Stop putting dragons in every single fantasy prompt

I've been browsing this community for about 6 months now and I swear half the prompts just swap out the color of a dragon and call it a day. Last week I saw three separate posts about "ice dragon riders" and another about "shadow dragon hunters." Like, come on. Fantasy worlds can have politics, trade disputes, religious schisms, or even just a dude trying to run a tavern in a weird town. I run a fencing crew in Phoenix and even my job has more interesting conflict than "the dragon escaped again." Why does every prompt need a mythical creature as the main plot device? Has anyone else noticed this trend getting stale or am I just being too picky about what I want to write about?

3 comments

3 Comments

ivanbell12d ago

...I mean, is it really that big of a deal though? People write what they like, and dragons are popular for a reason. Half the posts on here are about fantasy escapes, not realistic medieval tax systems. If you want political drama, there's plenty of prompts about kings and trade routes already. I see way more tavern and guild prompts than actual dragon ones, honestly. Maybe you're just scrolling through the wrong section or something. It's not like every story needs to reinvent the wheel to be fun.

lewis.mila11d ago

Fair point, Ivan. I'm just grumpy because my own fantasy ideas usually top out at "what if a character forgot their library card," so I shouldn't throw stones in glass dragon houses.

logan52512d ago

Last week I counted 14 dragon prompts in one day scrolling through the "new" tab alone. That's not just a trend, that's a traffic jam. People claim they want originality but every other post is just another variation on "dragon rider academy" or "bonded with a dragon from a forbidden species." It feels less like creativity and more like copy-paste with a new adjective. Why not throw in something like a magical plague affecting crops or a city run by rival merchant guilds where the conflict is about shipping routes instead of scales? I get that dragons are cool and all, but when they show up in every other prompt, doesn't it start feeling like the easy way out?