#risingvaliant

[raayllum]

So I've been trawling for ttm and post ttm fics on ao3 because that ending hurt my soul a bit and I was surprised how little I found, not just on ao3 either, there doesn't seem to be much discussion about it, granted the thing's only been out for 2 months but I would've thought that new material would've led to a bunch of new works and an upsurge in interest. I'm curious about your thoughts on this, care to share?

i mean for a lot of the fandom, it’s been out since early september (if people read the leaks). there was a lot of discussion then and also discussion in the immediate two weeks following the official release (october 6th). 

there’s two pages (31 works) total of just people who used the tag “book: through the moon” on ao3, let alone people who didn’t tag the graphic novel at all even if their fic was set after/during it, or people who used different tags, like “ttm spoilers” or “post ttm” or “post through the moon.” there’s also a sizeable amount of fic that gets posted on tumblr - shorter pieces, definitely, but they still add up eventually - that don’t get posted on ao3 or ffn (or only one or the other). so in the 2-3 months since the graphic novel dropped, there’s been a far bit of specific content. 

there’s also a difference, i think, in all the promotion and hype of a season VS an extra additional material. i think if TTM had come out 4-6 months post-s3 there might have been more works inspired by it - people naturally ebb and flow in fandoms, especially when they’re in hiatus - but it came out 10 months into hiatus. that’s a long time. 

and in an active tv show fandom like this, there tends to be two types of fic writers.

seasonal writers, who update projects and create them based around new material every season. think fan seasons, canon divergences, projects started and finished before they’re made AU, etc. very common for slowburn / non canon ships in on going series (especially when a show is released weekly). this was the bulk of the rayllum fic content following s2, as pining and non established relationships gives a lot of different ship centric fic flavoured options (i.e. how long the pining lasts, who kisses who first and under what circumstances, etc).

we’re gonna call the second group regardless writers. these are the people who write stuff they know is gonna be au in future seasons (or already is) and plod along well after that point passes. usually deals with established relationships (canon or not). these were the people writing about rayllum getting married post s2 or pre-s2. nor do they try and tailor or update their fics to fit the latest content; they’re more concerned with exploring the being (fanon possibilities) than the happening (canon realities).  think writing a fan season but like, three seasons down the line (s6) instead of the next one (s4). 

the main reason i make this distinction is that post s3 rayllum shifted from having mostly seasonal writers (by proxy) to regardless writers. there were fics of staying in xadia, fics of going back to katolis, fics just about fluffy scenarios, de-coining fics, etc. what s4 could hold was absolutely anyone’s guess, especially for rayllum. would they be in xadia or katolis, would there be a separation arc, how long would the timeskip be, etc? we sure didn’t know, and were making all of our stuff regardless.

which is a long way of saying that most people who are seasonal writers probably started writing their fan season fours 8 months before TTM came out, and given that the comic fundamentally changes where rayllum left off as compared to s3, changing possibly 100k+ of what you’ve already written is basically impossible. and those who are non seasonal writers wouldn’t have changed it up regardless. 

there’s also the fact that TTM’s ending, while it opens up a lot of possibilities for them as individuals (travelling separately, running into OCs or canon characters like nyx or ethari, etc), from a ‘ship centric’ fic lens, there’s like, two possibilities. 

either callum goes after her (possibly right away, possibly after a duration - but again, that’s overall a very small detail) and eventually finds her, or rayla chooses to come back of her own accord. the conclusion from that point onwards is pretty self explanatory. callum is hurt and angry, something has changed rayla’s mind, and they work on reconciling. 

it’s a very angsty premise we know the show is most likely going to explore in detail (cause they’re two of three Main Characters) nor is it everyone’s cup of tea to write. 

after all, compare and contrast that to all the established possibilities that were previously set: fancy balls in katolis; cute date shenanigans in the pentarchy or xadia; characters reacting to seeing the two together; engagement or fluff set after whatever reconciliation there would be (which therefore TTM really doesn’t have that much bearing on by default), etc. just to name a few, and yeah - post-ttm has a very narrowed focus of what’s an emotionally compelling next step by comparison. which is not bad - but there’s only so much people are gonna want to write about a reunion before they wanna move on Beyond that in some manner.

i also think there’s more factors as to why, following s2, there were a plethora of “fan season 3 rayllum fics” and not nearly as many “fan season four” fics which is that post s2 was like, fans knew for a decent chunk of s3 that rayllum 1) had the main plotline of bringing zym home, and 2) the importance of them taking zym home meant keeping them isolated from the rest of the cast / plot for the majority of the season/fic made sense. you could write a fic all about just these two kids pining for each other and exploring xadia and it was very easy to make a coherent narrative out of it.

post s3, they’re suddenly connected to everyone else again. or that rayla has to connect to someone else in order to have a sustainable storyline, and if callum is in katolis to help ezran politically, it’s delaying the natural emotional conclusion people ultimately want from post-ttm work (as a reader and a writer) because they’re not going to be seeing each other any time soon. 

as a fan, sitting there and watching everything that s4 could include beyond rayllum is a really fun, engaging experience that requires significantly less brain work than plotting and balancing however many plot lines are gonna collide when, from a creation aspect, you really might just be there for one.

and given that we’ve been on hiatus now for over a year, we’re likely more than halfway through the hiatus. and for all the reasons i’ve started before, seasonal writers have either already started their stuff a while ago or have naturally drifted. regardless writers are still here, but activity always drops up past the 6 month mark of hiatus (july in particular tends to be the last hurrah because it’s their joint birthday month and is a bit of an annual thing). 

TLDR; ttm doesn’t actually change that much in the grand scheme of things (at least not when it comes to ship wish fulfillment), people defaulted to the general layout of what the reunion would be like very quickly (and rather correctly tbh), and fic writers who try to keep up with the new content likely hadn’t changed anything hardcore since s3 and it’s too late to do so now.