to appease it. Many have tried to slay the dragon, and all have failed, owing to its impenetrable scales. The people 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 riding the wave of exponential growth invented a material so sharp, it could pierce the dragon's scales. However, the citizens had grown complacent, accepting the dragon as inevitable and essential to the human experience, with some even coming to see it as natural beauty. 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.

* 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 they shouldn't tolerate the dragon anymore.
* AwfulTruth: Deconstructed. The kingdom started by teaching children how the dragon was a harsh truth nobody wanted. Over time, the kingdom started teaching children how the dragon wasn't awful. Embrace an awful truth too much, and you may lose sight of chances to eliminate 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." Notwithstanding, a spiritual sage widely respected for his kindness and devotion encourages the child who calls out the dragon. Furthermore, when the dragon-killing missile finally launches, several people, including the king, pray to the sky.

* BlackAndWhiteMorality: Justified; the point of the fable is to show how death has no innate redeeming qualities, be it "giving life meaning" or anything else. Trying to pragmatically argue about some social benefit death provides detaches the social good from the good of the people, as a society must ultimately serve its citizens, and saving lives is the most fundamental of services.

* CentralTheme: Bostrom wrote this fable as a TakeThat to mainstream society's hostility and negative view towards immortality, advocating for us to reject aging and our acceptance of our mortality and instead work as hard as we can to expunge death from its status as a "natural part of life."

* CurbStompBattle: Even with magic, a medieval kingdom has no chance against a dragon embodying TheGrimReaper. Immune to the best spells, weapons, and toxic potions humanity could conjure, the dragon burned everything in sight and beat the kingdom into submission, forcing them to sacrifice their citizens to it.

* DraconicAbomination: The dragon that demanded human sacrifices since medieval times qualified. For a long time, everyone was too afraid to act against it. {{Justified}} as it’s an AllegoricalCharacter meant to represent aging.
* FaceDeathWithDignity: Deconstrcted. The fable depicts those who advocate for this trope as a dangerous obstacle to immortality, as viewing death as something you would want to face ''at all'' foster complacency and procrastnation.
* FateWorseThanDeath: Deconstructed. One of this fable's morals is how villains with MortalityPhobia are genuinely the only ones with a clue despite being undeniably wicked everywhere else, as we have no evidence of anything but CessationOfExistence for people gone forever into the great unknown of death. Any attempt to appeal to the social disadvantages of immortality is SkewedPriorities.

* FromTheMouthsOfBabes: Part of what nakes the boy’s speech so powerful, as a child he’s still essentially an outsider who hasn;t fully absorbed the biases that adults have.
* GiantAnimalWorship: There’s a bit of this in the constant train loads of people being sent to the dragon and the justification that society does from these trainloads.

* GoOutWithASmile: Deconstructed. Bostrom wrote this fable to show how aging is ''nothing'' dignified, being the principal cause of almost every degenerative disease in history. CGP Grey's animation includes a close-up shot of the dragon's jaws chomping on people crying in despair and gory bones and tissue pieces, showing how utterly horrendous death is.

* 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, you can never avoid death, and misery means living forever is non-negotiably terrible. Most children shiver at this lesson, but from this fable, you can tell that behind their stern words, Bostrom and CGP Grey are fuming with contempt 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.

* 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 and will force innocents to pay for the authorities' ignorance with their blood.

* ImmortalsFearDeath: A Administrivia/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.

* KryptoniteFactor: The dragon's scales are tough enough to ward off the most potent spells, but a missile of one specific compound is sharp enough to tear 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, 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 [[ChildrenAreInnocent naive kids]] who only see in BlackAndWhiteMorality.

* MortalityPhobia: Justified; this trope would be one of the last things you would consider heroic, but you are neither Bostrom nor Grey, who treat emotions towards death similar to how you regard actions. Fear is sometimes necessary, as type I and II errors in this field are dangerous. Although only fear can diminish your willpower, it can motivate you when fear itself means you have more reason to fight.

** Humans will always try to justify suffering we can't eliminate. We called diseases and famines punishment from PowersThatBe, wars a [[WarIsGlorious daring adventure for glory]], and slavery a [[NotUsedToFreedom benefit for the slaves who could not find their way]]; WhoWantsToLiveForever is no different.

* NotNowKiddo: The king's executive branch sweeps the iconoclasts' petition for funding to build their anti-dragon missile under their rug at first, as they have many pressing matters to deal with and can't pay attention to what they see as an escapist fantasy.

* SelfFulfillingProphecy: Teaching everyone we can never do something discourages people from researching how to do it, meaning we still can't do it and turning into a vicious circle. As shown by how faulty education actively stagnated the anti-dragon movement, this phenomenon is deadly when discussing curing aging.

* TooDumbToFool: An adviser of the king gave an eloquent address that spoke of the beauty and nature of the dragon, but it all goes over a naive boy's head. Unable to understand the ethics of the situation, all he knows is that the dragon killed his granny, and he wants her back. This display of emotion kickstarted the project to kill the dragon.

* YouCantFightFate: Deconstructed, with "fate" here being the claim that you can never avoid how WeAllDieSomeday. With society teaching everyone you could ''never'' hope to fight the dragon just because medieval weapons failed against it, many scientific geniuses who otherwise invented revolutionary technology lost sight of chances to make progress against the dragon's tyranny, delaying their anti-dragon movement significantly. Claiming aging is uncurable because all past attempts failed commits the [[UsefulNotes/LogicalFallacies proof-by-example fallacy]], making a SelfFulfillingProphecy.
----

* AdaptationDistillation: The story is far more streamlined then the original story, much of the description and moralizing is cut away
* AnachronismStew: In a few decades the country goes from a medival agrarian society to one with electricity and advanced agriculture and missiles all while several characters who were there at the start are still alive.
* DeathByAdaptation: Here the king has a queen who’s with him when the dragon first appears. Later he’s seen holding a locket with a woman's picture on it, likely lost to the dragon. The original version mentions no family of the king.

* DroolDeluge: The Dragon is huge and the sickly green drool coming down is proportionally large.
* GoodWingsEvilWings: The Dragon has wings of shadow
* ModestRoyalty: The royal couples formal wear is rather simplistic and stays that way through the decades.

* RedEyesTakeWarning: The Dragon is given a pair of these just in case you need help knowing it was the antagonist.

* OurDragonsAreDifferent: The dragon is portrayed here is a classic western one with red eyes and wings made of shadow, which helps given it serves as a metaphor for [[TheGrimReaper death]].

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

* EldritchAbomination: The dragon that demanded human sacrifices since medieval times qualified. For a long time, everyone was too afraid to act against it.

* ModestRoyalty: In the CGP Grey animation, the king's formal wear is rather simplistic.

* OurDragonsAreDifferent: The dragon portrayed here is a classic western one and serves as a metaphor for [[TheGrimReaper death]].
* PrayerPose: Some of the crowd, including the king, have this pose at the launch.

* 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 the deceased, the king looks at a locket picturing her, implying that she was among those eaten.

* YouCantFightFate: Deconstructed, with "fate" here being the claim that you can never avoid how WeAllDieSomeday. With society teaching everyone you could ''never'' hope to fight the dragon just because medieval weapons failed against it, many scientific geniuses who otherwise invented revolutionary technology lost sight of chances to make progress against the dragon's tyranny, delaying their anti-dragon movement significantly. Claiming aging is uncurable because all past attempts failed commits the no-limits fallacy, making a SelfFulfillingProphecy.

* AnyoneCanDie: A literal example: under the tyranny of the dragon, no one, not even the king, is above dying to feed it eventually.

''[[https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant]]'' is a short story by Creator/NickBostrom.

Once upon a time, a tyrannical dragon demanded thousands of human sacrifices per day from a kingdom to appease it. Many have tried to slay the dragon, and all have failed, owing to its impenetrable scales. 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 riding the wave of exponential growth invented a material so sharp, it could pierce the dragon's scales. However, by this time, the citizens had grown complacent, accepting the dragon as an inevitable and essential part of the human experience, with some even coming to see it as a beauty of nature. 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.

In 2018, WebVideo/CGPGrey [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY adapted this fable]] into an animated Website/YouTube video as part of his biological immortality advocacy campaign.

* AndThereWasMuchRejoicing: Everybody is happy that the dragon is dead.

* 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.
* AwfulTruth: Deconstructed. The kingdom started by teaching children how nobody wanted the dragon, but it was a harsh truth of life. Over time, the kingdom started teaching about how the dragon wasn't awful. Embrace an awful truth too much, and you may lose sight of chances to eliminate 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 devotion encourages the child who calls out the dragon. Furthermore, when the dragon-killing missile finally launches, several people, including the king, pray to the sky.

* CallingTheOldManOut: 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 one bit. The child will only see you defending the source of the most traumatic event in their life, which obliterates any goodwill you have in their eyes.

* ConditionedToAcceptHorror: All of humanity has adapted to cope with the horror of the dragon, as the real world has with death.

* CurbStompBattle: Even with magic, a medieval kingdom has no chance of slaying a dragon proportioned to normal western dragons. Being immune to the best spells, weapons, and poisons humanity could conjure, the dragon burned everything in sight and beat the kingdom into submission.
* 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.

* EldritchAbomination: The dragon, who demanded human sacrifices since the early days of humanity. For a long time, everyone was too afraid to act against it.
* FateWorseThanDeath: Deconstructed. One of this fable's morals is how villains with MortalityPhobia are the only ones with a clue despite their methods being undeniably wicked, as we have no evidence of anything but CessationOfExistence for people gone forever into the great unknown of death. Any attempt to appeal to the social disadvantages of immortality is SkewedPriorities.

* 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 means living forever is non-negotiably terrible. Most children shiver at this lesson, but from this fable, you can tell that behind their stern words, Bostrom and CGP Grey are fuming with contempt 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.

* HumanSacrifice: The citizens 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.

* ImmortalitySeeker: One of the only positive examples. The seekers in question are the scientists serving as the main heroes of the story. They eventually succeed in their quest to vanquish the dragon and aging along with it.
* ImmortalProcreationClause: Bostrom discusses this trope in the appendix and suggests some possible solutions like space travel.

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

* MortalityPhobia: Justified; this trope would be one of the last things you would consider heroic, but you are neither Bostrom nor Grey, who treat emotions towards death similar to how you would regarding actions. Fear is sadly sometimes necessary, as both type I and II errors in this field are dangerous. Although only fear can diminish your willpower, it can also motivate you if the fear itself means you have more reason to fight.

** Not fearing something for which we can have perfectly justified fear is as dangerous as fearing something you don't need to. Fearlessness towards death caused hesitation at a proposal that should make CaptainObvious look confused by just ''[[ExaggeratedTrope how]]'' obvious it should be.

* OurDragonsAreDifferent: The dragon portrayed here is a classic western one and serves as a metaphor [[spoiler: for [[TheGrimReaper death]]]].
* PrayerPose: Some members of the crowd, including the king, when the missile launched.
* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: After the king approved the project to kill the dragon, he makes it his #1 24/7 priority.

** Firstly, he could choose to launch the dragon-killing missile at the earliest time; if it failed, it would force the kingdom to start the decades-long process from scratch and cause a reprisal. He could also choose to delay to test the missile and remove potential flaws, which meant thousands more would die; he decides on the latter.

* TooDumbToFool: An adviser of the king gave an eloquent address that spoke of the beauty and nature of the dragon, but it all goes over a naive boy's head. Unable to understand the ethics of the situation, all he knows is that the dragon killed his granny, and he wants her back. This display of emotion by him is what kickstarted the project to kill the dragon.

* WeAllDieSomeday: Deconstructed. The fable sees this trope as a dangerous idea ingrained in traditions that stop us from seeing just how awful death is and discouraging us from finding salvation. At heart, the narrative questions why we even consider this trope heroic.

->''Stories about aging have traditionally focused on the need for graceful accommodation. The recommended solution to diminishing vigor and impending death was resignation coupled with an effort to achieve closure in practical affairs and personal relationships. Given that nothing could be done to prevent or retard aging, this focus made sense. Rather than fretting about the inevitable, one could aim for peace of mind.''\\
''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.''

->''"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!"''

* AuthorFilibuster: Inverted: an antagonist speaks against the author's position before a child calls him out on it.
* AwfulTruth: Deconstructed. The kingdom started by teaching children that nobody wanted the dragon, but it was a harsh truth of life. Over time, the kingdom started teaching that the dragon wasn't awful. Immerse yourself in an awful truth too much, and you may lose sight of chances to eliminate it.

''[[https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant]]'' is a short story by Creator/NickBostrom 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.

In 2018, WebVideo/CGPGrey [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY adapted this fable]] into an animated Website/YouTube video as part of his biological immortality advocacy campaign. His truncated adaptation received [[https://www.lifespan.io/news/cgp-grey-the-fable-of-the-dragon-tyrant/ unanimous praise]] from the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome:
** Even with magic, a medieval kingdom has no chance of slaying a dragon proportioned to normal western dragons. Being immune to the best spells, weapons, and poisons humanity could conjure, the dragon burned everything in sight and beat the kingdom into submission in a CurbStompBattle.
** Humans will always find some way to justify suffering we can't eliminate. We called diseases and famines punishment from PowersThatBe, wars a [[WarIsGlorious daring adventure for glory]], and slavery a [[NotUsedToFreedom benefit for the slaves who could not find their way]]; WhoWantsToLiveForever is no different.
** The king's executive branch sweeps the iconoclasts' petition for funding to build their anti-dragon missile under their rug at first, as they have many pressing matters to deal with and can't pay attention to what they see as an escapist fantasy.
** 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 one bit. The child will only see you defending the source of the most traumatic event in their life, which obliterates any goodwill you have in their eyes.

* 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.

In 2018, WebVideo/CGPGrey [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY adapted this fable]] into an animated Website/YouTube video as part of his biological immortality advocacy campaign. His truncated adaptation received [[https://www.lifespan.io/news/cgp-grey-the-fable-of-the-dragon-tyrant/ unanimously praise]] from the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation.

In 2018, WebVideo/CGPGrey [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY adapted this fable]] into a truncated animated Website/YouTube video as part of his biological immortality advocacy campaign that the [[https://www.lifespan.io/news/cgp-grey-the-fable-of-the-dragon-tyrant/ Life Extension Advocacy Foundation]] unanimously praised.

[[caption-width-right:128:Silly sketches aside, this dragon would be a CosmicHorrorStory in the making [[ReferencedBy/TheFableOfTheDragonTyrant anywhere else]].]]

''[[https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html 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.

* 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 and how long it would need, admitting 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.

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

* MortalityPhobia: Justified; this trope might be one of the last things you would consider heroic, but you are neither Bostrom nor Grey, who treat emotions towards death similar to how you would regarding actions. Fear is sadly sometimes necessary, as both type I and II errors in this field are dangerous. Although only fear can diminish your willpower, it can also motivate you if the fear itself means you have more reason to fight.

* AnAesop: Accelerated technological progress has created possibilities StockAesops would consider unnatural. Despite all the otherwise wise people advising us to accept it as inevitable since time immemorial, aging is merely another disease. 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.

* FateWorseThanDeath: Defied. One of this fable's morals is how the villains with MortalityPhobia are actually the only ones with a clue despite their methods being undeniably wicked, as we have no evidence of anything but CessationOfExistence for people gone forever into the great unknown of death. Any attempt to appeal to the social disadvantages of immortality is SkewedPriorities.

* 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 in this trope will force innocents to pay for the authorities' ignorance with their blood.

* MortalityPhobia: Justified; this trope might be one of the last things you would consider heroic, but you are neither Bostrom nor Grey, who treat emotions towards death similar to how ''Franchise/GreenLantern'' does. Fear reduces willpower as it causes hesitance except for when the fear gives you a reason to fight harder; the dragon scared the citizens into submission at first, but they later get the willpower to invest so much against it precisely because they're afraid of the dragon and want to kill it. Hope provides a massive boost to willpower but is near-useless alone, as hope is useless without the willpower to enact it; the citizens always held hope for the afterlife to save them from the dragon but only made progress once the boy's anguish gave them the willpower to oppose the dragon, which their hope for immortality boosted by orders of magnitude. As a final note, death at the dragon's hands eliminates your emotions while eternal life is the pinnicale of infinite emotions over the years.

* ImmortalProcreationClause: Bostrom discusses in the appendix where he suggests some possible solutions like space travel.

* MortalityPhobia: Justified; this trope might be one of the last things you would consider heroic, but you are neither Bostrom nor Grey, who treat emotions towards death similar to how ''Franchise/GreenLantern'' does. Fear reduces willpower as it causes hesitance except for when the fear gives you a reason to fight harder; the citizens have the willpower invest so much precisely because they're afraid of the dragon and want to kill it. Hope provides a massive boost to willpower but is near-useless alone, as hope is useless without the willpower to enact it; the citizens always held hope for the afterlife to save them from the dragon but only made progress once the boy's anguish gave them the willpower to oppose the dragon, which their hope for immortality boosted by orders of magnitude. As a final note, death at the dragon's hands eliminates your emotions while eternal life is the pinnicale of infinite emotions over the years.

%%[[caption-width-right:128:some caption text]]

* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: This trope serves as the main plot: 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.
* ForcedToWatch: Every day, as people get shipped off to the dragon to die, the entire kingdom looking on.

* 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 this mindset archaic and dangerous in the modern world, with genetic engineering to cure aging now on the table.

* 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 would have survived along with many others.

->''"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!"''

%% 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.

[[caption-width-right:128:<''awaiting {{Tagline}} selection''>]]

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