Like most social media, Twitter has an algorithm to throw a constant stream of "things you might like" at us. Just now, it showed me a lovely piece of art "based on" my likes. It was a dragon, done in purple, black, gray, and white, and was offered up by the artist for "Ace awareness week," a thing I didn't know was going on now. (For those not in the know, Ace refers to people who are asexual, commonly thought of as the A in LGBTQIA+.) The dragon was beautiful, and my first thought was gosh, that would make a great tattoo for someone. My second thought was how much it reminded me of my favorite dragon of all time, Darius from The Dragon Who Liked to Spit Fire, by Judy Varga.
From there my thoughts kind of exploded like the fireworks that Darius would spit, all purple and orange perkles (a word I might have made up in childhood?) It mostly involved the idea that if the other dragon could be someone else's tattoo, then why couldn't I get one of Darius? So naturally I went looking for the source material, the out-of-print book from 1961. I've mentioned it once or twice here, many years ago. My grandmother had the book at her house when I was a little kid, but if that copy still exists, it's buried in a box somewhere and may never be found. I would like to obtain a copy elsewhere, but used ones on big sites like Amazon list them for more than 40 bucks, and I just can't bring myself to order one. (I dislike buying online--yet another weird quirk.) Maybe someday I'll see it in a used book shop in the wild, and I'll know it was meant to be. Until then, I might sketch out tattoo ideas from the few pages available on the internet, and let the idea of it simmer for a while to see whether I really want this, and where. I usually give myself at least a year, to see whether I like it enough to want it permanently. Avoided several mistakes by doing this.
While I was googling the book, hoping to see more pages of it than last time, I did find something new. Earlier this year, a theater group in Minneapolis adapted it as a musical, assumably for children. There were significant changes, such as making the lead character a princess named June, rather than a prince named Frederic. Since I haven't seen the book in decades, I'm not sure about the rest of the story. At least they kept the purple and orange color scheme. As for the dialogue and songs? Well, maybe I should just not comment on that. I only watched about 30 minutes of it, and I don't expect I'll finish it.
Obviously, tonight the photo is not my own. Cover art of the book, I believe saved from the Goodreads site.
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