#good thing i at least provide entertainment for my friends bc the way EVERYBODY laughed when i told them... help

[90sbee]

was talking to this girl the other day and she randomly grabbed my hand ??? and instead of doing something normal i just. i just. you know. just shook her hand. repeatedly. like a maniac.

ladies would you be charmed by an aggressive handshake yes or not.

[panharmonium]

@merlinobsessionist you understand me on a spiritual level

[putting the rest of this under a cut because it just ended up being me grumping at length about fandom trends - which, yes, i am well-aware is a silly endeavour in all cases, but sometimes you just gotta have your little grump regardless, you know, for health reasons. X)  and in this particular case the grumping is probably relevant/entertaining only to myself, and you, and one or two other people here, so, tucking it away to spare everyone’s dash :) ]

the other day i was exploring the mostly abandoned wasteland that is the merlin fandom on livejournal (since that’s my original fandom home and obviously i missed out on being involved in that particular niche of lj when merlin was active, so i was feeling nostalgic and kinda curious as to it had looked like) - i stumbled over a merlin fic-finders comm and looked up my boy william just for kicks, and surprisingly, a couple of the old requests sounded like maybe i WAS involved in the merlin fandom on livejournal back then and i just don’t remember it

i think i wrote this in a past life

this is an eleven year-old comment in a mostly defunct fandom community but i felt it in my BONES

oh, my dear commenter from 8 years ago, i WISH  XD

it made me laugh, and then it made me grumpy, because obviously there were very few suggestions offered in response to these asks - the fics just don’t exist, not in any numbers.

and like, the thing is, i don’t particularly care about the shipping side of things for the most part; i always lean towards gen and that’s mostly been it, for me; that’s always been my MO in every fandom i’ve ever participated in, but - look.  if i have to witness (*checks ao3*) 23,830 (twenty four thousand. twenty four THOUSAND!!!!) instances of merlin getting together with arthur hecking pendragon, over and over and over again, in every AU configuration under the sun, then you had better believe i am ready and willing to plead the case of the only person in the merlin-verse who did not think arthur pendragon deserved merlin’s entire life.  

and of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with arthur and merlin as an item, obviously (i mean, i can name a few things about it that don’t appeal to me personally, but that is not the same thing as a value judgment) and everybody should have fun with their own ships, always - but for me, personally, there is just...enough of that out there.  i have seen Enough.  it’s hard for me to even determine where the rest of the fandom is, under the ever-present spread of merlin/arthur content; a picture of merlin/arthur should literally be next to the dictionary entry for steamroller.

and of course, i knew it would be like this from the beginning, and i know complaining about the ubiquitousness of a particular ship in fandom is utterly silly, in the end, because it’s not like there’s anything wrong with something being ubiquitous - the whole point of fandom is to make what you love, and if that’s what everybody loves, well, hey, that’s just how it is!  that’s what people should be making - the stuff they love!  that’s what fandom is here for!  i only mutter to myself in the bubble of my own blog because the ubiquitousness makes it almost impossible for me to find what *i* love, because i don’t want to read about arthur/merlin in the first place, no matter who else appears in the fic, and also because my fave minor character, while he gets a pretty good amount of fannish screentime for someone who showed up in one episode, also suffers from the curse known as “virtually everything he features in is actually about merlin and arthur getting it on”

like - by the numbers, when you exclude merlin/arthur from will’s character tag, will retains less than 20% of his fics, some of which are already like...you know, he’s dead, or just mentioned, et cetera.  

and his poor ship tag...he and merlin have 136 fics in their tag, and at first you wanna look at that and be like - ‘hey, not bad, pal, that’s p. good for a rarepair!’  but in actuality, less than 20 of those fics are actually about him and merlin.  like...12% of his own ship tag actually belongs to him, and the rest is him being used as a plot device to get arthur and merlin together.

and i am sure that a lot of other side characters probably suffer from this, too, given the general fic distribution in this fandom, though the only person i’ve looked at for comparison purposes is freya, who is a (mostly) one-ep character like will.  she, despite that, doesn’t appear to get hit quite as hard - she seems to keep more of her fic for herself, which is nice (when i exclude merlin/arthur from the freya/merlin search, freya still retains about 65% of her fics, as opposed to will’s sad little 12%).  i’m glad for her, though - she of all people does not need to be losing fic to arthur; she has suffered enough. 

to put things in perspective, though - merlin and uther have more fics in their ship tag that earnestly focus on the tagged....hnhhmgnhn i can’t say it...relationship than merlin and will do -��even filtering out every instance of dubcon/noncon.  

(and yes, i did in fact want to die when i had to actually click the merlin/uther tag on ao3 in order to check that factoid, thanks for asking.)

so, that said - i don’t generally read canon-era fic anyway, when i’m actively writing for a fandom, but since the merlin fandom sometimes feels like it consists solely of modern AU’s anyway, all i am trying to say is that it would be nice if i could pick up an AU including a character i enjoy without seeing him constantly reduced to:

merlin’s loser ex

merlin’s abusive ex (w h at)

merlin’s ex who’s kinda sorta tolerable-ish, maybe, if you squint, but just ultimately Not Right for merlin - holding merlin back, or being too overbearing, or too pushy, or Just Not Enough - or being someone who merlin stays with only bc he’s familiar and merlin’s settling for something safe and unrisky and stagnantly unfulfilling

the dude who merlin cheats on to be with arthur

the dude who cheats on merlin, bc the fic needed a reason to break up merlin and will so that white-knight!arthur could swoop in (cue me shouting ‘IN WHAT UNIVERSE DO YOU THINK WILL WOULD EVER - ’)

the dude merlin “makes mistakes with” when things with arthur aren’t going well

the friend-with-benefits who’s apparently chill with a casual arrangement, thus keeping himself conveniently out of the way of the oncoming merlin/arthur train

the friend-with-benefits who’s secretly NOT chill with a casual arrangement and who’s pining for merlin, except we all know that ain’t ever going anywhere because arthur exists, and in the meantime merlin only ever gets together with will to try and forget his problems

the friend-with-no-benefits who’s still pining for merlin (which situation, i might add, would be read completely differently if it were arthur in will’s shoes, because if that were the case then the audience would 100% be rooting for him)

the “best friend” whose only purpose in fic is to provide space for conversations/debriefs about merlin’s relationship/pre-relationship with arthur (like - i’m sorry, but there desperately needs to be some type of bechdel-esque test for will; e.g. do will and merlin have a conversation about something other than arthur pendragon?  if yes, u win, u may pass go, collect 20 dollars, congratulations)

the friend whose dislike of arthur always, ALWAYS ends up being framed as a mistake.  as will’s stubborn unwillingness to give arthur a chance, until at last will sees the light and succumbs to the irresistible beauty of merlin and arthur’s eternal love. -_-  there is vanishingly rare acknowledgement in fic of the fact that in the canon universe, all of the criticisms will makes about merlin and arthur’s relationship are not only accurate, but made in merlin’s best interests (and also, ultimately, proven right, by the end of the show - merlin tanks his whole damn life for a series of empty promises prophesying arthur pendragon’s future potential, and he gets NOTHING for his devotion.  merlin is more alone at the end of the show than he was at the beginning, when his only dream was to be loved and accepted by more than the two people who’d comprised his entire life up until that point.  and he spends at least half a decade in between the show’s hopeful beginning and its miserable end being told that he’s evil by the very person for whom he is expected to sacrifice his future.  

so what, exactly, makes will so wrong to be wary?  who among us wouldn’t be angry if we saw somebody we loved being forced to sacrifice themselves on an unforgiving altar like this?  

i don’t know the answer.  i’m not sure what it is that earns will his spot on the “destined to be shafted for arthur pendragon” list.  i don’t know if it’s an unconscious backlash to will’s refusal to hop on the arthur/merlin train, or if it’s just a superficial understanding/lack of genuine interest in his character, which, in that case, sure, i’ll give people that one, in all fairness; not everyone has spent a year picking his character apart (though i still don’t think it justifies tossing him in there just because the fic needs a random insert who can be positioned as inferior to arthur’s gloriousness).  either way, the end result is that we usually end up seeing a will who has very little in common with his source material, or who needs to ultimately step aside to make way for arthur - arthur, who never displays the same level of care toward merlin in canon that merlin shows toward him, and who actively oppresses merlin’s people for the entire duration of their relationship.  

like...it’s all just fic, obviously, and we can make characters as OOC as we want; have fun; go wild.  but at the same time, it’s impossible for me not to balk at how arthur in some of this fic is just - utterly unrecognizable.  in comparison with fic!will, arthur is the most Solicitous, Gentle, Understanding, Deeply Concerned, Invested-In-Merlin’s-Welfare-and-Inner-Thoughts creature you ever did see, and I’m just over here like - it is not like that!  it is NOT LIKE THAT!  IT HAS LITERALLY NEVER BEEN LIKE THAT.  arthur pendragon in fic sometimes interacts with merlin like - he tilts his head and listens like a therapist and affirms absolutely everything merlin says and tells him ‘gosh, i understand. tell me more. how can i help you’ - he goes about his day thinking about merlin and putting merlin first and i just - i literally have never seen this person before in my life.  who is this man?  who is this unbelievably attentive paragon of caring?  i’ve never met him before.

the entire running problem with merlin and arthur’s friendship in canon is that arthur, while he absolutely does care about merlin, tends to take merlin for granted.  merlin is just another feature of arthur’s landscape, until something dramatic happens and arthur has a little scare and saves merlin’s life, and then things go back to the way they were.  arthur doesn’t See merlin the way he should, not in the ordinary moments.  merlin goes home and spends his evenings thinking about arthur’s life; he ties himself in knots trying to help arthur develop as a person and to keep arthur safe and happy, but arthur just goes home and eats supper with his wife.  arthur does not go home and spend his nights agonizing over how he can improve merlin’s life.  he never once thinks, ‘my purpose on this earth is to serve and support my friend merlin.’  he never feels like he’s supposed to be half of some two-sided coin.  i know people like to give arthur this quality in their fic - and that’s totally fine, of course, it’s fic, have as much fun as you want - but in canon, that is just not something arthur pendragon does.  it’s not who he is shown to be.  

and yet almost every time when i go to explore fandom, i find that the person who does put merlin first in canon is perpetually elbowed aside for this extremely generous interpretation of everyone’s favorite prince.  

and i just...i always try to find the good bits in everything, and i am sometimes willing to overlook a ship i don’t personally enjoy if there’s something else about the piece that i think is great, but there’s only so many times i can read the sentence “merlin had never felt like this with anyone, not even will” in fics where merlin and will are supposed to have been dating or even married/engaged, or “will was merlin’s best friend, but he just didn’t understand” (not like arthur, of course, who merlin literally just met a week ago), or “will was great, but there was only so much of him merlin could stand in one sitting/will was great, but he was best enjoyed in small doses.”  there’s only so many times i can read a hundred different variations of that before i start to get real grumpy.  and that’s not even touching the fics where will’s portrayed less favorably than that, even.  

so, you know.  i feel grumbly about it sometimes, how this particular character is trapped in a perpetual net of always being less-than, when one of the nicest parts of fandom for me is that every character/ship can have an infinitude of possibilities, even the ones i personally think are unbelievably bizarre (which category merlin and will do not even fall into, like - it’s not an incredible leap.  merlin/mordred is a leap, okay; mordred is like seventeen years old!  leon/morgana is a leap - how on earth did that become so popular??? - but will and merlin?  that’s not a leap.)

what is it about will that makes him so tempting to trample over?  will’s only sin in canon was to look at arthur pendragon and pronounce himself utterly unimpressed.  his only crime was to tell merlin ‘this dude isn’t good for you,’ about which fact he was CORRECT, by the way - he is the first person who ever chooses to care about merlin, the first person merlin ever chooses to trust, the first friend who loves real!merlin without needing to be coaxed and convinced and taught that it’s okay.  he is the only one who ever tells merlin ‘you deserve better than this mess,’ the only one for whom merlin has always been priority number one and in whose eyes arthur isn’t even on the map.  merlin’s friendship with will (and lancelot, afterwards) is the healthiest one merlin ever gets to experience, and i wish more fannish material acknowledged it as such, as opposed to using will to set up merlin and arthur’s epic romance.  

all of this, i suppose, is just a very long way of saying that now that i am no longer avoiding spoilers and have actually started testing the waters of the wider fandom, i have come to the obstinate, utterly inflexible conclusion that will deserves his own collection of happy endings, and i don’t care if i have to write them myself.  i’ve already got the gen angle covered.  and even though i’ve never written ship!fic in my life, the fact of the matter is that spite can be a hell of a motivator, and i will bite the bullet and learn how to do it if i have to.  if people can really be out here tagging their merlin/uther fics as “schmoop” (YES. REALLY.) then by GOD, i swear, there are no excuses - this fandom can accommodate literally anything; there’s no reason it can’t accommodate stories where will wins.  let this kid have his good ending.  arthur pendragon can fall in love with merlin 23,830 times despite his and merlin’s ship flying in the face of canon, and that means will deserves his own tiny handful of stories to be actually about him, without his and merlin’s relationship being used solely as a stepping stone on the way to merlin and arthur’s 23,831st triumph.

i am just saying - if uther pendragon can fall in love with merlin and have it tagged as ‘fluff,’ then for the love of all that is good, we can give will his moment.  let will enjoy the respect he should have earned from us when he died saving both merlin and arthur’s lives.  let will be a person in his own right, instead of a plot device sacrificed to the (in)glorious altar of merthur.  let will have an inner life of his own.  let will have a best friend who doesn’t treat him like an accessory to The Greatest Love Story Ever Told.  let will himself live out The Greatest Love Story Ever Told, for once.  let will get his guy.  i may tend to focus on friendship in my own work, but there are a lot of universes out there, and when it comes to someone who has always been so alone, and so singularly focused on merlin’s wellbeing, i’m not entirely sure if friendship even feels anything different to “in love” for will at all, in at least some of these places.

let will have his happy tags.  he’s been on his own for so much of his life - let him have his simple ‘friendship’, his ‘platonic love,’ his ‘found family.’  let him have his lovestruck ‘pining,’ ‘friends-to-lovers,’ ‘angst with a happy ending,’ too, and let him keep those tags for himself.  let characters who aren’t arthur pendragon have their love stories.

i may not care much for shipping, and i would rather read gen any day of the week, but let me tell you right now, i would rather write will and merlin settling down in a haze of domestic bliss 23,830 times before i would ever want to watch merlin ditch him yet again for a dude who never matched merlin’s level of caring and investment in the canon ‘verse.