#arthur gets reincarnated

[onceandfutureclotpoll]

Title: See You in the Sunlight

Author: helloearthlings

Rating: Teen and up Audiences

Summary: Merlin tells stories about his life. Arthur listens, but doesn't understand. That is, until he does.

[knightswaypoint]

“Candid No. 24” by A. Penn Photo taken at “Camelot and Other Mythos” Exhibit, Natural History Museum

(Merlinktober Days 4 & 5: Foreign (Out of Place / Out of Time) & Lens)

[justaz]

merthur reincarnation au, merlin is constantly roaming the earth and running into various reincarnations of arthur’s soul. neither know but there is always this draw between them. they’ve met in many different lives with many different dynamics. when do they realize/remember? when arthur’s body is mortally wounded.

in one life they met on the battlefield, leaders of the opposing armies. they often ended up fighting each other and they grew to respect the others tactics and plans. despite being enemies, the level of shared respect grew to an odd fondness. merlin’s rival in his own army grew tired of watching merlin dance with the enemies leader and decided to step in and put an end to it. they attacked arthur from behind and left him for dead. merlin, who saw the whole thing but was too far away to do anything about it, rushed over to be by arthur’s side as he died. arthur took off his helm then and merlin was faced with a man who looked eerily similar to the man who had died just a couple of centuries ago. arthur’s memories began to rush back and he bled out and merlin Knew when arthur stared up at him the same way he had the first time he died. merlin was unable to save him then too.

in another life, merlin had taken to simply roaming, no settling down and no roots. he was homeless and napping on a bench outside a cafe. a woman came out with a bag of perfectly fine baked goods that she was supposed to throw out (dictated by corporate) and she instead brought them over to merlin and set them down by him. merlin woke at the sound of the crinkling bag and met her gaze. it became routine after they closed, she would bring merlin the goods from the day. merlin eventually began to come in and sit at the tables inside every once in a while and talk with her when it was slow. one night, merlin was late to his bench and when he got there the lights were still on and the door was unlocked but he couldn’t see the nice girl who always gave him food. he shuffled in and found her bleeding out from gunshots behind the counter where the cash register had been emptied out. merlin was there for her final breaths and she joked how he could definitely do better than living on the streets. merlin realized who she was as the light left her eyes.

in another life, they were corporate rivals. another they were best friends for five years. another they were pirates and merlin ended up delivering the final blow. another they explored the stars together. etc, etc.

merlin losing him again and again after just finding him. arthur remembering everything right before he dies. a horrible cycle that seems never ending. merlin is forced to live thru the deception arthur suffered over and over again - finding out just who he has known for years is someone else entirely but not having the time to revel in it. arthur suffers the other end of their twisted dynamic of never being able to express his true self until the end wherein death is imminent. the cycle continues for millennia.

eventually, like all things, humans destroy what they had whether it be nuclear war or climate change or what have you, the earth reclaims itself and sends humankind back into their caves. everything there once was is gone and now left with nothing, humans return to their roots. magic flourishes and spreads as new civilizations begin to establish themselves. merlin, oddly enough, hasn’t run into an arthur reincarnation in centuries. not until he ventures into a village and finds a young man toiling in the fields. he dons a face merlin hasn’t seen in millennia. when he looks up and catches merlin’s eye, he smiles wide and calls out for him.

he remembers

[halfateabag]

fanfic prompt #1 Avengers/merlin crossover

One man falls to his death in an icy ravine from a running train but ends up in a living hell.

But was he the only one unfortunate enough to end up in the clutches of HYDRA?

Merlin waits for Arthur to return. Centuries pass, and finally, the Second World War is on them. Merlin has the highest of hopes that this would be Arthur's moment, but the Triple Goddess decides to screw with him again and no one came out of the lake. After the war is won, depressed and tired of living with Arthur, Merlin gives up and purges his own magic so he can finally die.

Wandering through Europe waiting for death, Merlin gets captured by HYDRA who wants him for his magic now that the tesseract is gone. But Merlin's powers are gone, but his captors don't believe him.

HYDRA believes that Merlin is hiding his powers deliberately, and decides that the only way to gain access to the true legend of Merlin is to make the legend their own Asset.

(Basically where I desperately want to read a Winter solider!Merlin fic and Arthur fighting him on a bridge.)

[elizaisdunn]

been super busy lately and haven't been able to create anything of substance. but here's a sketchy thing I made of one of my OCs! her name is Meg and I love her very much :)

[oswinsdolma]

bbc merlin is literally 100x funnier when you remember how tiny the kingdoms of britain were at that time. like,, arthur and uther act like they're kings over a glorious domain but in reality they might as well be ruling over swindon or some shit

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

(first sentence meme)

Now he wasn't saying the place was haunted, but he definitely wasn't not saying it, either.

(fandom and character/au of choice!)

(y'know it's been a minute since i did anything msa... and per usual i'm absolute dogshit at sticking to that sentence limit. honestly i forgot it even existed this time) (src - still open!)

It wasn't just the age—though it was old—but old places weren't inherently haunted, in Arthur's opinion. Sure, every place tended to acquire a sort of... flavor, over time, as they were lived in, but sometimes that vibe was calm. Peaceful.

This place was—not. It was not that, even if Vivi apparently couldn't feel it. It had an almost oppressive air of anger to it, low and simmering, like the old walls were glaring daggers down at them. And it felt... there was this nagging in the back of his head, like something he was forgetting that he should have remembered. Something important about this place. That meant something.

Per usual, though, his vocal complaints were being ignored—until they came to a bigger room. It might have been some kind of theater, once, or a performance hall, or—

Any speculation was cut short when the centerpiece of the room—sparked, immediately making everything else a distantly secondary concern. That feeling of hatred spiked with it, too, sending his heart rate instantly through the roof—and seriously, if Vivi thought he was still making shit up now—

"You've got a lot of nerve, K," a voice echoed around the vast room, "waltzing back in here like nothing's wrong."

The fire—the fire that radiated an entire spectrum of warm colors, edging into a magenta that couldn't be anything natural—coalesced into a form that was starting to look almost—human.

"Your expression says you maybe haven't remembered me yet," it—he says. "That's fine."

He waves one hand, and a whip of fire whirls around the edge of the room, making doors that definitely weren't there before all slam in an almost rhythmic thunk-thunk-thunk.

A pair of neon-white eyes glare like they're trying to burn holes through his skull. It feels almost like they're succeeding.

"I'm more than happy to help remind you."

[starry-bi-sky]

I was hit with Brain Worms about this au last night at the sane hour of 3am (my dorm's AC turned off and i woke up sweltering and couldn't fall back asleep) and now that I have the time and energy to sit down, i am going to TALK about it.

I'm reverting back to my middle school roots and playing the game "how much can i fuse this character with another before the host character becomes recognizable".

AKA: How much Ras can I make Danny before he stops being Danny. And I have SO much practice here, i am frothing at the mouth. Beautiful world and character building here.

SO, meet Danny Fenton! At least, Danny Fenton to the rest of the world. His full name is Ras Danyal Alghul-Fenton. It's a mouthful, I know, but that's what makes it fun! Known as Danny to his friends and the world, known as Ras to his family.

Fenton is actually his mother's name, Alghul is his father's. Yehya Aghul, who changed his name to Jack legally for an easier transition immigrating to America with his family. But to family and friends, his name is Yehya. (Yehya is the arabic spelling of John, and Jack is a nickname variant for John, hence why his name is Yehya)

Yasmeen and Ras; Jazz and Danny.

The LOA is situated in Nanda Parbat, as it does not exist in Danny's world, it's simply the little town/village Jack grew up in before his family decided to immigrate. Danny's family visits in the summers when they can.

Growing up, Danny and Jazz were constantly told about these "secret underground pools full of ectoplasm" that Jack stumbled upon as a kid after he was playing around the area and fell down a hole. He'd broken his leg on the way down, and when he'd gone to wash the blood off in the strange water (he was desperate and in pain) it healed the injury entirely and reinvigorated him. He was able to climb out, but he could never find the cave again.

("I didn't know what to call it, so I called it lazarus until i learned later that it was ectoplasm!")

It's what started his obsession with ectoplasm, and then ghosts. Prior to the portal, Danny and Jazz just brushed it off as simply their dad telling tall tales again. The idea that ectoplasm had healing properties was never proven because whenever Jack tried, he was always stopped by either Maddie or Vlad in college. And then after the kids were born, he was banned from trying to test the theory on their kids.

It was only after Danny had his accident that he realized that his dad was right, and after that he started carrying a water bottle full of ectoplasm around with him. But since he couldn't call it that in front of people, he just called it lazarus water. Says his dad came up with the stuff, and that typically tends to deter people from wanting to try.

Now I know you said that Danny ends up in the DCU via a portal in the GZ while he was on the way to Clockwork, BUT. I had this idea and had to share. Nanda Parbat, know how Danny and his family visits Nanda Parbat in the summers?

:]

They weren't able to visit the first summer after Danny's accident because of Issues with the portal -- Maddie and Jack didn't want the thing to malfunction while they were gone, so they wanted to stay for the summer and make sure it could sustain itself in long term hibernation -- but the summer after? Oh yeah, they're going.

Danny steps foot in Nanda Parbat for the first time since his accident, and after getting accosted by Mother Soul ("Ras saghiri! Ya tiflati, laqad kabarat kthyran. Daeni 'ulqi nazratan ealayki."**) he goes looking around for the cave that his dad mentioned.

**("Little Ras! My child, you have grown so much. Let me take a look at you")

He finds it within a week, and he falls down the tunnel leading into it much like his dad did nearly thirty years earlier -- without breaking his leg, that is.

His dad never mentioned that the pools were so vibrant. A much richer shade of green than any of the ectoplasm he keeps in the fridge, as deep as the ghost zone's sky. And surrounding the misting waters were small bushes and flowers, the ectoplasm seeping into the ground and feeding the soil.

"Incredible." Danny breathes, running a hand through his hair in breathless shock, and he tiptoes closer to the water. He can feel the ectoplasm in the air, thrumming in his core like a pleasant hum.

He kneels down and dips his hands in the water, and as the water escapes off his skin, the scrapes and bruises on his palms seal and close as if they were never there in the first place. Danny's eyes are reflecting green in the water, the same rich shade.

Naturally, he falls in. And accidentally, in combination with his own core and ectoplasm and the water, a portal opens up as he does, and he lands in the DCU.

…And thats approximately where the brain worms end. With a bonus doodle! Because I couldn’t not try my hand at it.

Danny Is An Alternate Version Of Ra's Al Ghul And Flash Already Called Dibs On Adopting Him

Danny In All His Sleep Deprived Slightly Scuffed Up From A Fight Glory Is On His Way To Clockworks Tower To Hopefully Get A Nap And Maybe Some Homework Done When A Natural Portal Opens Up In Front Of Him And Proceeds To Unceremoniously Drop Him In The DC Verse Just Outside Of Central City Before Promptly Closing Leaving A Tired Danny Behind In A Run Down Abandoned Parking Lot.

It's Times Like This When Danny Regrets Putting Off Learning How To Make His Own Portals, Cause Now He Is Very Much Stuck For The Foreseeable Future And He Has No Idea Where Or When He Is. Luckily For Him However Central City Isn't Too Far Away, Unlucky For Him However Is That Once In The City He Realizes This Isn't His Dimension. He's Pretty Sure He'd Remember Something Called The Justice League.

So What Do You Do When Supernatural Bullshit Fails You? You Fall Back On Your Mad Scientist Roots And You Make A Portal Gun. So That's Exactly What Danny Plans To Do.

Unfortunately Staying Alive And Building Questionably Safe Portal Technology Requires Money And Supplies, So He Ends Up Wandering From City To City Doing Odd Jobs/Fixing Up Busted Tech For Cash Or Unwanted Electronics For His "Operation: Get Home" Needs. This Obviously Ends In A Few Superhero Encounter Shenanigans.

Though He Always Ends Up Back Near Central City, Both On The Off Chance The Natural Portal Will Open Up Again And Because Out Of All The Superheroes That Apparently Exist In This Universe The Speedsters Are His Favorite (Red Robin Is Solidly His Second Favorite Ever Since The Gotham Vigilante Gave Him A Large Coffee Filled With Enough Caffeine To Kill A Man).

Unbeknownst To Danny However Is That Every Hero/Vigilante He Has Encountered Has Come To At Least One Of The Following Conclusions; 1. Run Away Meta Who Is In Desperate Need Of A Good Meal/Adoption Bait. 2. Possibly Red Robin/Tim Drake Clone 3. A Good Kid But Could Possibly Be A Future Rouge If Left Unsupervised. 4. Did Bats Get A New Kid And Why Is He Here?

All Flash Knows Is That He Saw The Kid First And Therefore Has Dibs. Suck It Bruce.

Fast-forward A Few Months And Danny Gets Hurt During A Rogue Attack While Trying To Help Some Civilians Get To Safety (Old Hero Habits Die Hard (Ha Die Hard) And All That Jazz) And He Nopes Out Once Everyone Is Safe And When The Paramedics Are Busy With Other People Unaware He Left A Blood Sample Behind.

One DNA Test Brought To You By Paranoid Bat Concerns Of A Possible Red Robin Clone Later And They Find Out That Dannys DNA Matches One Ra's Al Ghul.

They Now Think Danny Is An Escaped Ra's Al Ghul Clone.

Memes For The Vibes:

[morganadismay]

we have GOT to get weirder with arthurian retellings. david lowery and the slightly unsettling whimsy of his green knight is the only one that scratches this itch but i would like something even more rooted in magical realism and absurdism. i've been plagued with visions of arthurian characters living past their myth and becoming Something Else for months now... get into Morgan's necromancy more, the double Guinevere as a doppelgänger narrative, the whole deal with Merlin being entombed for years on end.

[whereisthedamndaddymanual]

They can clearly see my straw man corporation is not for profit.

All my funds go toward buying my children shit they don't necessarily need, but I try to do better for them then I was done for.

[onceandfutureclotpoll]

Title: Memories

Author: shadowglove88

Rating: Teen and up Audiences

Summary: Merlin is tired of the centuries in between reincarnations in which he's so alone, so he stops looking for Arthur, making a life for himself. And yet Arthur comes back into his life, and even without his memories Prince Arthur is playing for keeps.

[sailorb00]

Sorry don't mind me, just reblogging this mostly to act as a bookmark for me to reread later because it's very insightful and my ADHD doesn't do great with long texts unless I'm committed to the task fsdf

Also just wanted to also write down some thoughts I got when reading through this (mostly for myself in case I forget them later lol)

I think you're absolutely on the money w/ everything in your post, but especially that last thought; i.e. the relics being a reflection of their corresponding maiden in the current story.

Like, yeah, I always found it strange how the relics didn't align w/ what we (the audience) would perceive to be the rational corresponding season/maiden (i.e. spring=creation; summer=choice; fall=knowledge; winter=destruction) and that they actually appeared to be more arbitrary/random in nature??

I mean, like you've said, the maiden mythos/fairytale supports the audience's initial view of the 'correct' order, but then instead we have spring=knowledge; summer=destruction; fall=choice; winter=creation, which seems out of place.

Until you look at the current Maidens and their actions/motives/narratives.

(these are just basic ramblings/thoughts and not super in depth, so forgive me fsdff. also apologies if you've touched on this before in a previous post or s/t)

First you've got our Fall Maiden and Choice, Cinder.

Girl has made so many spicy choices; some resulting in favourable outcomes, many not so much fsdf

— She willingly defies Salem's orders/plans in want of her own desires i.e. going after Winter maiden powers

— She killed Watts (which while yes, his usefulness at the end of the Atlas Arc kinda ran its course, I'm sure Salem might beg to differ, or at least not appreciate Cinder killing her followers w/o her say so)

— She also lied to Salem about Ruby being killed by Neo + about RWBY using the lamp (though we know she more than likely saw through that fsdf)

(also, yes she isn't a Maiden, but Pyrrha was forced to make The Choice™ and I think that is also vital evidence/fuel for this theory fsdf)

Then you have the Spring Maiden and Knowledge, Raven.

— She tells Yang in V5 to keep asking questions, to question everything about Ozpin, etc.

— She clearly knows what happened to Summer Rose and the previous Spring Maiden, and that knowledge has made her fearful as all heck, forcing her to go into hiding.

Then you have our Winter Maidens and Creation, Penny and Winter.

— Penny is literally created 3 times. Twice in robot form/s, then lastly as a human. She is a Creation™ and also embodies the theme of spring/creation most. i.e. youthful, naive, etc

— The obvious Winter comparison is the Scheme family semblance of summoning. She also sees Penny transference of the Maiden power as a gift, which I see as also kind of aligning w/ 'creation'. Kinda pulling at straws there, but I'm sure there's something I'm missing fsdf

Then we have Summer and Destruction, ????

— while we don't know who the Summer Maiden is, I have a sneaking suspicion they're going to be connected to destruction in some form, whether they do some destruction in their past and that has made them fearful of their powers or something along those lines, or that they will be destructive in the future volume, whenever it is released.

I am so excited for V10 and Vacuo, etc and really hope RWBY Beyond helps quell my anxiety and anguish that it may be the last RWBY content we get for some time 🥲

Read your post on the relics and I did not pay any attention to the chains until you brought it up.

I remember seeing a theory that the sword will essentially be Excalibur and the spirit inside will essentially be the lady of the lake. Her name in Arthurian lore is either Vivian or Nimue.

Also have you noticed that the environments in the vaults is the season AFTER the corresponding maiden’s? The spring maiden’s vault had a hot desert (summer) and the winter maiden’s vault had a grassy field (spring). Which if the sword does turn out to be Excalibur, then the summer maiden’s vault might end up looking like a pond surrounded by trees with red-orange-yellow leaves.

Then imagine if the fall maiden’s vault looks like a snowy forest, just like Ruby was walking through in the red trailer.

kinda of two minds on the sword-as-excalibur thing because, while it does seem like the obvious pull and it is where i landed when i first started mulling over the sword and the crown for the purposes of fanfic (which is something of a complicating factor here, in that i have a pair of full-blown OCs and i gotta be real clear to myself on the distinction between "this is lore i assembled out of canonical crumbs to suit my fanfic" and "this is a theory i have about what's going on in canon," particularly when the two overlap significantly, which in this case they do)… well, rwby doesn't often go for the obvious pull. and jinn isn't an allusion to arthurian myth, so there's not exactly a pattern here, ya know?

the thread of imprisonment linking the genie in the lamp to merlin in the tree might be a pattern, or a coincidence, but as far as speculation goes i think “mythical characters for whom being trapped is a notable theme/event” is probably a category worth taking into consideration.

(for what it’s worth: the pulls i made for the aforementioned OCs were loki [sword] and prometheus [crown], and while obviously constructing OCs is a WHOLE other ballgame, on the most basic level of possible allusions they do check the “imprisonment” box and hold water if refracted through the lens of “spirit of destruction/choice,” so it’s like. i wouldn’t be SURPRISED? if rwby also went there. prometheus in particular feels like a solid candidate for the spirit for the crown because, well. something about choice and stealing fire from gods. and cinder lmfao.)

and oh ho ho i have a... theory? a thought ? about the interiors of the vaults. because it's, well, arbitrary. the maidens all have the same pool of general elemental powers. likewise the relics don't just lack any clear reason for their associations with the season of their respective maiden— they strike me as deliberately flouting the associations you might expect them to have based on the common cultural associations the four seasons have. like:

spring - the planting, the world thawing after winter = creation summer - a time of growth, freedom, maturation = choice fall - harvest time, preparation for winter = knowledge winter - cold, dark, symbolically everything 'dies' = destruction.

yeah? and where it gets even weirder is that the symbolic 'lesson' of each sister/season in the canonical fairytale describing the origins of the maidens themselves also fits much more naturally into the spring-creation, summer-choice, fall-knowledge, and winter-destruction schema:

spring plants a garden and teaches the hermit to tend to it; "life returned to the tired hermit and the forest, which flourished and became green and lush." creation, right?

summer dances and teases and invites the hermit out of his shell, reminding him of the possibility of joy and freedom. he learns not to limit himself to passive observance of the world and to instead takes an active part in it. that's choice!

fall advises the hermit to let go of his misconceptions about himself and his life and see himself clearly at last; he "realized that Fall was right" and eventually achieved a fuller understanding of himself. knowledge!

and winter—who arrived first, encountering the hermit at the height of his isolation, taught him to reflect and meditate until he found serenity and a renewed sense of purpose—in a sense, transforming his metaphorical 'death' into a period of rest or hibernation until his frozen solitude began to thaw. destruction, before the creative energy of spring entered his life.

and yet:

spring maiden = the maiden of knowledge summer maiden = maiden of destruction fall maiden = maiden of choice winter maiden = maiden of creation

why?

(the important thing to keep in mind here, i think, is that rwby has never presented these associations as a natural or intrinsic quality. the maiden-season-relic connection only exists, in-universe, because ozma set it up that way.)

now consider that—as you said—the two vaults we've gotten a look at so far don't line up with the seasons they're 'supposed' to have, with winter's vault [creation] being lush and green inside and spring's vault [knowledge] being a barren desert. so we've got this winter->spring, spring->summer pattern going on, and if that holds we should expect summer's vault [destruction] to be evocative of autumn and fall's vault [choice] to be evocative of winter.

BUT. i think—because of the arbitrariness of the seasonal associations in and of themselves, and because those associations are explicitly a social construct, and because if we follow the seasonal associations the plot has gone fall->spring->winter->summer and that’s um, not right, and i think it’s deliberately not right—there may be something different entirely going on.

namely, the relics exist in two different sets of pairs. right? we've got destruction+knowledge and creation+choice—the pairs given to humanity by the two brother gods. and we've (maybe) also got creation+knowledge and destruction+choice—the complementary power pairs, with the lamp able to eliminate (or at least mitigate) the risks of using the staff and (maybe) the crown and the sword being similar. [the world of remnant episode pertaining to the great war makes a heavy visual implication that ozma used the crown of choice in tandem with the sword of destruction, is where i'm getting that.]

moreover, the four relics symbolically [and perhaps literally] represent the four essential qualities that, together, define what humanity IS: creation AND destruction AND knowledge AND choice.

not four individual, separate magical artifacts. it's a set. we know there's a way to combine them into one thing that will summon the brothers back to remnant, and with the limited information we have now about how they work mechanically it seems very much like they are intended to be used together.

so: the vault with the lamp of knowledge inside it. what does it look like, on the inside? a desert.

knowledge was one of the gifts given to humanity by the god of darkness; the other was destruction. and where is the sword of destruction locked away? the desert of vacuo.

likewise, the staff of creation? hidden in a vault filled with green, grassy meadows. very much like the landscape of vale. where the crown of choice is hidden—and if i'm right about precisely where the crown's vault is hidden, namely the circular ruins where beacon academy's initiation is conducted, the crown is in fact hidden directly under a large, grassy meadow!

further: the vault doors we've seen echo the color scheme of the relics they protect. removing a relic from the vault destroys the doors, which to me suggests that the relics themselves might be the 'anchor' that sustains the vaults themselves—we don't really know enough about how magic works mechanically to say for sure that an 'anchor' is truly necessary, but cinder's use of the staff in v8 demonstrated that if you directly use a relic to create a portal to another realm, you cannot then destroy those portals until the relic has been removed from the 'interior' realm. the vaults were created by some other means, but the same basic principle of linking the existence of the vault to the presence of the relic inside it could very well still apply.

aaand if the vaults are materially connected to the relics in some way—if the presence of the relics in the vaults is somehow providing the energy necessary to maintain them, like plugging in some kind of magical battery?—then... it's not that much of a leap to wonder if maybe the vault interiors symbolically reflect, or are influenced by, the location of that relic's missing pair.

especially in light of the fact that: 1. the nature of the spirits inside the relics is very humanlike, with both jinn and ambrosius clearly being emotional, fully sapient beings, and 2. it rains in the ever after when ruby starts to cry.

[my secondary theory here is that—well. the god of light says explicitly that modern humans do not have the divine blessings given to their predecessors, and while mechanically that seems to mean "they don't have magic," metaphysically it's not... entirely implausible that for ancient humans, "creation, destruction, knowledge, and choice" weren't abstract capabilities but rather actual. literal gifts, something that materially, measurably existed in the human soul, were the source of magical abilities, and were taken away when the gods left. (consider the four larger orbs of energy salem conjures when she's fidgeting with her magic at the beginning of lost fable, which are conspicuously missing when her daughter does the same trick later on.)

ozpin's explanation of the maidens is that he "divided his magic" somehow and his "remaining" magic is now dwindling, but the thing about that is magical power doesn't really... seem to be a limited resource in the way that aura is? we've yet to see anyone with magic 'run out' like people run out of aura. even ozpin seems to be fairly cavalier in his usage of magic—he's cautious of giving it away, and it's not the first thing he turns to in a fight, but he's never hesitated to make full use of his own power when the situation calls for it.

i've been thinking that maybe?? what he actually did with the maidens was give them each one of the divine blessings. like literally, removed the Quantifiable Gift Of Creation from his own soul and gave it to winter, and so on, leaving himself with the metaphysical capacity for these qualities—because that can't be taken away, just as the gods couldn't truly obliterate humankind—but giving up the limitless energy source of the blessings themselves; ergo, his magic is 'dwindling' in the sense that he has to use aura to fuel it now.

this does leave the question of how the hell he gave the branwens shapeshifting abilities, but considering salem seems to have given cinder the ability to control grimm long before she got the maiden powers... maybe folks with magical abilities can just do that? share specific skills? and what makes the maidens so uniquely powerful is that they didn't get specific skills, they got the power source.

anyway all that to say i do wonder if maybe 'seasons' are just an arbitrary smokescreen ozma fabricated and the maidens are literally rather than symbolically the maidens of choice, creation, knowledge, and destruction, with the relic vaults each being linked to the maiden with the matching blessing.]

[achillesuwu]

Yeah yeah, Merlin being a doctor, Merlin being a biologist, a writer,...

BUT what if Merlin decided for shit and giggle to find a weird thing to study? The kind of thing that when you explain it at family meal there is a blank of confusion because nobody understands what you do/because this is so fucking weird

Now this could go 2 different way

Post return arthur coming out of tha lake and Merlin desperately avoiding what he has been doing the last decade (IMAGINE IF HE GOT A JOB AS A PROFESSOR OF SAID WEIRD STUDIES)

Merlin peacefully walking to get to his class and finding reincarnated Artbur. Poor him trying very hard to avoid the subject of "In What Field He Is"

[ramblings-of-a-chaotic-neutral]

This au was created with the combined forces of the amazing and awesomely talented group of @griffonskies, @hufflehobbitmakes, @lorienrobins, and myself (and they're all super cool people and you should all check out their blogs!) in an absolutely hilarious conversation, so I had to flesh this idea out. Enjoy!

This is a post-canon AU, where Merlin is still living by the Lake of Avalon in modern times, awaiting Arthur's return. While the world has changed immensely in the time since Arthur's reign, there were a few things that have stayed the same. And one of the things that had stayed constant throughout the last 1500 years were the druids and their worship of Emrys.

As Merlin's powers grew following Camlann, he found that he could hear the prayers that the druids directed at him, and he could answer them to the best of his ability with his magic while staying at the shores of Avalon. Besides, the druids knew better than to seek him out in person unless there was an absolute emergency.

Now, fast forwards to the 21st century, and there's modern druids worshipping Merlin as Emrys, and they pray to him and leave offerings, and he still sometimes answers their prayers. While the most popular offerings to Emrys are physical offerings, such as wooden carvings and food, their songs and dances praising him work as offerings as well.

However, one day, some Gen Z druids get an idea. Their religion isn't very well known, how about they spread more awareness of it online? And what better way to reach a wide audience than to share one of their dances praising Emrys on TikTok!

And of course, their dances for Emrys blows up online and go viral. The consequences of this, besides the rising interest in their religion, is that Merlin has accidentally gained millions of new worshippers, who have performed the dance without really knowing what it means.

Suddenly, with millions of people performing dances in honor of him online, Merlin is more powerful than ever before, much to his own confusion, since he's just chilling in a cabin next to the lake and doesn't really spend much time online.

However, one day, Arthur's reincarnation does the new dance trend at reincarnated Morgana's insistence. Merlin immediately senses his king performing one of the dances made to worship Emrys and teleports to Arthur's location, scaring the shit out of him. Now Arthur's stuck with a maybe-a-god-but-honesty-kinda-hot guy in his flat who keeps calling him "sire" and telling him to go to some lake so he can pick up a sword. It's a very confusing day for poor Arthur!

Bonus: some quotes from Gen Z druids in this au explaining their religion online: "Yeah, we can talk directly to our god, but he doesn't always respond because he's kinda busy being sad next to a magical lake."

"No, we swear he isn't a cult leader looking for a tax break!"

"If you catch him in a good mood he might do a pub crawl with you! That happened to my cousin once!"

"Yeah, I heard he turned water into beer on that pub crawl! Wild night."

[fanf1cadd1ct]

You know I absolutely adore the Arthur getting resurrected in the modern times and learning how to navigate it with Merlin's (who's been waiting for him to return for centuries) help (and them finally getting together in the process). But man I really want a fic where when Arthur dies in the last episode, rather than having to live through centuries without Arthur, Merlin or his magic just decide to put him to a sleep like state for centuries (like in the sleeping beauty). Like, Merlin buries Arthur, delivers the news of his death and just disappears into some sealed off crypt or place far away from any civilization and goes into a deep slumber there, blessed to never wake up till the other part of his coin does too. And then fast forward to modern day and Arthur gets resurrected and at the same time Merlin wakes up. Shenanigans ensue as Merlin, confused asf at everything happening on in this day and age but knows he must find Arthur first before figuring everything out, uses his magic to find Arthur, who is just confused asf Abt everything and two seconds away form getting hit by a car. And once they're finally united further antics ensue as they learn to navigate modern times together (and get together in the process)and get reunited with the rest of the (now reincarnated) cast.

[dsabian]

It's been a year since I finished this.

Not sure how tf that happened, but I'm still pretty pleased with myself 🤣

Well, I've done it. I have tonight posted the final chapter in my 100 chapter Merlin fic o.O

It basically asks, and then answers the question "What if the prophesy was wrong?" Merlin is immortal, it's about 800 years on from canon, and it turns out this was not a question he particularly wanted to know the existence of. But in true Merlin style, he rolls with it, there are unexpected consequences, a smidge of angst, a fair amount of BAMF and a truly unholy amount of fluff.

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with myself.