Dragon Prince season 4
Nov. 28th, 2022 12:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraPreviously on The Dragon Prince: one, two, three. Three years later I had actually forgotten how little I liked season three? Anyways, things have not improved. Clunky writing, cringy dialogue, giant chunk of exposition we had no reason to care about, bad pacing in general. Behind the cut, some complaining about specifics (really only read this if you want to read complaining).
So, three things. First of all, I was really bothered by this one subplot, and I know they're just all fictional moving drawings but I'm not watching kids TV to feel upset and kind of queasy, you know? So, the show wants to set up Conflict Between Humans and Elves, so they have this human new minor character who's one of the architects of the tent city these refugee elves have been living in put out a religious flame that one of the elves has lit because the tent city apparently has a strict no open flame rule so the whole thing doesn't burn down, and in return he severely burns her, and the elves put *her* on trial (but not him) and the human leader (the hot Deaf lesbian who I used to like! boo!) who is supposed to speak in her defense decides partway through, without consulting with her, to be like "no, she doesn't deserve defense, she's so guilty", and the elves make a big show about how they could kill or maim her but instead sentence her to build a shrine where these religious flames can burn safely, at which point she's so traumatized by their threats that she's grateful about it. And, like, okay, leaving aside the bad-writing questions of why they built the refugee city this way in the first place if open flames were such a cultural requirement, or how this has never come up in two years if they have to do it every time someone dies, or how this one elf wasn't aware of the rules... wtf? The only story I want to see from this point is some kind of rescue mission getting this lady the fuck out of elfland and back to the human realms. Seriously all the sun elves could fall into the sea at this point and I would clap. This is... probably not what the show was going for??
Secondly, this one doesn't upset me, it's just bad writing, they did have an elf fall into the sea, I mean, get stabbed, and the show tried to make a Really Big Deal out of the death, like it was a main-character death? But it was this minor character I can't even remember the name of. I'm sorry, but if you want to do a big sad character death beat, you have to do it about someone there's actually any reason to care about, it was just pathetic watching them try to cheat like that.
And thirdly... okay, I'm sorry, I really want to give this show points for introducing a canonically trans character, I think that's so important for kids to see in particular, but did they have to make him an annoying twerp who we were all speculating was being kept around as an eventual spell component? I mean, I guess there's something to the idea that trans characters should be able to fill any/all character slots, including "hapless victim" and "naive irritance", but I think that really only works if you actually have trans characters in all the other slots too. And in practice right now I just want to see trans characters who I like. I know Bow was never officially canonically trans on She-Ra but, like, I loved him, I want more of that. Also as representation goes, the euphemistic language they had the character use (well, I guess not so much euphemistic as "elf slang" - yes, all three of these paragraphs are secretly about hating on elves) went right over the 10yo's head, and he wouldn't have gotten that the character was trans unless we explained. (The character describes himself as "they thought I was a doe but I knew I was a buck", which Q very fairly heard as "they thought I was a dope", and did not get that these were deer genders.) Anyways, maybe we will be switching back to Owl House soon and I can console myself with Raine Whispers.
So, three things. First of all, I was really bothered by this one subplot, and I know they're just all fictional moving drawings but I'm not watching kids TV to feel upset and kind of queasy, you know? So, the show wants to set up Conflict Between Humans and Elves, so they have this human new minor character who's one of the architects of the tent city these refugee elves have been living in put out a religious flame that one of the elves has lit because the tent city apparently has a strict no open flame rule so the whole thing doesn't burn down, and in return he severely burns her, and the elves put *her* on trial (but not him) and the human leader (the hot Deaf lesbian who I used to like! boo!) who is supposed to speak in her defense decides partway through, without consulting with her, to be like "no, she doesn't deserve defense, she's so guilty", and the elves make a big show about how they could kill or maim her but instead sentence her to build a shrine where these religious flames can burn safely, at which point she's so traumatized by their threats that she's grateful about it. And, like, okay, leaving aside the bad-writing questions of why they built the refugee city this way in the first place if open flames were such a cultural requirement, or how this has never come up in two years if they have to do it every time someone dies, or how this one elf wasn't aware of the rules... wtf? The only story I want to see from this point is some kind of rescue mission getting this lady the fuck out of elfland and back to the human realms. Seriously all the sun elves could fall into the sea at this point and I would clap. This is... probably not what the show was going for??
Secondly, this one doesn't upset me, it's just bad writing, they did have an elf fall into the sea, I mean, get stabbed, and the show tried to make a Really Big Deal out of the death, like it was a main-character death? But it was this minor character I can't even remember the name of. I'm sorry, but if you want to do a big sad character death beat, you have to do it about someone there's actually any reason to care about, it was just pathetic watching them try to cheat like that.
And thirdly... okay, I'm sorry, I really want to give this show points for introducing a canonically trans character, I think that's so important for kids to see in particular, but did they have to make him an annoying twerp who we were all speculating was being kept around as an eventual spell component? I mean, I guess there's something to the idea that trans characters should be able to fill any/all character slots, including "hapless victim" and "naive irritance", but I think that really only works if you actually have trans characters in all the other slots too. And in practice right now I just want to see trans characters who I like. I know Bow was never officially canonically trans on She-Ra but, like, I loved him, I want more of that. Also as representation goes, the euphemistic language they had the character use (well, I guess not so much euphemistic as "elf slang" - yes, all three of these paragraphs are secretly about hating on elves) went right over the 10yo's head, and he wouldn't have gotten that the character was trans unless we explained. (The character describes himself as "they thought I was a doe but I knew I was a buck", which Q very fairly heard as "they thought I was a dope", and did not get that these were deer genders.) Anyways, maybe we will be switching back to Owl House soon and I can console myself with Raine Whispers.
