#i also am deliriously tired so i completely forgot to mention here that. y'know. yeah skrael actually definitely shows affection

[dreamcrow]

@falling-hand-in-unlovable-hand + @babblish, from (this fic author meta meme)

here's the thing tho: you're both right.

wizards introduced a trio of the tightest, coolest antagonist concepts in the entire toa franchise. it then proceeded to run them directly into the ground through a combination of 1.) rushed writing (wizards) and 2.) bad writing (rott). it's late and i'm not particularly interested in beating this crumbling horse skeleton for the nth time in public, but i'm on my soapbox and the editor has already eaten one version of this post.

the order should be scary. these are the things merlin is afraid of, or at least that he doesn't want to tangle with head-on. they made morgana. but that means nari is scary, too. which is borne out! in her very first appearance, she's the one merlin (!) turns to for help; she's the one who boosts camelot, singlehandedly, to stand against bellroc and skrael. her second appearance introduces her as a necromancer, one, again, powerful enough to accomplish (as if in play) what bellroc and skrael cannot, even working together. she also straight up kills humans at killahead, handily, and never once uses magic to do it. most importantly: her dialogue consistently places her as "one of the order," even if she's currently apart from the other two.

but wizards fails to take its own premises seriously. nari should be terrifying; but the narrative presents her as charming, sweet, having done terrible things but ultimately "heroic," concerned with setting things right. but by her own definition, she's still one third of the arcane order. gdt's entire brand is monster apology. more importantly, we have MULTIPLE on-screen attempts to reach out to "villains" in both trollhunters and 3 below. jim tries to make a connection with fucking bular, of all people! so what's stopping us from extending the same gracious assessment to bellroc and skrael?

"uh, they can't be three-dimensional, they're the bad guys."

a lazy, flimsy justification. and one that doesn't hold up if you've watched even one (1) season of the previous franchise installments.