As my following grows and as I meet more and more people who have rats, had rats, know someone who has/had rats, and love rats...

increasingly I wonder if/when a day will come... a day that I'll express rat enjoyment to someone and they'll enthusiastically ask me if I've heard of This Funnie Little Rodent Blog they like, figuring I may already know it or will enjoy it if not...

and it's.. my blog... and then I have to come out as popular Rat Tumblr blogger that they follow and now know IRL.......

Wait, you hate Aaravos!? What, why?? Saying he's boring..can you explain? Because to me he and Viren are pretty much the only interesting characters. :'D Like elf who possibly taught people to use dark magic, dissecting his fellow-elfs because he thought they were too high and mighty, that's boring? (Ok, show hasn't outright said some of these things, but writings on their website have very much hinted that.) I'm not hating at all, I just want to understand your opinion in this. :D

oh yeah no i get what you mean, no hate gotten here!

the first thing to know about me hating aaravos is that it’s exaggerated for what is intended to be comedic effect. sometimes i like to be a Hater, and one of the best things to be a Hater about is fictional characters, because nobody is actually hurt if you just really hate a fictional thing.

but anyways, aaravos i think makes me kind of annoyed for a few reasons, the main reason is just his character archetype--you know, the chessmaster ancient being who is a secret for some reason. the illuminati guys. there’s nothing inherently wrong with this trope, but it’s super easy to do mess up, and i’m always extremely skeptical of the value that such a character brings to a story.

first,  it relies on you “buying into” the story. you have to trust that the mystery and such will be worth it--and i have no such trust in the writers of the dragon prince. 

second, it requires that the character is woven in such a way to meaningfully interact with the plot/story, so that there are real mysteries to uncover. aaravos does a lot of shady stuff, but simply making a character do powerful and shady stuff is super easy; what they have to do is tie into the existing themes and characters. aaravos is supposed to be super convincing, but viren trusts him for... not very good reasons. aside from a few throwaway references, he’s not well-integrated into the show proper and it doesn’t really feel like he’s sitting on anything particularly connected to other things the characters care about--he never says anything like “oh well you know, i helped the humans” or anything to convince viren even though it would make complete sense for him to do so. he just kind of sits there, smirks, and does things like atomizing people, which feels dissonant from the magic system rather than anything that makes me feel wonder. he doesn’t even really have a meaningful relationship with viren--all he does is smirk ominously, and it feels like smoke and mirrors. (that is, unless you know supplementary material--i always try to stay away from that or try to integrate supplementary material with scenes already in the show.)

third is what i’ve alluded to above: i am not sure that the dragon prince would be a better story with aaravos in it anyways. does a complex war that goes back thousands of years really *need* a master manipulator that is so prominent so quickly? apparently, yes, because the writers always fail to do interesting things with the 1000-year-old conflict. but there are plenty of plots here that he can seed himself in without becoming the main driver or focus--organically building up interest instead of signposting “look!!!! what a big deal!!!! WHAT A MYSTERY!!!!” it’s just very clumsy to me.

now, from a backstory perspective, i think he can be an interesting figure and i think he is interesting in concept given what we get in the supplementary material--with solid writing i can see him having roughly a similar relationship to viren as he does now (just without the shit-eating “conQuER xADiA????” stuff that makes me not take him very seriously). viren is a character who is not good at being a leader and needs someone to play off of, and aaravos is a leader-type. makes sense and there are a lot of places you can go with that. it’s mostly just his execution

these are the writing-related reasons as to why i find aaravos to be boring--it’s mostly that i don’t buy into him rather than his concept being bad. he feels very smoke and mirrors and very “written-in” and as a result i think i have less patience for his quips and mannerisms, which are more grating to me than anything else, and that becomes multiplied with how prominent he is. as with all things, i could always be wrong and aaravos might surprise me. i hope that i have answered this question to your satisfaction.