Hey I am doing this as a favor to the Magna Draconis. Heand I would like to know if any of you have been helped by Dragon Boosters morals, or anything about it. Has it ever helped you do something that you thought you couldnt do? Did it help you not do something you knew that you would regret? Anything at all. Thanks for your comments!!!!

I'm sorry, but...

bwa he heee!!

It's usually bad writing to try to shove a moral into a story, so it's probably a good thing that DB hasn't tried little preachy voiceovers to remind us that Lying Is Bad and the like. Those things are usually just laughable. Despite that being the case, I have some moral problems with DB.

• Respect for quasi-religious authority above one's own children. To wit, Connor lying to Artha and ten-year-old Lance (even though the specific prophecy probably didn't say he had to).
• The whole creepy priestly-authority thing. I don't think it's moral to deny people information, though I'll admit in the DB world it's a nuanced argument due to the amount of things that can go wrong with the misuse of mag-energy, and I definitely think it was wrong for Connor to lie to Artha so that he as Mortis could control the Dragon Booster's powers. It's creepy for these people hiding information to be telling the sixteen-year-old boy who'll eventually have more power than anyone else on the planet what to do, and it'd be better if canon recognized that. It's moral to obey authority, but it's also moral to defy it sometimes.
• The little incident with Beau pushing scared-of-heights Parm up in the air and the several other minor bullying incidents among the heroes--yeah, rough-and-tumble play happens, I'm not always a humorless and censorious old maid, but it's not exactly a great example of The Morals Dragon Booster Can Teach.
• The bit when Artha hits Moordryd while he's down, in Eye of the Dragon. I know it's pragmatic and all to stop the villain while you can so he doesn't hurt innocent bystanders (not that Moordryd/SB has actually done that as far as I recall), but at the least they should've shown the hero regretting it!
• The whole cheating thing. Artha has the dragon of legend and gets extra training from Mortis to do things the others can't, not even his supposed friend Kitt, which is a dishonourable advantage that would get him kicked out even if not technically against the rules--and unlike Moordryd, he's supposed to be the hero, and also unlike Moordryd, he doesn't care it's cheating. There's no way he would've gone from rookie to champion without the special help.
• The "you, Artha, are special" thing. This actually isn't a way to empower the audience, though of course some kids do identify with him, because he's represented as the only special one.
• And on that thought, the reason why Artha's speshul--because he believes in himself, not because he actually worked for it a la Kitt. I agree self-confidence rocks, but kids really also need to be taught the hard work part of it as well. Kitt being minimized and Parm a figure of fun don't really show this moral lesson.
• The downright misogyny in the treatment of Kitt. She's useless in the vast majority of eps and ends up losing her career--where she's the hardworking orphan and he's the lazy boy with the rich father and special powers. It's pretty damn nasty to take your one main female character down from best street racer to out of the competition, either because she's in wuv and needs to obey her man or just because he's more important than her. Proof!
• The racism, from the stereotypical black/evul colour coding to Kawake, Shane and Khatah's racial stereotyping to Parm, Cain, Kawake, Shane and Khatah's (note: all but one of the characters of colour in the whole thing) "Oh Great White Master How May I Serve You" attitude to the fact that dark skin should be prized in this universe rather than most of the powerful characters being very pale to the total lack of women of colour. Not to mention the pure dragons being the best. (Akarai has no lines and appears in one ep. It's nice he exists, but he's not exactly a strong counter example.) See the posts below for more extensive discussion.
• The bit of classism in the marginalization of Kitt as the poor orphan giving up her career for rich Artha (more sexism IMO, but it's probably there).
• This is a bit unfair, but here goes nonetheless: it would've been awfully progressive of DB to have openly included teh gay (not as in sex, as in saying on screen "Khatah and Sarjo are totally dating"). I don't blame the writers for not doing it, as there's still a whole lot of homophobia in the world, but it's one more moral stand they could have taken. (In case I have to support this one: gay people exist. It shouldn't be any more inappropriate for Parm and Cain to date than Artha and Kitt.)

I'm glad for anyone who has gained moral lessons out of DB, and I know from my own experience that imagining a powerful fictional character's likely choices can help us become confident to make strong decisions. DB is hardly likely to make anyone bully, cheat or abandon their children, though it is one more thing carrying on the misogyny, racism and homophobia in our society. DB's not going to increase juvenile delinquency, but I don't think the show shines in terms of the moral messages it conveys.

So I guess that your saying no? Hmmm, gotcha.....Im not gonna preach to a stone wall but I would like to see another show that actually tries to have a good moral. Im sure theyre out there but Im just sayin`......

Actually, I was never under the impression that DB was trying. As I said above, voiceovers telling kids all about how Popularity Is Shallow or Lying To Friends Sucks are kind of boring and badly written. DB seemed to be more about replicating Joseph Campbell cliches with the occasional ep that was more devoted to a particular message than others (like Artha the Drac, Fame Has Its Problems), entertaining the kids with something resembling a storyline.

I'll jump to taking the bait with Ace Lightning (it rocked! it totally rocked! :P ), which did have some of those preachy voiceovers, but with a slight reason for them (the main character was talking to a friend of his overseas), and had a neat plot, action sequences, some characters who deliberately defied their stereotypes, and a hero who canonically refuses to hit anyone while they're down (pictured in my icon :P) .

My TV knowledge is kind of nowhere near most people's, but going through the shows I know Kim Possible has perhaps the same proportion of vaguely-messagelike eps as DB (Kim and Ron learn that Overcommitting Is Bad, Honesty Is Good But Too Much Sucks, Popularity Is Shallow, Fashion Is Fun But Kind Of Silly, among other things that I don't recall), The Proud Family seems to have some strong messages in favour of family togetherness, the one ep of American Dragon I've seen had a character learning something about popularity and not overusing new powers... It's actually pretty much a requirement for a children's TV show to be vaguely educational and/or convey some moral message, which was why a semi-literate idiot going by Kunkel once criticised Ace despite the voiceovers.

So, yeah, every kids' TV show vaguely tries to put some moral message in there. DB tries less than others, which is actually usually a good thing in terms of consistent storyline--it's just that some of their plot inconsistencies convey what I consider to be immoral messages.

Ah! Sarah! I'm disapointed!

You forgot the racisim! 'Browns' are good at physical sports (like full contact two on two basketball)! Kwake was a good message, but he was decived by the white man and had to be enlightened by a young, idealistic, rich, white man!

The high class people are all white! The bad side is a race of blacks! You even had a dark coloured person as a criminal. It's okay to pick on and mock the token black guy!

Low class people can never succede, espcially not against their betters!

Should I go on?


There's the people of far easten descent being good at martial arts, but I'll give you that as an archtype.

Ohdamnit! My apologies. :poof: *hides in humiliation* Oh yes. Big brown basketballers dragballers riding big brown dragons! Asian martial artists with wacky accents! Nope, no racial stereotyping going on there!

Sentrus, Connor, Word, Artha, Moordryd, Faiar, Tannis, Chute, powerful white people in charge--when in the world environment pale skin should mean the opposite! (Granted, Akarai. One episode, no lines. Yay!)

Kawake. As you remark, Nemi, basketballer needing enlightenment by the noble young white guy. Basketballer's brother helping young white guy for apparently no personal gain.

Khatah. Loses a race. Needs the younger white guy's help to retrieve his artefact in spite of being an Academy veteran. Congratulates young white guy later for saving them from the other young white guy, in spite of (again) his own experience and skills. Congratulates young white guy again even as he's knocking him out of the competition (no way could he win! He's not white and doesn't have a speshul destiny given by a rich daddy!). Loses his final race to the other privileged brat, knocked out right at the start.

Black the evul colour. Totally not a racism-based stereotype.

Parm, Cain, Khatah, Kawake, Shane. Oh Great White Master/s, How May I Serve You? Does Parm have a life outside Artha? Is Artha remotely grateful? Does Parm get that rebellion ep where Artha has to show How Much He Truly Appreciates His Servitude?

Actually, the no chance of winning against their supriors was a 'jab' at Kitt.

Poor, female, and can't win against the rich white guy.

And going further, though perhaps you may not like this Sarah: She was a top street Racer, winning against all the others. This, presumably as a top racer, includes people on BLACK dragons, and things. And of course she's White, and fits in the White guy's defintion of perfect feminine beauty.

Racism and sexism, oh how they do intersect. :P

The black=evul thing is one racist thing, the black guys serving the white guys is another racist thing, and the absence of women of colour is another racist thing (zomg uuuugly!!one!).

Kitt getting ignored and marginalized is a sexist thing, the other women getting ignored and marginalized is a sexist thing, the unrealistically-slender beauty standard is another sexist thing.

And Kitt the hardworking orphan being pushed behind the sons-of-rich-families Moordryd and Artha is a classist thing (but mostly sexist, IMO, as her being an orphan or Connor being rich isn't actually mentioned on screen).

And so the deadly intersection occurs.

But the characters of colour don't defer to Kitt. It's not inherently racist for Kitt to have been the top racer while Khatah and Kawake et al were good racers in their own right who didn't usually compete in the same races she did, and that seems to be what happened before Artha got them bootlicking. It'd be even nicer if Kitt was a woman of colour who was the top racer, bonus points a lesbian--but it undoes one prejudice to have a woman in the top spot, anyway. Khatah and Kawake both pretty much ignore her, she's not as laughed at but is more marginalized than Parm, Cain saves her in spite of, y'know, him being a sidekick and her being Best Street Racer, so she doesn't really participate in the whole Great White Master thing.

So she's a poor female orphan who can't compete against the rich white guy, and it sucks to be her--and it sucks to be Kawake and Khatah too, desperately needing the same rich white guy to save them from...other rich white guys. Hard to tell which is worse.

....And THIS is why you're the English/Lit/whatever major and I'm not. You are one, right?

*brain fizzles* damn moxa using acupuncture students.

Do you think there's any...subtext or whatnot to the diffrent races of dragon being so physically dissimular that it may render natural cross breeding impossible? And easier for the female 'working class' (Bull and bull like dragons) dragons to concive from a 'high class' (Beau and Beau like (Gold, Black, and Blue) dragons) than the other way around?

Double major, IT and Law. :P

I don't know. I think the intent with the different dragons was to have them all look unique with their unique qualities, and the real-world equivalent is more dog breeds than human races (they're a lot more dissimilar than humans, although on the other hand they are meant to be sentient). Aside from black=evul, all the other colour meanings seem pretty neutral to me--white/daring (not the most important colour), gold/good (shiny), purple/teamwork (dunno where that symbolism came from!), red/fast (obvious!)... The brown and green ones seem coded as masculine cuz they're big (sexism!), but in Beau's ancestry a working class quadruped would have had to be the one bearing a biped/quadruped blend. Perhaps that's classist, but I don't know...it seems logical that the four-legged ones can grow bigger than the two-legged ones (though I must note that the fastest runners in our universe are also four-legged), and the bigger ones are better for digging and mining, and if you have bipeds as well it's probably a better idea to blend using a quadruped mum and biped dad rather than vice versa. So the breeding mostly seems like a natural consequence.

It is arbitrary, though, to have colour so linked to ability, and that's the source of a lot of real-world prejudices as well. Women have uteri so they stay at home looking after kids, black people are good at sports but bad at school, Asians are good at school but boring. It's one of the things that doesn't make the dragons quite human--their choices in life are determined by their physical shape and form, whereas humans have some choice which dragon to ride (maybe human influences are set at birth, but they're not obvious, which at least lets the humans imagine they're not choosing their lives based on something physical). So that's a good point about the dragon races not being something that's unproblematic. I guess the writers just wanted different species to look cool, and fell down a bit on the whole "dragons are sentient" thing in the process, and fell down a lot when they went for evul black--but you can't write something having to do with race without being unproblematic, not in this time and place.

...at least Beau's black and gold?

Point, point, and double point. Though I suspect there's some classisim sneaking into the dragon shapes, esp since I've seen a fanart where they make Brutaris and Cyrano look...more like bulls I guess. Longer legged, more real and natural (and related to Beau and consequently more capable of breeding outside their 'type' ) rather than the hulks they had in show.

Black and Gold...I wonder if it'd be too much of a strech to compare that to chromozones and make paralells between Kitt and Artha and Decepshun and Beau.

That is to say, Beau is Black and Gold, and has an X and Y chromozone and so he is intelligent and no one can beat him.

Artha is Caucassion, and has an X and Y chromozone and is inteligent and no one can beat him.

Decepshun is Black (and black?) and has no Y chromozone/no Gold, and/so she is intelligent but bettered by those with Gold/Y choromozone. (As a note, I typed "But she is" instead of "and she is," sexisim sneaking in)

Kitt is Caucassion, and has no Y chromozone, and so she is intelligent and good, but beaten by those who are White and have a Y chromozone.

The two sets are both of the same race (white/black) and one has what the other lacks (Gold/Y chromozone).

Thoughts on what that says about morality?

Point. (They're beautiful, thanks for mentioning them!) Manual labour = short, brutish, kinda ugly (like Kitt actually says in Rules of Power, bad Kitt)? You have a point. Although I suppose longer, thinner legs would make them less effective, and that's the creator justification.

And point on the comparisons. Artha and Kitt are both gifted and basically good-hearted racers with a bit of an ego (though Kitt's more hardworking and with less of an ego); Beau and Decepshun are the two main dragons. And Artha's different because his rich white father brought him up with the Dragon of Legend, and Kitt's thrust to the sidelines because she's just a poor female orphan love interest--and Beau's different part because he's the hero, but Decepshun doesn't show nearly as much independence, and the Vysox (another female dragon) merges into her enough not to care that Decepshun's rider is fighting the guy she used to work with. Not to mention Decepshun's (a woman's) colour-based (evul black again!) independence is regarded as a weakness. As is Kitt's, I suppose, when she goes off on her own in Slithercorp to achieve something for herself for once, and has to be stalked and defeated by the boys for her own good.

Parallel works! :)

Actually, longer legs would give them better hauling/pushing ability due to leverage.

Short legs are good for not being moved, stability. Which is one reason why English Bulls are low to the ground, they were bred, in part, to get up to the guy/dog, resist being kicked away, chomp down, hang on, dragging their heels if they must.

So if anything, there's MORE of a reason for them to have long legs, though, I'll give you that perhaps it would be better for Earth class dragons to be short.

Point: Word is rich and he's bad and sucks. Artha and Contis are Rich and they're awesome and rock.

So...superiority is genetically based, not monetarily or virtue based?

Gotcha! Thanks Dragon Booster! I never knew that, I'll make a note of that in my 'bible'! Course, my bible is more for the blonds, ya know?

Word is rich and Moordryd's Crew-leader. Contis is rich and Artha's the hero. Superiority for the two of them is most definitely based on their ancestry--Moordryd wouldn't be Crew-leader, Decepshun wouldn't be pure, he wouldn't have the wraiths to help him, his father's Citadel defences wouldn't have helped train him, he wouldn't have been made to get all the experience dragon-stealing, and Artha would be sitting around playing VIDD games if Contis hadn't bred Beau and raised him with him. I imagine an orphaned Moordryd would at least be a racer in the Dragon Eyes, but an orphaned Artha likely wouldn't be anything special without Beau. It is realistic that wealthy, powerful fathers (not mothers, you'll note :P) give advantages to their offspring, but it's a bit annoying that the hardworking orphan and the black guys are just there to support their chosen white brat with a rich father in their personal battle.

Ah, but both of them presumably started off as orphans themselves.

Word apprently was in a Down City Crew.

I think genetics is a stronger corolation to success than money.

Im gonna go ask Lightningflash if theres any way to change topic titles. This should be called TOP 10 REASONS DRAGON BOOSTER SHOULD BE SHOT That would be a more appropriate of a title for the direction this has taken.

You were essentially asking about what morals have we taken away from the show, and this is the answer.

We have not been helped in our moral decisions by Dragon Booster because it is lacking in morals.

And anyways, even if it wasn't the writing isn't good enough to make an impact that we'd keep close to our hearts.

I think it's a good thing DB doesn't try preaching many explicit moral lessons. :) I do think the standard that a kids' TV show must be Educational and Moral and Preachy above everything else is a very silly standard, because the storyline should always be the most important thing about an adventure tale, and I'm sorry that the Magna Draconis feels like he has to provide such testimony. However, DB has some icky subtext that implies immoral messages, probably subconscious or accidental on the part of the creators, and that was on topic here.

I sort of agree with you there ^.=.^;;

Let me know if the topic comes up elsewhere...

In my experience, I do find places in these episodes where they influence life choices for me... I mean, stepping aside from some of the things the others have said above, I think the show drives people to think that if you believe in something, you can make it happen!

If I'm feeling down, I like to think that there is always a chance that life has some sort of grand plans for me that I am unaware of yet. Yes, Artha is the rich kid, but he also works in a stable to earn his keep. It shows that he does actually work for what he has, and that even heros were once normal people like you or I. It teaches the importance of friendships without coming directly out and saying so. I mean, there are times where I agree that Kitt has been taking waaaaay too many falls, but there are still times where Artha must look to her for guidance.

I have a lot of examples... Just let me know if you would like to hear more...

On a side note I convinced our local toy shop to order the dragon booster toys. He said he will continue through the week trying to be one of Jakk's venders. I'm hoping this will work. ^^

He didn't seem to work terribly hard. :)

Examples would be appreciated! I count two occasions when Kitt gives Artha racing advice, once in the second episode or so and a second time in Fanning the Flames. Aside from that, she does extremely little.

Ohh I agree that he didn't work too hard, concidering it never showed him do more than rake up a few things or pawn it off on Lance. But at least he did do something ^^;; lol

As for Kitt, I have to agree with you, it disapoints me to see that she was concidered one of the top up and coming racers, then vanished in Artha's dust... I liked Kitt, and had high hopes for her.

Right now I recall an episode where Artha stole her moves to win, without crediting her, it was one of the few instances where Kitt's skills were of a higher class. Though the fact that she lost so terribly kind of scrambled the message...

That was Fanning the Flames. :) It was one of Kitt's approximately two good episodes, where she showed some skills (the other one was When Opposites Attract, where she actually did something as a sidekick to Artha), but in the end the plot was as sexist as the particularly egregious Slithercorp: Artha is a prick, Kitt is justifiably annoyed, Kitt does something stupid to invalidate her annoyance (going after Furox, going to Slithercorp), Artha saves the day and she goes back to being his sidekick. The link above gives a fairly exhaustive rundown of what she actually does in each episode, and...it's not much. I count 27 out of 39 eps where she's mostly useless (YMMV slightly), and in most of the remainder she's either getting rescued by Artha or just competing in a race rather than helping out in the main plot. She was supposed to be the best street racer, but other Crew-leaders are competing in the final whereas she's knocked out with no canon reasons why (other than OMGArtha'sTheGreatestAndNobodyWondersWhyARookie'sSuddenlySoGreat).