#i just want that specific kid trunks to have more cool badass friends

[chickensauras]

Listen. I have no idea why, but I really REALLY want kid future trunks and broly to be friends! Like... like how John Connor is friends w the killer robot in terminator 2. Thats what I want, more T2.

[seenashwrite]

Some Dean

Word Count: 4K Category: One-shot, On-The-Hunt, Humor, Creature Feature, Behind-the-scenes Canon-Compliant, Teamwork, Friendship… and, to hell with it: Fluff Rating: Teen & Up Character(s): Dean, Sam, Cas Warnings: None Anti-Warning: There’s no images or links to anything creeptastic below the cut, those of you with squicks/phobias need not worry, I’m not that big of an a-hole Author’s Note(s): *This is a re-post minus tags & links in an effort to get it to show in searches*; if you’ve no knowledge of the children’s story “Charlotte’s Web”, this may not be for you; more post-story Overall Summary: Sometimes good things come in small, albeit eight-legged, packages.

Dean had always liked spiders.

Well, “like” may’ve been overstating; Dean had always held an appreciation for spiders. They weren’t nasty like rats or sneaky like snakes, with spiders you knew where you stood: in his experience, anything supernatural aside, you leave them alone, they’ll leave you alone. Plus, they were badass - spiders packed a lot of intimidation into a small package, could be killing machines when they wanted to be, and mostly he appreciated that they were efficient and effective when it came to dealing with the annoying bugs that occasionally popped up. He did live in a basement, after all; the world’s tiniest were not deterred by any amount of warding or weaponry.

So when he’d notice small, barely-there wisps of webs in far corners or between the bottom of a bookshelf and the wall, stretching from the carved wood to the sticky bricks, he’d leave the homemade traps be for a week or two if they were empty, and sure enough, they’d have captured some crawlers next time he made a run-through with the vacuum. It was an amicable relationship - Dean never saw the spiders, just their handiwork, and the webs seldom popped up in the same space twice. Plus, they seemed to know the kitchen was a no-fly… spider… zone, so all was well.

And then came Charlotte.

Charlotte - as Dean had eventually started calling the garden spider, much to Sam’s dismay - did not have any regard for the out-of-sight, you-don’t-get-the-boot arrangement, nor did she have any regard for giving Dean his space. The day they met, he’d sauntered into the garage, popped the Impala’s trunk, tossed in a bag and a shotgun, yelled at Sam to hurry up, then went to reach for the driver’s side handle, caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and froze. And he wasn’t the only one.

The web was thick at the edges and delicate in the middle, stretching from the side mirror to the handle, upon which Charlotte perched, her crafting put on hold. She wasn’t terribly small, but not remotely large; she would’ve easily fit on the pad of his thumb. And she was clearly of the brave - or stupid, perhaps - sort, because she didn’t immediately scurry off. She took in the sight of the giant creature before her - technically, there was eight of him, what with her four pairs of eyes and all - and she opted to see what would happen.

What happened was that Dean turned, grabbed a shop rag, and began cursing under his breath as he whipped the web into nothingness; by the time he stopped, Charlotte had skittered to places unknown.

Dean tossed the rag away, gave the handle a good eyeballing before he grabbed it, opening the door and saying in a low voice through grit teeth, “Not. The. Car.”

“What not the car?” asked Sam, bounding up the garage steps.

“Nothing,” Dean replied.

This nothing continued for six weeks.

Charlotte was a determined artist, it seemed, not to mention a fast one. She spun webs of all sizes and shapes, covering the license plate in quilt-panel squares, weaving long, ropy trails around and between the wipers, and at one point obscured the back window in a lacy pattern that Castiel noted looked like a fine guipure. She liked to travel, too, as more than once the brothers would exit a given roadside motel room to find Charlotte had been busy during the night, Sam’s personal favorite being when she’d decorated a hubcap in a complex Fibonacci design, though he’d never have let on to Dean.

On the initial occasions following such a discovery, if Dean happened to spot her, he would scold her with a sharp “NO!”, walk in her direction briskly, and she’d retreat, slipping into the trunk or under the hood, but it wasn’t long before she’d stay put, even edge closer, cutting the distance between them, eventually so bold as to crawl onto the roof of the Impala, watching as he dismantled her webs.

“Really?” he asked one morning after the latest wipe-down, bending slightly so they were eye-to-eyes.

She calmly extended one leg to the side, held it out til he got the hint, turning his head, following what he’d presumed was a point, and sure enough, he’d missed some cottony puffs that were still stuck on a tail light.

Looking back at her, he said - begrudgingly -  "Thanks.“

Dean had dealt with stranger things.

"One day I’m expecting to come out and see ‘terrific’ in a web,” Sam commented during a return trip from the latest hunt.

“What?” Dean asked.

“You know - the kid’s book. Charlotte’s Web. You read it to me when we were little. About the farm, and saving Wilbur the would-be bacon?”

“Charlotte’s anti-bacon?”

“No, I don’t think— it was— it— she was just pro-pig.”

It was after this conversation that Dean took to calling their frequent tag-a-long Charlotte. To be specific, it was after he’d brought a BLT with him into the garage while working on the car, and she’d happily investigated a bit of bacon that had escaped his plate. A point to the pro-bacon column, he thought.

Dean informed her that he was fine with her hanging around, he was even fine with her fancy webwork, but she needed to cool it when it came to the car, explaining with lots of gesturing to make sure the message got across, just in case. He’d looked it up. Spiders did not have ears.

He’d also looked up things on spider life spans, and arachnid health in general. Sam found him in the library one evening doing just that, frowning at his laptop screen as he scanned. Castiel was nearby, returning some books to their places on the shelves.

“What is he doing?” Sam asked in a hushed voice, and Castiel opened his mouth to respond, but Dean spoke, diverting their attention.

“Did Charlotte look pale to you earlier?”

Now Sam frowned. “Dean… what?”

“I mean, she’s light brown, but she looked a little yellow earlier,” Dean explained, scrolling further down a page, but then closing the window with a huff and turning in his seat to face Sam. “Can’t find anything.” A pause; a thought. “Hey, I should put out a devil’s trap drawing for her, maybe a new pattern’ll perk her up.”

Sam was, in a word, startled. “Do you think of her as a pet?”

“Why do you care?”

“Oh, I dunno - because a spider is stalking us, and you’ve named it, and you talk to it, and—-”

“What, you got a thing about spiders to go with your thing about clowns, even though your imaginary friend was a clown?” Another pause. “Come to think of it, that explains a lot.”

“Sully’s not a clown, and no, I do not have arachnophobia, what I do have is a worry that - if it is a female - it may lay a bunch of eggs, then we’ll have an infestation. Is that what you want? Bunch of spider babies in your Baby?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “She’s not gonna do that.”

Sam narrowed his eyes. “Did she pinky swear?”

“Would you like me to have a look at her?” asked Castiel, and the concern in his voice was less for Charlotte and more for Dean, and less in the sympathetic way and more in the tiptoeing around someone who’s slipped into psychosis way.

Sam crossed his arms. “Taking it outside hasn’t worked, neither has trying to leave it wherever we’ve been hunting - this is getting ridiculous, will you just kill it, already?!”

Dean stood, walked over to him, defiant. “We not been doing enough killing for you lately?”

“It’s just a spider, Dean!”

“I know that! Maybe I just don’t wanna be scraping moist spider guts off my boot.”

“Does this spider communicate with you?” Castiel asked, the concern still floating under his words.

He was ignored.

“It’s not your pet, it’s a tiny insect - you don’t even know if it could be poisonous!” Sam exclaimed.

“Not an insect, genius, and Charlotte would never bite us—-”

“What is wrong with you?!”

“Have either of you considered the possibility that this is no ordinary spider?” Castiel suggested.

“Gee, thanks, Cas - no, hadn’t noticed that this is weird,” Dean shot back with a look.

“So you get that this is weird?” Sam checked.

“Our life is weird, what’s some more? And at least this is fun weird, is that so bad?” Dean replied, and the touch of melancholy in his voice caused both Sam and Castiel to stay quiet for a few moments.

The silence was broken by the ring of Dean’s phone - a case awaited them.

And, of course, Charlotte.

Dean looked up from the map as Sam came back into their motel room, six pack in one hand, phone in the other, kicking the door shut as he spoke.

“Jane called. She says a container ship from the UK was bringing in illegal cargo, for some rich people who wanted exotic animals for canned hunts—”

“Douche move.”

“—and apparently when they went to unload, the crates were all busted up. The hold was covered with what was left of the bodies of the animals. All except for one. Three guesses.”

“Big bad bacon?”

“Yup. And she thinks we’re looking at… ah….” Sam trailed off and chuckled.

“Yeah?”

“A cryptid. It’s called The Beast of Dean, a.k.a. the Moose Pig.”

“Why do I think that somewhere, somehow, whatever’s left of Crowley just got a chub.”

They were in a rural area of Virginia, not too far from Portsmouth, and had been for a week, tracking what sounded like a rabid boar, but there was enough of a bump-in-the-night bend to the word on the street that they’d been confident it fell in their wheelhouse. Now that they had confirmation, after a night of research and weapon prep, they were ready to knock out the most recent mission and get back home. The Dean-Moose was large, and it was anything but subtle. The hunt should be an easy one, wouldn’t take long, nothing to it.

Well. One thing. One sort-of big thing. Even though it was also a small thing. Sam’s pro-pig storybook spider and their companion, they’d come to find, had more in common than just a name.

.

STOP

.

There, stretched across the Impala’s grill the next morning, was an undeniable message, and given Dean’s jaw-dropped state, it prompted Sam to speak on his behalf.

“Um, Charlotte? Listen, I don’t know if you… you seem nice, and… really smart, but… look, this thing isn’t like that pig in the book.”

“Because she’s read the book,” Dean said sarcastically, breaking out of his stupor and stomping over to the car, sharp eyes looking for the sassy spider; no joy. “Hey, guess what?” he said loudly. “I’m gonna drive so fast that by the time I do stop, your web’s gonna get shredded, how do you like that? I told you my car was OFF LIMITS!”

With one last glare at the web, Dean got into the car, and Sam followed suit. They put on the radio and chatted about anything but spiders and pigs for the better part of an hour as they bumped along the winding back roads. And after parking at the edge of the woods where the most recent sighting of the beastly hog had occurred, they opened the trunk to find another message, one that unfurled neatly, springing open as the lid of the weapons compartment lifted.

.

REALLY! STOP, STUPID.

.

Punctuation, and all.

“You know…” Dean began, but trailed off with a shake of his head, snatching up the shotgun and pocketing a handful of the shells with the special filling he and Sam had cooked up the night prior.

Sam removed the freshly-etched-with-symbols machete. Dean slammed the trunk shut. Charlotte did not emerge.

As they walked deeper and deeper into the woods, Sam spoke in a quiet voice.

“When we get back, I’m calling Cas. This is out of control, Dean. The spider’s obviously somebody - or something - dicking around with us. Maybe that’s been the plan, keeping us from killing this thing.”

Dean didn’t look at him, rather kept scanning their surroundings as he responded. “Maybe. She… it… came around before that ship got here. But, yeah. Maybe something’s up.”

Sam reflexively sighed in relief, and at that moment Dean stopped, extended his arm to stop Sam’s progress, as well.

“Shhh. Listen.”

The growl was only audible for a moment before the foliage began to stir.

The hunt, it turned out, did not last long. The defeated brothers wearily tossed their dented weapons into the backseat and practically fell into the front. Dean immediately turned off the radio - the chanting of Duran Duran’s “Wild Boys” had come screaming through the speakers.

“It does kinda sound like they’re saying 'wild boars’,” Sam noted.

“Shut up.”

After they’d returned to the motel and showered, cleaned up their scratches and cuts, swapped torn clothing for intact, Sam went back to researching, while Dean went out to the Impala, damp washcloths in hand, and opened the trunk. It was barely even six o'clock, and there was still enough sunlight that he could see every trace of the webbing was gone. But he wanted to check that his little - former - friend hadn’t done anything else.

She had.

Sitting in the driver’s set, Dean’s eye was drawn to the thin, nearly opaque message across the radio, anchored by the knobs and an ejected tape.

.

BAD JOB

.

Dean swiped it away without a word, uttering a small groan and clutching his bruised ribs as he climbed out. He took a few steps, but then pivoted. He opened the door again and leaned in, voice tense as he spoke.

“Tell you what, how’s about I bring you some toothpicks and you join in tomorrow, help us out, get in a few stabs? Be useful, show us how it’s done?”

Dean fell asleep wondering if he’d completely lost his mind.

.

THIS IS DUMB .

Sam ran a hand through his hair and closed his eyes - he’d been out the door first, so the newest message, covering the entirety of the hood, immediately made him brace himself for what was coming next.

But, surprisingly, Dean kept his temper in check; he merely set down his bag, returned to the room for a towel, and briskly wiped down the hood.

“Ready?” he asked Sam, forcing a smile that was likely more unsettling than intended.

Sam kept quiet, answering with a thumbs-up.

Their Everything’s Fine! charade was short-lived.

As with the prior morning, Charlotte had chosen to reinforce her message, wrapping the steering wheel so thickly it was barely visible, and her stance on their mission came through loud and clear.

.

THIS IS ACTUALLY DUMB .

Sam thought the choice of having the final “dumb” in bold italic for emphasis was a nice touch. And he noted the copious amount of webbing wound around the gear shift with raised eyebrows. And he gulped when he spotted more strands of said webbing emerging from the ignition. He cut his eyes over to Dean and, upon seeing his expression, took a step back.

This time, Charlotte did not hide. She’d positioned herself on the dashboard, right near the puffed-up wheel, standing with what could be described as quite the petulant posture. And much like the day the spider and the hunter had met, Dean froze.

Charlotte held her ground.

Dean’s nostrils flared.

Charlotte crossed her front legs as if they were arms.

Dean’s jaw clenched.

Charlotte tapped a back leg, as if to say Well get on with it.

Dean was still unmoved, and so Sam said, “You know, when you freeze like that, it’s really not as intimidating as you might—-”

“CHARLOTTE!” Dean bellowed.

She turned and sashayed to the glove box, crawling inside without the first indication she felt in any danger whatsoever.

Thankfully, the motel was just shy of a mile from from a modest gas station-diner combo. Sam talked Dean into a breakfast - with extra bacon, a thumb of the nose to both the beast and its defender. After they easily convinced the owner to loan them his truck, explaining their car’s fuel gauge was apparently broken, buying a can of gas for show, they promised they’d have it returned to him by morning.

As they drove back to grab their gear, Dean asked, “You hear from Cas?”

Sam nodded. “Reception’s crap, though - I can only hear parts of his voicemail. He found something about Charlotte, at least, I think. But he didn’t sound upset, like she was dangerous.”

“Let’s just roast the pig and get the hell outta here.”

“I’m sorry she’s not… you know, fun-weird anymore,” Sam said.

Dean lowered his foot, gunning the engine. “Yeah, well. Story of my life,” he muttered.

The truck was returned way before morning, this encounter with their newest foe having gone as well as the first. Then they found that Charlotte had removed all the web from the Impala, though the door to the motel room held some snark:

.

NICE HEAD

.

Dean barely glanced at it - possibly a little hard to do with the near swollen-shut, a breath away from blackened eye - and didn’t even bother to clean it off. There was no message from Charlotte the next morning. Dean did bother to wonder if she was gone.

The sound of the tree cracking sent both of them diving behind a small knoll, gasping for breath, cringing as it crashed down just where they’d been not seconds earlier.

“I’m empty,” Dean said, returning his gun to his waistband. “You?”

“About ten minutes ago,” Sam answered.

The beast’s growls now turned into a piercing scream, a most furious howl, angry it couldn’t find them. They heard it turning up earth with its tusks, sending rocks flying, then ramming its head into yet another tree, the trunk buckling under the strain. Dean had managed to send a bullet into its snout, likely preventing it from sniffing them out, if the occasional gurgling snorts were any indication. Sam had earned himself a minor goring to his calf, but otherwise they were intact.

“Think you can run?” Dean asked, gesturing to the bandanna-wrapped wound.

Sam nodded. “Yeah, I think so. That the plan? Just make a run for it?”

“You got any better ideas?”

“On three?”

“One… two…. three!”

They dodged trees, though the beast didn’t bother, taking out the smaller ones along the way, picking up speed with every moment that passed, while the brothers were losing speed at the same time.

Dean noticed a large branch in their path up ahead and started to veer off from Sam, pointing to it and yelling, “Keep going! I’ll try to knock Porky out!”

“No!” Sam yelled back, grimacing each time his leg made contact with the ground. “It’ll kill—- HUUUURMMPPHH!”

Sam went down, Dean not far behind, something tripping both of them, causing them to fall with such force that whatever air they had left in their lungs got knocked out. Disoriented, they raised their heads only to immediately duck them, covering up with their arms, as the beast was still plowing ahead. Its hooves hit the ground in between them, tossing dirt everywhere, its speed too far gone for it to stop on a dime. They expected to soon hear it reversing course, so Sam opened his eyes, trying to spot a place to hide, Dean doing the same, trying to spot the branch.

Instead, the sound of the most meek squeal one could imagine reached their ears, prompting Dean and Sam to turn their gazes directly ahead.

They were at the bottom of a small incline, and they watched as the boar’s head rolled their way, their heads slowly turning as they observed it leisurely passing by. It came to a sudden stop against something near their feet. They shared a look, moving in sync onto their knees.

“Uh, Dean?” Sam said.

Dean looked up from inspecting the severed head to find Sam with his hand extended, pushing under something that Dean couldn’t make out, but a shift in position and a tilt of his head allowed him to see the bright moonlight glint off the surprisingly thick, iridescent rope running across Sam’s fingers.

Another look, another in sync movement as they stood, then tentatively walked forward til they reached the body. This time, Dean spotted it right away when he crouched, the finely-wound strands that were stretched between two trees, at just the perfect height to relieve a squatty hog monster of its head. He flicked it with a finger, as one would a string on a guitar, and it was just as taut.

“She clotheslined it,” Sam said, awestruck. “She tripped us so we wouldn’t… That could’ve clipped us at the knees. She… she…”

Dean looked up at Sam, and a slow smile spread across his face. "She’s awesome!”

Sam shifted his weight off of his bad leg, and grinned. “Think she’s any good with stitches?”

How Charlotte managed to spin their salvation in such little time, they’d never know, and they also had no idea how she beat them back to the car, but the evidence was there, across the driver’s side window. .

SOME PIG .

They laughed, Dean saying, “You ain’t lying.”

But before he could say anything else, Charlotte crawled out from under the handle. She scurried up her web, and as they watched, she whipped the “P” into a “D”; the “I” went “E” in a few short passes; the “G” was partially dismantled, then spun into an “A”; and in mere seconds, there appeared an “N”. .

SOME DEAN .

After a quick hop from its tip, a slide to the outside of one of the long connecting end pieces, and a drop of a new line of silk, their eyes followed her as she leapt, letting the momentum swing her clean up onto the roof. And then - Sam would swear to it, many times over the coming years - she curtsied.

“Thanks,” Dean said softly. “You, too.” With that, he opened the back door, gestured for her to climb inside.

Which, she did.

“Yes… yes… that’s very kind of you.”

Dean, Sam, and Castiel were standing outside the bunker, the former waiting patiently - and occasionally impatiently - as the latter had a conversation with Charlotte.

Castiel looked to them. “She says she likes my tie. The material meets her standards.”

Dean’s expression was completely flat, causing Sam to snicker.

“There any reason you didn’t tell us you could’ve been talking to her this whole time?” Dean demanded.

Castiel shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”

It turned out that Castiel’s message had been to inform them that Charlotte was indeed a most special spider, more so than what they’d already divined. She was an emissary, an information-gatherer, a spy of sorts, though not a nefarious one. And because she herself was quite the accomplished hunter, she chose to spend time with other hunters whenever her journeys brought her to them.

And now, it was time for Charlotte to start her next journey.

Castiel was nodding his head as Charlotte, who was on his collar, near his ear, told him one last thing. “She’d like you to know that Sam was correct - she does need to prepare to lay her eggs, though she would not have done so in the car,” Castiel related.

Dean shot Sam a smug look.

“And she says she’ll name them Dean.”

Dean blinked. “All of them?”

“Yes.”

“How many we talking?”

A pause as Charlotte answered, and Castiel replied, “Anywhere from fifty to sixty.”

“That’s… a lot,” Dean said, because he didn’t know what else to say.

“Not really,” Sam commented.

Another look from Dean - actually, he cycled through several.

“Fine. So maybe I did some research, too,” Sam admitted.

“It’s time for her to go,” Castiel announced. “She says she’s enjoyed your company immensely. And she apologizes for the web you’ve yet to find. It seems she was in a cranky mood that evening.”

“That’s okay. Tell her it’s okay,” Dean said, walking closer. “Tell her that, um… it’s been great knowing her. Don’t be a stranger. All that.”

Castiel smiled. “She knows.” He raised his hand to his shoulder, and Charlotte climbed onto it. “I’m going to give her a boost,” he explained, and then to Charlotte he said, “Please do give Mr. Anansi the Winchester brothers’ warmest regards.”

They watched as Charlotte prepped a silk balloon, and after a gentle wave of Castiel’s hand, off she flew.  

“It would be… cheesy of me to comment it is angelic, their flight, wouldn’t it?” Castiel asked.

“Yes,” Dean and Sam answered in unison.

They began to walk back inside.

“What was that at the end? About Anansi?” asked Sam.

“Networking,” Castiel replied.

“I wouldn’t worry about us ever having to tangle with him,” Dean said. “I mean, not with Charlotte on our side. She’ll talk us up. She’s a talker.”

“Plus, there’ll be all the Deans,” Sam added.

“Yup. Exactly. We are cool with the spider kingdom,” said Dean, and with great confidence.

Dean was incorrect on this point, as he and Sam would later learn, during a case involving a young lady by the name of Muffet.

But that’s another story.

Want more stories? My Master Post is linked in my profile, and it tells you about getting on the Tag List, too! If for whatever reason it gives you trouble, don’t hesitate to send an Ask and I’ll link you.

Re-blogs and feedback are fuel for a writer’s soul - please do let me know if you enjoyed. 😘

Author’s Note #2 - The Jane mentioned is a character from my story Supernatural: Revelation, which you can find linked on the master post -or- just go straight to AO3, same author name SeeNashWrite 😁

Author’s Note #3 -  This also included a prompt which had languished in drafts - albeit with the note “Anansi” from the get-go, thankyouverymuch! - which was from the cringeworthy submissions:

You can find all the #Nash300 Follower Celebration Master List of Madness stories (wherein I asked followers to send me prompts consisting of three words to make me cringe) via the Master Post.

Author’s Note #4: The beast of Dean mentioned is actually a thing, give it a google! And so is Anansi, check that out, too. If you don’t get the Muffet reference, well, I can’t help you with that. 😉

[tearlessrain]

I’m about to watch Arthur and Merlin, which is free on youtube and came up in my suggestions randomly. I have no idea what it is but I am hungry for the arthurian Content so Imma watch it and see how it goes

update: it was way better than I expected and accidentally SUPER gay. that merlin tv show everyone loved was amateur hour compared to how gay this was.

“there is magic in the air, and in the water, but it has been forgotten by many in these lands” wow why does that sound familiar I wonder

the funny thing is I watched fellowship of the ring literally yesterday so this will be hilarious

but there is hope [extremely unsubtle cut to a baby who is definitely important]

now I think... and I could be wrong... but guys I suspect this baby might be the chosen one.

oh god there was no father he was conceived by midichlorians

THE SKYWALKERS HAVE INFILTRATED THE CELTS

okay place your bets is it arthur or merlin

it’s Merlin. or Merddyn rather, in a surprise twist this movie was written by Fucking Nerds

so far mild cheese aside this is surprisingly watchable

“your crops fail and so you ask the king for help, but do not help yourselves! where are your alters?? starvation is punishment for your lack of faith!” THE RNC HAS INFILTRATED THE CELTS

okay so near as I can figure out the mark is from the old gods but there’s a druid who I guess speaks for the king or something who wants them to worship different old gods and now he’s demanding the villagers make a human sacrifice and it’s gonna be Smol Merddyn.

aw no they killed Celtic Shmi. Merddyn got away though and is now wandering the Forbidden Forest

I’m mad this is actually a solid movie so far. absolutely nothing unexpected has happened but I didn’t click on a movie called “Arthur and Merlin” to be surprised

oh wait that kid who freed him was Arthur

fifteen years later arthur is... a military leader who looks strangely like one of those romans played by obviously white actors in older movies

I honestly can’t pinpoint when this movie was made on aesthetics alone

ooo some Roving Misogynists™ are here to cause trouble and assault random women for being christian. by order of the druid no doubt.

“you mock us!” “I do.” okay I’m starting to like this arthur.

oh my god is that. he just fucking. tripped over excalibur while wading in like a two foot deep pond to get this woman’s cross back for her. best interpretation ever.

wait Olwen??? as in Ysbaddaden’s daughter Olwen?? once again I assumed they’d go with Guinevere or make someone up but I forgot, this movie was made by Fucking Nerds.

okay I know insisting everything is gay is a constant thing on this site but I want to point out that Arthur has showed nothing but very platonic friendship to Olwen but this is the face he makes when he sees Merddyn in a vision

and I mean to be fair to him this is what Merddyn looks like now

goddamn

oh no they’ve immediately made it very clear that he’s Romantically Involved With Olwen In Secret Look They’re Kissing Nobody Is Gay

so now I really want to know who wrote this movie because what I’m seeing here is people who intentionally chose to use the name merddyn, and know that olwen exists, but then decided to pair her romantically with... king arthur. and culhwch just doesn’t exist I guess. not that this is the most off the wall welsh mythology ship I’ve encountered but still it’s a weird one for this kind of media even if it’s an indie film

who are you people. how did this movie get made. I mean I like whatever it is but for real how and why did you do this.

I love how there’s just this trio of random dudes who don’t even have names who are arthur/olwen’s friends. and yet somehow they’re likable and I’m rooting for them. whoever they are.

so the only real problem with this movie that’s denting my enjoyment is that nobody has names and they all have the same haircut so I lose track of who’s doing what. see these are arthur’s friends:

and these are bad guys:

and Olwen is the only person in either screenshot who has a name

if any of them ever changes into a new outfit I’m screwed.

I’m gonna be real with y’all I love me a cursed forest

in an ironic twist, excalibur is now firmly stuck in a tree trunk and arthur cannot get it out

why is this movie GOOD what the heck. I mean the druid and king situation is blatantly ripped from wormtongue and theoden but I still like. care about the king. they’ve done it well.

“I’ve already told you, I am no longer a man.” “are you so sure???” see I know nothing will happen since this is a movie not a fanfic but that line is the quintessential hate-makeout segue

THIS IS VERY HETEROSEXUAL they’ve had most of the argument while approximately that distance from each other

oh god what the fuck arthur’s friends got sacrificed by the druid just to make a point to olwen. this is the opposite of a Sacrificial Girlfriend.

they do not need to be this close to each other to argue but they keep on doing it

they’ve been on screen together for less than five minutes y’all

arthur: maybe you’re right, you are no longer a man

merlin: [conjures an entire patch of flowers for him to make... some kind of point I guess?]

okay now they’re arguing again but there’s all this “I thought I knew you” talk (which, again, it’s been five minutes) and the actors have clearly decided that their dynamic is based entirely on constant, roiling sexual tension

why does every single thing they say scan like dialogue from a slow burn enemies to friends to lovers fanfic

“the girl in the village, did you love her once?” “I know little of love” “Surely a man who can control the growth of a flower must be able to make love blossom” JUST FUCK ALREADY

this is how they’re having this conversation by the way

there was only one shrub hollow

“to control nature is one thing, but only the most powerful sorcerer could control the mind of a man- OR WOMAN,” he said, heterosexually.

y’all I’m gonna be honest I thought I was just projecting at first but this is the gayest thing I’ve seen since the baseball song in high school musical 2. this is just absolute beleg and turin levels of probably unintended but utterly blatant homosexuality. I’m so glad I decided to watch this movie and youtube was right to recommend it to me.

this movie really speaks to me because on a spiritual level I too am a mystical but irritable and socially stunted forest hermit with sexy hair just waiting for a brash but pure-hearted warrior who looks like a roman statue to draw me out of my cave with homoerotic banter. 

oh it’s not excalibur it’s... nuadu. which I guess in this movie is not the king of the tuatha de danann but a sword forged by them? see my first impulse would be to assume that the way they’re mangling everything, the writers knew nothing about Celtic folklore, except that they’ve chosen such weirdly specific things to mangle. they know their shit, they’ve just deliberately chosen to go absolutely buckwild with it.

THEY’RE DOING IT AGAIN THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF ARGUING WHILE STANDING MORE THAN TWO FEET APART

for real though character-wise this might be one of my favorite interpretations of merlin/merddyn I’ve ever seen. I feel like everyone involved was genuinely super passionate about the subject matter they were working with. like all jokes aside he’s really honestly well acted and well written.

STOP IT NOW YOU HORNY SIMPLETONS

uh oh they’ve been captured by... bandits?

oh it’s olwen’s uncle

“TO GOOD WOMEN... WHY DO YOU NOT DRINK, MERDDYN”

it is a mystery, olwen’s uncle.

a mystery.

this motivational monologue could have been so cheesy but like. I’m here for it. I would follow arthur into battle.

aw come on. olwen’s uncle betrayed them. I kinda saw it coming but dammit.

again, the druid should be absolutely stupid but he’s kind of a cool villain.

yay olwen’s uncle unbetrayed them. probably so would I if I’d seen what merddyn just did to the druid’s guys.

so the druid is trying to sacrifice ten thousand souls to raise a god from the underworld and merddyn is on the fucking warpath. and olwen’s uncle is ON BOARD HELL YEAH.

THE HOBBITS THE HOBBITS THE HOBBITS THE HOBBITS TO ISENGUARD TO ISENGUARD

arthur and merddyn have escalated to clutching each other’s clothes during their heated two-feet-apart discussions

olwen is a badass in her own right like she has her own whole thing going trying to save the king from basically his own literal dementia and the druid who’s taking advantage of it, which is somehow way more compelling than just magical mind control.

“I thought the cave taught you fairness” “well... you taught me fighting” JUST KISS.

okay let’s see how they pull off this dark god on the shoestring budget they definitely have, at this point I honestly believe in them.

by avoiding showing the god entirely apparently but they made it work even with that.

aw the king has named him his heir. which again we all knew would happen but it’s still so well done.

and we end on merddyn placing the crown on arthur’s head while lovingly quoting his own words back at him, while olwen looks on with the kind of approval that implies they’ve ended up with some kind of road to el dorado situation. solid.

so I was expecting this to be absolute garbage with bad actors and checked out writers just trying to make another mediocre coattail-riding medieval fantasy movie and what I got was some weirdly good actors and writers who are clearly obsessed with celtic folklore and desperately wanted to just run amok with it for an hour and 45 minutes. and they did. they poured every ounce of their hearts and souls and tiny, tiny budget into it. and it was beautiful. 10/10