Eastern dragons

>Eastern dragons
>symbolize good luck, prosperity, strength, wisdom

>Western dragons
>aggressive gold-hoarding savages who murder peasants and rape maidens for shits and giggles

What went wrong?

What's wrong about this? It's just two different cultures being different.

>eastern floods
>symbolizes challenges to rulers. ruler's ability to manage flood determines their right to rule

>western floods
>symbolizes sins of mankind. can't do shit, just pray

The European and Chinese dragon are unrelated. Some person just called the Chinese long a "dragon" because it was a reptile thing. The Chinese fenghuang is unrelated to the phoenix but people still call it a "Chinese phoenix".

It's obviously a dragon.

It's "obvious" to you because the Chinese term has been translated as dragon for centuries. If we had called dinosaurs dragons you'd say a Trex is obviously a dragon.

The concept of dragon is man made. It doesn't exist in reality. When you say "its obviously a dragon", the reality of the phrasing makes things not very obvious since we can alter the appearance of dragons to anything we want and still call it such. In doing so, what we can call as dragons become not so obvious as the conceptual understanding of dragons become arbitrary.

The actual reasoning should be "its obvious, both are descendant from snake myths". More likely some giant sea snake. This much is true for both east/west. Most of the early myths surrounding dragons revolve around giant snakes and water. Its only after Christianity and the mixes with various local tribal people of Europe, did the depiction of dragons become more lizard like.

Dragons are literally just large mythical reptiles. Sometimes not even that, medieval European dragons are sometimes depicted as oversized dog monsters and such. The concept is so vague that a lot of completely different creatures from various cultures are called dragons even though they aren't related in any way beyond superficialities.

I'm quite sure the modern Western depictions owe a lot to Middle Eastern mythological influences too, when I look at OP's picture I keep seeing a hybrid of those Babylonian creatures, except with bat wings.

>it looks like a dragon
>it has all traits of a dragon
>"lol fuck you it aint a dragon, it's akshually some weird sea serpent lizard-thingy"
autism

>Quadrupedal, six-limbed creature that breathes fire with the scales of a reptile and the build of a canine

>Flying, feathered snakes

>Similar

I ship it.

You forgot to mention the antlers, ears and mustaches

>>Flying, feathered snakes
so we should be calling them Quetzlcoatls instead?

Not really, but at least they're both "feathered serpents"

>implying

Son, we call fucking Lindorms dragons and they don't even have wings or more than two limbs. The Peluda was one covered in shaggy green fur and porcupine spines. The tarrasque looked like a giant eight legged turtle covered in spikes with a lion's head.

It's a mythical creature, their forms are mutable. The only thing that really matters in the classification of something as a "Dragon" is the fact that it is something supernatural involved in some high level shit like flying or breathing fire.

Does the dragon really rape the maiden? Unless there's some goosh goosh shit going on then they must have small Dicks.

>everything is a fucking dragon
hate this meme

In many Euro folk stories they're usually the ones kidnapping young virgins.

It probably symbolizes how the West was opposed to natural forces (thus portraying them as satanic dinosaurs), whereas the East tried to be harmonious with nature.

Did people actually believe that these creatures existed? Or was it just something invented for the purpose of story-telling? Think of all the weird creatures that we modern humans have concocted for the sole purpose of telling stories.

Depends on what you mean by "existed".

The era of scientific proof, or rigorous proof is something entirely modern. Its only possible due to modern records keeping and rigorous fact checking, availability of records and the ability to verify those accounts.

So during pre-modern times, the idea of "existence" is vague at best. If they could believe in a deity who existed above the sky (who could disprove this?) or under the earth, controlling our very lives, why can't there be semi-mythical creatures who hide in mountains or in caves sleeping?

Was there ever an instance where a group of people avoided a certain mountain because it was rumored to be the home of a dragon? Was there ever an instance where a famine was blamed on a dragon burning crops or something like that? For example, imagine a scenario where a city burns down, and a man comes forward saying that he saw a dragon start the fire. Would people believe him or would they call him a liar? Would the church consider a belief in dragons to be a sort of hersey? Or would they say: "yep dragons are totally legit"?

If there were instances of group of people blaming natural disasters on dragons, it would have to be very localized. Unless the natural disaster were very large scaled, in this scale, the responsibility would transfer from local dragons to gods.

Dragons occupied the power between gods/people. Beyond people but lesser than Gods. So anything local disaster could be dragons or gods. Anything national would be gods level responsibility.

Black plague for example is seen as punishment by the God for people's sins/greed/etc. And they would totally say "yep, god did it"

Dragons in folklores usually occupied the powers surrounding natural weathers. Whether or not the Christian people of the land would say "yep, dragon did it" is probably another matter. But non-christian people probably did.

>it's called a long and it's also very long

really liquefies my lichees