You’d think that someone who likes fantasy novels as much as I do would like dragons. Actually, I loathe the creatures. I’ve literally quit books when—in the middle of a perfectly good story about people—a dragon slithers in.

And they crop up all the time, in J. R. R. Tolkien, George R. R. Martin,Robin Hobb, Ursula LeGuin, Anne McCaffrey, and a myriad of other authors. They have deep roots in mythology, folktales, and religion (St. George and the Dragon, anyone?). They have become one of the most popular twentieth-century fantasy tropes. Nothing says “fantasy” as much as a dragon on the cover. Evidently, other readers enjoy them.

My friend the psych professor, Dara, has taught me about individual differences in responses to art. So I want to understand—what could be dragons’ appeal?

And what’s wrong with me?

First, dragons can fly. Defeating space and gravity is a cool conceit, which connotes freedom and exhilaration.

But I don’t like flying. I’m sure my distaste arises partially from too many hideous experiences on United, but I also find the very idea of flying unappealing. Yes, everyone would love to move quickly from one place to another without the tedium of earthbound travel. But I’d prefer to beam or tesser from one place to another. Flying necessarily entails being high in the sky and looking down on everyone and everything. You see landscapes only as abstract patterns and you don’t see people at all. The dragon or her rider’s viewpoints are removed from human concerns—theirs is a cold and superior gaze.

So dragons connote flight, freedom, and detachment. Yet Tinkerbell flies, but she’s not a dragon. The difference between Tinkerbell and dragons is a one of scale. Dragons are always big and always deadly, shooting out fire and burning people to death. Power! Excitement! Battle prowess! Dragons are the super-heroes, the Incredible Hulks, of the genre.

I like excitement as much as the next reader, but dragon power often brings an unfair advantage. When Daenerys calls in her dragons to burn up her enemies, my overall reaction is not awe, but horror at the escalation. Talk about a non-commensurate response to provocation!

Finally, some authors make their dragons the repository of everything ancient, wise, and lost. Dragons—which spring forth from ancient legends—come pre-packaged for nostalgia.

But when I ponder dragons as arising from a land before time, I think of them as akin to dinosaurs (with tiny brains) and you can probably guess how well that works for me.

Of course, some writers draw their dragons as sensitive and devoted. And much prose and billions of pixels have been devoted to dressing them in beautiful colors.

However, if you want a nice beast, a soul-mate type, I’d advise swiping left at fire-breathing reptiles in the OkBestiary.

When I was five we visited Arizona and brought back a terrarium of lizards as a pitiful stab at household pets. I don’t know what went wrong, but the lizards ate one another. Everyday when I checked, there was one less and the survivor had a companion’s limb sticking out of his jaw.

The only dragon I’ve ever been able to build up any fuzzy feelings toward is “my father’s dragon,” in the Ruth Stiles Gannett children’s books. That’s because, of course, this poor, captured, orphan dragon has lost all his lizard qualities and been turned into a stuffed toy in expensive, Swedish cotton pajamas, with a small seahorse head, ears, and red nail polish.

But if you go too far down that route, you end up with Barney . . . who is repellant in a different way.

Concerning Dragons