#anyway yeah Viren and Opeli absolutely had a thing

[madou-dilou]

Me (lying to myself): "Of course this isn't just a pointless Twin Peaks reference for the sake of reference, this element has to have an in-universe meaning. This part of the dream is about Viren's wildest desires for control, things Viren himself knows are delusional and foolish. The curtains and the lights are red, symbolising violence or desire. So either Viren fantasies about Opeli stroking his wood or they did have an affair and she had an abortion regardless of Viren's wishes, and he helped her in it, performing the spell himself, because this way would be painless for her and he knew it was best for everyone, but it's still a memory that stays with them both. The writers have obviously thought this through."

[beautifulterriblequeen]

B2:S - Chapter 2

Much of this series will be about the differences and additions in the novel version, and how they contribute to my understanding of story canon. But there will be character appreciation, the odd theory and headcanon, and suchlike as well.

Spoilers for Book Two: Sky below.

I admit it, I didn't get the vibe that the Breach was secret from the elves until I read this chapter! *puts on derp cap* It seemed like enough time had passed that the elves would have managed to recon just about every part of the border, and that's why Janai was there in the first place: because she knew about the Breach, but not about the second human stronghold on the elven side. Like maybe that violated their agreed-upon terms or something: Keep To Your Side. So she attacked it when she discovered it. Oh well.

A secret path into Xadia is way more interesting, since it balances out the Moonstone Path that the Moonshadow assassins take into the human lands and lets all sorts of fun chaos ensue - and fun headcanons.

Amaya's ability to track everything within sight using perfect recall? Sound like any young Sky mages we know? Amaya and Callum have the same ability! That is so cool.

*carefully buries my headcanons about Amaya and Janai knowing each other as battle rivals all these years* I'll always remember you... Seems that Amaya is meeting Janai for the very first time here at the Breach.

Amaya literally losing track of time as she stares at Janai to calculate how dangerous she is.

Her howling battlecry. I just think it's neat.

It's gonna be interesting to see how Janaya's relationship develops with regards to Amaya's observation that Janai gets overconfident--something that Amaya seems careful not to do because she considers it a tactical weakness.

Viren believing that being up early counts as caring, and feeling superior to the other monarchs because he's been awake for more hours of the day already. The more you exhaust yourself, the better of a person you are, huh? At least he applies that to everyone else as much as he applies it to himself.

His internal judgements are pretty harsh, though. I loved the council member's question about war dragons vs. regular dragons. What is a "war dragon," anyway? propaganda, it's propaganda Viren decides the asker is an ignoramus because they don't think like he does.

It was interesting that the book takes Saleer's line about "maybe everything will just... settle down now," and gives it to Opeli, in order to give Saleer a more calculating position from the start. It's more consistent with his character arc--if there's no weird twist involving Aaravos--but he's still really sus to me.

Okay holy cats, did anyone else have to read Viren's take on King Harrow's chamber after the battle like ten times in a row to pick up all the details and implications? Oh man, so intense. Heh, no wonder it didn't make it onscreen in S1. "Dried, crusted blood splattered the walls." Uhh. Okay wow, it was an absolute bloodbath then. "Screams and chaos roiled in his ears," too. The way Viren remembers that night, that battle, there seems to have been little organization and it was an all-out, desperate scramble for victory at any cost. Which, yeah, we knew it was. But it was messy.

Thing is, Viren is very good at framing. He could be thinking of the battle in general, the part where the elves were killing the humans, the part where the elves were dying as well, or maybe some part that doesn't quite fit the narrative he'd have us believe in. It seems likely that the blood he's seeing on the walls is from elven attacks against human defenders, though--he wouldn't care nearly as much if it were elf blood, and he'd be less likely to take narrative time to notice it. But realistically, that was a knock-down, drag-out fight in which Runaan was one of very few survivors, if not the only one. Of course it got bloody as hell.

Lastly, hey uhh Viren I have a question: if Pip is in his cage in Harrow's bedchamber, which hasn't been touched, let alone cleaned, since the night of the full moon, then who the hell has been feeding him?? It seems that Viren didn't know Pip was alive until that moment. Squawk! I have questions!

[uneryx]

Renee Gets Salty About Dark Magic

This post got long, and got away from me, so I’ll tl;dr it

1. dark magic is a metaphor for consumption and materialism and is ultimately bad because it harms others unnecessarily and is not a sustainable resource

2. the elves were dicks for banishing humans but (especially if humans sucked all the magic out of the land themselves) they were kind of justified, even if it was an extreme measure

3. Eating meat is not the same as dark magic if you’re looking at things from an animistic point of view, which the elves likely do

4. it’s okay to like problematic characters and you don’t have to portray Ezran as a monstrous enfant terrible to feel okay about thinking Viren is justified in what he does.  In fact, pretty please stop doing this, everyone in all fandoms. It’s fine if you don’t like the protags but that doesn’t mean you get to say Ezran or Rayla or whoever is EVIL. It’s called Ron the Death Eater and it’s a fandom trope that has pissed me off for going on fifteen years. Deliberately misreading the text isn’t cute. Stop doing it.

5. The show isn’t over, be patient, you’ll probably get to see some comeuppance for stuff anyway. And if you don’t, there’s always fanfiction. 

6. For the love of baby adoraburrs please tag posts that go in the vein of “the writing is bad because Viren is portrayed as a classic villain/elves good humans bad/the protags aren’t held accountalbe” with “TDP CRITICAL” I would greatly appreciate it because I’m getting super annoyed with posts that deliberately misrepresent canon to uphold a favored side and it’s affecting my enjoyment of the show. Now! Actual long and discourse-heavy post under the cut!

 Ugh I don’t want to start a big ol’ argument with people because I’m still on vacation and don’t want to spend the rest of today arguing about cartoons on the internet, but this has been on the kettle for a while and I feel QUITE STRONGLY about some of these things, so just... let me express my views here and don’t come for me because I’m about to talk about religion and sociology. 

Dark Magic is a metaphor for unchecked consumption and capitalism.  1. The theory i’m seeing floating around that got my dander up is that the elves and dragons drained the western half of the continent of magic to keep magic away from humans. I think that, based on what we’ve learned from canon, this is highly unlikely and would be weaker writing than what I think actually happened. Instead, Dark magic was going on for a good solid 800 years (Rise of Elarion is 2000 years before canon) before Sol Regem faced off with Viard (1200 years before canon). The division of Xadia was another 200 years after that. Humans had a solid honking millennium of unchecked dark magic. It is quite likely that the reason the west is entirely devoid of magic, and that humans were banished there, is because they sucked all the magic out of that half themselves. Poor innocent baby humans nothing. They got a taste of power and progress and, like real world humans, let that get WAY out of control.

2. “But Lujanne eats bugs, she’s a hypocrite for saying Claudia can’t squish bugs for pancakes” I want you to go down to your local new-age/witchy bookstore and find yourself an animist that eats meat. You are going to get glared at SO HARD if you whip out the “you think animals have souls but you eat meat!” chestnut. Because here’s the thing.

Eating meat/animal products is an act of life, necessary to sustain the life of someone else. We don’t vilify wolves for eating deer. You gotta eat to live your life, and the human (or, we can assume, bipedal humanoid) diet includes a need for complex protein chains, quite often found in animal meat. 

But the reason that we find cannibalism repulsive in western society is because it’s eating another human, despite the fact that humans are made of meat. It’s eating something that we consider sentient, dignified and possessed of a soul. Of course, the taboo also derives from the fact that you can contract prion disease from consuming human meat, but people in 11th century Normandy didn’t know that.  It is quite likely, especially given what we’ve seen of magical creatures and Ezran’s ability to talk to animals, that elves view non-human/elf creatures as sentient and possessed of a soul. If that’s the case, then OF COURSE they would see dark magic as horrific.

But eating meat is not on the same level because, as we see from the assassins, death is a part of life, and sometimes necessary. I imagine that hunting and taking a creature’s life for food is an act that is done with respect. The creatures are honored or thanked before they’re eaten or turned into leather. Highly ritualized to dignify that creature’s life.  Dark magic doesn’t do that. Dark magic sucks the whole life out, without so much of a how do you do.  It’s treating a person like a thing. It’s sucking all the life and essence out of someone so you can shoot fireballs or make fluffy pancakes. Lets be real - you don’t need to do either of those things, so the creature thus died in vain. 3. “The elves are selfish bastards for hogging all the magic.” I agree. Granted, their attitudes may have cooled in the ensuing centuries. It’s a new dawn, the era of Zubeia. We might see elves getting over their uppity selves and working to help teach humans magic. We might also see the show explore that kind of prejudice as Callum learns more magic. In fact, I hope we do. However, two wrongs dont make a right.  If Japan bombs the absolute fuckshit out of Hawaii, that does not make it okay to flash-fry Nagasaki with a weapon that blights the land and its people for years and years afterward.

To the elves (who are magical creatures and therefore totally usable as spell components), that’s what dark magic is. Suddenly, haha oh fuck, the humans have a fucking NUKE that every elf and dragon in Xadia is vulnerable to.  If a weapon was devised that ONLY a certain portion of the population was affected by, you better bet your sweet bippy that people would panic and make it forbidden and illegal, and severely punish the people who created it. ESPECIALLY if those people were already marginalized. Sucks, don’t it? Doesn’t mean the writing is bad for portraying people having a realistic reaction to something that is harmful to them. The elves aren’t justified in hogging the magic, and I hope future chapters will explore that. But the elves ARE a liiiiiittle bit justified in freaking out. I hold they could’ve come up with a better solution than BANISH HUMANS, but they didn’t. Makes for interesting story conflict, doesn’t it? 4. “Humans NEED dark magic!” / “Calling dark magic a shortcut is dumb” Did they tho? Did they really? Really really? We, modern day humans, don’t NEED smart phones (which rely on several rare earth minerals and are causing untold ecological disaster in areas where they’re miend). We, modern day humans, don’t NEED coal power (which is controlled by coal companies, who keep telling us that we totally do, despite many scientists saying that renewable energy is ready to go whenever). We don’t NEED blackberries from Mexico year-round, or a whole hell of a lot of the things we have come to rely on and consider part of our every day lives. All of these things are unnecessary and shortcuts to progress.

The only - ONLY! - good, necessary thing we’ve seen in canon that dark magic was required for was using the magma titan’s heart for saving people from famine.

A lot of the complaints about sustainable energy and efforts to heal the planet as climate change become increasingly a crisis stem from the fact that doing things RIGHT, in a way that is sustainable and doesn’t strip every last resource out of our home, is that it takes time. It takes SO MUCH TIME to do things properly. Yeah, we can keep going with our coal and our gas-guzzler cars and our fracking and our rare-earth metals... but we ARE going to run out. And then what?  Dark magic is the same principle. Eventually, you’re going to run out of resources. 

5. Where I think the show is going My main beef with those (and there’s a lot of ya, so I’m not intending to single anyone out) who say that the writing is lazy for dark magic bad elfs good is that the show is not over. Wonderstorm is doing their damndest to give us the saga. And they’ve said, out right, that there WILL be books, if nothing else.

You can’t judge a story’s merits when it’s only been half told. Right now, what the show has done is it has shown us the worst and best of the elves (for example, Khessa’s purity test vs Rayla refusing to kill Ez so she doesn’t perpetuate a cycle of violence) and the worst and best of the humans (ex: Viren forcibly turning thousands of people into monsters against their will vs Viren risking his life in order to save thousands of people from famine). The show has done well to demonstrate that there is good and bad in everyone, and it’s the choices you make and the respect you show others’ autonomy that makes you a good or bad person. The dominoes are in place. The saga has only begun. Being mad that Ezran burned an army (that he likely knew from Soren was invulnerable to fire) or that Aanya shot Kasef in the face (when Opeli would have told her that Kasef conspired behind Ezran’s back to usurp the throne, which is AN ACT OF WAR btw) means you aren’t looking at the big picture. There WILL be consequences for those actions in later seasons, mark my words.

I’m sorry if you’re a Viren or Claudia stan, but they have made choices that hurt other people, and it is in no way shape or form Ezran or Callum or Rayla or ANYONE ELSE’S fault that they made the choices they did. Instead of being mad at the show for not portraying your fav as an innocent victim, be glad that you got such a wonderfully complex set of villains who, quite likely, will get a bomb-ass redemption arc. In fact, I’ll bet you anything that Viren’s walk back from the edge has already begun. The dude fucking DIED, and he’s not going to be eager to get in there and get all grabby with the power any time soon. 

That’s what good writing IS - conflict. Tension. People making morally questionable choices. We like it because every day people are hypocrites and morally questionable. You, and I, and everyone we know. Nobody’s perfect and getting cranky and painting the protagonists with the broad villain brush so you can feel good about liking a problematic fave is... some peak tumblr bullshit, tbh.  It’s okay to like characters who aren’t perfect. How fucking boring fiction would be if everyone was perfect.

Now if I can ask my mutuals to please tag their criticisms of the show that go in the vein of “the writing is bad because dark magic is portrayed so negatively/they don’t hold the protags accountable/elves good humans bad” with “TDP critical” I would greatly appreciate it. It’s getting to the degree where things are becoming very not fun and making me cranky.  Thank you, Renee out. 

[incorrect-tdp-quotes]

TDP Heathers AU

So @princecallumenergy and I have many weird conversations, but this one actually made something beautiful

We have two different versions of this: the one with the younger characters of TDP (like claudia, soren, callum) and one with the older characters (Runaan, Viren, Amaya etc)

Younger characters as Heathers:

The Heathers are Claudia, Opeli and Gren as Chandler, Duke and McNamara respectively (Purple, Silver and Orange themed)

We thought Claudia had the potential to fit the role

Plus we couldn’t think of someone mean so we took someone who was dark coded

Opeli is just Opeli and she’s great as Heather Duke

Gren is only Heather M because Claudia has blackmail on him (for what, we don’t know)

We originally had Soren as Heather M but Gren fits her personality better plus we have better ideas for Soren

At first we cast Rayla as Veronica but then we needed a JD and I honestly think that if she had awful trauma she might just be bad enough to kill people

Plus it makes sense that she gets weapons because Runaan’s an assassin

ANYWAYS

Soren and Marcos are Kurt and Ram just less disgusting and actually decent

But just as dumbass

Soren is chill with the Heathers because his sister is like the head heather

Viren is the fucking teacher 

“Shine a light”

My Dead Gay Son is a Sorcos Anthem

Callum is Veronica

“Dead prince walking”

“Mythic Witch”

So like deranged Rayla as JD

Pulls two knives on Soren and Marcos instead of blanks

That’s about all we have for the younger characters feel free to add

Martha is Ezran but there’s no like Soren/Ezran thing cause that’s absolutely disgusting

Older Characters as Heathers:

Harrow, Viren and Sarai as Heather C, D and M respectively

Harrow is the perfect fucking Heather Chandler and he looks amazing in a skirt

Viren is a jealous bitch who wants the ‘throne’

Sarai is just a precious babey who likes Harrow so decided to stick with him 

We originally wanted to have Runaan as JD because he’s an assassin and Amaya as Veronica but then that didn’t work because if Amaya was Veronica no one would have died (this being Morgans point against my idea and it’s totally valid)

So then Morgan had the incredible idea

Runaan as Veronica

Fucking Aaravos as JD

We don’t know much about Aaravos yet but I get the feeling he’s a sinister character despite the fandom painting him as a memelord

So yeah also Morgan and I live for ex bfs Runaan and Aaravos

Amaya and Corvus are Ram and Kurt but they’re good and the reason they die is because they’re trying to stop Aavaros so he kills them

Gren is obvi Martha because the crush on Amaya just makes sense 

And Amaya and Corvus are only friends with the Heathers through Sarai

Runaan as Veronica is fucking gold: “Dead elf walking” 

“Candy Katolis”

“RUNAAN open the-open the door, please, Runaan open the door”

Instead of “Blue” being about blue balls, it’s about how they found Heather C’s mouth blue and it’s Corvus and Amaya trying to find out what that might mean