Discover Top Posts Tagged with #pre meta rewatch

There's a lot of things the series uses Rayla as a character to say, largely about mercy and forgiveness, but I do think this message is probably her most important one, especially in arc 2, and yeah. It always hits

#theme: grief #tdp rayla #like it's her Whole Thing. arguably #even just in how she leaves and then comes back and. yeah #s6 #6x05 #dragons liveblogs #rayla #pre meta rewatch

took these screencaps mostly on a "loverboy is locked TF in" basis but it is funny how this also reflects their like, whole thing: Callum is always 110% committed, always focused on Rayla, meanwhile she's more likely to pay attention to/notice Other Things going on. It's 3x01 with Sol Regem all over again

#like most of the characters have some aspect of tunnel vision but callum is like. The Most #and it's very funny every time #rayllum #dragons liveblogs #s6 #6x07 #ngl i forgot this scene was in this episode bc i was so mentally locked in on karim & ezran #arc 2 #pre meta rewatch #characterization #mine #pining!callum #rayla

you do anything for your children

#it was just red #theme: parents and children #dragons liveblogs #pre meta rewatch #6x05 #end credits #s6 #arc 2 #arc 3 #moonmage family #mine

yeah i'm Sure the continued viren-ezran parallels in their dynamic with soren won't go anywhere terrible. haha. of course

#dragons liveblogs #s6 #6x05 #arc 2 #pre meta rewatch #tdp soren #soren #brotp: best crownguard #the royal family of katolis #tdp viren #tdp ezran #personal fave #aka yes i'm starting the 6x05 rewatch no i don't know how im gonna survive it either #parallels

6x02 / 7x07 / 7x03 / 6x06

#true heart true name true love true north one deep truth whatever #s6 #s7 #arc 2 #multi #parallels #pre meta rewatch #mine #janaya #ezran #viren x lissa #theme: truth #thinking about 'the whole truth' as holistic vs. the literal division of the continent #as inherently untruthful. 'we can't just ignore it or pretend it'll go away' but you tried. god you Tried

i think a lot about TDP's homecoming arcs, simply because they're kind of a genre irregularity in a show that is Ostensibly About Questing.

typically in high fantasy stories, the characters leave home and don't return until the end (lord of the rings, for ex; most of atla's main cast never go back home in any manner). consistent homecomings (yearly or more than once) are much more common in hidden world / urban fantasy stories (percy in pjo goes back and forth every summer/fall for example, etc).

we see this hold true in arc 1, at least at first. the kids all leave home in season 1 (or in rayla's case, pre-series) and don't return for most of the arc. however, in season 3, this changes: ezran, rayla, claudia, and soren all get homecoming arcs, and these arcs (3x03-3x05) are used to demonstrate just how much has changed for each of them. we then see the characters all venture from home, again, and by the end of the arc they have not returned; 3x09 is wholly triumphant in that regard. what do they need to return home for, in a narrative sense?

arc 2, in contrast, arguably becomes About Home. not only do we start off in katolis basically every season, but each time we return to it with any of the characters, we are inevitably being shored up with contrast. for example, we see ezran's council meetings in 4x01 and 6x01 with two seasons between them, and they are radically different. we also see the sunfire elves who are wrestling with the loss of their home and attempting to create a new one, with returning to lux aurea always being a disaster (5x04, 7x08-7x09). aaravos, likewise, is no longer imprisoned and instead 'sent home' by the end of the arc (a very apt rayla parallel, arguably, even if his is still negative and hers is positive, but that's a post for another day).

the main exception(s) we see in arc 2 is for the rest of sparklepuff antagonist team. viren, claudia, and terry only return home once apiece. terry in 4x07 as he reflects on who he was and cannot yet see what he's becoming; viren, no longer imprisoned metaphysically and to make amends; and claudia in 6x08, who still considers katolis her home even after everything has happened.

in many ways, we can see ezran and claudia's reactions to katolis' destruction — one, the destruction of his home that he's become more and more symbolically aligned with, the other the death of her father — to be mirrored images symbolically. following the destruction of katolis and its consequences, they are vulnerable, they are angry, and they are susceptible to their worst impulses. ezran comes back from this by returning home, yes, but also deciding to build something new (literally) from the ashes. claudia clings to her dragonscales and insists that she's still the same. (who knows when/if she will return home again?)

conversely, rayla's arc is probably the most explicitly about homecoming throughout the show. this is because she starts from a place of narrative displacement (we do not get a sense of her 'ordinary world' the way we do for the bulk of the main cast before she's thrust immediately into the construct/conflicts of the story, causing us to play perpetual catchup in a way that's very fun and crunchy), and also from her consistent pattern of leaving-and-returning, like the moon. her homecomings are staggered and explosive (3x03, 4x02/4x03, 7x04) but always transformative, and directly wrestle wth some of the series' innermost themes (absence, grief, penance, forgiveness, reintegration).

callum, conversely, doesn't have a traditional homecoming arc like his peers. unlike everyone else, he never goes home at all in season 3. whenever he is in katolis in arc 2, he is almost always thinking of elsewhere: pining for rayla (s4), planning and eager and asking to leave (5x01, 6x01), reluctant to return (7x01) and much happier to go (7x02). his homecoming arc happens in season 4 when rayla returns, because she is his home. (meta expansion here.) it gets mapped out across multiple seasons, then, as her return causes him to change and both not change as they become reintegrated with one another, culminating in 6x06 mirroring her trial's positive outcome. (this is affirmed in season 7 where he chooses her over katolis, because he's choosing his actual home > a physical place. this is also, of course, something that karim will not or cannot do, and he dies for it.)

the reason why all these homecomings are going on, therefore, is because in contrast to what arc 1 (and arguably just s1-s2 explores compared to everything else), TDP is about Going Home on a thematic level much more than it is about questing on a plot level, precisely because its chosen its beats of "humans are returning (home) to xadia and it's a good thing" plus "the stars will return (home) to us and be fully integrated" stacked on top.

and idk, i think it's neat

#home motif #tdp #the dragon prince #tdp meta #analysis series #analysis #mine #parallels #the gang's all here #arc 1 #arc 2 #home is the first grave #mini meta #pre meta rewatch #dragons liveblogs #s6 #personal fave #insp'd by literally one (1) line from claudia in 6x08 im afraid

So as a very strong start to 7x05, first, we get one of my favourite Terry specific pieces of symbolism — his glasses — wherein he takes them off upon introduction in Viren&Claudia's presence, but puts them on when preparing to go to Ezran and the side of good (he does put them on and also take them off upon actually meeting Ezran, too).

Then we get a beautiful parallel, I think, of Terry's wonder-filled eyes that he had intrinsically now being mirrored/'given' back to him through his choices to care for them and see things clearly by reflecting Aaron and Sam in his glasses. Chef's kiss