Well, I Have A Recent Hyperfixation On The Sunfire Royal Family, So I'd Probably Just Have. More Of Them.

Well, I have a recent hyperfixation on the sunfire royal family, so I'd probably just have. More of them. In general. Is this realistic, considering their roles in the story, and the length of the actual story? No, but nobody ever specified being realistic.

Mind you, I'm not talking really changing any major plotlines, I'm just talking one or two interactions thrown in there. Khessa finds Janai in private before they take viren to the sunforge and, you know, all that happens (janai's on her way to tell Amaya the tea, as she did in the show already), and shows some concern for her about something--khessa worries about janai getting soft, worries about her little sister being tricked by the malevolent humans, whatever, just something to show that she really cares for janai? 90% of khessa's screentime is spent condescending to janai and I just want ONE decent interaction before khessa disintegrates.

Oh, and Karim appears in season 3. He was probably meant to be off studying or something in season 3, but it means we don't see too much of janai and karim's pre-war dynamic? Just karim being in the throne room when janai enters with amaya, being the one to back her up about not killing amaya. He calls khessa "sister" so we know their relationship. When khessa's dying, he witnesses it firsthand and manages to escape corruption or death by aaravos; he shows up at the storm spire with janai and amaya, supporting his sister, being suspicious of callum's magic, fighting alongside the troops, yada, yada, yada. A quick scene of him hugging janai or something after the battle, idk. Then in season 4, when he decides he's going to kill her, actually, it's a lot sadder because we KNOW they love each other, we KNOW they had a pre-war dynamic--it's this one ideological difference that prevents them from keeping it.

Plus, more of an emphasis on how karim wants things to "go back to normal." He wants janai to be more ruthless and dismissive of different things, more grandeous and decisive (even detrimentally so), like khessa was. He wants spectacles and ceremonies and fire prisons and what-have-you, and he wants to be his sister's right hand. He doesn't care for humans, or even other elves. He fully buys into sunfire supremacy; he doesn't think that the human soldiers can defeat sunfire soldiers, he doesn't buy that callum is actually a primal mage, he likes amaya well enough, but he doesn't really respect her. Karim, at this point, would have been established to have been at khessa's hand and have her ear, and he wants to occupy the same position with janai, but janai has a different worldview now, and it's not like she's isolated and has only her brother to turn to: she has her (girl) friend, amaya, who's also a human, and amaya's bestie gren, and her new scholar friend kazi (add in a line about how that's "beneath" janai, in karim's head). She was a general, presumably for years; she probably has SOME sort of relationship with the soldiers who served under her. Plenty of whom would have been at the storm spire, fighting alongside humans and being saved by humans and being helped by humans after. The cracks are starting to form in the worldview they've held onto for years and that karim still can't let go of, and, in HIS eyes, his power and position is being stripped away and being given to humans and "lower" elves.

I think this has run away from me, lol...but anyways, more sunfire royal family interactions plssss.

Very Random Thought Experiment

What's something small you would like to go back change about The Dragon Prince? You can't change any major plot points (sorry off screen rayllum breakup/sunfire s4 storyline), or give any dead characters a miraculous return. (copy and paste the starter paragraph, add your thoughts, then pass it on by tagging someone whose change you want to see.)

I'll go first. I would change Opeli. She would serve the same purpose. She would oppose Viren while caring for, supporting, and advising Ezran and Callum so no major changes happen to the story.

BUT her backstory (and by extension, her appearance) will be redone. She is now Opeli, mother to Sarai and Amaya, maternal grandmother to King Ezran and Prince Callum. She will sign insults when Viren's back is turned, and when he's looking. She will hug the king and prince and tell them to be careful and make sure to eat enough; they are still growing boys. In capturing Rayla, she might seem a little too happy to have her grandson's flighty ex-gf in shackles. The scene where Gren hugs Amaya after finding her alive will be replaced with Mamma Opeli shaking Amaya by the pauldrons and shouting "What were you thinking young lady?!" (Amaya replying by signing 'you know it doesn't help to yell') while Gren looks on smugly in the background. And of course, Opeli can be seen giving Janai the side-eye when she holds her daughter's in front of the dragon queen.

@a-certain-elf -any small change you would make?

Some incoherent ranting/rambling i guess

I really don't understand some people's obsession with fictional characters doing shitty things just conveniently...NOT KNOWING that they're bad?? Idk if that makes ANY sense at all it's 3 in the goddamn morning but let me explain--

I was doom scrolling, as one does, when I came across a tiktok of a marvel fan explaining why actually wanda maximoff had no idea what she was doing with the hex, which, sure, holds true for the BEGINNING of wandavision. But we're shown pretty clearly during the rest of the show that she knows what she's done, how it's affecting the townspeople, and that it's not real...she just needs it to be real. She can't cope with her ACTUAL reality. Her family is gone, and the ones that remain are busy dealing with their own traumas and families (i.e. clint, who I still argue WOULD have tried to find her and help her post-endgame, even if he desperately needed some downtime with his family--but moving on). I'm a wanda maximoff stan, she's my girl, my favourite, my one and only, but she's not a complete idiot. She knew what she was doing. I don't care that she did an objectively bad thing, I care about why she did it and kept on doing it--which is so much more interesting to me, anyways.

Alicent Hightower in HOTD? According to the writers, had no clue that, actually, years of talking about how aegon should be the heir to the throne would result in people ACTUALLY SCHEMING to get him on the throne, even though she seems to be heading the effort the entire time? Listen, the HOTD fandom is something else, and the way they talk about alicent genuinely scares me, but alicent being worried for her kids' safety, reluctantly cutting off all affection for Rhaenyra because she's genuinely terrified for her kids' lives, even just the spite of wanting her years of suffering and humiliation to mean something; alicent being both a ringleader and a pawn in a man's game, because ultimately she's resigned to the fact that the closest she can get to winning in this system (under this wheel, if you will), is finding the best man to propel to victory/be a pawn for because she as a woman will ultimately never be the victor herself--is SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING than "okay, yeah, she spent years declaring how unfit her ex-bff/stepdaughter is to rule, but she didn't know people would actually take that seriously...she just wants rhaenyra to be OKAY, yall..." (I have a lot of feelings about how the show wrote alicent, okay?)

And arcane is one of my favourite shows of all time, and I've been lucky enough to MOSTLY stay on the good side of the fandom, which, from my end, is usually pretty amazing with an appreciation for nuanced media. But it genuinely makes my blood boil when I see people claim that Vi "could have gone back for jinx on the bridge" (ep. 7), when the moment they're referencing is vi supporting an injured Caitlyn, who almost died by jinx's bombs, RIGHT AFTER JINX SHOT AT THEM BOTH, AND RIGHT AFTER EKKO TOLD VI TO GO. "She left her sister to get beat up--" everything in vi's face in that scene speaks to her reluctance. She's holding up a girl she's growing closer to, who could actually be grievously injured, and she knows, at this point, that jinx is irrational--jinx just shot at her. Like...we knew that vi wasn't going to die, but she could've really easily. Ekko says he'll handle it. There's another bomb. Vi goes back to look for jinx AS SOON as Caitlyn's sitting down somewhere relatively safe (at which point, you know, she sees jinx being picked up by silco and his sidekicks). The point is, people act, with scenes like this one, like jinx was chucking paint bombs, not shooting fucking bullets en masse. I love all the arcane characters; jinx is such an interesting one, and her hallucinations and delusions do tend to make us wonder how much responsibility we can rightfully place on her shoulders. But people are really out here acting like she didn't...almost kill vi and cait there? We, from jinx's perspective, know that she saw Caitlyn as the literal devil; from vi and cait's povs, she just kind of walked up and tried to kill them. Am I making my point yet?

Speaking of arcane, i hope in season 2 we get scenes of characters from piltover who are really rooting for the oppression of the undercity. Not because of what jinx did, not because of the war, not because they "just don't know" how bad it is...because they make a profit off of it, and for that they are perfectly content letting people become dependent on drugs and make their livings from dangerous work in factories and mines. The whole point of "the city of progress" is that it became what it was off the backs of the undercity. We get a lot of characters in season 1 REALIZING the conditions down there, but I want them realizing in season 2 that not everybody was sheltered, they were just making a profit. (I kind of want to see Heimerdinger called out, too. Like, yeah, he's fluffy and cute and stuff, but if he's the founder of piltover, he's also been there since the beginning of the undercity, and didn't care because immortality yada yada. Have I envisioned scenes of ekko calling vi a sellout and she's just like "bitch and who the fuck are you working with?" and everybody's miserable? Yes. Yes I have. And don't come for me, ekko is the mvp of this show. Let a girl dream).

Even people like Tony Stark...people be acting like he's not actually an asshole a lot of the time. Or that he didn't know what weapons did before he stopped distributing them. I like tony, he's entertaining. But I'm not going to act like I need him to be a saint who didn't know shit about the world or basic courtesies to like him.

Idk if fandoms are just weird like that, but you can like your fave even if they do shitty things. They don't always have to be helpless, or just too stupid to realize what's going on. I don't understand why so many people are opposed to being entertained by people who do shitty things. Where's the appreciation for the drama? The messiness? The chaos?

coming back to this post with the news that Bridgerton is only going to come back in like, 2 years? For an 8 episode season? When they have actors that are going to visibly grow up, AND others that are going to be getting more and better-paying opportunities as the years go by and can't be signed to the same show forever?

It's really not that big of a deal idk i just saw this post and thought about it.

I hate modern media.

Like don't get me wrong, there's plenty of good stuff out there, but for the most part it feels like so little heart goes into most books/movies/shows?

Like--the PJO show, don't get me wrong, it was good...but it was, at least to me, just kind of...fine? Nostalgia can only go so far.

Casting-wise, it was perfect, and it does seem like it was made by people who genuinely love and care about the source material, but who had to rush their story because they just didn't have the time. They had 8 episodes. Each of those episodes was like 35-45 minutes long, but not only is that pretty long for a single episode, if each of those episodes pretty much just covers one part of the story...that's still not a lot??

House of the Dragon? 10 episodes. No matter how long those 10 episodes are, they're trying to show us how a whole ass war got started in 10 FREAKING EPISODES. How Alicent and Rhaenyra's friendship broke down. Both of their relationships with their spouses and children. They still didn't fully explore Rhaenyra and Harwin's relationship. Does Rhaenyra have any more complicated feelings about her father for his role in the deterioration of her friendship with Alicent? Plus all the time skips...we don't have time to sit with these characters and their relationships and get to know them. Not like we did in GOT (at least the first like 4 seasons).

Not to mention waiting like 2 years between each season. Like, one of my favourite shows ever is Arcane because I like to suffer, and between season 1 and 2 there are 3 years (season 2 comes out November of this year). Watchers may not be happy to wait that long, but we expect good quality for that wait because Arcane is insanely good in all aspects--animation, character arcs, world building, nuance, commentary, music, action, etc., etc., etc. A lot of other shows, not just the two I've mentioned above, just don't feel as worth the wait. I still think they're enjoyable, and I think the writers do want to make good work, but that's hard to do with 8-10 episodes. And Arcane has only 9 episodes, and all of them are long, sure, but I feel like since there are so many moving parts and characters and subplots to the subplots, it can a) keep viewers engaged that long, and b) can easily fill up that much time well with clear priorities and a tightly woven story.

Avatar: The Last Airbender, a masterpiece show in my (and many other people's) opinion, had 20 episode seasons, each episode around 20-25 minutes. That's a reasonable amount of time to focus on one adventure or aspect of the adventure. Prioritize what to focus on, and it slays. But you can't keep giving writers 8 episodes, a shit ton of material, and then expect 100% quality every time.

You know what we DESERVED from s4/5 of tdp?

No, it's not more aaravos, though I DID yearn for that voice--

ANYWAYS! WE DESERVED MORE OF JANAI BONDING WITH CALLUM AND EZRAN! I said what I said.

Yes, I know callum and janai had like, a scene together in s5, but they were talking about the world ending, and callum's clearly jittery around her (which is so fair, considering she can turn into a literal lava being, but anyways), and exclusively calls her "queen" janai, not just janai or aunt janai, which i guess she's technically not until she gets married. If her bitch ass brother even lets her HAVE that.

The POINT is, and excuse the excess capital letters because I'm sleep-deprived af, but...I want janai being a cute aunt and also completely bewildered by bait, and callum's magic, and how they're still alive after Amaya's bone-crushing bear hugs. It's a small gripe that i'm sure will be assuaged by fanfic, BUT. I NEEDED it.