#all my homies hate uther

[nextstopparis]

ollie schminkey

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

Every few years I am re-possessed with the urge to suffer through the relentless tragedy that is BBC’s Merlin and repeatedly, futilely ask myself ‘but what if this time it didn’t have to be a tragedy????’

[casualbluebirdmentality]

do YOU hate Uther Pendragon?

do YOU wish Arthur had gone through with his attempted regicide in S2E8?

...then good news! i wrote a 700-smth word one-shot about Just That!

If you wanna hear me rant about the bonkers way this one-shot came to be, that's down here lol

(...Well, I guess it's not really that bonkers, but to me, it was just such a random little thing that spiraled into something really weirdly motivational, so I think I need to yell the story into the void to process lmao)

Ok so-- yesterday morning, I saw this post in the merlin subreddit (which I'd practically just joined):

And there weren't any in the comments at the time that I saw it, so I responded with this:

Which was quite insane of me for two (2) reasons.

Firstly, it's bc I write a lot privately, but I've never actually posted anything, and it's never been fanfic, but... idk man i just hate Uther. (What more does it take, really, to make someone leap into the unknown and submit themself to the mercy of the internet at large, than to just hate a fictional man So So Much?)

Anyway the second reason is that I tend to over-analyze/labor over every sentence I write, and edit it to death WHILE writing it, so I take so long to write literally anything. But, I wrote this shit:

First thing in the morning (and un-medicated, at that)

In 2-3 hours, a large chunk of which was spent transcribing the entire og fight scene (all dialogue and actions, every notable sword swing) from the moment Arthur first says "I know… what you did to my mother" and Uther orders the other knights to leave the room, to Arthur finally being talked down and gasping out an "Oh lord... I'm sorry" after collapsing to the floor-- all of which was just over a thousand words, even in the most bare-bones, script-ish language. (I only ended up using ~100 of those words as the lead-in to the fic lmao)

And then people liked it?!?!?!?!?

Don't get me wrong, it's not some magnum opus or anything, but like... Idk y'all it just absolutely made me day. I'd been pretty down on myself recently about my writing abilities (and other things lmao) but this made me feel SO much better, like-- damn, maybe this could work out as a career eventually if I ever finish my wips lol, rip. And it was so nice to just write something short without over-analyzing/-editing constantly that I'm DEFINITELY gonna continue doing/posting one-shots like that, which is also really good bc it gives me something more manageable to work on so I can get writing practice in more regularly. Idk y'all I'm just having a great time rn!!!

[mobycotton]

Chapter 10: Long Live The King

In which Arthur is taken from his marriage bed by the news of his father being close to death.

CWs: death, mentions/implications of suicide, self-harm, self harm through not eating, not sleeping, self-isolation, generally bad coping menchanisms

spoilers: Uther dies in this one (who cheered)

[marcskywalker]

if you really think about it, arthur's parents are ygraine and magic fuck uther all my homies hate uther

[albonium]

fuck uther all my homies hate uther

[poisonedfate]

me and all my homies hate uther pendragon btw

[greyscale-exe]

the magic in bbc merlin is a perfect queer allegory

(this is long but i have so many thoughts about bbc merlin and specifically merlin’s character) 

we all know and love bbc merlin as a kinda queerbait-y show about a couple of pals (arthur and merlin) who go on adventures together, but it’s also a great queer allegory (an allegory being a symbolic representation of something else). 

throughout the show, magic is presented as an innate part of a person that they are born with that they cannot control, yet they are persecuted for it. some people can hide it and live fulfilling lives in spite of the anti-magic rhetoric in camelot, but others, like morgana, morgause, nimueh, and others cannot live any other way than loudly themselves. now does that sound at all familiar?? if it does, lovely! that’s a queer allegory!

you can also see this in merlin’s journey from s1 to s5 because in the beginning, he is not at all confident in his magic abilities and he’s (mostly) very careful about people finding out because he is terrified of being outed as a wizard in a city of people who would have him killed. gaius is really his only ally there because he understands merlin’s situation and what he’s going though. you might even say he’s a bit of a queer elder.

in s4 and s5, merlin is significantly more confident in his abilities and you see the shift from being a timid little guy early on, to proudly saying “i was born with it” when agravaine said he had magic. hell, he was even able to stand up to uther and show that he had magic during the ghost episode! to me, this feels comparable to when a queer person has fully accepted their queer identity and gotten over a lot of internalized queerphobia to be able to be loudly and proudly themselves. obviously merlin isn’t suddenly flaunting his magical abilities because as dumb as he can be sometimes he’s not a complete idiot, but he has made his magic a central part of his identity and he’s comfortable with that! 

for merlin “coming out” as a wizard to uther was a huge turning point in his character arc because he was able to leave some of his anger towards uther behind him and prove to himself that he won. uther was scandalized that he had given merlin such a privileged position and yet that just showed how merlin had won. he had survived right under uther’s nose, becoming arthur’s closest friend and lover and to me, that final scene with uther’s ghost is a massive “fuck you” to uther and everything he stood for, after which merlin is more able to come into his own and be more proud of himself and his magic. s1 merlin would not have been at all able to something like that and it always makes me smile when i watch s5. 

--

tldr: most stories about forbidden magic (including bbc merlin) can be interpreted as queer allegories and merlin’s character development over the show is simply so amazing :)

[yourfavecharacterisqueer]

merlin, gaius, & morgana saw argwen happening from day 1.

uther did not, thats y he tried to k!ll gwen ig😗✌️

[voiidvagabond]

The show sometimes tries to make me sympathize with him, but I REFUSE. >:(

hate reading a fic and somehow uther is like. a sympathetic character. or gets some sort of redemption arc. nah fam just kill him? just kill him.

[fruithoods]

i love bbc merlin with all my heart but there are so many flaws in that show,,, uther being considered a morally grey character while morgana is a villain is definitely one of them.

uther committed genocide after causing the death of his wife.

morgana was coerced, living in terror over her father, completely alone (i love merlin but he handled this badly), was POISONED by someone she considered a friend, and was locked in a pit for 2 years. she made mistakes, she wasn’t innocent either. but she became who she was as a reaction to other people’s actions.

morgana was a victim of bad, inconsistent writing. uther was just evil.

[mushr00m-b0y]

no because i have so many thoughts about this 

1. they talk about the “old religion” being linked to magic all the time in the show, so I think it comes from the Gods of that religion. The magic has to come from some kind of blessing/curse (however you want to look at it) in order to harness it, because not everyone in the realm can practice it. But it also comes mostly from learning, because there were so few in the show that were blessed with the natural ability to perform magic like Merlin was. I think that the limitations magic users experienced came from either a smaller bestowment or maybe even just illiteracy. 

2. In Merlin’s case, the magic was definitely partially ancestral because his dad was a Dragonlord, and we know that that’s only passed down through a bloodline. I think that you have to be blessed by the Gods of the “old religion” in order to be able to wield it in any amount, or at least be descended from someone who was blessed. This could also be a reason for people not having “strong magic” - because their great-grandparent was the one who was blessed. 

3. I think that nature was more something to be respected than a tool for magic users in the show. Merlin had extensive knowledge of different plants because of his work as Gaius’s assistant, and he respected the creatures within the forest whether they were magical or not. We also saw this kind of demeanor with Morgana. I think that the Druids were more nature-oriented as a culture, but we never really got to see a lot of them as a people because of Uther’s determination to wipe them out. 

4. I honestly don’t know this one and I wish that the show had given us more of the Druids and their culture besides their remedies and some of the lore that they had with the creatures that Merlin encountered (and yknow the occasional Uther being a h*m*cidal maniac) because I would love to learn the way that magic affected them as a group. 

5. We know that healing magic can basically save you from death as long as you aren’t already dead unless there’s an enchantment that would stop or reverse the effects because of the several times Merlin has come back or saved someone as well as Uther’s death when Morgana enchanted him and Arthur thought that Merlin’s oldsona had murdered his dad. I don’t think there are many limitations to healing magic in this world. If the person is too far over the threshold of death (like more than 95% dead) or if there’s an enchantment to stop the magic, then I don’t think it works. However, with the dead people, the whole balance of life and death thing comes into play. You can save someone but you have to be willing to risk someone else and I think that the way that it works is that the person you give up is whoever means as much or more to the person asking for the High Priestess (and by extension the Gods) for a person to be saved. That’s why Uther loses Arthur’s mom and why Merlin loses his mom. I think the people that are unrecoverable are the ones that are lost to spells like this. Otherwise people would just keep trading the lives of their friends and family for eternity. Those that die deaths as a result of such a heavy spell probably can’t be revived. I would go as far as to say that spell-caused deaths can’t be revived, but technically Lancelot’s whole return would prove that claim false. 

this was so much rambling I'm so sorry 

It always annoyed me how the magic system in Merlin was never explained or expanded upon. Here's a list of questions I wish I had answers to. Feel free to put in your own thoughts.

How does the magic work? What are the limitations?

Does someone's ability to use magic depend on their ancestry? Are magic users descendants of gods or those blessed by gods?

Do all magic users have a deep connection with nature? Is that connection an important key to how much magic they can wield?

Why do some druids not have access to magic?

What are the limits to healing magic and why? What about the balance of life and death? What is defined as unrecoverable?

[and-damntheconsequences]

13 bc Fuck Uther 😤

Hell yes it's Uther Hate Time.

13. You decide Uther's death. When and how does it happen?

Honestly? 1x12. Exactly the same as the episode, only either Morgana doesn't change her mind, or she and Merlin aren't able to stop the assassins.

I've written about this before, but I think there would be something beautiful in that. That he didn't die from the magic he spent his whole life trying to destroy. But from a child who was sick of watching him murder, who was tired of being hurt for trying to defend others. He'd die because of something mortal and mundane. Nimueh would love that I think.

I think it could have been very interesting for everyone. Arthur's too young, really, for the throne. But he would learn. He would change. He'd have far more opportunity to unlearn all that Uther taught him. Would Morgana have gone down the same path? I don't know. Probably not entirely, but I think her darker side would have become much clearer at some point. But for the whole kingdom, it would have been a huge change, given how young Arthur was and how different.

Maybe we could have had a golden Albion if that had happened.

((But also like, put the man in a paper shredder. We don't like him.))

[hooliganpearl]

I'm watching merlin for the first time with my sister and HNNGGGGHHH UTHER DIE CHALLENGE

AJXGAJDH RIGHT

I love that you came to my inbox with this it means you've seen my Merlin posts and how many of them are about how much I HATE UTHER

[catsxratsxbats]

Obsessed with bbc Merlin lately. He is the most audacious twit to ever wizard. We do stan his gay (affectionate) little scarf

[rejectfalseiconz]

HE WHAT

it’s the way I always thought uther chaining arthur up like morgana in 1.12 was a hc but theres actual, explicit evidence that he has done so before in canon,,