#Merthur taken out of context

[send-noodles-not-nudes]

A gif of Arthur telling Merlin "we're all thirsty, Merlin" seems like something that could be taken out of context for merthur writers jus sayin

[thhiod]

Merthur inspired poem -

This is a poem Drabble I wrote. Context is that Arthur lives and Merlin sort of has to deal with it over the rest of their lives. Let me know thoughts!

Decade after decade:

You smile at me over the dining table,

After it is all over. You are alive, I think. I have thought this a lot recently. You are alive.

Everyone is overjoyed, your friends, your subjects, your wife. Most of all me, you are the air I breathe, the food which nourishes my soul.

I am all that I am because of you.

I had not thought this would happen. I had known the prophecy. You were meant to die. I had not prepared myself for a world where you lived. Where I opened my heart to you and you opened yours to me, and then we went home.

We mourned. We carried on. You had children.

The children are odd to me, like little facsimiles of you. I love them whole heartedly but, if I am being honest, only because they are of you.

The years pass and I love you no less. We are close, but you are a father, a husband. It is not like it was before.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you hold my face in your hands, and you look at me with those clear blue eyes and tell me that you love me. That I’m your best friend, that you couldn’t bear to be without me. Then you walk away to your wife and children and it feels like you’ve taken my heart out of my chest and taken it with you too.

I stand there, heartless and alone, in the darkness left by your going.

I try so hard to find someone else, to move on, but it has been so long. I am in my fortieth year, and there is no one left for me.

I have my occupation, I have all of you, but I also have none of you. The loneliness is so precise and acute that it burrows its way into my chest and makes a home there. I begin to make friends with it, to carry it around with me like a badge of honour for my service to everyone else but myself.

It is your fourty-fifth birthday, you have lines in your forehead and between your brow, and while your muscles are still strong, the skin has begun to sag slightly and your belly is softer than it was before. You complain about aging but I think you look beautiful.

Later, you look at me with such profound tenderness that I almost dissolve into the air. I cannot handle this, I think. But then I am in your arms, and you stroke my hair and kiss my temple behind the wall between the rooms.

“I am sorry. I am so sorry for all this. You must know, if it was my choice, things would be different.”

I say nothing, I’m scared if I say anything the moment will collapse around me. You say nothing else, you hold me tightly, and we think of what might have been.

We are old now. Our bones ache and rattle. Your wife is dead, your children grown and have their own children. We sit together on a bench by the beach. You hold my wrinkly hand in your wrinkly hand.

“I am sorry, it has taken so long, so many decades for me to be able to be honest with you.”

“I am grateful for it all.” I reply. I find it is true.

You learn over and press your lips to my cheek. The loneliness buried in my heart for decades has finally left, something else has made its home there instead.

[papersniffer]

While watching BBC’s Merlin for the second time I was able to enjoy it more since I knew what was going to happen. So when I saw Arthur ask Merlin if his ‘little bottom was sore?’ and Merlin said ‘Yes…“ I knew I had to do something lol. From Season 3 Episode: Tears of Uther Pendragon part 1

[arsenicandsunshine]

Merlin Challenge 2020: Favorite Ship (Merthur) 

“& Forgive Us Our Trespasses” by Sinead Morrissey

[purr-merthur-purr]

Merthur taken out of context part 8/?

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[educatingmerlin]

Let's talk about these posts, how they are used and how they are harmful.

[ALT TEXT]

Disclaimer ⚠️ : These are just two examples. There are many more posts such as these which exist within the Merlin fandom. Some may not be exactly the same but follow a similar theme.

This is talking about these posts as a whole.

If you are in the Merlin fandom, and have been for a while, you will likely be aware of the hate and racism Gwen Pendragon receives. The hate can vary from direct and blatant racism, to microaggressions or posts such as the ones above.

As you can see in the above images, Gwen is being put down at the expense of Merthur.

Before I continue, this is not a Merthur hate post or page. It is common knowledge within the fandom that Gwen receives hate at the expense of Merthur. And yes, a lot of jokes within the fandom are tied to Merthur and Gwen.

In saying this, it is important to remember eventhough certain ships (such as Merthur) can be tied to the racism Gwen receives, they are not the sole source and reason.

I have used these examples as they are the most popular in the fandom. I have seen these and others around for years, and similar jokes even now are still made.

Both posts are used to sideline and degrade Gwen.

The first post, the scene is Gwen and Arthur are having a picnic. Arthur talks about what he would like to do if he was not prince, speaking about how he would take Gwen and become a farmer. Arthur then mentions how he would also bring Merlin.

The actual response from Gwen in this scene is her smiling about what Arthur said. They then laugh and joke. The bottom image is from when there is a bee near Arthur.

Fans have edited these images to make it seem as though Arthur is thinking about Merlin and Gwen is annoyed at this.

How is this post degrading and sidelining Gwen you may ask?

A common theme amongst the hate Gwen receives as well as post such as these, is that people imply Gwen is jealous of Merlin and Arthur. That she secretly knows they are in a relationship and she hates that.

Gwen is not jealous and never has been jealous. In the show, she has always admired Merlin and Arthur's friendship and how close they are. She understands their love for each other even if they do not admit it themselves. That is shown in the show. It is a fact, not an opinion.

The second post is of a similar theme. It ties into most of what I have said above.

There are constant jokes and comments made about how Merlin and Arthur are in a secret relationship and Gwen is unaware (or according to some, she is aware and jealous).

People have said "Gwen is a beard* for Arthur"

Beard* meaning Arthur is secretly gay and married Gwen because he was forced to.

This (harmful) opinion comes in line with what the second post is about. The top image is a stock image series which has become popular over the last couple of years.

In the different images with these same people, the man is with his presumed girlfriend, but is always looking at another woman in a "she is hot and I fancy her" way.

Basically he goes behind his girlfriend's back to check out other woman and supposedly cheat on her.

Which is what the bottom image also implies with Gwen and Arthur hugging, and Arthur looks over to Merlin. And as you can see, in the stock image the woman hugging the man is aware of what her boyfriend is doing and is annoyed at him.

Like the first image the scene was taken out of context. Arthur looked over to Merlin to say something to him.

Posts and jokes such as these are usually seen as innocent and harmless jokes. However again, they are at the expense of Gwen and her relationship.

Arthur and Gwen's relationship is constantly under fire and invalidated. And unfortunately not a lot of people understand or realise how images such as these have been taken out of context and are made to imply Gwen is someone jealous of her husband or that she is in an unloveable relationship.

Gwen is told she should not be with Arthur. She works better with [redacted]. Arthur and Gwen have no chemistry. Arthur only married her as a cover up for him being gay. The list goes on and on.

These contribute to the harm towards Black women and interracial ships. And eventhough you may just want to share a, what seems, an innocent joke, it is really important that we avoid contributing to subtle racism.

We need to STOP the harmful and inaccurate opinion that Gwen is jealous of Merthur or that Arthur does not really love Gwen.

We CAN ship different people and have lots of different headcanons, opinions and theories WITHOUT harming BIPOC.

Remember the Racism which occur in the Merlin fandom, in the show, towards the characters, towards the fans are much more than fictional ships and characters. There is a deeper and more serious issue rooted in situations such as these and more than simply liking/disliking a ship or a character.

Any posts such as these which sideline and degrade Gwen, should not be posted, laughed at or encouraged. As innocent as you may intend them to be and/or interpret them, they are harmful. And subtle racism is able to continue due to these posts being "just a joke" or "some innocent fun".

[candicewright]

Kindly requesting that analysis on wangxian being peak romance and how it compares to queerbaiting please 🙏 🙏 🙏

Hello, anon! I am very genuinely happy that my rambling thoughts interest you in any way (because I have a lot of thoughts) so here is my analysis as promised. It is veeeery long (almost 2k), sorry about that but I’ve really been looking forward to talking about this for a very long time. In the end, it isn’t so much about how Wangxian is peak romance and more about the censorship and how it compares to queerbaiting, I may have to do another post about that later on. Without much further ado, here it is!

The Untamed’s tasteful censorship vs. BBC Merlin’s queerbaiting and why I prefer one over the other.

I know most people follow this blog for Merlin and believe me when I say that I love this show more than I can say because it has quite literally changed my life. But The Untamed has opened my mind to a whole new world (insert Aladdin’s A Whole New World here) and it has given me a lot of perspective on a lot of things.

I often joke with my friends saying that my first consideration when choosing a new show to watch is saying “is it gay?” which is not far from the truth, but it’s also not the complete story. What I mean is that I ask myself “does this show have a relationship that I think is worth getting invested in?”. Yes, t usually happens that those are not heterosexual romances, but what can I say, I’m queer and I like my emotional support fictional characters to be so too. This is the exact reasoning that led me to Merlin. I saw a couple of videos about them on youtube and immediately found their dynamic compelling and their story beautifully tragic. But like with most shows these days, the writers failed (among other things) to make their relationship explicit. This has happened with every show I watched after Merlin too; The Witcher, Sherlock and Good Omens being the most notable ones. 

You can argue if they are or are not queerbaiting, I at least think Good Omens isn’t, but again, it is pretty subjective.

But i had grown so accustomed to this type of media that I fully went into The Untamed expecting something similar.

And oh boy was I wrong.

Now, the case of The Untamed is a curious one because it is supposed to be a love story between two men due to being based on a BL novel, but because of censorship, it had to be very toned down. I found this out right before actually watching the show while doing some preliminary research and while it did change my thought on what I was getting into I truly thought they would just erase the entire relationship and try to hide it behind straight relationships like in most other shows I had watched.

But that was absolutely not the case, to my endless relief and joy.

But how? How did they get away with censoring all the explicit aspects of a romantic relationship while still managing to tell a wonderful love story? And how does this compare to the queerbaiting of a show like Merlin?

Warning: I will be using different parts of both shows and probably some of the MDZS novel to illustrate my point, so there will be spoilers.

The initial accidental chemistry + innuendos vs. The establishment of the very clear enemies to friends to lovers trope

I’m going to use Merlin to compare and contrast this because it’s what I know best and the other show I've given a lot of thought to.

Merthur and Wangxian are both similar and different dynamics in the way they’re written and it was one of the things that drew me into The Untamed in the first place. Both stories begin with our main duo meeting and instantly disliking each other, ending up in a fight. And while they both set the story up to lead to a more intimate bond being created between the pairs, there’s something very different from the start.

Merthur is deliberately set up to be a close friendship and all innuendos and chemistry are accidental (in my opinion and only at the start). Let me explain.

The concept for Merlin clearly started with the idea of how the story would change if Merlin was a young boy arriving in Camelot instead of an old powerful sorcerer. Then they made the main plot to be his destiny/friendship with the young and arrogant Prince Arthur. I truly believe that the first innuendos were not what they intended and that all chemistry and sexual tension between the characters comes courtesy of Colin and Bradley and how undeniably good they look on screen together. Fans then started speculating (as we always do) and then the production team decided to run with it, making it almost a recurring joke when it shouldn’t have been. Had they treated that developing relationship seriously like what they were hinting it was, the show would have been very different.

The Untamed on the other hand, is everything but accidental. What they’re doing is deliberately establishing the enemies to friends to lovers trope from the very beginning. It’s not an accident that during their first fight on the roof of the Cloud Recesses Wei Wuxian tells Lan Wangji that women would find his true character very disappointing and that no one would want to marry him. he says so several times in fact and this is clearly both to highlight the change in their relationship as well as to say that Lan Wangji is not at all interested in the opinion of any female (or anyone besides Wei Wuxian for that matter). This is the same stuff we see in mainstream straight romances: one of the characters saying something to the effect of “who would want to date them?” only to end up involved with the other at the end of the story.

You could argue that Merlin does something similar with the conversation between Merlin and Kilgharrah where Merlin is affronted by the idea of having to help Arthur where he says “There must be another Arthur because this one’s an idiot...If someone wants to kill him, they can go right ahead. In fact, I’ll give them a hand.” but the difference between these two is that Merlin is hiding behind the guise of destiny and friendship to make these parallels while Wangxian is deliberately and clearly in a romantic context.

The deliberate continuation of the subtext vs. The suggestion of something more

The accidental nature of the subtext doesn’t last long and in true BBC fashion, it turns into full-on queerbaiting real fast. Again, you can argue endlessly about when the deliberately suggestive comments start, but by the end of the show, we know for a fact the entire production staff and even the staff were aware of the effect and reception their show was having. This was no longer an innocent mistake on people reading too much into it, it was a very purposeful narrative that they were pushing without ever truly committing to it. This is what got fans going crazy over “poetry” or lines like “you’re the only friend I have and I couldn’t bear to lose you”. These are all very intentional choices they made to keep their devoted fanbase interested and while we’re all very thankful for this material it really keeps us wondering what it could have been if they had taken that extra step.

The Untamed can’t take that step because of the censorship laws, but it’s still much more daring than Merlin ever was. While Merlin keeps the soulmate aspect of the Merthur relationship a suggestion, The Untamed outright says it, which was baffling to me. It even does it at a pint where the first kiss happened in the novel, which you would think makes it less romantic. But that's absolutely not the case because of both the non-consensual nature of that original kiss and because of how heartbreakingly beautiful the replacement scene is. Not only that, but they also keep all the elements you could expect to see in any pre-relationship stage of a developing romance story: endless amounts of mutual pining, not-really-unrequited love, jealousy, panicking at the sight of your crush (yes I’m looking at you 15-year-old Lan Wangji) and even some fun in vino veritas moments. They even have a son together! It doesn’t get more clear than that!

This is all the way the show has of suggesting something more without outright saying (even though it’s a pretty not subtle way of suggesting it).

Merlin, on the other hand, keeps trying to deny the romantic nature of the Merthur dynamic, which brings me to my next point.

The introduction of a female love interest as an excuse vs. The awareness that the audience understands the relationship in the way it's meant to be

Now, this one really bugs me, because of all the ways they could have done this they truly chose the worst and destroyed Gwen’s character in the process. 

In my opinion, the writers could have done a few different things. They could have fully developed the Merthur relationship as a romantic one while keeping Gwen’s role as a queen and creating a much more satisfying character arch for her, maybe even getting her together with Morgana or Lancelot. They could have focused on the Awen romance and therefore lowered the suggestions of romance between Merlin and Arthur, once again creating a much more enjoyable subplot for Gwen, though it could have also meant sacrificing the very powerful bond between the main characters. They could have even taken advantage of Gwen’s crush on Merlin in the first season and gone on the full-on polyamory direction! That would have been much better! Instead, they halfassed the romance between Arthur and Gwen and made it just...meh. Not that Angel and Bradley didn’t do a great job, it was more of a writing problem than a them problem.

The Untamed (despite the rumours and possibilities of a Wen Qing/Wei Wuxian relationship) decided to just run with the not really platonic relationship between Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, making them the complete focus of the story while still upholding the censorship laws. What I think the biggest difference between the two shows is, is that one runs on assuming the audience is stupid while the other one assumes the audience is smart.

Let me explain once more.

The Merlin writers clearly thought that by introducing Gwen as the love interest to Arthur he would just become what? Magically straight? As if we hadn’t seen the last four seasons of sexual tension between him and Merlin? The audience was not fooled for the most part, but some people did fall for this, coming with the argument “But he’s married to Gwen so he’s straight!” as if being gay or straight are the only two possibilities but oh well.

The Untamed does quite the opposite. It relies on the fact that the audience is going to catch onto the romantic aspect of the narrative without them actively saying anything because we are Not Dumb. It also does something that I think is quite beautiful which is leaving it up for interpretation as far as whether it’s platonic or not and even more touching is the way the story has resonated with the ace community (that is according to what I’ve seen, please do correct me if I’m wrong) by focusing on their emotional and intellectual connection instead of in their physical and sexual one.

This is why, in the end, I prefer what I call The Untamed’s tasteful censorship over Merlin and other shows’ blatant queerbaiting.

I feel the need after all of this to state that Merlin is still my favorite show of all time and that this is not by any means me saying that Merlin is absolute trash or something like that. There’s also a lot more that I think can be said in this conversation, so please feel free to tell me what you think and if you’ve ever encountered something similar to this.

Also, if I made any mistakes or wrong points, please don’t be shy about telling me!

I hope this rant was at least somewhat interesting and that you found it satisfactory, anon!

[rigelmejo]

On a mildly related talk to all this reading practice stuff...

it really is a wild trip when I compare learning how to read french to reading chinese. >o> Yesterday I was reading some sites in french for learning chinese and like. For some background, back when I was studying french, about 3 months in I started reading technical texts like esperanto learning books, wikipedia, psychology books, linguistic books, and news articles... who even knows why. I just did. Maybe because I was reading that stuff anyway, so i figured I’d practice french at the same time. Maybe I was comforted by the higher chance of cognates in technical french writing, compared to like fictional stories. 

Either way, when I first went through that “brutal slog” of reading stuff I comprehended way less than 90% in french, it was informational technical texts galore. Also, eventually, I switched my french grammar study to reading sites written in french about grammar, at which point i pretty much never looked at a french learning book written in english again. So anyway now, years later, that specific kind of reading material is so easy for me I can skim through it for specific details, I can speed read it to learn stuff. 

With french fictional novels I’m not as competent, for sure. I can comprehend stuff though, which is all I really desire to be able to do in French. I should eventually read some more french fanfic though. I’ll improve where I’m lacking. (also you would not believe the amount of high quality Merlin/Arthur fic, and Root/Shaw from Person of Interest fic, that exists on ao3 it is phenomenal.... im talking multiple 100k+ Root/Shaw fics spanning many genres, pages of Merthur novels!) 

But anyway, one notable thing about french for me was... it was certainly a slog and brutally draining in the beginning. But the rate at which the difficulty lowered, and the amount of effort I had to put in for the difficulty to lower (and my comprehension to increase), is so much different than with Chinese. I would imagine a huge reason for the difference is simply that French is ranked as one of the easier languages that should take a shorter amount of time for native english speakers to learn (600-some hours), compared to Chinese which is ranked as one of the hardest languages to learn taking the most amount of time (2200 hours+) (source). So just, in general, one would expect reading level progress in French to take less time. The other big difference that sort of ties into that, is the character based writing system that I had no basis of prior knowledge for, and the lack of cognates to chinese compared to french. Which, I have noticed over the months, this problem becomes less as I learn more characters - knowing characters that make up new words is sort of, for me, like knowing a ‘similar’ word that makes the new word easier. Since the pronunciation is familiar, and since I at least am familiar with the parts the new word is made from. 

Sort of like seeing french words that look like cognates of english or that have similar endings/beginnings to english words, and those french words being easier to remember and learn. So... for me personally, I’m focusing a lot on characters and vocabulary in chinese right now, in the hopes that sort of similar-to-words-i-know feedback process happens more in chinese. Since I think it makes learning new words much easier, compared to learning words where I have no already-known information to connect to the new information I’m learning. In french, I felt a large portion of words could easily ‘connect’ to some prior english knowledge I had in my head... so learning words wasn’t too hard, and once I learned enough words, I had a lot of french words to also use as this ‘scaffold’ to help support me as I picked up more new words. 

But also, the amount of effort I put into French is just staggeringly less (to me). French was definitely difficult, still is difficult as far as purposely choosing to do stuff to speed up things I want to measurably improve in. But it just took a lot ‘less’ than Chinese to see improvement. In French, I genuinely only read once every couple of weeks. I rarely looked up words, after the first year (because I am immensely lazy). So a giant portion of my improvement in reading was just from me brute force trying to read with nothing to help me, once I knew some basics. And mostly, it worked? After a couple years I could read whatever I wanted in French, and at least follow the main ideas/main plot. Which was all I wanted. Then everything after that has mostly just been the process of reading getting easier (less focus required from me, speedier reading, easier to catch more details without sacrificing speed). Compared to my Chinese reading practice, I just generally had to put less time into french and less effort. I only had to intensively look up words in french for the first year of reading (around 9 months). 

For Chinese, if my current reading level if anything to go on, I’m looking at at least another year of intensively looking up words if I want to keep making substantial progress, and likely years of looking up words every few minutes (to improve comprehension, and pick up new words regularly). Whereas in French, after 1 year I could switch to looking up words every few minutes/occasionally, if I wanted more context and more detailed understanding or to learn a new word faster. 

But I could also just... not look up any words, and still managed to keep improving. I am not sure if me learning 2000-3000 characters would make a difference for Chinese, and make it easier for me to learn more words from ‘context’ in chinese at a bit of a faster rate then I currently can. By learn from ‘context’ I mean, that I’d be able to remember words more easily, figure out their meaning in show subtitles and books more easily, and generally just work less hard to learn them. Compared to now, where many new words contain at least 1 new character, so I’m usually SRS flashcard studying them and drilling them ALONG with reading them in context and looking them up over and over (because I’m struggling to recognize them when I see them again). 

Then there’s also the matter of me wanting to read more complicated material in Chinese then I ever wanted to read in French. In French, mainly I just wanted to be able to read my historical books and theatre-play books. Occasionally I read a fiction novel in French, but its never particularly important to me to catch the details. The only time it is, is when I’m reading a fanfiction I really like (and when that happens, I do actually look up words sometimes - even though with most other french reading i no longer bother). Whereas in Chinese, I have a lot of authors I’m specifically interested in, specifically because of writing style nuances and details they choose to use. And because I want to read content of theirs that is only available in Chinese - so a decent portion of the material I’m not going to have backup English context to lean on. So alongside Chinese just taking over 3.7x more work (roughly 2200 hrs/600 hrs) than French to progress the same amount, I also want to end up being at a higher reading level in Chinese then my goal was for French. 

It’s all just... interesting to me. Studying and improving in any language takes a lot of time and effort. And for me who kind of just threw myself into reading, it’s brutal in the beginning sort of no matter what. And it gets easier, over time. It’s just a stark contrast when I think about it. People always like to say the ‘easier’ languages for english speakers to learn are significantly easier. But of course, starting out, any language is ‘difficult’ to improve in. Over time it is always going to be considerable effort to improve in. So to someone with no prior-language study experience, it’s all a long consistent amount of effort so it’s not like the difference in ‘difficulty’ should be anyone’s deciding factor on what they study. I can say though, when studying French and Japanese at the same time, it really slapped me in the face how true the ‘difficulty’ levels thing is. Something I’d learned in French would take me 4 times as long to learn in Japanese. And because Japanese took so long to improve to the ‘same level’ compared to how quick my French improved, it was so easy to get demotivated. It’s easy to get demotivated when progress is slow. With Chinese the difference has also been stark. But unlike Japanese, with studying Chinese I’ve really buckled down and studied a lot to try and ‘make up’ the time difference it takes to learn things a bit more. So, I study Chinese a lot more than I did with Japanese - but the payoff is I’m improving a bit faster, seeing results a bit faster, and I’m more motivated. I’m still taking significantly longer to learn something than it has taken to learn it in French. But instead of seeing no light at the end of the tunnel, the extra time and effort I’m putting in means that my Chinese is always at least improving fast enough to see the hint of light. If we’d assume French is always right by it, reaching it pretty fast, and my Japanese is lagging in the back of the tunnel wondering if it picks a direction if it will ever find a way to get through this tunnel ever and make any progress at all... (the tunnel being some x noticable progress in the language). 

So like... Chinese takes 3-4 times as long to improve in as French? I compensate by grinding words with SRS to really speed up my vobulary acquisition (compared to french where I just looked at word lists, occassionally looked up words, and generally took a lazier approach). I compensate by spending more time studying Chinese - usually at least a half hour a day, sometimes a few hours, and way more active immersion then I ever did in french. In French I did it once every few days somewhat leisurely, to every few weeks intensively in short bursts, in Chinese I did it at least once a week intensively, a lot more for ‘leisurely.’ (’Leisurely’ being looking words up once in a while, and consuming content for a decent chunk of time instead of only a few minutes). This all does make me wonder... how much better could I be in French, if I started doing this stuff for French? How much faster could I have gotten at French, if I’d been working this hard?

It doesn’t really matter now, since i can do what I wanted to in French... if I ever want to do other things better in French, at least now I know a solid plan to make improvements fast... 

[smorgasbordofobsessions]

liveblog: merlin s111

the unicorn ep! this was my favorite merthur scene

arthur, with a crossbow, leather gloves, leather vest, chest out, is  LOOK TM

a unicorn!

“haha, a unicorn!” like... arthur... do we not know anything about unicorns?

if there was any rat that left droppings that big it’s not a rat

wow, all of a sudden the crops died, i wonder why

“i’ll issue a decdree that looters will be executed”

“oh, no grain, no water. it is the work of magic”

damn right, uther

oohh mysterious hooded figure

merlin’s fucking loud jesus

i mean this in the context of how he’s loud in the forest

and by that i mean walking

with his legs

not his knees

“if you fail any of these tests, camelot will be damned for all eternity”

damn goodbye england

arthur saying word for word what uther says about sorcery and sorcerers

arthur passing the first test by allowing the guy to take the sack of grain that’s my PRINCE!

how did the sand turn back into water so quickly?

uh duh first test arthur

i legit want to cry because arthur feels for his people and the suffering they’re going through and aahh, my prince!

arthur doesn’t want to eat the rat stew but he’ll force merlin to do so

“you hold your tongue, or i will make time to teach you some manners”

god i am so turned on right now

test 2 is such a good test, and more emotionally involved than tests 1 or 3, because it deals with arthur’s own insecurities about his father’s love for him, whether he would be a good king or not, if he would even be ready to be a king

uther: save the food for the army

arthur: save the food for our people

uther: i will not beg neighboring kingdoms for help, where’s your pride?

arthur: i can only think of my people

LOOK at these ideological difference!

arthur has finally taken responsibility for the curse on camelot

merlin got arthur a third test, nice

arthur: i’m going alone

merlin: i’m coming with you

did... no one question why there was a huge ass labyrinth just... existing

the labyrinth is symbolic of how merlin and arthur are two sides of the same coin

look at these shitty vines

literally my favorite merthur adventure

“i thought i told you to stay at home”

some domestic shit right there

they really only had this debate to build drama and suspense

arthur sacrificng himself i want to cry

bradley really does make the best “passing out” faces

anhora just all straight faced “he’s not dead”

“arthur was willing to sacrifice his life to save yours. he has proven what is to be in his heart”

“is the sorcerer dead?” “he won’t be troubling us anymore”

sounds like a yes but isn’t really

burying the unicorn’s horn as repentance nice

[purr-merthur-purr]

Merthur taken out of context part 7/? 👀

#eyesexagain #literallyfortenseconds #normalfriendsdontdothat

[purr-merthur-purr]

Merthur taken out of context part 4/? 💪🏻 The caption says it all

[purr-merthur-purr]

Merthur taken out of context part 5/? 😵

Aksbakbdlwbwwkbdlanapsnalbs

[mergwenthurs]

I'm pretty much a multi-shipper in Merlin fandom but I agree with OP 100%. Arthur is a very nuanced character. I think that Arthur haters expect him to be this pure and sweet character -- I've seen this phenomenon on twitter where characters who are not pure and sweet will get "cancelled" or branded as "problematic" (and the most troubling is that their stans get harassed a lot, but that's another story).

The fact is, none of the characters in BBC Merlin can measure up to this pureness standard. Take Merlin himself. He's also very nuanced and I would argue that he's one of the darkest characters in the series, far more than Arthur whose moral compass remains uncompromised until the end.

But yeah, I do think the haters should understand that stanning a character or shipping a different ship =/= activism, and if they don't like Merthur or Arthur, just say it and let other people with different opinions live, instead of going on and on with some "toxic evidences" which are most likely not based on canon or taken out of context and nuances.

The thing about Arthur critical ppl that bugs me is that they seem to love to ignore all the wonderful things about Arthur make him out to be this jerk. Esp in regards to Merlin. I've seen Merwaine shippers act like Gwaine is the only one who cared about Merlin. As if Arthur didn't risk his life and go against his father for Merlin after knowing him for a couple of weeks. Or defy his father again to help him save his village. And that was just at the very beginning. I'm not saying Arthur didn't have plenty of flaws but the thing is so did the others including Merlin. But Arthur was also an inherently wonderful person who did his best and it frustrates me how ppl try to gloss over that or downplay his trauma.

YOU'RE RIGHT AND YOU SHOULD SAY IT. Thank you so very much for this!

Honestly, Arthur's character was the most inconsistently developed out of them all and it was frustrating. But even then, it's super easy to make out which scenes were in character for him and which weren't and I feel Arthur haters refuse to see that on purpose, just to have an excuse to mindlessly hate on him. I'm not saying he was perfect or that he didn't have faults but he was without a doubt one of the best characters on the show. He was complicated and made bad decisions sometimes and there were moments when he was a little oblivious and lost too but at his core, he was fundamentally a good person, who ALWAYS strived to do his best, to improve himself, to be a better king for his people and TBF 200% had a better moral compass till the end than most of the others. Gwaine stans should understand that their fave decided to follow Arthur and pledge him his undying loyalty for a reason.

Anyway, don't even get me started on how annoying it is when his pretty heavy trauma is ignored and dismissed, especially when it's done so in comparison to Morgana. BOTH OF THEIR TRAUMAS WERE DIFFERENT BUT EQUALLY DAMAGING AND THEY BOTH DEALT WITH THEM IN DIFFERENT WAYS. Don't fucking talk to me if you think differently.

Coming on to a different topic, Merwaine is a great ship, just like most ships in the show. I see the appeal in it, I lowkey ship it myself but what I'm really tired of is Merwaine shippers (or any other non-Merthur shippers) using their ship as a goddamn weapon to undermine Merthur and establish their ship as superior or better. Maybe there can be multiple good things in the same franchise and people have different tastes and enjoy different things? Maybe live and let live? Maybe let people ship whatever they want without trying to shove some far-reaching "toxic" elements of a ship down their throat just because you're salty that their ship is more popular than yours? I've seen this sort of meaningless activism a lot in this fandom and it's unfortunately put me off some great ships.

Anyway, I should stop before I get personal lmao. Thanks for the ask, you're totally right!

[purr-merthur-purr]

Merthur taken out of context part 3/? 👀 They can't stop looking at each other Headcanon that they were about to kiss

[purr-merthur-purr]

Merthur taken out of context part 1/? 👍🏻 (Sorry for the bad quality haha I took these for Snapchat and decided they were too good to throw away but my storage is almost full so I'm going to have to make some room but I want these to live forever so here you go~~~)

[purr-merthur-purr]

Merthur taken out of context part 6/? ♥️ Awwwwhhhhhhwhwhwhhhhwhhh