#anti aaravos

[shiftingwithmars]

”Aaravos tried to avenger his daughter!! He’s not evil!!🥺”

Yeah, pretty sure trying to take over the entire world isn’t a very valid way of vengeance.

Also, no, he didn’t “try to avenge her”. That would imply that he targeted specifically the people who had her killed. Instead he chose to take out his anger on innocent people and drove many people into madness.

[wishesofeternity]

My problem with The Dragon Prince is that while it preaches about "breaking the cycle" and "choosing love", it repeatedly does so in a way that echoes the age-old idea of telling victims to passively accept their lot in life and the injustices inflicted upon them while their perpetrators never have to acknowledge their wrongs or face consequences for their actions. This is the kind of narrative they follow on both a personal and systematic axis, and it's exactly why the show will always frustrate me.

[t-n-c]

@saraptor

"Yeah I remember getting this vibe (as in it hit me like a truck) when Aaravos made that move on the Sunfire Queen, and then again with his comment to Zubeia. He's slimy in a way that's deeply uncomfortable. I always thought I was just looking into it too much tho (or being overly sensitive.) Like, i was making a load of jokes about sparklepuff but the "our child" comments kind of drive it home ajdhwhsjfhs"

I don't think you were looking too much into it or being overly sensitive. Further, I agree with you, Aaravos is slimy in those scenes--and that's one of the problems I have with him.

To be clear, him being slimy it's necessarily an issue for me by itself (there are plenty of good villains who're depicted as creeps, after all). My problem lies with the impression that we as the audience were supposed to see those scenes as him being "Cool, Powerful, and Sexy" and not anything negative--something that doesn't really fit if the writers' goal is to tell a complex and progressive story.

Another issue I have is that it feels like his sleaziness makes up his whole personality at this point. I can think of only two instances in the show where he seemed to express genuine, non-schemey emotions (i.e. the confusion he had when he admitted to Viren he didn't know where he was imprisoned and the rage he showed when he recounted to Viren how Avizandum/Thunder helped imprison him). Every other time he's present he's depicted as a Smirking Seductor (TM) or The Great Evil (TM)--neither of which are bad if you're writing a simple good vs evil story, but tdp keeps trying to be nuanced so having that kind of villain doesn't really work.

More tdp s5 spoilers under the cut

(TW: acts of coercion/violation will be mentioned)

With how imbalanced their relationship is and my prior concerns regarding Aaravos' history of coercive/violating behavior towards Viren, Sir Sparklepuff being established as Viren and Aaravos's child makes me reeeeeally uncomfortable.

[themattress]

Here's some more Scumbag Terry for you, because it's morbidly hilarious to me.

Just remember, kids: lying to someone about a magical map and the true nature of the destination it leads to in order to manipulate someone into helping your cause is evil, but lying to someone about their long-lost mother who kick-started all of that person's abandonment issues (which you exacerbated by abandoning them earlier) coming back to apologize for it and seek reconciliation in order to manipulate that person into helping your cause is good!

[ultraericthered]

Mystery of Aaravos has me at here by the end. Gotta <3 the Girlboss Queen, awkwardly flat line reads and all.

I do still love Rayla and Claudia on the whole, mind you, but I think Aaron Ehasz's creative instincts and the writing on this show just made them into pale shadows of the characters they used to be.

[hotdoghottakes]

Ok, so finally got around to watching The Dragon Prince, three and a half seasons so far before having to take a break from the binge, and...I don't...love it. I mean it's good, the characters and story are solid, it's just...

I'm not going to go into detail about this, not until I've watched the whole thing at least, so no one @ me about how I "don't get it" or "well of you actually watched the whole thing".

I'll get to it when I get to it, alright?

[confessyourship]

Aaravos x Terry ♡

🩷

[self-spaghettification]

I had a lot of analysis on s4/5 after rewatching and there was some good thematic stuff in 6 too but I honestly don’t even want to post it anymore after that 😔

[themattress]

To be fair, Aaravos clearly wasn't trying to shoot their relationship down. He thought he was helping: Terry was not on an equal level with Claudia due to his innocence and he needed to have it stripped away in order to be in a relationship with Claudia as an equal, without needing to be lied to by her. Unfortunately, Terry valued his innocence and self-regard more than his relationship with Claudia, and Aaravos was genuinely surprised when he left.

Tl;dr: Aaravos made a major Whoopsie, and Terry kind of sucks.

[themattress]

Terry, you are a lying little bitch. Friendship ended with you!

[mjbarrosart]

My Dragon Prince Boards season 7, episode 708: My Final Episode

Happy new year!!

Well, the day has arrived! It is time to talk about my last sequence on the last episode of The dragon Prince I worked: season 7, episode 8.

I can not explain you how much work went into the last 3 episodes of season 7. If you check the board artist credits for this episode, several artist worked on each one! Usually a SB unit has 3 artist, but for this last ones every unit was collaborating with each other. There was a lot of work to do.

I boarded the initial sequence of this episode. Or at least the bones of it. 2 things happened that made my input in this episode smaller that in the previous ones:

First, they removed a lot of things from this initial sequence as it was on the script, mostly to make it shorter, because episode 8 is incredible long (almost half an hour!) so they trimmed the beginning to give more space to other sequences that were more relevant. So a lot of the things I did are not there, haha.

Second, By the end of my time in Dragon Prince I got a really cool offer to go to Titmouse (another animation studio) to work on an amazing show (that sadly is still unannounced so I can not talk about it) so, as soon as I finished my boards for episode 8 I left, while most of the team stayed to keep working on revisions of the boards, so while normally I would do the revisions and changes on my own sequences in the past, for this one I was not in Bardel anymore, so some of my talented coworkers did that for me.

As I said the structure of the sequence is close to what I boarded but not the same. All the beats are there, mostly.

Anyway, there are still some shots that I would like to share with you:

Most of the sequence with the corrupted banthers was changed,. because certain things did not happened, so a lot of my shots got changed, but this one survived, and I like it, "Are you betraying us AGAIN, Karim?" hahaha lol

I like this two shots, they look cool.

Also, Karim is such an idiot. As I told before, i worked so much with him during all my seasons in the show, that i kinda like him, but also he is insufferable, lol.

I think that when I was boarding this parts, we were not set on how big Aaravos will be. We had a proxy to work with, but looks like at the end they made him slightly smaller.

And yeah, I had the privileged to Kill Karim, haha.

No regrets, tho. The part when Aaravos clean his hand on his chest was added later, so that was not me.

Its is not up to me to talk about the parts that were cut or changed. This is not my show at the end of the day, and that is something that only the people at Wondersotorm could share with you. I always try to respect how creators choose to tell their stories, and this is the same.

And yeah, a little anti-climatic after all the highs of episodes 702 and 705, but anyway was a privilege to work on this episode and on so many season of this amazing show.

I could write long about how important for me and my career this experience was, but i have the feeling that you already know that, haha.

Thank you for being part of this journey.

And feel free to ask if you have any questions, I always enjoy reading your comments and tags!!

[raayllum]

like as far as Claudia is concerned a dragon killed her father, she already hated elves and dragons (1x03, 2x03, 4x07), and Aaravos has been feeding her anti-elf/dragon sentients for years (4x07) about how he's the elven exception in regards to his treatment of humans, she was willing to sacrifice hundreds of human troops for what she believed was Viren's plan in 3x09... + Aaravos comparing his love for Leola with Viren's love for Claudia ("you do anything for your children") that already conflates well with her worldview of love, AND she's now loyal to Aaravos ("She loves me. I am her father now, and she is my daughter") the only person who's never, and in her mind literally cannot, leave her. Ofc she's going along with his revenge plan, particularly after he was 'honest' with her (immediately contrasted with Terry and Soren deceiving her). What else is there for her?

[stardustamaryllis78]

By taking out the Archdragons, Aaravos removes anyone from being able to contact the Cosmic Council. For example, there would be no one left to be able to tell them that Callum is a human Primal Mage.

Obviously, it would cause big issues for Callum if they were to find out he was a human Primal Mage. And with the Archdragons now dead, it gives way for humans to freely be able to learn Primal Magic again without fear.

You can't tell me that Rex wouldn't have dobbed in Callum had he had known he was a Primal Mage. He knew he had a Primal Stone and could therefore do magic, but he did not know he was a Primal Mage. Rex still refers to Aaravos as Betrayer for his work helping humans so he very much still has his anti human bias.

As for Domina, a reminder that she said this when first referring to Ezran.

Now yes, she does end up friendly with Ezran but she still looks down upon humans with this being her immediate reaction. (I can't be the only one who found it weird that she gave her life for them in the end.)

Now for Zubeia. Remember this:

If she somehow wasn't still somewhat pro Order, why would she say "First Elves"? Remember, these are still the same people who had Leola murdered for kindly giving magic to humans after Sol Regem dobbed her in. Why does Zubeia look upon them so fondly?

One thing I also found kind of weird is how Ezran says that Callum is the first human Primal Mage in centuries, whereas Callum says that he is the first human Primal Mage.

So which is the truth?

Well, this goes into theory territory but I believe at some point, there was a time that humans did learn and understand Primal Magic but they were killed by the Cosmic Council. I really don't believe Callum would be the first human to figure out Primal Magic after all this time, especially after Ezran's comment. That just really doesn't make any sense.

Aaravos is the creator of Dark Magic and the one who suffered most at the hand of the Cosmic Council. Does Dark Magic perhaps protect humans from the Cosmic Council at the cost of "compromise"? And Aaravos doesn't even really even control Dark Mages very often at all via this "compromise" because otherwise he could have easily just controlled Viren instead of working with him. Same with Callum in season 4 instead of just roasting the cast and then dipping.

Its an interesting topic I hope we get the answer to at some point. But ultimately, Aaravos has now made it so there are no more people that can dob Callum in as a Primal Mage. And human Primal Mages are now free to roam again.

[agentoffangirling]

I've done the pros, now here is my cons post about TDP s7. As always, spoilers below

For being hyped up as a major threat, Aaravos didn't do that much. Most of his power is in his words, but he's literally the most powerful mage in the world, with all forms of magic mastered and no need to do incantations for any of them. And yet, he does very little magic in the season (in reference to how much his magic was hyped) and only monologues for the finale. Like. You can do so much. Why are you letting these ants get their way? Why are you bothering with them?

I somewhat dislike how they got rid of Aaravos as well. I agree with several other people when they say we were "cheated", bc there was so much marketing around Callum using dark magic. His arc was leading up to him using dark magic, that's what was foretold from the start. And it's kinda disappointing that they don't go through with it

To add onto my last point slightly, there wasn't enough death for a season finale. I know a lot of y'all are going "death? it's a kids show!" (absolutely not, kid me would be crying at the scenes they show), but we expected there to be some element of sacrifice. While Zubeia's death was incredibly sad and I mourn the death of the other Archdragons, no one else was particularly hurt. Most characters were left unscathed, further adding to the "cheating" part

Claudia should have died. I don't mean that in a bad way, like a "oh I hate her so much!!", no, she just doesn't have anything else to do. Viren's dead and everyone else has left her; her loved ones are what she was doing the whole Aaravos thing for, and clearly, no one wanted to stick around for that. There just isn't much of a reason for her to stay alive anymore and I think it cheapens her to be a puppet of Aaravos forever. Furthermore, her dying would be an excellent way to complete the "doomed siblings" trope. It would all come full circle

I dislike how the show tried to portray Ezran in the wrong for locking up Runaan. At that time, they all still believed Harrow was dead and that Runaan killed him-- if I was in Ezran's position, trust me, I would do much worse. Ezran was right to feel angry and vengeful and I don't think he necessarily should've forgiven him at the end

Filler. To make it clear, I am not anti-filler, and I think shows nowadays trying to remove filler is to their detriment. But TDP has always had a problem with having filler that just. Completely stops the story. And you would think that in a season finale, they would get rid of that to focus entirely on the big threat. But they don't. The scenes of Callum watching the Moonshadow kids are cute, and I love him bonding with Ethari and Runaan, but I can't think much of a reason for these scenes to exist. That time could've been better used to develop other parts of the story and the "meeting the parents" would fit better for the epilogue, not the middle of the season

There was also a ton of exposition dumped on us this season. Again, a problem TDP has been dealing with, but imagine instead of us being told everything about the mage wars and the Orphan Queen, that time used on filler is instead used on a flashback at the beginning of the episode showing how she rallied the troops together. That would be so badass!

These are very few grievances compared to my pros post, like I said, I was content watching this season and I enjoyed it greatly. There's just a couple things they could've done better

[httyddragonfox]

The Horror of Callum's possession: Season 6 ed.

This has a different tone than season 4, and I'm more talking about the one he doesn't know about. Let's go back to the beginning:

Callum is super worried about Aaravos using him again, so he's gung ho on getting that pearl destroyed so Aaravos will no longer be a threat. Of course, no one is taking precedence on this like he is; Thinking it's better just to keep it safe in the secret dungeon. Callum cannot sleep, thinking about Aaravos controlling him again, seeing as they're technically in the same building now. Of course, Aaravos decides to confirm Callum's worries and controls him. He gets him to access the pearl, and gives him a vision of him being inside the prison while Aaravos smashes it. That's a blatant cue to Callum that Aaravos is going to use him to get out. Callum wakes up and sees that he's holding the pearl, which he knew he didn't go to sleep holding.

I'm surprised he didn't freak out all the way to Rayla's room. Rayla of course doesn't think it's anything serious, while Callum is scared now. He quickly hatches a plan to get Aaravos away from the people he cares about. He has Barius make some candy that looks like the pearl to act as a decoy while the real pearl is taken far away to the icy north, (hopefully to be destroyed), whilst covered with an anti-magic blanket so that Aaravos can't try anything.

[I.E. that must've been some plan of Callum's if Aaravos didn't want it enacted]

They make their way to the star-scraper, after telling the king the plan, assuring him he has nothing to worry about; the pearl will be far away from the kingdom.

Once at the Star-scraper, they discuss on how to destroy Aaravos/the pearl safely. They are told Aaravos cannot be killed. Rayla reacts with a simple, "Oh, that's why they imprisoned him." Meanwhile, Callum is devastated. He really wanted to be rid of this potential threat that would use him and hurt his loved ones. Now he knows he will always somewhat be around. This means that Callum will never be safe. Later on they get a prophecy saying "all I see for you is darkness."

Earlier on, Callum had a fight with Rayla. He admitted he did dark magic again, he knows how vulnerable he is to Aaravos' manipulations and he hates that fact. Now after that prophecy, he can't help but think about how Aaravos told him he'll be his one day. According to Callum, he can't sleep because he's too anxious. As Callum said, "he's ruined;" Callum thinks he's doomed to be Aaravos' puppet, knowing that there's no way to kill him, and he has darkness inside of him. Callum knows he's a threat to his friends and family.

Rayla tries to assure him that maybe they can just leave the pearl there, as at least it would be out of the way. They ask the celestial elves to help them, and this is where the horror part comes into play.

In the alternate future, Kosmo tells them that the pearl is actually fake. When Callum hears this, he realizes many things.

No one at Katollis knows the real prison is there, so they're no on guard in case someone comes for it.

Even if they had found a way to kill Aaravos, he wouldn't have been there to deal with. He escaped.

They went all this way to keep him far away from everyone, and that didn't work.

Thanks to Rayla (but I think he already knew), Aaravos controlled him again! Not only that...but he didn't even notice!

That's like being hacked but not even noticing until your friends start getting weird messages you never sent. Callum would feel he'd have no control, not even being sure when he does have control. Seeing as he can't notice when it's happening anymore.

They try to tell him about a ritual to cleanse the darkness from him so he won't be controlled anymore, but Callum would feel so violated and helpless that nothing could save him from being Aaravos' pawn. I'd feel like I'd mess that up too (maybe Aaravos would control me in the middle of it to keep me as his pawn or worse kill me).

Whelp...Kosmo decides not to tell Callum, because the better course of action would be to cleanse him to avoid Aaravos controlling him again.

Still it's terrifying knowing Aaravos could control him at any moment and Callum wouldn't even be aware of it.

If you want to read about how one might feel about the rest of the episode Link here

[themattress]

EXACTLY. Terry's innocence should have already been lost!

Also, in a recent video interview, Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond outright admitted that it was not pre-planned for Terry to leave Claudia over this and that they did it because it "felt like what the character would do in the moment"...clearly showing that their "in the moment" thinking neglected to take into account all prior moments that showed that he wouldn't leave her over this, including his own words and actions! Poor Terry's character got fucked over.

in what world did terry have a true heart did the cosmic lawmakers of pure innocence just skip over his history of murder?