#if people keep this up I may choose to disable our anon option

[black-salt-cage]

soooooooooooooooo you guys do know that most anon hate, rude anons, and so on get deleted and you won't get the response you're itching for, right?

[sol1056]

anons on the dragon prince

Yes, we all know the comparison points, so I’m skipping those to focus solely on tDP. Alright, starting from the top.

It does speak volumes [...] that tDP has seemingly (and unless proven otherwise in s2 by a fan theory coming true) killed one of a major CoC after only 3 episodes [but] the fandom, and PoC fans more importantly, still trust Ehasz/Wonderstorm and the story to not let them down ...

I was talking to someone the other day who DM’d me about finally seeing tDP, who said something along the lines of “I feel like I can breathe.” Which isn’t that far off what @ptw30 and I were telling each other, when we binge-watched tDP the night of its release. 

First episode, we were both a little ennnhhh over the animation style. Second episode, we barely noticed that anymore. Third episode, everything went to hell in a handbasket and yet our shared reaction was something along the lines of, “I feel like I can settle in, and let the story go where it’s going. I don’t have to stress about this. The writers have got this.” 

Think of being a passenger when the driver isn’t sure where they’re going. They slow repeatedly to check road signs, show an ‘ehhhh oh right no no we’re fine’ expression (or say it out loud), or switch lanes back and forth unexpectedly. Eventually you’re going to give serious thought to pulling out your phone and offering to navigate, just so someone in the car has a clue. Failing that, you end up worrying whether you’ll get there on time (or at all). 

Not once did tDP give me the remotest worry about where it’s going. Even if it seems counterintuitive that we could get to a Manhattan happy ending by way of a Brooklyn character death, the story must have a good reason. We can relax and enjoy the trip. 

It’s hard to pin down what creates that trust for an audience, because it’s so many things. It’s a combination of setups and payoffs. It’s getting emotional beats at regular intervals. It’s having questions raised and getting just enough answered that you don’t feel like the story is covering for not actually knowing and/or hoping you won’t notice it’s making things up as it goes along. 

More behind the cut: tDP’s handling of race, who’s right vs wrong, and whether tDP’s storytelling can/will surpass AtLA.

I rewatched The Dragon Prince recently and it's amazing how carefully they show racism in only 9 episodes [where other shows failed in multiple seasons]. You can see what happens when people in charge care not only about their own characters, but also the audience following their story.

It’s a very thoughtful story, in the sense that the writers clearly put a great deal of thought into each character’s perspective and place. General Amaya is a walking poster child for How To Do This Shit Right Yo, as is Ava. It makes sense that no less attention was paid to the potentially complicated issue of racism, and how viewers’ real-world experiences would impact and layer on top of what the story is trying to do. 

I mean, tDP could’ve decided that Amaya would be deaf... and then proceed to make up its own sign language. Or that magic could (and should) heal disabilities. When the story did neither, it told me the writing team is aware stories don’t exist in a vacuum: that disabled viewers have also been waiting to see themselves on screen, as characters with agency, treated with respect. 

(The lack of subtitles for Amaya may’ve confused those of us who don’t know ASL, but it was absolutely a gift to those who do. It was saying: hey, this is just for you. All those times you’ve missed something that hearing people take for granted? Now’s your turn to be the one in the know. And come on, that’s just awesome.)

Will tDP stumble at some point? Sure. Stories and people are complex things, and the world is a thousand times more so. It’s not the stumbling that bothers me. It’s when a story is thoughtless, because it won’t even recognize its stumbles, let alone fix them. 

I really struggle with liking the show, specifically because it seems to take the stance that the elf girl was "right" to betray the other elves (leading to the slaughter of her entire team). beyond the pain of the ribbon, she doesn't seem to show any sadness or remorse, and then it seems that the human characters are quick to condemn the elf assassins, instead of the king's slaughter of the dragon king. what writing purpose does this serve?

It serves to prompt exactly what you’re doing: asking questions.

The story is full of conflicting interpretations of events, actions, reactions, and motivations if you just think twice. The humans may fear the elves, and do their best to prevent the elves from succeeding --- but Harrow acknowledged explicitly that it’s not as though the elves don’t have just cause. Harrow wasn’t going to go down easy, but I saw no condemnation on his part upon the elves’ retaliation for human crimes. 

Callum argued with Harrow over why Harrow couldn’t just ‘make peace.’ When Rayla shows Runaan the egg and demands Runaan call everything off, isn’t she effectively arguing the same thing? Additionally, Rayla went into the castle determined to make up for her failing; if she’d succeeded in her mission (especially with Callum’s misdirection), it’d be a very short story, indeed. Instead, the three protagonists end up unified in their hope that this could prevent any further bloodshed. 

Note that I say ‘further’ because what is done, and out of their control, is done. Rayla didn’t act out of a wish to betray; when she choose not to assassinate the prince, she acted out of a hope there could be peace. When the first ribbon falls off and the messenger-arrow flies overhead, Rayla’s assumption makes sense, based on those two details: her team achieved at least one of their goals. We don’t know their fate (other than Runaan), but it also sets up a later plot-point where Rayla discovers the team did not, in fact, all return intact. 

For that matter, by the time she learns those details (and concludes who won and who lost), she’s already befriended the princes. From the very first scene, it’s clear Rayla isn’t cut out for this assassination business. She’s incapable of seeing targets. As Ezran later notes, she sees people as, well, people, even when they’re strangers. Is it really so surprising that she’d waffle even more, once those strangers have become something nearing friends, or at least allies? 

So she chooses to keep silent, and her motivation is wonderfully complex, from a writer’s perspective. She wants peace, and believes returning the egg will do that, so reminding the two princes of her role in their father’s death would alienate them, and put her desires at risk. She likes the princes by that point, and doesn’t want to hurt them with such news. And she’s also feeling guilty for the part she played, especially knowing her secret (not just of failing her mission but of preventing anyone else from succeeding) is probably already known. 

Most of that thought process seems to get decided early in the journey. After that, Rayla goes through all the stages as she realizes the consequences of failing to fulfill a sacred oath: anger, bargaining, grief. At the end, Rayla weighs the two options --- keeping her hand, vs killing someone innocent of any crime --- and decides her hand is a small sacrifice in comparison. 

(Note that thematically, this is echoed in Ava’s story. Ava’s paw was caught in a trap, and escaping came at the cost of her paw. Yet Ava remains perfect as she is, and it’s only other people who require Ava appear to be whole. Part of the reason for going up the mountain is to save the egg, but Rayla also implies she wishes she could save her hand, too. Ava’s story is telling us that such a disability doesn’t and shouldn’t render Rayla broken or useless.) 

Alongside that, the boys don’t seem to have fully put together their father’s role in the current situation. I think Callum might have (in a roundabout way), but not so much for Ezran. It’s a process, though. First we’re shown the princes were raised with a bias they’ve never had reason to question, about elves being bloodthirsty monsters. The story lets Rayla call them on it and express her hurt, and the boys are remorseful. 

The story also doesn’t position Callum (as human) as always knowing the rightness of things; hell, it takes Rayla calling him a mage before he even realizes the meaning of what he’s done. The story also shows the boys are eager to learn (and willing to question their assumptions), when Callum asks Rayla what it’s like in her country.

By the end of S1, both princes have worked their way through several points: from ‘all elves are bad’ to ‘Rayla is the one exception’ to ‘maybe elves aren’t the monsters we were told they are.’ The next logical step is for them to begin questioning their father’s actions. Like you, the story is leading them into questioning things that they took for granted when the story began. 

That’s the purpose of creating a story where perspective shifts with each new character: the story is rewarding you for digging deeper.    

A story that doesn’t want those questions raised --- that isn’t prepared to grapple with them --- would tell you from the get-go, “elves are plain evil, that’s all there is to it.” Or, “humans are always good and their actions are righteous.” Any hint of a conflicting perspective would eventually be revealed as false within the story, or a minor oversight outside the story. 

Where tDP is so well-crafted is that it’s given everything enough layers and conflicts that poking at the story reveals more underneath. All you have to do is give it a bit of thought, and you can see a larger picture, and that larger story’s view may be tilted from what you’ve seen so far, if not flipped outright (or flipped back again). That’s the beauty of a large cast where each character has their own motivation, agency, reasons and beliefs and assumptions: there’s always another side to things.

That’s what makes a story truly rich and deep. Not the worldbuilding, not the complexity of the final solution, not the number of product placements or jokes or high-octane fight sequences. It’s characters with individual perspectives and motivations, agreeing and conflicting per their own purposes, and each one seeing themselves as the hero of their own story.  

...what is it about TDP that makes it a good show for you? What is it you like about it, what about it pulls you in? And would you say it's on par or close to the quality of Avatar?

I think my answers above have probably already covered your question, but I’ll add this: I think tDP has potential to not just be ‘on par’ with Avatar but to leave it far, far behind. 

I mean, AtLA is already ten years old. In 2003, Ehasz’ credits consisted of three freelance episodes for two shows, and one episode as a staff writer. That’s it. That he catapulted from that to head-of-story for AtLA speaks to a definite talent --- but of course he’d get better from there, with ten intervening years of continuing to hone his craft. 

I’d say there are two places where it’s most apparent: exposition and humor. While I (mostly) like AtLA, the exposition could be somewhat clunky. It needed to be in there, but it wasn’t always quite as deft as I would’ve liked, in terms of combining information with characterization. 

The writing in tDP is far superlative in that regard. We get exposition, yes, but it's not delivering answers so much as answering one thing to raise ten more questions. There are almost no “as you know Bob” exchanges. When Rayla talks about what her country is like, it’s exposition, but it’s also a wonderful characterization moment; Rayla’s love for her world shines through, along with a certain ambivalence about her place in that world.

The other place Ehasz has improved a thousand-fold is his humor. One of the things I hated most about AtLA was its use of bathos: taking a serious moment and turning on a dime to crack a joke and trivialize the moment. (Sokka was the worst offender, but no character was immune.) As AtLA went on, the story scaled back on that, but it still raised its head often enough to make me wince.

In contrast, tDP’s humor is seamlessly organic. When Rayla yells, “I’m not falling for that flashing frog trick again!” she’s deadly serious, but that makes the bizarre phrase even funnier. When Gren translates Amaya’s sarcasm and has a beat in which he’s clearly trying to find a family-friendly way to translate “bullshit”... that beat is the joke. We don’t need someone gesticulating wildly to tell us it’s funny. 

At the same time, Ehasz is clearly unafraid, now, to let the serious moments be. He doesn’t trivialize the characters’ emotions with a joke; the story isn’t afraid we’ll see it as cheesy or asinine -- as less -- when it’s being sincere. 

As Carol Burnett once put it, comedy is tragedy at a distance. What tDP is doing isn’t comedy in that sense, where the characters themselves (as AtLA often did) use humor to distance themselves. Instead, it’s humor most often in one of three modes. 

One is when a character intends to crack a joke: Soren and Claudia jibing each other, or Callum attempting to lighten everyone’s spirits. This is kept relatively light, so it’s not a constant thing, as if too much levity is to be feared.

The second is simply a witty delivery, like Rayla when her temper’s up. She doesn’t deliver the line “I’m habsolutely hurious” as if she expects a laugh; she is angry, after all. Or when Soren decides to let Callum 'win’ the bout: Soren’s melodramatic as all get out, but he’s not mocking Callum, for whom impressing Claudia is a big deal. Soren’s dramatic words and over-acting are actually a wonderfully compact characterization that tells us a whole lot in a single scene of what someone should expect when Soren tries to ‘help’. 

In the penultimate episode, when Rayla accepts the consequences of her choice and decides she’s okay with paying, this is a significant emotional beat. Her conclusion is... well, it makes sense given her thoughts to this point. 

But it’s also a blunt and rather startling way to put it. Again, this isn’t cracking a joke to create distance from emotion. It’s wittier than that. 

Ezran’s shock as he registers the words is barely two frames. Any longer and it’d be overplayed. Between basically saying someone's friendship is worth a body part, and Ezran’s half-beat of shock, the combination definitely startled a laugh out of me. 

And here’s the thing: in AtLA, one of the two would’ve cracked a joke. The story would’ve backed away from what really, underneath, is a pretty phenomenal admission. Not just of friendship, but also of how Rayla herself has changed so significantly between when she made that oath, versus where she sits now. 

Ezran’s response is both funny (again, in a witty sense) but also just as heartfelt. It’s also extremely telling in terms of Ezran’s characterization. 

The one character most likely to crack a joke --- Callum --- doesn’t always, either. In fact, sometimes he’s remarkably vulnerable and honest in ways Sokka, his spiritual predecessor, wasn’t allowed to be. At the same point that Ezran and Rayla are having their heart-to-heart, Callum’s admitting freely that he doesn’t have immense power; he just has a swirly stone that does the work for him. He doesn’t make a joke of Ellis’ compliment, nor make fun of himself. 

Ellis’ line was delivered seriously, as she has every reason to believe her perspective is true. If Callum were to joke, he’d be mocking her sincerity, and the story is willing to respect that Callum is someone who responds to sincerity with sincerity of his own. 

In a word, tDP is unafraid of its own heart.