Rayllum Modern!AU

Rayla Season 3 Summary 

I cannot express it enough how excited I am for Through the Moon! Inspired by the Rayla key art sketch released on Twitter and Lindsey Stirling’s Shatter Me. @dragonprinceofficial

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Some more Older Rayllum!

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My Commissions are open!

Callum returns home from one of his visits to Katolis, and finds an elated Rayla AKA I wanted to draw her in a fluffy dress

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My commissions are OPEN

Not so confused...

Rayla:

Also Rayla:

but you know when rayla doesn’t hesitate? when something feels right. 

callum’s influence on her life helps her figure out what the right thing to do is, with more surety (as outside of 1x03, she displays a lot of uncertainty) and therefore takes away her hesitation.

so i’m not surprised that loving him - expressing that love - and being with him is something she doesn’t hesitate too much about, either.

after all, it feels right.

What Callum’s relationships say about him

Callum always seems to gravitate towards people who share the same values and traits as him.

This was clear even back in S1—when he saw Rayla stand up to Runaan to do the right thing,

He decides to stand with her.

So, it’s no wonder that he ends up having traits that line up pretty closely to the girls he ends up falling for. First Claudia, then Rayla.

Initially, I thought that was just some neat attention to detail—Callum isn’t superficial about who he loves or cares about, so he has to feel some kind of connection or “affinity” to that person.

But now, I think there’s more to it than that. I think that, in many ways, Callum’s transition from pining on Claudia to loving Rayla also reflects and parallels his character development. From awkward sheltered prince to powerful mage.

Lemme break it down.

When we first see Claudia, she is so engrossed in her book that she was about to walk into a tree.

She’s described as always having her spellbook nearby (much like Callum has his sketchbook).

Claudia is a magic nerd, adorable awkwardness and all.

Much like a certain step-prince we all know and love, Claudia is pretty eccentric.

When it comes to fighting, Claudia prefers to keep her distance; her spells are long-ranged, and she’ll usually be on the sidelines while Soren does the physical fighting.

She loves magic, mainly for casting spells.

But she’s also capable of having an appreciation of magical things for their own sake.

However, for the most part, she keeps her feelings about magic at an arms-length. Claudia sees magic as largely an academic pursuit, a tool, or an outside resource that you can tap into (provided you know the spells).

For Claudia, magic is about what you can get out of it. Either a spell, or a ritual, or some kind of power just waiting to be unlocked.

Lastly, Claudia is ruthless. Like, really ruthless, willing to do almost anything to achieve a goal, even going through unethical means.

Particularly, she’ll “save” her family members through any means and regardless of how they might feel about what she did.

As a result, it leads her to justify all sorts of terrible actions that she probably would never have considered herself.

Claudia is ruthless pragmatism personified.

During the time that he crushes on Claudia, in S1 and S2, Callum has a lot of traits in common with Claudia.

For starters, he’s fairly bookish himself—the first time we see him, he’s drawing in his sketchbook.

We see him draw many times in the first two seasons, mostly for fun.

Or to calm down.

But even if he has only a few moments, you might see him sketching something—even here, on the Cursed Caldera when Rayla’s gone not five minutes just to check on a sound they heard.

He’s a nerd, just like Claudia—he’s eccentric, awkward, and adorkable (and thankfully, some things never change).

He’s also not action-oriented either, fighting from a safe distance or watching from the sidelines.

But most of all, he shares Claudia’s fascination with magic. Like her, this fascination is primarily with spells and not necessarily with magic as a phenomenon.

Here, while talking with Lujanne, she tells him all sorts of wonderful things about Primal Magic, focusing on how Primal Sources function as part of nature, but he steers the conversation back to what matters to him.

So, while he has an appreciation for magic as a natural marvel, and even though he has a distaste for Claudia’s brand of Dark Magic, he mainly sees Primal Magic as a means to an end.

For him, magic gives him something he can be good at. A way he can feel secure about himself. A way for him to feel right.

But as he learns about the Sky Primal, as he grows to understand the Sky Arcanum, he begins to move away from this.

By the time he wakes up from his coma and connects to the Sky, he no longer sees Primal Magic as just a source of spells and way to discover his self-worth—it becomes something much, much deeper to him.

It’s an experience, an intimate connection he now shares. His Primal Source is no longer an extension of his abilities as a mage, one that he can tap into for a wind or lightning spell. Now, he is an extension of it.

Callum expresses this change with just one line of dialogue.

It just so happens that this change in his way of thinking happened around the time he began to align himself more closely with Rayla. Ultimately, while Callum had already fallen out of love with Claudia by this point, it’s when the Sky Arcanum finally clicks with him that he starts to associate more with Rayla’s traits and values rather than Caludia’s.

The main difference between how Claudia and Rayla see magic is as follows:

For Claudia, magic is a tool, a resource.

But for Rayla, magic is an ambience, a part of everything around them.

Even though she doesn’t have much of the technical understanding of magic that Claudia and Lujanne have, she still knows enough to express how she and the other elves view magic.

Now, it’s not a stretch to say that this isn’t the only thing that Claudia and Rayla don’t see eye to eye on.

Unlike Claudia, Rayla is very action-oriented, using her physical abilities for just about everything.

That’s not even limited to just fighting; here, she gracefully slides across the ice just to catch up with Callum.

Or she’ll climb up a tree to ride one of the giant helicopter seeds down the valley.

Or she’ll lay out some rope and jump off an Ambler.

Claudia has a plan for everything—her bag has a seemingly endless supply of problem-solvers.

But Rayla, instead, relies on her can-do attitude—she won’t second-guess whether she can do something, instead jumping right into the middle of things and figuring out the details on the way down.

Rayla also prefers to be right in the thick of things; if there’s a fight, or someone’s in danger, she’s there.

However, Rayla also places a high value on morals. Even though she’s not above using underhanded means or trickery when necessary (such as tricking Soren and Claudia in 2x03), she very much believes in doing things the right way.

This is why, for instance, Rayla is very angry with Callum when he uses Dark Magic, and it takes quite a bit for her to be able to look past it.

Like, Callum has a spell, one spell, that will save both Rayla and the dragon, literally solving all their problems in one fell swoop, and this is the look she gives him:

Oof.

So, needless to say, in the first two seasons Callum resembles Claudia more than Rayla. He prefers to take a back seat on the action, isn’t all that confident in his physical abilities, and spends most of the time avoiding fights, especially when he doesn’t have a plan.

And, even when he understood that Dark Magic was wrong, he was nevertheless willing to do something unethical to save Rayla regardless of how she felt about it. He shares that ruthless pragmatism with Claudia that Rayla doesn’t.

But once Season 3 rolls around, we see Callum start to move away from Claudia’s way of thinking as he begins to gravitate more toward Rayla’s.

Early on, Rayla shows Callum magic in Xadia. He begins to see magic and the world it inhabits the way Rayla does.

I’ve heard people wonder why Callum doesn’t learn that much magic in S3, and that’s because he’s learning magic less as spells and more as an experience.

And through that experience, not only does Callum learn a great deal about magic in Xadia, he learns about what the elves are fighting to protect. He learns why this kind of world is worth protecting.

And the more he spends in this world, the more we see him come around to Rayla’s way of thinking.

For starters, he’s much more action-oriented in S3—we see him follow Rayla up a tree, ride a difficult-to-tame mount, or climb a 70-foot Ambler’s leg while it’s walking.

I mean, he’s not as good as Rayla at these things…but baby steps.

Even though he may hesitate, he’s much less sure in his abilities than in S1 and S2. He doesn’t insist on taking an easier route. When Rayla gives him her sword, he simply follows her up the tree. He’s showing signs of that similar can-do attitude that Rayla wears on her sleeve.

He also comes around to Rayla’s values—there’s a right way to do things, and the ends do not justify the means.

Unlike in S2, where Callum was willing to use Dark Magic to save Rayla in spite knowing it’s something he shouldn’t be messing with, this season he takes a bit more principled approach.

After they fight over whether Rayla should stay, Callum uses a spell to discover that Rayla’s parents did not abandon the Dragon Egg, and in fact fought till the very end.

And the thing is…that actually gives him a solid argument for why this means Rayla should leave with them. They sacrificed themselves to protect the Dragon Prince, he could say. You should honor their memory by finishing what they started and protect Zym.

He could, just as he did with Dark Magic, use his powers to help save her life, and it wouldn’t even really be that unethical this time.

And yet he doesn’t, because this time he realizes it’s whether he can use magic to fix a problem. He’s not going to use magic to get Rayla to agree with him, or to support his argument for leaving.

Instead, he uses magic entirely for her. He does it to give Rayla the closure she needs, letting see her parents and showing her that they were in fact heroes.

And when she’s at a loss as to what to do next, Callum just gently reminds her it’s ultimately her choice. And he’ll respect that choice, provided she’s making it willingly.

He empowers her, reminding her that she gets to choose who she wants to be, much like he discovered for himself:

This is diametrically opposed to what Claudia would do in this situation. We’ve seen her take the Primal Energy from a living creature to cure her brother, even when he’s accepted his situation. She does something similar, or perhaps even worse, to save her father.

Claudia would use magic to save people through any means, even if those people might disapprove.

Callum used to think this way, but now he doesn’t, using his magic instead to empower the people around him, such as Rayla.

All of this shows just how much he’s changed. How much she has changed him.

As a last point, I’ve noticed something else that had changed in Callum, though it’s a lot more subtle. Before I mentioned that Callum would always draw in his sketchbook, largely for his own enjoyment.

Yet in S3, we don’t see any of that.

Sure, he carries his sketchbook around with him at all times, even during the Battle of the Storm Spire for some reason!

(like, did you think you’d have time to sketch while people are fighting and dying, Callum what are you even—)

But even when keeping the sketchbook around, we don’t see Callum drawing recreationally anymore—the one time he draws in it, he does it specifically for Rayla, both proving that he saw them in his spell, and giving her a change to see her parents’ faces again.

The reason for this is because he’s become far more preoccupied with the world that Rayla introduced him too. He’s not sitting down to draw what he sees in Xadia. He’s going to experience it himself.

This all culminates in one final moment in S3:

Callum lays down his sketchbook one final time.

And leaps off the pinnacle to save Rayla.

After this moment, we never see the sketchbook around him again.

I mean, sure, I definitely think we’ll see him drawing again in S4, but the sketchbook is no longer inseparable from Callum. The symbolism here is clear—Callum has been transformed.

And just to drive the symbolism even further, his blue jacket is torn to shreds, leaving Callum with just his sleeveless red shirt, scarf, and fingerless gloves. Not to get too bogged down into color motifs here, but this change was big, since red is typically more associated with “action” while blue with “calmness.”

But symbolism aside, he looks less like a young Merlin and more like a young Goku.

He’s no longer someone who will wait on the sidelines hoping everything works out. Callum is now someone who will jump right into thick of things, against all odds and with a determination to save the day himself.

In short, he’s become someone like Rayla now.

Something I just absolutely love about S3 is the sheer amount of faith Rayla has in Callum to keep up with her through Xadia.

We’ve seen Rayla perform incredible physical feats, whether leaping from treetop to branch to treetop, or somersaulting between guards, or effortlessly jumping across rooftops.

Callum, on the other hand, is fairly clumsy, almost tripping over himself when trying to dance outside the Silvergrove. Even when he’s confident about his ability to do magic, he’s pretty insecure about his physical abilities. He’s not convinced he can do much else beyond casting spells.

Yet Rayla sees right through this, because she fully expects Callum to keep up with her.

Whether its climbing a tree:

Or an Ambler:

She doesn’t even bother to give him some instructions or slow down for him. She just hands him a blade or grabs his hand, and then it’s “see ya at the top, loud mage.”

And the crazy thing is that because Rayla has so much faith in him, he goes ahead and does it.

He’s never done any of this before, and while he’s not as good as Rayla at this sort of thing, he still keeps up with her. All without any instruction. Just as Rayla expected he would.

It all just shows how Rayla’s confidence and just being around Rayla has helped him. He’s probably never been around someone this physically capable with this amount of faith that he can do the same things.

It also just helps show just how much of Callum’s feeling inadequate is just in his head. He’s perfectly able to do many of the same feats Rayla does–and the longer he hangs around Rayla, the more of her influence rubs off on him.

Who knows where they’ll be after the timeskip in S4?

Rayla’s Choice—The Making of a Dragon Guard

“Because Rayla is a hero.”

According to Callum, Rayla is a hero because she is selfless, strong, and caring. For these reasons, she will always do what is right.

Rayla is incredibly decisive. When it comes to doing the right thing, she never hesitates.

She comes to Katolis with Runaan and his team of assassins, resolved to kill the King and the Crown Prince to avenge the Dragon Prince.

But when she discovers that the Dragon Prince is alive, she immediately switches sides.

Even defending the princes from her own father figure. Even though she knew he’d probably kill her.

Rayla also doesn’t hesitate to save people, even when it’s clear she’d rather not.

(Yes, Bait’s a person. You can’t change my mind.)

But most of the time, she doesn’t even recognize these acts as heroic and is surprised when others (read: Callum) do.

Rayla also suffers from deep-seated insecurities about her self-worth.

Much of this comes from her anger and guilt over her parents:

So, it’s interesting to me that, when Rayla finds out her parents weren’t cowards.

When she finds out that they didn’t run, and were in fact heroes who fought to the very end.

When she finds out that the reason they even have a Dragon Prince to return home was because of her mother’s quick thinking…

…Rayla doesn’t know what to do next.

I always found this moment really interesting, as though Rayla finding out her parents were heroic wasn’t inspirational, but confusing.

Up to that point, much of Rayla’s decisiveness was driven by her good-naturedness as well as a reaction to her parents’ perceived wrongdoing.

So, when that wrongdoing turned out to never had happened, it shakes up what had been motivating her up to that point.

She doesn’t see her actions as heroic because she doesn’t see herself as a hero. She sees herself as someone looking for redemption.

Or making up for her parents’ alleged betrayal.

As a result, when Rayla succeeds in saving others or generally doing the right thing, she just thinks she’s doing what she’s supposed to be doing.

When she doesn’t, she thinks it’s because she’s worthless, or a failure.

She’s still heroic regardless of what’s motivating her, but her actions have a touch of tragedy to them—she doesn’t think she has a choice in any of this. Rayla feels like she’s being driven by external forces beyond her control. She can’t take back her parents’ actions, so she’s constantly trying to make up for them.

In this way, when Callum says that she’s letting her parents drag her down, while he’s being an asshole about it, he’s pretty much spot on. Rayla has to keep risking her life for others because of this misplaced sense of guilt that she can’t quite shake.

So when it turns out that her parents were actually never traitors to begin with, she’s at a loss as to what she should do.

And all Callum tells her is:

And this is where she becomes even more spectacular, because everything after this moment is a choice Rayla knowingly makes of her own free will.

She decides to stay in the Spire and protect Zym.

Not because she’s making up for past mistakes. Not because it’s what her parents would want her to do. But because she’s choosing to do what’s right and protect the Dragon Prince.

This probably isn’t a choice she would have made in the past. In all three seasons, we see that Rayla is the one who goes and fights while Callum and/or Ezran stay to watch over Zym.

She prefers to be in the middle of the action. But here, the roles are reversed. Rayla will stay and watch over Zym while Callum and Ezran fight at the Battle of the Storm Spire. The reason she chooses to be Zym’s protector is because, after three seasons, she realizes that this is what feels right for her.

When all the external factors pushing her along are taken away, Rayla’s true nature is revealed by the choices she makes. And she chooses to be a protector.

Unlike the Guard members who fled, Rayla decides to stand her ground and protect Zym. Even if she’s not as experienced as the original Dragon Guard members, and Viren is far superior to her in power, she’s not going to flee.

She will fight.

And she will save Zym, even if she has to potentially sacrifice herself to do it.

Because of this, she earns her title as “the Last Dragon Guard.” She didn’t choose to run away, like the other Dragon Guard members.

She made these choices, not because she felt guilty or needing redemption, but:

“Because Rayla is a hero.”

This is amazing. I love this so much! Especially the part where she starts making her own choices for her own reasons again, and the first thing she decides is to defend Zym. That leads directly to her choosing to kill for her own reasons, too, which she does with her hood down.

I suddenly wonder how much of Rayla’s training she intended to lead to assassinry and how much she was just training to take after her birth parents. Ain’t no Dragonguard training centers in the Silvergrove, only assassin ones. She always wanted to fight. And she did look up to Runaan. But if she only demanded to be on his mission to avenge her parents’ honor, would she ever have become an assassin at all if they’d never gone missing?

some of my favourite little rayllum things are, in no particular order:

1) how callum is always endeared by rayla’s bad moods. when she gets huffy or frustrated, instead of being annoyed by her frustration, callum is usually fond and just lets her get it out of her system. and this is usually in instances where he’s not the one she’s annoyed at, either. 

2) how rayla never diminishes him. even when callum doesn’t think he’s worth anything, rayla does. although he annoys her a little with his loud exclamations of “i’m a mage!” rayla doesn’t detract what she called him in a snarky or cruel manner. she simply chides him while also reaffirming the new thing he’s excited about: “nobody likes a loud mage.” we see her do this again in 1x04, where callum says he was never any good at being a prince, rayla still uses his title: “hey sad prince,” before agreeing to his request to go get his cube. and yeah she maybe teases him a little, but both encounters leave him looking after her like this:

3) all the little ways callum is considerate of her and how much he tries. he tries to cheer her up with two jokes in 1x05, helps her up, and pushes the boat away. he worries about her all throughout 1x04 and 1x07, thinks about her wrist binding when she doesn’t, offers to walk around an ocean/sea, finds a sea captain that she won’t have to hide herself from. he calls her out but never tears her down and always accepts her with open arms and gets so excited whenever he’s able to help her. he always gives her the most that he can and feels terrible whenever he can’t give her everything (particularly of her trust) before he inevitably does anyway. this boy flat out adores her and loves just being around her.

4) how rayla, regardless of her own internal sense of better judgment and reservation, can never actually say no to callum for anything. callum wants to go get his cube? he wants to ask five questions in an attempt to take her mind off things? stay an extra day at lujanne’s? try and find an initial truce with soren and claudia? go out into the storm? rayla may not like it, but she’ll go along with it. sometimes she’ll stand her ground about a choice, like taking tougher terrain, but when callum actually asks for something, particularly something that functions like a favour? rayla can’t say no to those eyes.

i can’t lose you like this :: rayla’s fears and callum

Rayla is a character with a complicated relationship to fear. Most of them stems from her upbringing as a Moonshadow assassin, and some likely from her inherent personality. She isn’t scared by many things and does her best to be dutiful. For the most part, she’s able to overcome her fear… but she doesn’t see such as noteworthy, nor does she should fear as anything other than a weakness… to an extent.

Fear is introduced alongside each of the trio, which I’ve talked about in greater detail here, but with Rayla, she’s set apart from the boys. Callum is reassuring a startled Ezran in the face of the storm, but Rayla instead is presented as someone to fear, at least from the point of view of the fleeing guard. She’s not humanized until we see her face, which is also the moment that her target’s humanity gets too much to bear.

Rayla, later in 1x08, reflects that Marcos’s fear, and personhood, shouldn’t have mattered to her, mirroring how Runaan chided her in 1x01.

Fear, to Rayla, is weakness. Something to normally suppress and bury, both her own and of other’s. But over the course of Book One and Two, her relationship to fear changes radically, and there’s one main reason for those changes: Callum. 

Rayla has four main fears, and in each of them, Callum plays a crucial part. With her fear of water, Callum is what pushes her into having to put up with it in 1x05. Then, once her bond to him and Ezran grows, she worries they’ll hate her if they know the truth (but more on that later, because that extends specifically with Callum into S2). Expanding upon not wanting the boys to hate her, Rayla is afraid of hurting Callum in S2. Finally, from 2x04 and then 2x07 onwards, Rayla is afraid of losing him, flat out. But again, I’ll get to why I’ve given the meta the title I did later on. 

Most of these fears, as well, and her lack of acknowledging them stems from a fear of being vulnerable, which is really just being scared of being ‘weak’ in a way others may reject you for. 

But for now, let’s break down each of these fears as we go.

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I’m going to get flak for this, but I need to say it, because I have a lot of problems with it. Rayla’s decision to help the dragon in Season 2, while brave, noble, and in line with her character, is also completely misguided, irresponsible, and somewhat out of character at the same time.

Rayla says it’s the right thing to do, and it’s the right thing for her to do. That part is completely fine and works with her character, she lays out her motivation clearly and it makes sense. She’s always had a strong sense of right and wrong and has been pretty confident with her decision making in that sense, in spite of someone like Runaan’s criticism. However, the part that really bothers me is the fact that Callum brings up an equally good point, it’s always been Rayla saying how they need to focus on the mission. She insisted on leaving the Moon Nexus after a couple of days, reluctantly relenting to stay for an extra day (which turned into two, but the point still stands), she dealt with the fact that they would have to go by sea to try and get to Xadia quicker, overall, she’s been very goal oriented. This is the part that I’m having trouble reconciling with her motivation to do what she thinks is right, because it’s at odds with other aspects of her character.

The other problem that’s never addressed…she tells Callum and Ezran that, if she doesn’t come back, they can get Zym to his mother. Some slight issues with that Rayla, how exactly do you expect them to do that? You briefly mentioned the Moonstone Path to Callum, but never got into specificities regarding it, you just said it exists. You never told him where it was, or how it works. This was definitely not something that was relayed off screen because, a couple episodes later, Rayla explains it to him. So if you didn’t come back, just how exactly were Callum and Ezran supposed to figure it out? And let’s say that, by some miracle, they did, what then? They don’t know where the Dragon Queen’s lair is, they don’t know how to navigate through Xadia, and they can’t defend themselves in a land that is incredibly hostile to humans if they’re discovered. Just what were you expecting them to do if they got into Xadia, walk up to the nearest elf and say “Excuse me, can you give me the directions to the lair of the Dragon Queen?” like a bunch of tourists?

Generally speaking, the writing in the show is good, and Rayla is easily my favorite character in the series. But this is such an egregious mistake in the writing and feels like it’s just done to set up conflict. 

I think the main crux of it is that Rayla is both an extremely rational (pragmatic) person and a highly emotional one. Is she thinking everything through rationally? Not really. It’s a feeling, one that she can’t ignore, much like how she had to turn on Runaan really in a matter of seconds to defend the boys. We’ve also seen Rayla put that sense of what’s right over the mission early on in 1x03 with offering to go back into the tower with Callum, and just like in 2x07, he doesn’t have the same instinctive impulse. After all, if they’d gone up to the tower, it easily would’ve been a disaster, and likely left each of them dead in the conflict and Ezran, the Egg, and Bait on their own, and Rayla knew all that on some level, yet she offered anyway because of the “I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t” that exists as part of her. 

Rayla thinking fast and emotionally isn’t a mark against her. Her response to Callum’s concerns shows remarkable maturity of stating that this doesn’t have to be his choice. And Callum, in many ways, can be just as dedicated to the mission as her, hence why he does stay on track in this scenario (”Then we need to get to that tree, even if it takes all night,” “Rayla’s right. We can’t go home yet. The mission is too important”). The only times he isn’t 100% focused on it is when it comes to convenient, on the way detours related to his magic (ie. 1x04 with the Lodge and the Cube being something they’d have to pass anyway, Lujanne’s feels safe and they’ve already been there for two days, in 2x04 they’re caught in the storm no matter what, etc.) or slowing their progress because he’s putting her first (pushing the boat away for her comfort in 1x05, offering to go around the sea in 2x04, going after her in the above scenario). 

She has a streak of brave and noble and stupid in her (hello, Gryffindor) that doesn’t always bow down to reason. She’s focused on their mission and with keeping the boys on track, but she also always gives into whatever detour Callum wants because there’s that emotional base just as much and she’s fond of him. She’s also willing to sometimes put her comfort/desires ahead of the mission/the boys without being willing to tell them why, either (ie. not wanting to take the boat at all and having to be cornered into it, insisting in taking tougher aka slower terrain). 

Rayla is a character who both has a strong sense of the right thing to do, but struggles with carrying it out immensely, and this is something Callum calls her out on in 1x02: “Why? You know this is wrong” and all she can do is deflect, “An assassin doesn’t decide right and wrong. Only life and death.” 

As for her not telling them about the Moonstone Path, that’s always something that’s given me pause, too, but again: this decision is made and carried out in a matter of minutes. That’s not to knock it, but it makes sense that she would even have the time to be thinking everything through. 

Rayla’s development in this scene, and that she sees how the dragon fits into a cycle of violence, is largely because of Callum, and once he sees that too, he immediately wants to go with her as well: “You’re right. If we’re really going to change things, we can’t just watch while humans and Xadia keep hurting each other. But how do I take a stand? Believe me, I want to go down there with you and be the heroes who stop all the fighting.” But unlike Rayla, he feels completely incapable of making a difference. 

Basically they’re multifaceted characters and can be contradictory like anything or anyone else, but I do always think their core motivations and decisions make sense; that doesn’t mean they’re not sometimes also messy.

rayllum & loneliness :: a rambling meta

i have been continually emo about this the past couple of days because like, god, sometimes it just hits me how lonely callum and rayla must’ve been before they met each other

like i was rewatching some of 1x01 and 1x02 yesterday for screencaps for a meta and like, callum is so often just flat out uncomfortable in his home, with his friends, with his family. we know from s2 that sarai died when he was little, around four or five, so harrow has been his primary parent for at least close to a decade, for most of his entire life that he can remember, and callum still doesn’t feel comfortable around him

soren knocks him around and puts him down (and thank you s3 for the apology scene, because it was important and good and gratifying). everyone stops and stares to watch hi get his ass kicked in the courtyard, which is already embarrassing enough, and then you have soren hit callum in a sore spot by talking about the thing the kid is already insecure enough in: his relationship with his stepfather and his failures as a prince, all in one go. 

even with claudia, who callum is closer to, his flustered nature verges into being vaguely uncomfortable too.

because claudia enjoys his crush on her, but doesn’t quite encourage him and/or go to lengths to make him comfortable about it. and we see in s2 that he considers them to be two of his oldest, closest friends: one a girl he can’t be fully open to (although that’s mostly on his side of things rather than something claudia can control, but we also see her fully willing to manipulate his trust, so…) and the other someone who is regularly a jerk to him.

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insp

Callum Should Actually Get Swol As He Gets Older

NO HEAR ME OUT.

Realistically speaking, flying is not  a muscle free activity. As a human being weighing a considerable amount that listing our own body weight is not an easy feat, Callum should actually some considerable muscle definition if he continues the flying thing as he gets older. Particularly in his back muscles, deltoids pecs and all those kind of muscles. And it works his muscles.

It’s not easy. We aren’t birds. We’re people with muscle and decently weighing bones. We are not light.

Like I’m not saying he’ll be just jacked to all jacked and a bodybuilder, but he should, realistically, build up a considerable amount of muscle as he gets older. And he’s not done growing so. He’s in his prime to start getting this kind of workout.

It all lines up.

Also Rayla will begin to understand why, growing up, she remembered Runaan loved Ethari’s arms so much. She gets it now. She really does.

Have y'all thanked the producers of TDP today that Viren didn't put Rayla in a coin by the end of the finale and have Callum look out for her in despair never finding her anywhere and not having said that he loves her yet? i have, twice