After several months of waiting, we finally have the Season 3 trailer for The Dragon Prince. I never thought it was possible for a bombastic, war-centric trailer to just kill all my hype, yet here we are!

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I'm not in much of a good mood for a detailed breakdown, so the main points are:

• my interest in Callum and Rayla, their story and their romance, is absolute zero, so it was expected that their heavy presence in the trailer would do nothing for me
• Ezran's plot-line is mildly more interesting, but only as long as it goes into the details of Katolian politics, rather than remain stuck in "I can talk to animals!" hijinks or the stupid, kindergarten-level humor associated with Bait
• Viren! Claudia and Soren! As was almost to be expected, these three made the entire trailer for me and kept it from totally flopping
• the scenes of war were suitably impressive and I want to see if the Pentarchy monarchs do end up with their noses rubbed in the dirt for their unwillingness to do anything but twiddle their thumbs and pass the buck from one to the other
• all of the narrative cues that Viren will die / be corrupted beyond salvation and killed. I'll be honest, I deeply hate this and if things pan out in the way the trailer indicates, I'll most certainly drop the show entirely.

Viren is 80% of the reason why I even started watching TDP (with the other 20% being split between Aaravos, Soren and Claudia). The janky, juddery animation style of the first season (like trying to play or watch someone playing a video-game at 15 FPS) put me off and I only gave it a shot with the arrival of the second season and Viren's plot, filled with politics, magical mysteries, desperation and an elf trapped in a mirror.

A significant reason why I love him so much as an antagonist and a character is that, so far, he hasn't been written as a stereotypical, cackling megalomaniac, but rather a very complex and flawed person, thrown into an ever-escalating nightmare with the death of his best friend. A nightmare he often feels powerless to avert, given the unwillingness of those around him to listen to his warnings, which leads him into ever more desperate and harsh measures and deals with the metaphorical devil. The visual and narrative cues in the trailer indicate that we're moving away from that and into "corrupted / possessed force of destruction" territory and this just sends my blood-pressure into the stratosphere, because it's so rare to find Western animation that treats its antagonists in a nuanced, non-preachy fashion. TDP was extremely promising right from the start, as far as this is concerned, so right now I'm feeling as if the rug went and got yanked from underneath my feet.

A short excerpt from one of my earlier posts, so people can see where I'm coming from:

The actions we see from episode 4 of Season 1 onward aren't those of a man who always planned to overthrow his best friend and stage a coup, but rather someone who acted rashly, saved Harrow's soul against his will... and then was stuck in an impossible situation, with a kingdom without a ruler and paralyzed into complete inaction, along with the loss of humanity's greatest asset against Xadia (the Dragon Prince egg). No wonder he looks as if he's flying by the seat of his pants, juggling seventeen things all at once and actually failing at the basics of a proper coup (such as ensuring the support of the armed forces).

Viren's fault, that trips him up again and again, is (hilariously and ironically enough) the fact he isn't actually ruthless enough for the position he's currently in! He's an idealist at heart and genuinely believes that people can be persuaded to make the rational choices, with the right arguments. This is what leads to his fall-from-political-grace and arrest at the end of S2. He takes an enormous risk in using the King's seal and lying about his status as Regent in front of the other rulers of the Pentarchy, effectively putting all his eggs in the one basked titled 'surely they'll see sense and act', if the danger is presented to them in a clear and concise manner.'

I'm at a point where, on the basis of everything we have so far, I'm convinced that She-Ra (the show I always scoffed at for being both simplistic and nonsensical in its writing) is going to give me a better 'complex and complicated antagonist arc, for a character who isn't turned into a cackling caricature or a twee, anodyne friend to all living things' in the form of Hordak. A year ago or even six months ago I certainly wouldn't have been making this prediction, but life sure has a way of surprising you!

I'd probably be in less of a foul mood about this whole thing if it hadn't very neatly coincided with something else that upset me. It's NaNo season, so I'm trying to fight back against this unpleasant funk I'm in right now by writing. Dedicating time to 'blood on the asphalt' specifically, because I've always reacted to my favorites being hated on by lavishing them with narrative love.