★ the saltmaster extraordinaire

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.

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The older I get, the less patience I have for Children’s Show Logic when it comes to politics. What I can suspend my sense of disbelief for where a simple adventure story is concerned (incompetent adults, children being Brave and Wise on account of their Youthful Innocence and fresh perspective, etc etc) absolutely does not work when it comes to any story that even remotely involves politics and statecraft.

Children and teenagers have no place anywhere near political power, not unless there’s something along the lines of a regency actually handling the business of ruling for them and training them for the moment they reach age of majority. The ‘Little Miss Dumbass of Duren’ scene (great commentary by 

theamazingsallyhogan) in The Dragon Prince, that so much of this fandom is going ga-ga over is, for me, a prime illustration of why you don’t allow children in power. Nothing but sassy quips and cheap, empty platitudes, with ‘stick our heads in the sand and hope the storm passes us over’ written all over them. There's also the matter of how much this scene props up the whole notion of 'The Divine Right of Kings', but I already touched upon this in my TDP politics meta post.

 

Part of me really wants future seasons to punish the Pentarchy for its inaction, but I’m not holding out much hope. At this point, this is a show I solely watch for my two-three favorites and their time on-screen and being able to write fucky fanfic featuring them.