What was the inspiration for the pink dragons?
So the ‘pink dragon’ thing is an idea I have been musing about for a short while, which is why it is called ‘pink dragon’ and not a more mythology-based name. It started with wondering if, in a world where dragons existed, would ‘dragon fruit’ still be called dragon fruit? They would only resemble dragon scales if there truly was a pink dragon with green edges to the scales.
Here’s a post based on this idea: https://draconesmundi.tumblr.com/post/189671143081/draconesmundi-draconesmundi-do-we-need-a-pink
The addition of ‘Vermillion dragon of the south?’ is to do with a part of Chinese cosmology – specifically the concept of Wufang Shangdi, the five faces of the highest deity, whereby there are five aspects of a deity correlating to colours, elements and cardinal directions. One form of this idea are the five dragon kings: black dragon of the north, azure of the east, white of the west, yellow of the centre and vermillion of the south. A pink dragon is likely to have a red or vermillion colour morph.
In the version of the book I wrote in 2018 there was a type of dragon for each of the five faces of the highest deity (white, black, yellow, azure and red), plus some extra dragons endemic to China, which meant China had 7 endemic dragons while Korea had 1, Japan had 1, Vietnam had 1 etc. This seemed unfair and unbalanced so I did a reshuffle. Part of the reshuffle was kicking out the vermillion dragon. Making the ‘dragon fruit’ dragon would mean I nearly have the white, black, yellow, azure and red pattern again!
There are also images of pink dragons in traditional art that would support this animal existing in Dracones Mundi: https://draconesmundi.tumblr.com/post/611224666241138688/treasures-and-beauty-qing-dynasty-daoguang
I later changed the design because I really like southern Asian and south east Asian art, especially nagas with their big nose horns, leading to this design here: https://draconesmundi.tumblr.com/post/189738003076/vermillion-dragon-of-the-south-pink-dragon-fruit
Finally, I did a challenge for people to tell me where they lived so I could reply with some local dragon info as found in Dracones Mundi (find these posts here: https://draconesmundi.tumblr.com/tagged/here+be+dragons ). The aim of this project is that if someone were to buy this book they would be able to find a local dragon, even if they live in places that are skipped over by most popular fantasy books. I will of course fail, because to have an absolute knowledge of all dragon mythology in the world would be too much for my small human mind, but I want to give it a good try!
I was therefore surprised to find out I knew nothing about the dragons of Singapore: https://draconesmundi.tumblr.com/post/612051679523799040/here-be-dragons . I blundered about with dragons of Indonesia before realising that Singapore has a very Chinese culture – or more of a melting pot of cultures; Malay, Indian, Chinese and some western influence thanks to the British trying to colonise the entire world a few times (I apologise for my country). Ergo the dragons there would be a mix of all these things.
Two very dragon-ish activities in Singapore are dragon boat racing and dragon dances. The dragon dances caught my attention because they looked super cool, and a number of the puppets were pink dragons, so I thought “aha, we can put the pink dragon here!”
So the pink dragon is a fruit-and-dance based dragon, without too many actual myths based on it. I might make it a very small dragon despite the large puppets used in dances (I mean the lion costumes are large enough for 2 people to stand inside so I think we can assume the ‘real’ dragons will be smaller than their dance counterparts) and therefore say that there aren’t many myths on its grand and powerful majesty because it’s only a few feet long and feeds mainly on birds and monkeys. I might change my mind and make it huge. Who knows?
‘Pink dragon’ is a placeholder name, I will work on this dragon a lot more in the future.
