#meta rewatch

[raayllum]

So this is a thing again? You two? Yes, it is. It always was. It was always her. / I think you love her. Yes, I do. I love her. I love her very much.

2x02 / 2x07 / 3x05 / 3x09 / 4x01 / 5x02 / 6x03 / 6x06 / 7x05 / S8

[raayllum]

Hello and welcome to the Losing to TDP at Chess Club: Meta Rewatch, otherwise known as a full series rewatch of season one through season seven of TDP, starting on June 28th and going at 2-3 episodes a week until we're done the whole show. (If you're doing the math, that means at 3 episodes a week, we're looking at a 5 month long rewatch schedule.)

The goal of the rewatch is to stimulate discussion and analysis. We want to dig into every detail with our beautiful pedantic shovels, draw all and even the most obscure parallels, and get weird with it. Crackships, intrepid searching, and talking about weird symbolic incest is welcome. Other forms of creation (playlists, headcanons, art, fic for missing scenes or AUs, etc) are welcome, but the focus is first and foremost on meta.

The discord server has been made and invites are currently going out for broader more in depth convos that maybe don't fit neatly into a public posting context (or lack of coherence); if you are interested, DM me and I will see if you are suitably deranged. The discord rules are about what's posted here:

Be an active participant in the rewatch and subsequent discussions

Coming at things from a primarily curious place. This includes critique

We are losing, not winning, to Wonderstorm at chess. This means assuming they know what they're doing for their story and their specific vision.

We're here to have fun. Digging and going deeper and asking why is fun. Arguably the most fun

Posting on tumblr generally is also welcome, and so is rewatching the show in tandem with us if you're just wanting to do so and vibe.

If you have any questions, feel free to DM or drop 'em in my askbox!

In the meantime, I'm going to go lose my queen to a fucking bishop I didn't notice in the corner

[raayllum]

I tried to thank the hippopotamus for the taffy...

Post s3 I wondered if arc 2 would take certain Ezran things (his games of hide and seek, for example) and twist them. That certainly wound up being the case (ie. the game of hide and seek for the prison), but another thing I wondered about was Ezran's taffy dreams from 1x04 and 2x03: "and he was right. I was delicious." It's another way where, although having a kind of non-opinion on magic (dark or otherwise) throughout the series, we still see Ezran contribute to it in season one in really interesting, consistent, allegorical ways.

You cannot consume something and leave it the same. If you take it carelessly, it will not be able to conceptualize or understand your gratitude. "If you love a flower you do not pick it," etc.

[raayllum]

I think a lot about "the illusion of help" as a concept in TDP, mostly because it shows up in particular with the series' antagonists. Aaravos of course is the most obvious: he gives humans the promise of "unlimited power" (2x08) through dark magic, but it actually allows him to manipulate and literally control them further, thereby making them more powerless than they were before. Finnegrin messes around with this directly, giving Callum the exact same choice in 5x08 with "you have all the power and control here" which is, of course, an utter falsehood. Viren framing his taking of the throne (and attempted murder by proxy of the boys) as "I can help us, from here" is another, slightly different example.

You also, with Lujanne here, have everything TDP associates with gifts, since that is what she gave Ava and Ellis, though nobody precisely calls it that. "A [gift] that others would see and feel, even though it wasn't real" is a mindfuck in the "how much can we trust our senses thing" (though I'm sure there's a parallel to be had to Callum seeing Rayla in 6x06 though blindfolded, or something and "seeing with our hearts" from the book one novelization) but it makes me think of primal magic, which was used precisely for said gift.

And we also have Ezran seeing through fear to realize that what he, more than anyone, was afraid of Isn't Real and well:

Your beliefs came from fear. Mine come from knowledge. You were scared of a monster in the dark. I fight in the light against an enemy, flesh and blood.

Idk, with destiny being both more and less of an immutable force, and explicitly something more akin to "there are multiple existing realities and our choices dictate which ones we live in" and then talking about divides between what is real (the objective truth) versus what people think is real (the destruction of the egg, the meanings of prophecies and poems, etc) is just. Bonkers and Beautiful to me from a juicy story perspective

And also ties back into "the help you offered wasn't real" (there is no miracle healer) and "none of those monsters were real" (there is no monster you can slay to solve all your problems) Concept(s) yet again

[raayllum]

The Timeblind transcend our perception of time. They experience the past, present, and future as one.

1x01 / 7x01 / 7x08 / 5x08

[raayllum]

I am intrigued by Rayla's assertation that being a Moon mage automatically precludes Lujanne from knowing healing, unless healing is a subject of magic that Moon magic has literally no overlap in (but does with death magic?? I digress). Moreover, I think it's interesting given that, arguably, Rayla is the her group's healer. She fetches Ezran the cure for the common sniffles; she fixes Esmeray's literally broken heart/collar; her return and patient persistence allows for her and Callum to heal (5x02); she heals the broken souls of her family and makes them whole again (6x09) as well as Callum's spirit/soul (6x06). "And fix what is broken in Xadia? No one can save it" -> "I can fix this" (1x02) -> "and do whatever it takes to save this world" etc.

[raayllum]

in a lot of ways ezran's "there is no miracle healer" is like the other side of the coin to sarai's "there is no monster you can slay" re: XYZ thing can "solve all your problems". a perfect easy solution doesn't exist, and if someone is presenting you with or promising you one, it's probably a falsehood. real solutions take time and effort and sacrifice and empathy from you, not from some external source or result. something something

[raayllum]

1x07 / 7x06 / 7x08