Idkjustletmescroll - Untitled

Me: starts typing

Me: types for days.

Me: does so much freaking work researching and thinking through complicated plotlines and potential dialogue. Fully fleshes out a story or a concept after months of stagnation. I'm talking months of backstory and descriptions and side plots and crying.

Character: actually, I'm going to do this instead. This one little thing that destroys everything you've been working towards. And if you try to change it, or make it different in any way, I'll make your life a living hell.

Me: Or you could just... you know, not do that?

Character: ... Nah, I'm gonna.

IT IS 3 AM

I Never Would Have Given You To Them by PomeloSoul

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.

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?