#[my third tdp ask blog? more likely than you think.]

[siderealsentinel]

[Yeah so, this is what I’m doing when I wake up. Stay tuned.]

[beautifulterriblequeen]

Hi! I just want to say I love your tdp blog soooo much your commentary does not go unheard or appreciated (you actually calm my jitters about the show with your analyses) I wanted to ask, thoughts on Zubeia? Also why is she so majestic and mighty and has just been in the shadows this whole time? I’d actually be more scared of her than Avizandum! Also 3 hip hip hoorays for Luna Tenebris not being the dragon queen. This will just deepen lore and her own character arch!

Aww, shucks, anon. You’re super sweet! And I’m glad that my ramblings help calm your jitters. Tbh I find focusing really tightly on just one or two details at a time calms me, too. 

Zubeia! I love her design. Fluffy horn tuft stuff! Very clever. The biggest reason I thought Luna Tenebris might be Dragon Queen was for dragon politics, but there was no way we weren’t getting dragon politics either way. 

So: a gorgeous Dragon Queen. Zym’s mom. Avizandum’s widow. Ruling Xadia, ordering assassin hits on foreign dignitaries. You know, the usual.

Thing is, she’s only been a secret to us. Everyone in Xadia knows she’s the Dragon Queen. Runaan’s most likely met her personally when he was given his mission. And maybe all his other missions, if he works exclusively for the crown. That Sun queen in the trailer probably deals with her from time to time, as rulers do. Rayla knows who her parents went to work for. And everyone knows she’s been in charge since Winter’s Turn. 

What I’m currently mulling over is the poster pose. The first two posters for S3 show antagonistic standoffs: Ziard vs Sol Regem, and Harrow vs. Avizandum. They’re in battle, confrontational. And in each case, one of the characters on the poster has died.

However, the poses in the third poster are different. Zubeia’s head is pointed away from Ezran, so there’s no antagonistic vibes. And Ezran has her son Zym with him. It’s a much softer, more hopeful image, and I like the deliberate shift from the earlier conflicts. A child truly is freer than a king. Although technically Ezran is now both a child and a king.

Sol Regem has been shown to have very racist opinions about humans. Avizandum has killed untold thousands of humans at the border--including three queens, which may or may not have saved Runaan a trip or two. You’d think that would be standard defense technique, but Lujanne manages to defend the Moon Nexus without taking lives. So I have very strong opinions about dragon morality and mental flexibility.

Dragons live so long they can outlive any problems that humans or even elves have with them. They don’t think they need to change. They consider themselves to be the gold standard, and everyone else is varying levels of inadequate. As long as dragons rule Xadia, no one will be able to adapt at a pace better suited for their societal development. Not elves, not humans.

Zubeia may be more flexible, maybe because she has a child’s future to think about, maybe because she’s still young for a dragon, maybe because of personal experiences. She may be a better foil for Ezran, as willing to work with him as he is with her. 

But probably not.

The trailer shows Zym going to a small stone chamber, with a Skywing elf and the Dragaang nearby. If the creators were serious about their “Zym goes through his whole life cycle” in S3 comment, maybe that chamber is where it happens? Why would they do that to sweet baby Zym??

Because of the same exact reason Viren wanted the egg of the Dragon Prince in the first place. Viren saw the massive power that a grown Storm Archdragon had when he watched Avizandum kill three human queens, and he marked himself down as both scared and greedy. He stole Zym’s egg and practice hatching big ostrich-type eggs in his secret dungeon oven, because he wanted his own magical badass dragon, fighting for the humans. He and Zubeia know the same truth: nothing in Xadia is stronger than an adult Storm Archdragon.(see, I told you there’d be dragon politics)

But Zubeia only has a baby one. So it’s possible she just decided to insta-grow her own son into an adult dragon, so he can fly out and fight in a fresh new war.

How motherly of her. Maybe she’s looking away from Zym in the poster because she doesn’t want to get too attached. Maybe, just like Viren, she sees her offspring as tools to be used as she sees fit.

I already think that the best thing that could’ve happened to Zym was meeting the Dragaang (and Lujanne and Phoe-Phoe) upon hatching, so he could bond with Ezran and experience what young humans and elves are really like. Maybe the worst thing that could happen to Zym is going home to his mom.

Yeah, I love problematic dragons.

[tdp-fandom]

Result Discussion: Total Ships (part 4)

Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3 · Ship List

This is the final part for the Total Ships table. I will proceed with the next results soon.

CW: This part is dedicated to discussing the so called “Problematic Ships”, namely large age gaps, adult/minor relationships and non-platonic relationships between family members.

If this is something you aren’t comfortable, I strongly suggest skipping this part. You won’t lose much and I’ll be back with stuff you can enjoy soon! ^u^

If you aren’t squeamish about this stuff or you ship any of these ships yourself - I would like to hear your opinions on the topics raised in this part of the discussion. Send me an ask, tell me what you think, who you ship and why! This is a pro-shipping blog and I promise you no judgement on my part!

Without further ado - let’s do this!

Problematic Ships

There are many things that can make certain ships problematic in the eyes of fans, but I would like to discuss four categories:

large age gaps between adults (yellow)

human/dragon relationships (orange)

adult/minor relationships (teal)

non-platonic relationships between family members (purple)

bigger version

As you can tell, several categories can overlap, but I will discuss the non-incestuous version of the first two separately from incest.

There’s also an interesting case - Nyx, who is shipped with both minors and adults. Since we don’t know her age, I don’t think we can make any assumptions about ships including her.

Large age gaps between adults

Out of 89 ships in the shipping poll, I counted 31 (more than a third) that include an age gap of 5 years or more between two non-related adult characters. Since there are plenty of healthy relationships with large age gap in real life, I decided to to define what could potentially make such a ship problematic:

the younger adult has entered adulthood only recently (18-20 years old);

the age gap is significantly high (10+ years).

The word “potentially” here is key, because even if both conditions are met, the ships are still not necessarily problematic.

One ship that gets extra attention when it comes to hate is Ruren. I think it’s due to its early popularity in season 1 (which seems to have declined since then). It’s interesting to note that Corpeli, a fairly equivalent ship (Corvus is 20 and Opeli is in her late 30s - early 40s) not only doesn’t get any hate - it’s actually the most popular non-canon ship (ranking at #6)!

I don’t know the exact nature of this inequality, but it could be due to Opeli looking very young and Corvus looking older than he is (frankly, I was very surprised he was only 20!). It does, however, reveal the inconsistency of fans judgement when it comes to the topic of “problematic” ships, which, in my opinion, is definitely worth noting.

Another interesting thing is that out of 11 of such ships (if we include Corpeli), 7 include Soren, 2 - Corvus, 1 - Crow Master, Kasef or Marcos. I will discuss Soren’s popularity in multishipping in a future post, but if you have any ideas to share - I’d love to hear them!

Human/dragon relationships

There are only two in my poll - Pyrren and Regicide. I have heard people call such ships zoophilia, however the dragons in TDP are as intelligent as humans and are able to give or refuse consent, which is the biggest issue with actual zoophilic relationships. Therefore, I would like to argue that they cannot be classified as “problematic” just because someone finds them “squicky”.

At the same time, the “squickiness” factor could influence why human/dragon or elf/dragon relationships are so rare. Another reason could be the size difference.

Adult/minor relationships

We are finally venturing into truly problematic territory. Before we proceed, I would like to clarify certain things:

1. Adult/minor is not automatically pedophilia!

Please stop using this word to refer to any relationship with a large age gap! It’s not just a matter of accuracy - by doing so, you create a “boy who cried wolf” environment, where it becomes impossible to distinguish shippers from online predators. You also turn “pedophilia” into a meaningless buzzword and make people who call out predators get taken less seriously. You’re not helping any children - you’re putting them in more danger.

2. Some people will ship adults with children

This does not give you the right to bully them! Fictional characters are not real and there has been no evidence of shipping having any real impact on children’s safety in the real world. Just block the tags you don’t like and move on with your life.

3. I will not discuss incest in this section - it will get a section of its own

With that out of the way, it is interesting to note that none of the ships I got in the poll are actually pedophilic. I don’t know if it’s because no one in this fandom ships Ezran, Aanya, Ellis and Zym with adults (or each other in a sexual way) or if this topic is so taboo, people aren’t comfortable admitting to that even in an anonymous poll.

This section will focus on adult/teen relationships.

Just like with the adult/adult age gap relationships, not all of these relationships are equal. I plotted all adult/teen relationships by vote count and divided them into three categories:

high school age (purple)

college age/high school age (orange)

older adult/teen (blue)

1. High school age

Relationships with such age gaps occur naturally in real life and are not inherently problematic. Since a great deal of TDP shippers are teens (ages 13 to 19), it is easy to see how Kadia (or Kaudia), Sorayla and Calren are the most popular in this group.

2. College student/high school student

Here we see Claudia pared up with slightly older guys, who are still young enough to be (at least visually) in her dating range (I do acknowledge that the 4 year gap is big enough here to be problematic, but give it two more years, and it would be a pretty standard age difference). The only young adult character missing here is Marcos. That would complete the Claudia shipping cycle :D

3. Older adult/teen relationships

Aka Claravos and Aaravum (Aarasordia, Aaravirdia, and Virdisoravos are all, in essence, Claravos x Soren/Viren/both).

These two ships are too character specific to be just random fetishising of Claudia and Callum. Both are connected to Aaravos through narrative and would make compelling dark stories.

It is also interesting that Aaravos and Viren (the villains) are the only adults shipped with minors (at least in this poll). There’s sadly not enough data to make any meaningful conclusions on that.

Non-platonic relationships between family members

Aka incest.

Incest in fiction is a topic I’ve always found fascinating. What inspires people to ship incestuous ships? How do people relate to those ships themselves? A connection between incestuous ships and irl practice/support of incest is often drawn by people, but I haven’t observed such a connection in my 14 years of fandom activity. Such correlation doesn’t seem to be there.

If I had to sum up incestuous ships in TDP, I could just say magefam and magefam + Aaravos. Does it mean people don’t ship the royal family? Not really, because I’ve seen some content of Harrow and his kids, or the princes together, but what I haven’t seen is Sarai/Amaya or Khessa/Janai.

Sordia is an interesting case, because it’s the only incest ship to score higher than some of the ships from my original list (it ranks #32 out of 40). It’s also one of those ships, I think, that would’ve had more votes if it actually were on the list.

So why do people ship incest? It’s not an easy question, but from the conversations I’ve had with people or things I’ve observed in fanfiction, I can list at least some of the reasons:

some people like the character dynamic regardless of whether or not they are related;

some people like the character dynamic because they are related;

the characters already show love for each other (especially in case of Sordia and Virdia), so they’re easy to ship;

some people would like to imagine a loving relationship between characters who don’t show it onscreen (in case or SorVir);

some onscreen character interactions can be interpreted as shippy;

some people find it sexy, or ship it in a strictly sexual way without getting into the characters’ feelings;

some people like the dark aspect of it and want to use this kind of shipping to explore darker themes.

If you ship incest of any kind, could you send me an ask and share why you ship it? I’m really curious. My main tumblr is @avtoservis​

Conclusion

Problematic ships are an integral, albeit often unwanted, part of any fandom. They do not necessarily reflect the shippers’ real world views and opinions and are often used as an outlet to explore dark themes.

There’s often double standards regarding which ships are deemed problematic and which are not and disgust towards certain ships is frequently expressed through bulling and call-outs.

While most shippers of problematic ships are aware of the problematic nature of their favorite ships, there’s still merit in having civil discussions on various ships and their implications.

[rubberduckyrye]

hajimes-erect-ahoge​:

i feel you on being salty about kokichi and gonta like. both of them deserve so much better than being painted as a villain and an idiot tool respectively, at least in the eyes of the other characters.

and oh my god about kokichi and gonta’s relationship like!! there’s literally a huge indication that kokichi doesn’t view gonta as an idiot and actually respects his observations and intelligence, which is exactly what you mentioned: how gonta mentioned that he saw the tiny bugs and kokichi actually took him seriously.

it also serves to show how much kokichi actually respected miu as well, because he asked her to make the bugvac. he can call her a bunch of vulgar insults all he wants, but he really did respect her intelligence as well since he relied on her for inventions.

basically, kokichi is like the only person that took both gonta and miu seriously and if that doesn’t tell you something about his character then i dont know what will (actually, i can name a bunch of other things but THAT’S NOT THE POINT)

Honestly yeah

Gonta, Kokichi, and Miu were the third secret Trio of the game that the game didn’t want you to know about

Honestly the vulgar insults at Miu seem to be more for her benefit than Kokichi being a jerk. Like people call Kokichi misogynistic all the time for the things he says to Miu except

He doesn’t say this shit to literally anyone else, not even in TDP mode I don’t think?? Like he calls Kaito a moron and teases Keebo but not like that so there’s something unique here, and that is--

MIU HAS SUCH AN OBVIOUS HUMILIATION KINK AAAAAAAHHHHHH IT MIGHT HURT MY EARS BUT IT’S HER THING SHE LIKES IT PLEASE STOP KINK SHAMING MIU (shame them for doing this vulgar shit in public like god damn, rip the rest of the class lmao)

Kokichi treated them with the respect they both deserved, even if he was bantering like that with Miu and playfully calling Gonta an idiot.

I just shamelessly self promoted but I have a whole blog about how Kokichi is a good boy and the circumstances that pushed him into becoming the villain and his true nature and aaaaaa--

honestly everyone in v3 who survived up until chapter 5 is such a clown for believing kokichi was the mastermind