I don’t know how well high-res works on various Tumblrs, but the giant demon girl in the picture has a princess in her mouth, and the hero has ridden up on his white horse.
She: “Help!”
He: “Oh, sorry! Wrong princess”
She: “Wh…What?!”
He: Sorry for the interruption!”
Giant demon lady: [Gulp!] “Not a problem!”
St George and the Dragon, Paolo Ucello, 1470
In Tolkein’s famous essay on Beowulf, he mentions that there are not very many dragons in European mythology, really. This is a bit funny, since Tolkein’s own Smaug would eventually become one of centerpieces of a whole genre based on emulating Tolkein’s aesthetic.
But he was right: before Smaug, there was St. George’s dragon (actually in Libya), and Fafnir, and Beowulf’s dragon. That’s pretty much it.
Above, George is about to rescue Sabra. Like most damsels in distress, Sabra has to marry whatever schmuck shows up to rescue her, even though in the original legend, she’s basically the one who saves the day, using the magic-virginity powers of her girdle…..?….? (That’s what she’s leashing him with).
And the poor dragon was only trying to sell astroturf.
Oglaf, The Princess
But seriously, blood and dragons eating people? Pretty dark stuff. Even if it’s kind of genre-specific dark stuff. So I thought I’d ramble on a bit about dark fantasies in general. Probably more on the blog, later, but here for now.