The penultimate episode of the fifth season of Game of Thrones has triggered a wave of responses, the way a deep sea earthquake triggers a wave of water. It was too violent, it is okay that it was violent, it was too violent but that is okay, etc. A character burning his younger daughter to death smack in the middle of an episode will do that to people, I suppose. Even for a show with a long history of burning people — and decapitating them, and poisoning them at a wedding, and slitting their throats at a wedding — regardless of how popular or central they’d been to that point, it was kind of a lot. So much, in fact, that it’s almost completely overshadowed another important takeaway from the episode, which I would like to discuss for a minute.
It would be cool to have a dragon.
Right? Having your own personal dragon seems pretty great. And not just for the reasons that having a dragon came in handy for Daenerys, either. I mean, I don’t have swarms of gold-masked men trying to kill me all that often. I imagine the whole “murdering my enemies with fire breath and spiriting me away to safety” won’t be my primary use for a dragon. Or maybe it will. Who knows? Maybe I’ll go mad with dragon power and run up a long list of powerful enemies who wish me harm. Maybe I’ll start burning my neighbors’ patio furniture the morning after they kept me up all night with loud music. Maybe I’ll get matching tanktops for me and my dragon and we’ll wear them to the beach. I’ve never had a dragon before. Everything’s on the table, really.
But even on a more practical, slightly less tyrannical level, who’s gonna mess with the guy with the huge pet dragon? Not me, that’s for sure. Just think about how helpful that could be.
MECHANIC: Yup, transmission’s shot. Gonna have to replace the whole thing. Lotta labor.
YOU: But… but I just came in for an oil change.
MECHANIC: Look, it’s all very technical. Just trust me on this.
YOU: Oh. Well that sucks. Hey, have you met my dragon?
MECHANIC: Your what?
YOU: [gestures toward parking lot, where dragon promptly screeches and breathes a 20-foot-long stream of white-hot fire into the chilly mid-morning air]
MECHANIC: … I should check the transmission again. Might have just been some, uh… dust. Yeah, transmission dust. Easy fix.
Bing bang boom. Problem solved. Score another one for Having A Dragon.
Here’s a question: What would you name your dragon, if you had one? I think I would name mine something super normal, like Steve. Or Gary. Gary the Dragon. That way I could casually mention him in conversation, like “What I am up to tonight? Eh, might go see a baseball game with Gary. You wanna join us?,” and then watch people’s eyeballs go sproinging out of their heads when they figure out (a) that Gary is a huge fire-breathing beast, and (b) that by “see a baseball game with Gary,” I meant “watch from the sky as Gary swoops menacingly over the stadium like a winged reptilian Goodyear blimp.” I think that would be fun. Plus then when he acts up I could be like, “Jesus Christ, Gary. We talked about this. Come on,” like he’s my annoying roommate or something.
Actually, that brings up the flip side of the dragon coin. There are a few issues you’ll need to consider. Like, where in the world are you gonna keep a dragon? Your apartment? Even a reasonably mid-sized dragon won’t fit in your one bedroom walk-up. You’ll need to move out to the suburbs, at least, and maybe even the country. You ready for that? And won’t having a dragon get really expensive? Assuming your dragon is perfectly behaved and doesn’t run off to eat some farmer’s cow every time it gets hungry, you’re gonna have to feed it. A lot. And if it’s not perfectly behaved, well, you don’t want to be on the hook for all that property damage. Unless… can you get dragon insurance? No, that still won’t work. The premiums alone will kill you. You’ll definitely need a well-behaved dragon.
But, look. Let’s not get bogged down in the negatives. You can figure this out! Maybe you can pay for all the food by giving people dragon rides, or by having your dragon incinerate, uh, things that need incinerating. Or maybe you can use your dragon to extort money from huge faceless corporations by threatening to rain down flames from the heavens on their operations. You have so many potential dragon-related sources of income at your disposal. Sure, I guess that takes a little of the fun out of it all because now your “fun” dragon stuff feels like a “job.” But it’s like Aristotle said back in Ancient Greece: “Shut up and enjoy your dragon, dummy!”
On second thought, maybe that was Socrates. I’m always getting those two mixed up. Good point, whoever it was.