it feels like chasing shadows in the night, have i been thrown away?
precious one, you have abandoned me
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You know what absolutely kills me about this? Sand doesn't even look surprised. He isn't teary or wide-eyed. It's a look of pure disappointment. The kind that says he knew this would happen from the start, and he's utterly powerless to stop it.
While seeing Sand breaking down in tears would have been devastating, there's something very achy about this reaction. It's hard to put into words.
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im really not a fan of Rick's recent trend of recycling bits of his writing that got a good reaction the first time and acting as if that's a valid substitute for. actually bothering to write something original a second time around. It's clearly just there as a callback and nothing more.
It's "Nico's rage exploded" and "Percy's rage exploded" with the exact same paragraph formatting. It's CoTG having titles like "My Singing Makes Things Worse, and Everyone Is Totally Shocked" (reference to TLO, when Percy says he thinks his singing would cause an avalanche) or "Pretty Much the Best Good-Night Kiss Ever" (reference to TLO "Pretty much the best underwater kiss of all time") or any other number of near word-for-word references to the first series. It's Nico calling Percy "seaweed brain" in Un Natale Mezzosangue (when Percy says in TTC that anybody but Annabeth calling him that is a major offense). It's Nico and Will falling into Tartarus in TSATS word-for-word referencing Percy and Annabeth in House of Hades, despite it not making any sense for their characters (and otherwise being written as Percabeth 2™). It's the show making huge changes but keeping random "fan-favorite references" (mostly overusing "seaweed brain" and "wise girl" and emphasizing percabeth) only because they're popular in-jokes and considering that a faithful enough adaptation to market it heavily as such. It's lazy writing.
And it's a disservice to the series and to the audience, because it clearly shows Rick doesn't have original ideas anymore (though given all his writing is heavily derivative to begin with, it begs the question how much was original in the first place and how much he has difficulty when he doesn't have a structured mythological plot to work from) and that there is an expectation that the audience will just sit down and accept that behavior hook-line-and-sinker. Everything recently is clearly such lip-service to the audience, either in retcons that are overt speaking-to-camera acknowledgements of things he's been criticized on or wink-wink-nudge-nudges of community in-jokes that have no business in the actual text (see: over-use of ship names in canon). Especially since Rick tends to be about 5 years behind on the fandom uptake. It's just so disappointing to see.
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I think something that Dragons Rising is doing so so well is making the ninja cooler.
I know that sounds weird. But listen. The ninja aren't the main characters anymore! Wanna know who the main characters are? Arin and Sora. Two 15 year olds. Two kids, one of which was raised learning about the ninja and how cool they are.
And the thing is, they are cool! But in the older seasons, the ones focused on the ninja themselves, we focus on the flaws (because the whole point of their seasons are character development.) We don't see them as cool as they are because the narration is from their point of view. Everything that they do is just day-to-day stuff. And, honestly, we get desensitized to all the things we'd normally think is cool because to them its normal!
I think my first epiphany of this was back in season 2 i think when Jay, who is generally perceived to be the weakest of the ninja, easily judo flips Darreth like its nothing, and we know that guy isn't the lightest of people. I saw that and went "huh." because if it wasn't him interacting with a normal citizen i wouldnt think anything of it. If it was him sparring with lloyd or something id be like "yeah whatever ninja do that." but it wasnt until i saw it from outside the ninja's perspective that it really made me think wow these kids are cool.
And thats exactly what dragons rising is doing. Arin is the main character. Our narrative point of view is coming from his eyes. We focus less on the ninja's flaws and more on what makes them awesome. We are looking at them through an inexperienced, child based, point of view. When seeing Lloyd do fancy sword maneuvers would have been normal because pshaw everyone does that is now really cool because wow you dont see that every day.
Dragons Rising allows us to go huh. These are ninjas that have been training and fighting for more than 10 years together. They are really freaking COOL for that.
So Arin, i'm behind you kid. I get your ninja fandom too.
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