Netflix's The Dragon Prince

How so? It seems like it addresses several of the questions/complaints regarding the situation in the first place.

Because "the humans genocided a sapient race for magical power" is a lot harsher and makes for a far more justifiable response than the previous notion of them killing various magical creatures to use dark magic and getting exiled for that. When we get the flashback in the show of the old human who went against Sol Regem, he's a lot less sympathetic if he actually murdered people for his power rather than harvesting wildlife. There's an interesting thread of whether dark magic is inherently evil and morally corrupting or if it's just that humans abused the natural resources and killed rare creatures indiscriminately for it, as well as the angle of whether elves and dragons are just self-righteous in their condemnation since humans have no inherent magic of their own. But "there was this super awesome magical race that gave humans magic out of the goodness of their heart and got killed to the last cause humans are bastards" just takes all that potential nuance and flushes it down the drain, as the show seems to be increasingly fond of doing.

Eh, I think the dark grey on dark grey works a lot better with "The elves and dragons tried to answer genocide with genocide". They've said unforgivable things have happened on both sides, this makes that much more believable.

I have to agree that this feels worse for the setup. I preferred how it seemed prior as it gave more ways to judge the situation and more open to interpretation and exploration. This is just "everybody is assholes", which bores me.

Edited by Prime_of_Perfection on May 28th 2020 at 4:39:45 AM

Considering there was a Dragon King between the two we know, it's possible Ziard's time they hadn't hunted down most of the Unicorns, as Sol Regem targeted just him to demand only him to stop using Dark Magic, and whoever followed in pracitcing got gradually worse as they only viewed other beings as just resources for power, which Viren and Claudia do.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on May 28th 2020 at 1:42:10 AM

It feels like a retcon done specifically to mitigate an unintended reaction (the elves suck) but doesn’t fit the setting and makes it harder to like anyone.

How does it not fit the setting?

It does explain why despite being protective of the borders the Dragons don't engage in the racism Sol Regen(who earned infamy for it) since while it wasn't perfect, exile is still a far better alternative to a race that committed genocide than answering with Genocide like the Elves wanted.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on May 28th 2020 at 1:41:54 AM

Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but this feels like a hasty retcon made to address the Unfortunate Implications of their worldbuilding by way of making one of the parties in the backstory way bigger assholes than we'd been led to believe.

I think a large part of what makes the new backstory so unpalatable is that we're only getting it now, when it feels like this is something we should've known from the start. It's like one of those plot twists that amount to "Actually this guy you were rooting for was just pretending to be good! Bet you feel silly for rooting for him this whole time!" except it feels even worse because this info came from a source outside the narrative we've been following.

I do agree with the theory that this was a retcon in response to the lack of the disdain they expected audiences to have towards dark magic. They probably felt that they needed a shocker to drive home how bad dark magic is.

And I definitely see why they would need to do that, if the narrative they want to build is incompatible with the audience's perception of good and evil in the world of the show. It just feels cheap to do it this way, IMO.

I mean we keep getting the rug pulled out from us for this in general. Before last season we though the Dark Mage in the opening was a bag of dicks who deserved a roasting by Sol Regnum.

As of yet I think there is a good way to use Dark Magic and that at times you would be morally justified but its still a dangerous line that can lead to dehumanization and over-consumption which had been glossed over as of yet and needed that anvil drop to be frank.

Edited by lycropath on May 28th 2020 at 5:03:03 AM

Oh, no, I totally agree that they were way too soft on dark magic within the show. For example, I think they intended for Claudia's sacrifice of the deer to be her "crossing the line" moment, but if real-world scientists could harvest real-world deer organs to instantly and completely heal quadruplegia, how many people would be against it?

Honestly, I think the biggest "mistake" the writers made in presenting dark magic was in giving it constructive uses. In addition to combat, dark magic is also used for healing, for farming and feeding, and for other practical purposes that don't feel inherently wasteful. If they had locked dark magic to being something that can only be used for destruction and trickery, that might have been an easier sell.

Ironically, I'm pretty sure that Moon magic and the one Sky magic wing spell are the only other types of magic that have been used non-destructively on screen. The vast majority of natural magic we've seen has been some form of attack or offensive enchantment, while dark magic has shown a much better mix of combat and utility spells, from what I can recall.

Frankly, between the deer and the golem the messaging around dark magic is very muddied and I'm not sure they intended it. Not to sound like an edgelord, but if tomorrow the news said that a way to cure quadriplegics was found but it used live fawns as components? It'd be damn near a moral obligation to set up farms and harvest those cute little deer till the does don't-come-home.

And knowing people, they'd hunt them to extinction in a week.

So, you are saying we need a mass sacrifice?

Edited by Blueace on May 28th 2020 at 9:16:46 AM

We already hunt deer. If anything we're getting more bang for our buck for something people were doing anyway.

Some corporation would patent it and force people to only buy their products so they can't sell it.

This has happened in real life, with of course, studying genes that cause cancer and located which ones do.

We sometimes hunt deer for food or sport but for the most part we don't overhunt them because we can get those things from other sources but if we figured out how to make somekind of panacea out of them then mass slaughter and exploitation would quickly become a problem.

I saw the sacrifice of the deer as a wonderful expression of love for her brother.

But yes, I'm all on Team Dark Magic and Elves Are Bastards.

You did read the part about the unicorn genocide, right?

Edited by Kaiseror on May 28th 2020 at 9:14:24 AM

I don't think the deer is a crossing the line moment for Claudia, although it was a very powerful moment for her character that's later echoed with bringing Viren back (Using what looks like a person for spellfood!) showing her doing something that is a lot less grey for a much worse person.

Dark magic still seems like a grey area to me to be treated with caution, but I think its much better now that they are showing the dehumanizing aspects of it that where only brushed upon in the show and giving the elves a better reason to be wary rather then a xenophobic "If nature wanted you to have magic you'd be born with it." sort of mindset.

Edited by lycropath on May 28th 2020 at 7:23:34 AM

It shows how those with power dehumanize others. The Elves did it, Sol Regem did it, and those who practice Dark Magic do it too, and especially in the latter case everything including humans are spellfood. Like say the breath of a dying woman being used for something she would never have wanted in that situation: Revenge.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that dying breath thing, that was really fucked up!

The Unicorn Genocide isn't canon to the show, unless it is actually shown in the show. It's only canon to the books which I assume most people here haven't read.

I mean its an overarching multi-media franchise that is unlikely to actually continue in its original format. We can ignore it but people are also free to discuss it and take it as a continuation and expansions of the story at face value as well.

Speaking of such, are there any news on the video game that's supposed to be connected to the series? I remember that being a huge part of the Wonderstorm Studio announcement.

Edited by GamerSlyRatchet on May 28th 2020 at 8:07:51 AM