(Drop a 🏳️🌈 in my inbox and I’ll respond with a queer media recommendation!)
Everybody who follows me already knows that The Dragon Prince is my favorite TV show in the whole world. Created for Netflix by Aaron Ehasz (an alumnus of Avatar: the Last Airbender) and Justin Richmond, it's an epic fantasy series that kicks off with a trio of plucky protagonists who are determined to return an egg kidnapped from the dragon queen by a dark mage, because the kidnapping of the dragon prince (hey! the title!) puts the entire world at risk of war.
One of the fundamental themes is exploring the cycle of violence and abuse, and how that cycle can only be broken when people commit to it wholeheartedly. It also shows that, even when someone wants to break the cycle, there are others who are invested in continuing it, and peace takes incredible and painful work.
The worldbuilding is phenomenal, the character and creature design is incredible, the story is gripping, and the writing is...*chef's kiss.* Every season is better than the last, and the increase in animation quality across the years is unreal. Season six was utterly ethereal.
Phase one of the series spanned seasons one to three, and we are currently in the final stretch of arc two ("Mystery of Aaravos"), encompassing seasons four to seven. Season six just dropped, and according to the official Instagram account, it's been #1 on Netflix for the past five days! That's really great news, because they're trying really hard to get greenlit for arc three--so now is a really, really great time to get into the show! You want to do it, you want to do it so bad. Use the hashtags #TheDragonPrince, #ContinueTheSaga, and #GiveUsTheSaga if you do! Please, for the love of fuck! 😭😭😭
Currently there are six seasons of the tv show, several books (including novelizations, original comics, and art book, and in-universe guides), a tabletop roleplaying game, a board game, and a brand-new video game that launched this week. This world is huge, and it's so fun to explore!
Here's the trailer for season one of the show:
Here's a trailer for the most recent season, for those who saw the early seasons but didn't keep up:
And here's the trailer for the mobile game:
As far as why I'm recommending it as a queer show, there are so many queer characters. The show prompted some griping early on because it had a pair of tragically dead lesbian queens, but in the seasons since, they've introduced a gloriously alive lesbian battle couple who get married on-screen, a married pair of gay men, three different trans characters (one of whom joins the main cast in season 4 and remains a major character), and a general lovely air of casual queerness in a high fantasy setting. The tabletop roleplaying game has multiple canon queer characters, too, and the show's cast and crew have made it clear that they have queer people among them, they fully support queer people in the fandom, and they want to include queerness in their world. It's awesome.
(And I'm still sticking with "when one man looks at another man and says 'our baby was so cute,' that's canon enough for me." So there's some fantastic queer villainy that's, like, the perfect icing on the cake for me personally. The Dragon Prince: for all your unholy dark magic mpreg bug baby needs!)
Also, this show has my poorest, saddest, littlest, wettest meow-meow babygirl of all fucking time: Lord Viren, (former) High Mage of Katolis, the most turbo-divorced man in all existence. If you follow me, you've seen that motherfucker. You know who he is. You have seen his sad miserable little face. You know who I am and what I'm here for. This paragraph is not a surprise to you. You know.
Here's a picture of me in Viren cosplay, as both a shameless cosplay self-promo and a reiteration that, no, seriously, this is my favorite TV show ever: