#1x08 toh

[hecateisalesbian]

Damn that foreshadowing is crazy

(Btw she’s called Luzan!)

[raayllum]

watching The Dragon Prince is a problem because every time people express discontent with another cartoon show it's almost always something TDP did really fucking well so i just default to like.

you want multiple fleshed out villains / antagonists with backstories and well developed motivations who are also wrong and not let off the hook for their actions? say hello to viren, aaravos, claudia, karim, and more.

you want varied queer rep and multiple trans/nb characters? meet an assassin and a blacksmith and a god and a sign language interpreter and a boy who loves plants and his unhinged girlfriend and married queens and rival enemies to lovers wlw who are now planning their wedding.

you want complex family dynamics regarding culture, legacy, power, and abuse? meet the mage fam, the sunfire royal family, the two main princes, adopted children with four parents, step and half siblings and blended families, etc, all explored in their heart and messiness.

you want varied and in depth character for disabled characters and characters of colour? you have a helpful blind pirate and a bitter blind dragon and a sweet amputee wolf and a deaf lesbian general who's also asian. 2/3 main characters are biracial. every couple is interracial. elves and humans alike have a variety of races and we see all of them on display.

you want to explore cycles of violence and healing and grief and war and found family? you want interesting and varied magic systems? you want ethical dilemmas and grey morality and characters being forced to make bad choices for good reasons? well done redemption arcs that still feel fresh, discussions of culture and religion and the death penalty? friends and family becoming enemies and enemies becoming friends and family?

watch The Dragon Prince.

[imminent-danger-came]

continue being a little mean to toh fans please it is really irritating how some act like its got the best writing of any modern cartoon

Daawwwww I don't have it in me. TOH fans love it for a reason, and there are legitimately good moments! It's just not the most complex or well-written show out there—which it doesn't need to be—but I also totally get your exhaustion. It gets tiring seeing people praise it so highly over and over again when it's just like...fine. It didn't do nothing but it also didn't do something, you know? It's main couple is cute and queer, but that's pretty much all there is to them. It has a fun cast of characters, but they all tend to fall into archetypes. Luz is a sweet main character, but she doesn't have any real flaws and kinda takes a back seat to Hunter and Eda (the white people lol). Her foil with Philip was interesting...but then they kinda backed off and went the "you and Belos are nothing alike" direction.

((I'm also going to answer this anon with another: ))

And It's not that an unsympathetic villian is bad, or that Belos would even be sympathetic with added backstory, it's just that...there were a lot of interesting things to explore with his character that were left hanging.

Like, while he's definitely not at all a good person, it's intriguing that he would bother to recreate his brother over and over again knowing that each time the grimwalker was going to betray him. It's intriguing that he was even willing to kill his brother to begin with (though Caleb was super underutilized in general). Like, you can give a villain depth without justifying or victimizing them (hi Finnegran from tdp, I'll also add Spider Queen & LBD here). So it just feels like a missed opportunity all across the board. It's still surprising to me that we got a confirmation on the Wittebane backstory through an unrelated background character, rather than Philip himself (who had literally possessed a main character, and mindscapes had already been well-established....the pieces were all there me thinks).

And obviously it's like, people can love something despite it's flaws, and they can cherish it for the good it has, but they still don't need to praise it as an ultimate form of media, you know? We don't need to pretend toh was this dark and complex story—it was just a story a lot of people liked and resonated with. Which I'm glad it's there for those people, and I'm glad there are options when it comes to queer pieces of media!

That said the show with the best writing of any modern cartoon is The Dragon Prince (streaming on Netflix).

[writesailingdreams]

Finally watched “Look Hooo’s Talking” for “Once Upon a Swap” and I think it’s my favourite so far