sometimes your baby girl is a beautiful woman who committed treason / war crimes with a trash (not) husband and that’s okay
thinking about the post-dragon demise dynamic of Amaya, Janai, and Miyana.
Janai and Miyana, who are Technically sisters-in-law but there was no marriage and Karim is both what brings them together and a wedge apart. Janai mourns in her own way, as does Miyana but she’s more bitter about it, and knows her children will be looked at with even more mistrust. Janai throws herself into rebuilding and revamping Lux Aurea now that it’s been so thoroughly destroyed it’s come back around to being cleansed…
But Miyana is lonely, and Miyana is pregnant, and Amaya was there through both of Sarai’s pregnancies and does not have the same complicated history with Karim and loved her first nephews so… Amaya stepping into hold Miyana through the morning sickness, to get Janai and Miyana to a point where they can feel more comfortable around one another, and feel like family
Just… three very different women with very different perspectives learning to grow and foster love with one another amid the loss and pain and hope they’ve been given
Rayllum + big hq gifs of them kissing because they're ruining my life (affectionate) - part 2 (part 1)
the way 'leola's fall' and 'leola's last wish' are two pieces about the same moment and are so very different
like the absolute contrast between retelling this moment in season six and seven respectively absolutely sends me because not once do we actually see anything from leola's perspective UNTIL her last wish is revealed and then when we do it's beautiful
and you can hear this in the music
so, 'leola's last wish' is, by name, about her last wish
I wish that even in the dark
Sad Afraid Alone
that every child should know…
You Are Loved
and it's this beautiful lyrical melody (that makes me cry every time i listen to it)
this melody is new, we've never heard it before and it's a solo violin with strings because yes, she's alone but she is loved
(begging for arc three because if we don't get a callback to this I will cry - think about the potential, miyana to her children, rayllum with any future kids etc.)
the music reflects her wish, for in the end, her last moments were of her father reaching out to her, of her father who loved her, loves her even, and telling her so
and her, as a child, only wished the same for others
and it is beautiful and so so full of love
and the piece and scene itself is the last of season seven - revealing a secret barely mentioned beforehand, but it's interesting with aaravos' themes of truth and history - that he never had the full truth - as we've spent a season or so discovering his plans and motivations but despite it all, all he has said, truths and half truths are only his. for all he doesn't lie, he doesn't tell, doesn't even know the truth about her and that's what this piece is and it's just so GOOD the way it contrasts to aaravos' perspective and consequent themes
to leola, her death and wish is full of love; in the dark, her dad told her that he loved her and always would
but in 'leola's fall' it's dark and tragic and desperate because no matter what aaravos tries, leola is going to die
this is aaravos' perspective of her death - being punished for helping, for giving magic out of kindness - and when recalling this moment, he can't see past his grief and anger and then his 'wish' is to have the cosmic council and order suffer for his daughter's death
(side note, there is something to be said about how even in this 'court' aaravos doesn't seem to like the council much anyway, and frowns when they mention the cosmic order. also at the start of this scene you can hear bell tones, like in a funeral - leola's death is a tragedy to him, and due to his grief he can't celebrate how she lived and what she did, only mourn her death. what she did - giving magic to humans - only becomes an instrument upon which he can hurt the cosmic order by twisting what she did. corrupt over compromise, indeed.)
so the piece starts; dark, sad and tragic - the strings make me think of funeral music and is reminiscent of 'the last sunset' from season one:
both pieces are string heavy with the cello as the main melody, the cello which is played by three times on screen by corvus - one of those being 'a song of love and loss' - something that could reflect leola's last wish and death
but then around 2.00, you get this shift to something far darker and angrier and at the end of 'leola's fall' you hear aaravos' theme come back - 'i see you' from season two - solidifying this moment as the root of his motivation + plans against the cosmic council and order
this theme is on the piano, almost as a solo part and the instrumentation of this really contrasts the string section from earlier and then again, earlier from 'i see you'
the piece begins with love played by the cello, a tragic love, but love nonetheless. and then at the end when 'i see you' is heard again, this is the loss, now played on the piano
this is furthered later, on the cello this time, when in 'why are you doing this?' the piece that plays when aaravos tells claudia the full truth, remembering again leola's death and expanding on his hate against the cosmic council/order. in this the strings take a backseat on the melodies which are played with other solo instruments and voice, and to me, this shows that like claudia, aaravos insists that he's the same, that he's done all of this for leola and in her name but even when the strings come back, the cello plays the 'i see you' motif and with an even darker tone to it and now his motivations have gone past his love for her and it's now his hate for the council
but back to 'leola's fall',
the piece itself is of aaravos telling claudia about leola in an effort to further her into freeing him, starting with emphasis on how much he loves his daughter but by the end there are hints to something darker, no longer driven by love instead hate, but he doesn't tell claudia this - terry is right, that even in the music it starts off as a story of love and then became one of hate
the piece starts off with love and then by the end we have his solo theme showing him as alone (wHICH i think is really interesting and @raayllum made a really interesting meta yonks ago about tdp's antagonistic isolationism which is the coolest phrase i've ever heard -also this meta is super cool check it out!!)
in the music, we can hear how leola's death is the moment aaravos was left alone to become corrupted by grief and corrupt leola's gift of magic with his own and then twisting it into his mission to destroy/hurt the cosmic council and order
i think its a semi well established fact, or at the very least within the fandom, that leola gives humans primal/deep magic (me personal opinion is that she gives them deep magic and aaravos was developing primal magic idk lol aNYWAY) but aaravos gives them dark magic and then manipulates those mages to him by promising knowledge and wordly things that are pratically child's play to him
this is slightly more plot related than the score but as he says 'it's only fiting that I deliver their fear' - aaravos wants the cosmic order and council to suffer, notably not with the magic they were afraid of, to show to them leola didn't have to die because he could break the order himself
the contrast between the two made me think of that african proverb 'the child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth' and i feel like that's what 'leola's fall' is to 'leola's last wish' which is like the light in the dark
two sides of a coin: the sun-fire if you will
(also similar to stars)
frederik wiedmann when i catch you-
thinking about terry telling claudia 'it's time to let him go. it's time to grieve.' because no one told aaravos that
Was originally going to do a screencaps post but then it was getting a little unwieldy so here’s a short meta post about Callum’s story to Ezran in 7x09, specifically how it pertains to Callum’s broader character arc in arc 2 and the show’s narrative as a whole.
So we start out with an easily accessible, likely drawn from life sibling scenario. (I too, for example, had a beloved toy accidentally adjacently broken by a sibling.) This also ties us into 4 important things, however:
This is reaffirmed further in what Aanya says to Ezran on the bridge in 7x03:
I know it hurts right now, Ezran. But you need to know that you and Callum are not broken. The both of you will heal one day. You’re brothers. It’s okay to be angry, and it’s okay to be sad.
However, the toy isn’t really a metaphor for their relationship. Callum doesn’t say that it was mended, or if it even could be. He moves on instead to what their mother told him, which likewise echoes what Aanya says:
Again, there’s a reaffirmation of needing to feel, and letting yourself feel, the bad emotions. Anger is not inherently bad and sometimes we need to be angry, even or especially at our siblings. Like Aanya, Callum, and Sarai say, it’s okay to be angry and to be sad. But — as we see Karim and Janai are unable to come back from (“all you do is look at me with contempt!”) — you can’t let the feelings stick. You have to let them go.
Harrow’s heart burned with anger (3x06); Ezran has fire in his eyes as he hears Runaan out; and Aaravos wants to set the world on fire. But anger cannot — or should not — last forever… because what is left for you afterwards?
The other implicit message is Callum and Sarai knowing, and now communicating to Ezran, that however much he loved that toy “more than anything in the world,” it ultimately meant nothing in comparison to his brother.
CALLUM: You’re my brother, and you mean everything to me. (2x06)
CALLUM: I’m sorry, Ezran. I can’t be your High Mage anymore… but I’ll always be your brother. (7x02)
This is also, in many ways, how Callum frames his relationship with Rayla once he learns to forgive her as well. He knows that he needs her (implicitly) and that they’re a team; he reaffirms “it was always her” much the same way he knows he will “always be [Ezran’s] brother”. His bonds of love are strong and can weather any storm; he still wants them in his life, and will always want them and need them.
This raises an interesting concept to Aaravos, who is deeply hurt and angry at his family (the other First Elves), referring to himself as “their dark brother” (TDP shorts, Patience). He wants them to suffer, and he wants them to hurt… but is there any other way forward? Is there any hope of forgiveness, or reconciliation? He clearly believes that they can never change unless through force… but what if they could? What if they could be brothers again, the same way that Callum (“there is great affinity between your brother and I […] he understands the need for compromise”) and Ezran are?
It’d also tie into Claudia and Soren’s sibling dynamic, as their mother counselled a similar message to Sarai: “that my brother and I needed each other.”
If Callum and Ezran coming together can represent the continent, and Aaravos + the Cosmic Council, and Soren and Claudia one day coming back together, too.
the TDP wikia isn’t always good but it DOES have pictures of every major and minor spell rune in the series and for that i must salute them and thank them for my sanity
Again deserves a meta of its own but something about Callum assigning himself a part in / a general prophecy to himself not once but Twice only for it to not be About him, actually, is funnier and more tragic to me than it should be. It’s such a reminder as to why to reject anything arrogance adjacent (why assume that you’re the saviour / special one) in addition to setting up for a couple of interesting avenues: either a prophecy that is 100% about Callum but he rejects it OR he’s the centre of another prophecy and fulfils it (to good ends).
thinking about how every elf callum meets from now on, each being that gives him a quick once over, will immediately identify him as a dark mage regardless of how true or Not true it is
thinking about Claudia’s heart eyes and cooing over Zym in 2x02 vs her nearly killing the dragon and revelling it in being afraid of her in 5x06
i love characters who do the “i worship the myth i make of you” and in turn dehumanize and get wrong the object of their devotion and love. yes project a thing that does not exist onto a pedestal and kneel at it like it is your altar. this will surely not blow up in both of your faces eventually
