#and finnegrin's giant crab

[kradogsrats]

so I'd assumed the reason there wasn't any naval warfare to speak of between Xadia and the human kingdoms for a thousand years was that the Spinning Sea prevented east/west travel in the south Charybdis-style and the Frozen Sea prevented it in the north The Terror-style, but s5 shows that apparently??? they've been able to just sail around the Spinning Sea???? all along??????

anyway I was thinking about that and piracy and was suddenly like "wait a minute, none of these fucking ships have any cannons, what the Disney-ass fuck???" and it honest to god took me a solid five minutes to remember that there's probably still a generation or two between now and someone in Katolis inventing gunpowder and causing everyone to have a bad time

#anyway xadian naval combat for piracy is probably mostly sky and ocean magic so #and finnegrin's giant crab #but yeah makes sense why a lot of skywing elves would bother to become sailors i guess

[baked-hylian]

why does each new season give me interesting crumbs in between annoying writing choices?

I finally watched the new season of tdp (didn't even know it was out) and I gotta say whatever writers left should come back please

episode one was extremely stale, maybe it's largely because I don't like how they've been writing Rayla and Callum's relationship, but it felt so forced and unnecessary of an episode all to force a "I trust her unconditionally" type of plot that doesn't even work with the information she's been hiding from Callum. Like why even hide what happened to her parents and Runaan? By now everyone is mostly aware of why the Moonshadow elves put the hit on Harrow, Rayla has been forgiven for her part in it. What purpose did that serve to the narrative other than to force the unconditional trust point that episode. A point that could have been done using the pirate town and her potentially having an arrest warrant from there, causing friction between the humans that still don't trust elves and Callum who doesn't ask her about the warrant, merely trusts that there is a good reason for it. I did really like Domina Profundis' design from the episode and I am still salty about the crap with the elf and human camp from the previous season and had to be reminded of it when Karim appeared.

episode two was better because of Claudia and Terry. Terry is great for her, love him for that, but I do dislike how much he shifts the tone during Claudia's scene considering she seems to be either being set up to stay a permanent enemy or perhaps episode nine will be her rock bottom before taking a different path. Also love all the shit going on in Viren's mind palace, poor guy needs a break.

episode three was interesting. I like the slow set up with Karim working towards taking back the kingdom via his first follower. I also really enjoyed the scenes with Amaya but it's Amaya and really hard not to like her. it does seem like tone is a difficult thing for the series to balance, and even by episode three it felt like whiplash at times between implied horrible thing and poop jokes.

episode four was probably the best of the first half of the season. It was so obvious that the book drop was going to be used as a makeshift fortress to keep out the corrupted banthers. However the episode just got laughable when the library became overrun with them. Would have been nice and cool of them to turn it into more of a zombie movie-esque situation and have corrupted elves and other animals appear, maybe even a dragon. also a little confused on how fast the corruption is supposed to work but hey, for plot reasons we need Zubeia to not become completely infected instantly, instead draw it out for several days/episodes for drama (same as the drama of whether or not Amaya and Corvus lived)

episode five was extremely predictable. Of course the first old elf ocean mage that the group meets is the one they need. We can't make this journey too complicated and heaven forbid that we take a moment to do anything, but maybe I'm still salty from the previous episode cause it seemed pretty far fetched that Zubeia couldn't just annihilate the corrupted banthers with ease and instead had to abandon Amaya and Corvus, because.... Amaya yelled for the first time on screen? BUT it did introduce my new favourite bad bitch Kim'dael, a bloodmoon shadow elf with some very interesting lore that I would have loved to see hinted at more when we were first visiting their forest.

episode six by far was one of my favourites introducing Captain Finnegrin but alas, all good things must come to an end because by episode eight he's dealt with like he was a stereotypical bully in a high school movie instead of a fearsome pirate captain.

episode seven was most interesting at two points. Janai being kidnapped by Kim'dael and the reveal of Finnegrin's ship being a giant hermit crab with a ship built around it. That was pretty sick, along with Callum literally stealing the wind from Finnegrin's ship prior to the crab reveal.

episode eight gets disappointing though with the way everything wrapped up with Finnegrin. I think I was hoping too much for that little thread of Finnegrin wanting to kill the ocean arch dragon due to wanting revenge for his first crab ship being killed by her. Really interesting, especially when he finally got the info he wanted from Callum about dark magic strong enough to kill an arch dragon. I thought it'd be really cool to see him return again, maybe even united with other antagonists at some point. BUT nope. Instead Soren uses the power of being a chill dude to convince Elmer he deserves to be treated better, and it worked somehow. Idk you'd figure a man who has been pirating over 40+ would maybe have had one or two actually loyal crew and not a bunch of essentially slaves. Seriously those kids would have been so fucked if Finnegrin had had some truly loyal men.

and lastly episode nine. Just poor Claudia, she really deserves the support she gets from Terry. Girl just wants to keep her family together. Was NOT expecting her to get her leg cut off in the confrontation, hopefully that sticks and she does some funky dark magic prosthetic for it. However the episode has left me wondering if they'll actually straight up kill Viran and use that to drive Claudia completely to the dark side, blaming Katolis and elves and dragons alike for getting in the way of her protecting her family, or will Viren live and try to walk Claudia back from the darkness? As it stands, I can totally see Aaravos forcing the dark magic spell to make Viren's resurrection permanent, but I do wonder if that was the only reason he created their freaky moth son or if there is more to that still.

#First couple of episodes I kept asking myself if I was gonna drop it #as the previous season and the sunfire elf camp actually pissed me off so much as it just was so stupid #but I made it through #because almost all the adult characters have at least one interesting thing going on still #but the kids (sans Claudia) are just getting a little boring #there was the moment in episode eight for Callum that was really good #with him breaking and giving Finnegrin the spell recipe #but I'm sorry Ezran is just boring #Rayla isn't horrible but certain scenarios with her just feel like a first draft #the whole thing with naming the baitlings was kinda meh (mainly cause I think all the names suck) #Soren wasn't too bad this season but it feels like he's hit a wall in his character arc with nowhere to go until he's reunited with his fam #I'm mildly salty about what age dragons finally start talking and why only select ones seem capable #(perhaps it's mentioned in a previous season and I forgot) #anyways I'll probably keep up with the series until the end #providing s6 doesn't dip even lower in writing for me