#in which i continue to ignore arthurian legend

[purble-gaymer]

more gsa family (+refs)

[mizjoely]

I wrote a bit of a start to a possible Arthurian Legend Sherlolly fic.

Yes, yes, I’m playing fast and loose with Arthurian legend. So sue me.

They meet for the first time when he’s 18, angry and bitter about having an unwanted destiny forced upon him, hurling the hated sword into the placid waters of the first lake his horse stops to drink from.

The sword never touches the water; a hand rises from beneath the silvery surface, a woman’s hand, pale and slender, grasping the hilt and holding it upright as lightly as if it weighed nothing.

(It weighs several pounds, unwieldy in its nearly four foot length, and only the stoutest of mortal women could have hefted it with such ease. But then, the likelihood of the hand his startled eyes are seeing belonging to a mortal woman are exactly nil, so the calculations flicker into nothing almost as quickly as they form in the lightning-swiftness of his mind.)

As suddenly as the hand appears, it vanishes, slipping back beneath the water’s surface with nary a ripple, until all he sees is the blade, and then only its tip, and then nothing. He waits warily; when nothing happens, he shrugs and turns back to his steed, whose only reaction to all of this has been to drink eagerly. Barbarossa isn’t pleased to have his head raised and body turned back toward the moor; he lets out a disgruntled nicker, jerks his head beneath Sherlock’s hand, and its then that he hears her voice.

“The sword Excalibur,” she says, not smoothly but with hesitant pauses between words, “is yours, King William. You drew it from the stone -”

“Anvil,” he corrects her shortly, then turns to look at her.

He sums her up with the flick of an eyelash. She’s as far from the romantic notions of a water spirit as he is from anyone’s idea of a king - least of all, he thinks sourly, his own. Legends and fairy tales say she should be tall and stately (she’s tiny, barely coming to his chin), slender, with regal bearing (she’s slender, yes, but stands awkwardly, still holding Excalibur - nice to know the sword has a name, he supposes - its tip now trailing in the water). Her eyes should be blue (they’re brown, overlarge in her heart-shaped face, bringing attention to her snubbed nose and making her mouth appear smaller than it actually is) and her features perfect (they’re decidedly imperfect but not unattractive even as her smile wavers under his gaze or possibly his interruption of her little speech).

He ignores the pucker between her eyebrows in order to continue his summation of her features. Hair that should be trailing in the water, long and flowing like a waterfall to the edges of her kirtle (which should be silk but appears instead to be simple blue homespun, as if she were a peasant and not a magical being) instead ends somewhere in the middle of her back. It should also, he notes critically, be the reddish-gold of a newly minted coin instead of mousy brown. Nor should it be plastered to her head, with what look like strands of duckweed tangled within it as if she were the mere country wench her clothing declares her to be, caught in the midst of a morning swim.

A peasant girl who’d somehow managed to catch his sword as he flung it towards the murky depths of this lonely body of water, intending that it never be found again, by him or anyone else.

He gave a mental snort. No, he thought bitterly, Fate or the Devil or whoever had cursed him onto this path would never allow such a thing.

Spirit or mere mortal, the girl blinks at the interruption, then continues doggedly on, as if reciting a memorized speech she’s being forced to give against her will. “You drew it from the anvil, which was set atop the stone with Excalibur through both, and that means you’re the true King of the British Isles.”

She stops abruptly, thrusting the sword at him as if impatient for him to be on with it and leave her to her watery world. “Take it,” she says, impatiently, but with a hint of desperation in her voice that piques his curiosity more than any question as to her potential otherworldly antecedents.

“What if I don’t?” he asks, folding his arms - awkward to do in armor, but he manages.

She gives him what can only be described as an annoyed look, once again allowing the tip of the sword to droop toward the water. “Then I have to keep it until you die and the next True King of the British Isles is born and reaches manhood and finds his way here to claim it.”

She sounds…he’s not sure. He expected defeat or despair as she recited what sounded to him like a curse that had been laid upon her, but what he hears sounds closer to resignation. 

Or is it possibly - indifference?

“And what happens if I take the sword?” he demands, various possibilities passing fleetingly through the back of his mind as he awaits her answer.

She gives him a sad smile. “Then you become the True King and I go back to watching fish and turtles and bugs live their busy underwater lives until they eventually die and sink to the muck at the bottom, leaving nothing but bones and shells and other bits and pieces of themselves behind.” 

“It sounds fascinating,” he replies, surprised by his own sincerity.

Her eyes light up and she takes an eager step forward, the sword dangling almost forgotten in her hand. “Do you think so, truly? Because it really is fascinating! I mean, I’ve seen animals die but never really had the chance to study what was left behind - well, I lived on a farm and everything that died was generally eaten afterwards and the bones added to the midden or used for soup stock and my mother thought it was morbid that I wanted to know what happened when animals died, and forbade me to speak to the gravediggers or the village priest about whether human bodies decomposed in the same way, not that he would have answered me - Father Tomas, I mean; the gravediggers might have been willing…”

She stumbles to a halt as he stares at her, bemused and intrigued by her words. “So you were mortal, once?” She nods dumbly. Yes, a peasant wench, that certainly fits with his surmises. “And cursed to this existence?” She nods again. “By whom?”

Her face clouds, and she drags the sword upward, clutching to her chest in a protective gesture. “By my betrothed,” she whispers, edging back away from him. Instinctively he moves toward her, splashing into the shallows, hearing his horse return to its interrupted drinking of the murky water.

TBC?

[tiodolma]

@inthecrystalofadream and i think this is what morgana analysis from a lot of merlin fandom lacks. Here I employ YMMV "your mileage may vary"

I get that we probably didnt grow up in the same circumstances. Hence why I can offer analysis like this of a very fictional character in response to your meta as someone who grew up in an environment that tbh isnt very different from Adventures of Merlin's Camelot. This is all very watsonian(in-universe) of us after all, so i implore you not to ignore what i can see for myself in bbc morgana's characterization.

Hear me out.

BBC Merlin writers were not stupid. They knew where to draw inspiration from. BBC Morgana, unlike arthurian legends Morgan la fey, was actually given by the writers a justified cause for her "evilness" or "extremism." She came from a place which wanted justice for herself and others members of a minority group and was continuously left with no choice but to go on the offensive. Why do I know this?

From this interview Katie Mcgrath dropped a very very interesting tidbit about Morgana's characterization

BTW, I used to think like you guys you know? Why couldn't Morgana just make a new kingdom? Why didnt she just started healing people out of the blue? Why wouldn't she convince uther when they are so close?

UNTIL THIS I READ THIS FROM KATIE MCGRATH HERSELF

“One thing I was told to remember was that you cannot underestimate the impact of spending a year with someone like Morgause … who she sees as the only person to ever accept her,” Katie explained, when asked about Morgana’s quick and brutal turn against everyone in Camelot

THIS SLAPPED ME IN THE FACE. You know what this reminded me? It reminded me of the "Save Our Children" Campaign my government used to propagate many years ago at the height of President Duterte's power. For context... Activism is basically discouraged in my "Democratic country." (ironic i know and thats why this propaganda was dangerous)

In this campaign the mothers of activists (who are now rebels) lamented at how their children/ young adult kids left home for montsh on end to train in the mountains and how they came back totally changed.

All the meta about "there is no way morgana would change in just one year! she must be darktowered and enchanted!" suddenly lost steam for me. I had forgotten an important truth in my own real life experience: THAT People, especially ambitious young adults full of hope and idealism, can get radicalised and turn to extremists in just 3-6 months by being thoroughly isolated from their peers and fed grandiose promises of new world orders and knowledge of information and offensive/militaristic skills.

You do not need magic to convince people to turn away from their original selves. You just need a skill of words and a show of belonging, community, knowledge, power and opportunity. AND 1 YEAR IN ISOLATION OF THAT? OH BOY. You got a well trained revolutionist and agent already.

I thoroughly believe that this is what happened with Morgana. Because Katie talked about her like that in that interview. In another interview she even said "Morgana was duped by Morgause"^^^

This is the analysis i have chosen to understand morgana. This is what I offer in this fandom. Because I come from a place most likely unlike yours but quite similar to BBC Merlin's in spirit.

There is another way to look at Morgana's character and that is to look at her in the eyes of a powerful political activist and A REBEL who was pushed to the extreme and yet not allowed to experience proper negotiation/diplomacy even when she asked for it.

Just think about it. Don't shut these kind of meta out for being disturbingly close to life for other fans. Our Mileage May Vary.

[adarkrainbow]

Oh that’s DEFINITIVELY the case! And again, the French literary fairytales are the key to understanding all that...

Already when I first read your post I wanted to reply “Perceforest” but you already wrote it down X) Now, I already talked about it in a post right before... right here, but the thing is that the idea of fairytales being “A beautiful man in armor riding on a horse saves a damsel in distress from a dragon or assorted monster” isn’t just something taken out of chivalric romance and then copy-pasted onto fairytales through Disney. This actually is TRULY a typical fairytale scenario - but was the scenario for the numerous French literary fairytales written during the “century of fairytales”. Most people do not realize that because French fairytales are ignored in favor of the tales of Grimm or Andersen, where you have much more woodcutters, humble folks, children, poor sons and poor girls, lower-class people - but this “century of French fairytales” was all about princes and princesses, having adventures consisting mainly of romance and killing monsters. A true “chivalric” aspect - that was intended.

The French literary fairytales were part of a cultural, artistic, literary feud known as the “Ancient vs the Moderns”. In the 17th century France, the world of art was dominated by the “Ancients” who believed in one thing: all forms of literature, all forms of art, all works of fiction truly worth it and of true quality, had to be derived, imitated or copied from the Greco-Roman texts, myths, legends and epics. It was their sincere belief that Greco-Roman literature was the peak of literature, and thus to do good works of art, you had to imitate the Ancient Greek and Romans. But in the 17th century the titular “Moderns” appeared - people who said “Maybe we can do a new, fresh literature instead of constantly recycling the new one? Maybe we can find inspiration into other ancient works?” And their proposition for this “modern literature” was to do art based on their own “national antiquity” - aka the medieval tales of France. Charlemagne and the legends of king Arthur, and the lais of Marie de France, and all the like. Charles Perrault was the leader of the Moderns, and all fairytale writers of the 17th century were Moderns - and fairy tales themselves as a literary genre were a tool used by the Moderns. It was a brand new literary genre never seen before, not directly coming from Antiquity (though it still bore a Greco-Roman influence, with characters such as Cupid or the Furies regularly appearing in them), and most importantly it was a continuation of the medieval texts of old France. It was the intended purpose.

For Perrault it isn’t that obvious because again his tales are actually unusual for the “century of fairytales” - but take d’Aulnoy, or some of the other literary fairytales of the time, and things get massively clear. This is why French fairytales have princes and kings in armor riding on magical horses to fight the dragons, giants and assorted monsters capturing their beloved. This is why we have enchanters and magical dwarfs. Heck, this is why there are even fairies in fairytales! Before the existence of fairy tales, fairy only existed in the Arthuriana and in medieval texts: it was Morgane and Mélusine and the ladies of the Otherworld. They didn’t exist anywhere else - and what the storytellers of fairytales did was take back the figure of the fairy directly from the “chivalric romances” and reinvent them for their own stories. The authors of fairy tales at the time were very aware of medieval texts - for example madame d’Aulnoy was a BIG fan of medieval Arthurian tales, and she liked to throw references in her stories here and there. For example she has a fairy mentionned whose name is a slight deformation of “Melusine” ; in one of her stories she has a character go into a long speech in Old French which goes into a medieval tale about a knight winning a lady’s heart through a tournament, as a clear parody of medieval texts, and she also has other things such as a king being called Merlin...

So yeah, you are definitively right, and you talking about Sleeping Beauty is the most relevant thing, because the true, intended “other side of the coin” for chivalric adventures and romances is truly the first French literary fairytales.

Proposition: Chivalric romances and fairy tales are set in the same universe, but told by different perspectives.

Chivalric romances, especially the Arthurian ones, focus sorely on knightly princes fighting epic battles, going into quests and rescuing damsels in peril.

Fairy Tales in general focus more on the exploits of those damsels in peril, along with some working class representation in the figure of lucky tricksters and helpless children.

In other words, Chivalric romances are mainly about Prince Charmings, while fairy tales are about everyone else.

The reason I started thinking about this was because of how much these types of stories share similar settings:

Humans, fae-like beings, dwarfs, cannibal giants (Ogres), and dragons being the main races.

Enchantress like Morgan Le Fay and the Lady of the Lake being suspiciously similar to the Fairies from the french fairy tales.

Christian entities being super present and somehow living relatively peacefully with other magical brings.

Heck, the oldest recorded version of the Sleeping Beauty type of story was in Perceforest, a Chivalric romance mea t to be a prequel to the King Arthur mythos.

Remember Perrault's version of the story, where after waking the Sleeping Beauty the prince has to go to war, leaving her and their children with his ogre mother?

Totally would be the type of story that chivalric romances would explore in bloody details

@ariel-seagull-wings @princesssarisa @adarkrainbow

[phoenix-downer]

Earth and Sea

~1200 words. Riku/Naminé. Arthurian Legend/Camelot AU. Angst, Romance, Bittersweet Ending.

Summary: Riku has done all he can to prepare Sora to be king, and Naminé rises from the waves to bring him home.

Happy RikuNami Day 2022! This is a continuation of my Camelot AU, this time focusing on Riku and Naminé 🌊

The waves of the sea gently lapped against the shore, pulling the moonlight reflected on their watery surface to and fro. It was one of those perfectly tranquil nights where all was right in the world and nothing could spoil Camelot’s bliss. 

Riku strolled back and forth on the beach, a triumphant smile on his face. “At last Sora is acting like a king.” He grinned to himself. “All it took was meeting his queen for him to learn ambition. Maybe I should’ve arranged for it to happen sooner.” 

He stopped his pacing and scratched his chin. “Of course, I already knew they would meet like this. It’s not like I could stop fate, no matter which way time flows for me.” He resumed his usual nightly walk along the shore. “And on a night, five years from now…” He frowned. “No, six? Wait, it has to be four. That’s right, it’s after the Battle of Bedegraine…Wait, that already happened.” He touched his head. “What’s wrong with my memory this evening? It’s almost as if…”  

He gulped and looked to the sea. He’d long since outgrown senility, and thus there was only one reason his memories of the future (well, his past) might be faltering so.

A golden light glowed from deep beneath the waves, and an angelic, lilting voice carried to him from the depths of the sea. “Far from day, far from night / Out of time, out of sight / In between, earth and sea / We shall fly, follow me…” she sang.

“Naminé,” he breathed. So much of her magic was sound-based, and indeed her very name meant the sound of waves. So of course her siren’s call came to him in the form of song. 

Her voice was slightly closer now and the glow from the sea was brighter. “Dry the rain, warm the snow / Where the winds never blow / Follow me, follow me…”

“Naminé, no, not yet,” he told her. He’d known this day would come for a long time, but he wasn’t ready. There was still so much he wanted to help Sora with. Surely he had a little more time.

But she ignored his pleas and continued her song. “To a cave by a sapphire shore / We shall walk through an emerald door / And for thousands of evermores to come my life you shall be…”

She was speaking of her abode beneath the waves, of course. He’d visited it many times as he’d taught her everything he knew about magic. And now, it was time to go home to her for good. 

He knew this, he knew his fate, and yet so stubbornly fought against it. “Naminé,” he pleaded, “Can’t you wait a little longer before taking my magic power? I just need to tell Sora a few more things.” 

She emerged from the waves, looking as majestic as always. Her hair graced her shoulders like a golden veil, and her eyes were the color of the sea at twilight. Her dress ebbed and flowed in the breeze like the sea on a windy night, and she fixed her even gaze on him. She was ancient and yet the very image of youth and beauty, and he found himself dry-mouthed before her. 

“Riku, it’s time, my love,” she said softly, a hint of sadness in her eyes as she cupped his cheek. Her touch was ever so gentle, ever so affectionate.

He placed his hand over hers. “I don’t want it to be.” 

She smiled sadly. “You knew this moment was coming. And besides, Sora will never truly be king if you’re always there to make sure he never stumbles. He’ll be alright now that he has Kairi.” Her eyes fluttered shut for a moment and then reopened. “Your time in Camelot is through, Riku. You’ve done everything you can to prepare him. The rest is in his hands.” 

She opened her mouth to sing again when he stopped her, the panic surging through his chest.  “But did I tell him about Roxas?” He scoured his thoughts, his foggy memories, then sighed deeply. “That’s right, I did. But Roxas and Kairi, did I warn him about Roxas and Kairi?” 

She shook her head. “And it’s best that you didn’t. Let him have these years of happiness before all that happens. Sometimes foresight is more a burden than an aid.” She looked out to the sea. “And besides, things might be different this time around. You don’t know that they’ll make the same mistakes. Kairi was so torn up about what happened the first time that I think she’ll choose differently, even without her memories to guide her.”

“That’s true,” he conceded. Maybe things really would turn out differently this time. 

“Riku,” Naminé said, her voice melodic and soothing like a lullaby, “I cannot delay any further. It’s time. I have to take you with me now or you’ll perish.” 

This was their tragic secret: Naminé would forever be seen as the enchantress who stole Riku’s life away and sealed him under the sea when really, she was the guardian angel who spirited him beneath the waves to save him from certain doom. 

“I know,” he said, sparing one last look in the direction of the castle. “You must do what you must to save me.” He very nearly went with her and then stopped. “But what about Vanitas? I didn’t warn him about Vanitas and I have to…” He started walking towards the castle, and Naminé gasped and grabbed his hand.

“Riku, please, we must go now!” she cried. “Please, give me permission to finish taking your powers.” Tears spilled out of her lovely eyes. “If you don’t, you’ll die, and I…I can’t bear to lose you.”

He smiled sadly at her. “What was I supposed to tell him anyway? I can’t remember.”

It was a playful joke, of course. She wouldn’t fully take his memories and powers without his permission. She understood this and relaxed, the tension leaving her body as she returned his smile. “Only you, only I,” she sang, “World farewell, world goodbye, to our home, ‘neath the sea, follow me.”

He couldn’t think of a better way to lose his memories of the future and his powers then with Naminé at his side, gently lulling him to a peaceful sleep in her abode. He reached for her hand, and together they stepped into the shallow surf, the sea tugging them home. 

As they waded further in, he turned back one last time to say, “Goodbye, Sora. I can’t remember the future anymore, and that means I don't know what sorrows and joys lay ahead of you. I can only wish for you in ignorance like everyone else. But I will say this: I hope you have a long and happy reign.” He smiled and shook his head, because while Sora was passionate and had a good heart, he needed to use his brain sometimes too. “Oh and Stick,” he said, using his affectionate childhood nickname for Sora, “Remember to think…”

Naminé gave him a gentle kiss on the lips to protect him until they reached her home, and with that, they disappeared beneath the waves. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/N: This story is inspired by the musical Camelot which is in turn inspired by the book The Once and Future King which also inspired the Disney film The Sword in the Stone. 

Naminé’s song is the song from the musical sung by Nimue and is called “Follow Me,” and Riku’s responses were also inspired by Merlin’s responses during the song (I would highly recommend giving it a listen, it’s just so hauntingly beautiful). The song has always just struck me as such a RikuNami song, especially with the “earth and sea” line, so I’ve been wanting to write something for it for a long time. Now I finally got the chance, and it was fun to continue the Camelot AU as well.   Thank you for reading!

[mayihavethisdanse]

“What is this, the Dark Ages?”

Or, Arthurian themes and allusions in the Brotherhood of Steel mythos as seen in Fallout 4. (But that’s a lot of words.)

Yep. We're doing this. 

First, some obligatory caveats: there is no single Arthurian canon, just 1500 years of assorted fanfic based on the whims of whoever was writing at the time. For this extremely highbrow Tumblr meta, I have ignored most of it and drawn on my favorites. Also Wikipedia.

Also, I am not an expert in Arthurian literature (or Fallout lore, come to that), and I preemptively beg the pardon of anyone who is.

Finally, in no way am I claiming that all these parallels and thematic echoes are deliberate or even significant. In fact, I'd break it down into:

Clearly deliberate allusions, whether in or out of universe;

Probably coincidence, but could be someone deliberately capitalizing on a coincidental similarity;

Almost certainly coincidence, but fun to speculate about; annnnd

Blatant Monty Python references. (Because of course there are.)

I'll start with the big one.

Arthur Maxson, boy king and unifier

(source)

So across all the retellings and variations of King Arthur’s life story, there are a few consistent elements, particularly in his early life and rise to power. Some of these threads are echoed in the Fallout universe, specifically (and unsurprisingly) in the person of Arthur Maxson.

Both the legendary King Arthur and Arthur Maxson were born with a claim to power lying in their ancestry, both were fostered away from their families, and both proved themselves in combat at a young age. 

King Arthur united the warring kingdoms of Britain into a single entity, making them stronger against outsiders and receiving general admiration and acclaim. Arthur Maxson united the divided factions of the BoS after the events of Fallout 3 and is held in similarly high regard by his men.

The name Prydwen is a reference to the ship of the original King Arthur. Presumably, Arthur Maxson (or someone in the BoS who anticipated his promotion) christened the airship in a deliberate homage to the Arthurian myth.

King Arthur is associated with his legendary sword. I think it’s notable that Maxson’s legend is associated with a bladed weapon, too. ("He killed a DEATHCLAW with a COMBAT KNIFE!”)

Probably coincidence, but fun: the historical emperor Magnus Maximus, who pops up a lot in early Arthurian legend, was known in Welsh as... Macsen. (⌐■_■)

Round Table, but make it dieselpunk

(Continued under the cut.)

Moving away from obvious allusions and into some looser parallels:

Like the Round Table, the Brotherhood is an exclusive knightly order with its leader being the one able to open it up to his chosen few.

Like the Round Table, the BoS sees itself as defending human civilization against forces of chaos. (I’ll touch on their tech-hoarding tendencies when I get to the Grail stuff.) This idea of civilization in the face of chaos goes back to the BoS’s founding, even though the level of isolationism we see in most of the Fallout franchise is not exactly what founder Roger Maxson had in mind: “Notably, Maxson's ultimate intention was to establish the Brotherhood as an organization that works closely with people outside of the Brotherhood, as guardians of civilizations, not its gatekeepers.” (source) In a lot of ways, Arthur Maxson represents a return to his ancestor’s original ideals.

Renegade knights? Internal politics? Traitors within? We gotchu.

In both the medieval legends and in all chapters of the BoS we’ve seen, there’s a big focus on bloodlines (ew). Ironically, it’s probably Arthur Maxson’s unquestionable ancestry that allows him to be more progressive than either of his East Coast predecessors when it comes to boosting Brotherhood numbers by recruitment (even though you can still see a clear division between “born Brotherhood” and recruited soldiers, but that’s a topic for another day). Maxson sees himself as an Elder who "cares for the people"—however misguided and patronizing that attitude might be—and whatever else you might say about the guy, you can't say he doesn't believe he has a duty. Which brings us to…

Know Your Enemy: Danse as Gawain

Before I start this section, an acknowledgement of authorial bias:

Gawain, as portrayed in the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is my very favorite of King Arthur’s knights. (Other stories aren't always as flattering, but like I said at the outset: I'm sticking to the ones I like.)

That poem is my very favorite piece of medieval Arthurian literature. In this section, I'll refer to the modern English translation by Simon Armitage.

...that’s it, I have no other biases to disclose. 

What? 👀

(Art: Clive Hicks-Jenkins)

All right. So in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, you’ve got this himbo loyal knight of Arthur’s who finds himself caught up in... you know what, let me just paste in the Wikipedia summary. (The Toast, RIP, also did a pretty entertaining and more-or-less accurate recap.)

It describes how Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table, accepts a challenge from a mysterious "Green Knight" who dares any knight to strike him with his axe if he will take a return blow in a year and a day. Gawain accepts and beheads him with his blow, at which the Green Knight stands up, picks up his head and reminds Gawain of the appointed time. In his struggles to keep his bargain, Gawain demonstrates chivalry and loyalty until his honour is called into question by a test involving the lord and the lady of the castle where he is a guest.

Don’t worry too much about the plot details, though; for this post, I’m more interested in the thematic parallels. The Green Knight story is full of contrasts: order vs. chaos, civilization vs. wilderness, mortal man vs. Other... but let’s start with Gawain himself. 

Some stuff to know about Gawain:

He was "as good as the purest gold, devoid of vices but virtuous and loyal". Gawain took his principles more seriously even than the rest of Arthur’s knights, not out of pride but out of humility: "I would rather drop dead than default from duty," he says. 

He’s faithful and honorable and never even tempted to betray an oath, even when offered every variety of seduction and riches, except for a single moment of weakness in a desperate desire not to be executed for random shit by powerful forces for reasons he doesn't understand.  

Even though he doesn’t really understand why he needs to die, he sticks to his oath. Gawain's one weakness is a moment of desperate, private, human desire for survival. He'll submit to the headsman’s axe if he has to, but he'd still rather live. 

Above all, Gawain is the ideal of a human man: he might be the bravest and loyal man there is, but he’s still fundamentally human.

You can probably see where I'm going with this.

A few more fun facts about Gawain that resonate with Paladin Danse’s story:

He’s got a bunch of really shitty brothers. (No comment.)

Gawain (SPOILERS!) doesn't actually end up beheaded, but he does willingly kneel for his execution and gets a cut on the throat as a reminder of his sin. And, uh, Danse can also get his throat cut! It doesn’t end as nicely but it’s, you know, a thing that can happen.

Gawain might be a really good guy, and he tries really hard to be one, but in the end he’s nothing more than that: there’s nothing supernatural about him, he has no special powers beyond his own principles and devotion. He’s just a dude doing his Best. 

Wait, why not Danselot?

Oh, that guy? Here’s the thing.

Lancelot personifies the continental ideals of courtly love that became popular in the High Middle Ages. Central to his story is the prioritization of personal relationships and romantic feelings in a way that you don’t really see in Gawain's, at least in the Green Knight tale. (Later stories hook Gawain up with an extremely delightful lady, but even that is a different flavor of romance than Lancelot's and has more to do with Gawain honoring his word and his egalitarian treatment of women (hell yeah). In the poem, Gawain is impressed by Bertilak's wife but resists her temptation; in fact, the biggest risk is not that he'll yield to her advances but that he'll be discourteous to her, i.e., violate his principles and cause dishonor to his king and his host.)

Lancelot is driven by passions over principles in a way that Gawain never really is (at least in the stories I’m talking about; later writers have committed character assassination to various degrees). Yes, you could argue that both Gawain and Lancelot betray their oaths, but Lancelot’s betrayal is never, um, blind. He knows what he’s doing and makes a deliberate choice to prioritize his love for the queen over his love for the king. It doesn’t make him a bad guy—he too is an ideal knight with one fatal flaw—but his character isn’t as comparable to Paladin Danse. 

Yeah, Gawain is (in most stories) a prince and a kinsman of Arthur’s, but he’s ultimately a native boy who doesn’t break the mold of a Knight of the Round Table. Likewise, Danse is portrayed as competent and valuable to the BoS, but not exceptional or breaking the mold of what a BoS soldier should be: he simply represents the ideal. Meanwhile, Lancelot is a foreign prince who was marked from childhood as special and fancy, and his storyline goes alllll over the place. (Much like this post.)

For example, Lancelot goes to absolutely absurd extremes to prove his devotion for no other reason than to prove it. (“I’ll do any useless humiliating thing you want. I’ll betray every oath except the one I made to you. That’s what love is!”) Gawain would never. Danse would never.

Ultimately, Gawain's tests are of his character and not of his love. And like Gawain, Danse’s devotion is to service and his principles, not to another person—even Arthur Maxson.

All that said, there are some similarities: both are beloved by Arthur, both are held up as the ideal of what a knight should be. And even if their fatal flaws are different, both make the point that no matter how good and brave and loyal they might be, no human being can be perfect. 

(Except Galahad. Who is, as a result, very boring.) 

I’ll conclude this section with a quote from someone else’s take on the Greek Knight poem:

I like Gawain. He’s not perfect, but he’s trying his best which is all any of us can do. He’s not like the other knights in the Arthurian legends who occasionally ‘accidentally’ kill women on their little adventures and then feel hard done by when they have to deal with the consequences of that. Gawain holds himself to a high standard – higher, it seems, than Arthur and his knights hold him to considering how hard they laugh when Gawain tells them how bad he feels about the whole thing.

I think Gawain is very relatable in this story. We all want to be better than we actually are.

And that, more than anything else, is Danse.

The Grail myth

What’s that? Lost relics of power? Better send some large armed men after ‘em!

The parallels to the BoS’s tech-hoarding ways are obvious enough that the games themselves lampshade them (albeit by way of Monty Python). But it also ties into the larger themes of “purity” versus “corruption” and the BoS’s self-image as a bastion between civilization and chaos. (See Maxson's line in response to the Sole Survivor’s quip about the Dark Ages: “Judging from the state of the world, it wouldn't be a stretch to say we're living in that era again.”)

But the ultimate futility of the Grail mission is also worthy of note. The BoS might want the power of prewar tech on their side, but they’re no more to be trusted with it than any other group of human beings. No matter how they try, the “corruption” of humanity can’t be overcome as long as they’re striving to harness power for their own ends. You can only achieve power by surrendering control of it.

The death of Arthur

The nature of gameplay being what it is, it's not guaranteed that the Arthur figure will be fatally betrayed, bringing Camelot down with him—but it's not unlikely, either.

Awkward.

Some final spitballing:

Outside the Brotherhood, there are some fun parallels of the Arthur myth with the rest of Fallout 4. Betrayal by one’s own son, for example.

The key difference between the BoS and the legendary Round Table: King Arthur’s knights, for all their flaws and human weaknesses, are usually presented as unambiguous Good Guys. The BoS is... a little more ambiguous...

...but damn if they don’t think they're the good guys. 

A-ad victoriam, fellas!

[gunpowderdtim]

Talk to me about narratomancy? Just whatever you want to talk about it I'm deathly interested

!!!! Today today i had so many Thoughts. To many. It almost rivals March 2020 thoughts

So

My current running names for the four pillars of Narratomancy are as follows:

Universal Story

Narrative Role Filling/Casting Call

Story Echoes

Narrative Flow/Narrative Imperative

Each of these refer to VERY different things within the concept of Narratomancy. I will do my best to describe them. I have coined every term here but narratomancy, to which I believe the honor falls to @lucky-sevens

Keep in mind this is 50% theory, 20% headcanon, 30% canon, and that you do not have to agree with me.

Universal Story

Universal Story refers to the story of the universe, not stories in the universe, the story of the universe. In other words, the story of ‘Dr. Carmilla & The Mechanisms’

This section of Narratomancy is a tad more meta than the others, as it does in some form rely on real-world events to define it, as well as having little to no in story inpact on anything. Maki created the mechanisms universe, clear and simple. She founded the band, and hashed out the earliest lore. Dr. Carmilla is the main character of the universe, not of all the stories, but of the universe. Essentially, Universal Story refers to the fact that Doc C is the main character of the universe, and that the mechanisms are her side characters, in the story of the universe. I have taken to viewing it as doc carmilla stuff is the story of the universe, and the mechanisms is a spin off of that. Both are just as canon, but not specifically canon to eachother. Regardless, the universes story is Carmilla, from starting on Terra, to Aurora, through Loreli, into creating The Mechansims, all of that. All of that is the story of The Universe. The Mechanisms backstories are included in this, of course, because they are part of Carmilla's tale, not the other way around. Through this, I conclude that The Mechanisms are a spin off, focusing on the mechs rather than Carmilla. After all, The Mechansisms are a vessel for telling stories, for fleshing out the universe.

Narrative Role Filling/Casting Call

This refers to the mechs penchant for falling into narrative roles similar to troupes that they represent, or basically acting as a crutch for a story to continue. In OUATIS, Jonny acts as The Prince figure in sleeping beauty. He saves Briar. In being The Prince, he allows Snow's forces to attack cole, and win the war. Without that whole escapade, its likely the war would have stretched on years longer, and not have ended as it did.

Or, Ashes as Hades. What do mythological Hades and Ashes have in common? Hades was eaten by his father, Kronos, because there was a prophesy that told Kronos that his children would usurp him as king of the titans. Ashes figured out Mickey was the snitch, Mickey realized beforehand and lead Ashes into a trap. Killing them because he knew that they could ruin him. Basically, a parental figure betrays the child figure due to them knowing the child could ruin/destroy their position of power. As well as, if Ashes were not Hades, the Suits would not have met, and because of that the story of Ulysses Dies At Dawn would not have happened.

Continuing, while I am not nearly as much of an Arthurian legend person as I am a greek mythology person, some quick google searches revealed a similar similarity between Merlin and Brian. Basically, Merlin and the lady of the lake. She was basically his apprentice/a lady he was in love with? She basically betrayed and killed him after learning all out magic from him. Brian brought a priest back to life, only to have the priest betray and kill him. The tying together point here is clearly the "someone you helped betrays and kills you." That or, the fact they are both magical. Beyond this, If Brian were not on Fort Galfridian, Galahad would never have sought out the grail, and the entire plot would not have occurred.

In The Bifrost Incident, the Mechanisms do not take narrative roles in the way they did in prior albums. But this does not exclude them from being vital points in the story, after all, if Ivy were not present Lyf would not have been able to recover the data on the Black Box)

In all of these situations, (barring Jonny as The Prince) the Mechanisms have had some sort of connection point in the Roles they assume, as well as in their roles, changing the story so that it can continue to the ending presented in the albums.

Story Echoes

Story echoes are, to be blatant, simply canon. No argument, no theorizing, just canon. Refers to the fact that in the mechanism's universe stories 'echo' or basically repeat. In Kofi's fiction for HNOC, its shown rather blatantly that there are more Arthurs in this universe than just the one in hnoc.

In those burning instants, he’d feel the weight of it all, and know it was true. The golden age that never came; the city that stood at the dawn of a world instead of in its dying embers. And beyond – to a myriad of Camelots and a thousand thousand Arthurs, unfathomable worlds apart, each different, each fighting the same hopeless battle.

I know there are other examples of this, but they do escape me right now.

Lastly,

Narrative Flow/Narrative Imperative

This one is also directly canon. On the mechanisms blog, this post defines it rather well.

In the ask, the asker asks "...Do you heal injuries at an abnormal rate, or can you not be injured?"

In the reply, it is stated.

It depends on the narrative imperative - sometimes a Mechanism might die for a while, and only come back later when it becomes more fun, other times they’ll just heal/ignore wounds as they take them. It’s not something they can control, but tends to follow a rough logic of whatever works best for the story.

This is just canon, no arguing or stating otherwise. A mechanisms ability to heal depends entirely on what's best for the story.

Other examples in canon where this comes into play would be as follows:

GPTVTMK. In gptvtmk, Jonny's severed head is there. Is talks. It moves. In one of the fictions, it's stated Jonny cannot separate his heart from his body. Therefore, these are contradictory. Under normal circumstances, this would be a plothole. It is not here. Under narratomancy, Jonny was capable of being a severed head due to the fact that that would be best for the story.

OUATIS. Jonny walks through rounds and rounds of bullets.

HNOC. This example is a bit different from the rest, as it is not about a Mechanism. Galahad does something pretty fucking impossible.

And so Galahad stood and walked into the corridor. The guns trained on the preacher and opened fire. 

Say what you want about faith, but it can have powerful effects on those that have it. It can keep you from faltering as the bullets start to slam into you. It can keep you walking as your legs are shot to bloody stumps. It can keep you laughing as your lungs are filled with shrapnel and lead. It can keep you smiling as half your face is blown away. It can keep a man like Galahad standing tall until the guns clicked dry.

It is my belief that this is another example of narrative imperative. Under normal rules, Galahad could never have done this. But his faith, his beleif, kept him going. And that was good for the story.

So. That wraps up my narratomancy ramble for today. hope yall enjoyed.

*EDIT: Nastya does say it's nanobots. My opinion is: it's both. The nanobots are narrative driven <3

[classicalsongbirdknits]

This month's knitflixing suggestion for Canadians: Merlin

From a young age, I've been obsessed with Arthurian legend. I grew up listening to a version of the King Arthur stories on tape, and as I got older, I proceeded to engage other versions and spin-offs, including acting in a play version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and reading Mists of Avalon (which I enjoyed, despite the, um, questionable views of the author). And then, one day, I discovered Merlin on Netflix. Merlin is a reimagined telling of the King Arthur legend which places Merlin and Arthur as young men in Camelot and tells the story in that vein through to the Battle of Badon. I was initially turned off by the somewhat dramatic changes to the version of the stories I grew up with, but I eventually settled into it and enjoyed the show immensely. As I continued watching, I realized that the show meant to draw on the source material as more of an inspiration, and the plot wasn't meant to be an exact retelling.

A quick tangent here- I took a class on Arthur of the Celts, which explored the rise of the Arthur in stories and legends, from his roots as a Celtic warlord or Roman dux bellorum, all the way up to Geoffery of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, which cemented Arthur's reputation into a King, a reputation which continues to this day. As I took the class (and rewatched the show simultaneously to "study"), I realized that the show is actually ladened with references to source material in ways that I didn't even know about in my first few watches. The nerd in me was extremely happy and very impressed, so if you're familiar with the Celtic origins of Arthur and some of the most prominent early texts, you'll enjoy the clever way the sources have been weaved into the show. Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Merlin was originally written to fill the space left by Doctor Who in its off season, so its intended audience was a family who would be looking for something to watch during what would normally be Doctor Who time. The "family" aspect is very obvious in some episodes, and distinctly less obvious in others. As with all shows, there are great episodes and some less great episodes, but overall the show is simultaneously funny, clever, emotional, sad, gripping, and light-hearted. The seriousness of the show also progresses as the seasons go by and the characters age, so the feel of the episodes is very different by the last season. 

One word of warning- the CGI is very early-2000's, which can be distracting at times, but do your best to ignore it, because the rest of the show is well worth watching.

You might like this show if: you enjoy Arthurian literature and are a huge nerd about it (like me); you like the enemies to friends (or maybe... lovers?) trope; you like historical dramas with pretty costumes and big castles.

You might not like this show if: you're not willing to endure the somewhat cheesy first season; you can't stand early-2000's CGI and special effects; you don't like any re-interpretations of the King Arthur material.

[black-rose-writings]

Some thoughts on Winx characters’ ages

From youngest to oldest, more or less

Characters discussed: Miele, Roxy, Daphne, The Earth Fairies, Faragonda, Griffin, Griselda and Valtor.

This is very long and I’m very sorry.

1) Miele (Flora’s sister)

She has been aged down in season 8, so I’m no counting that into her age.

She seems really young in season 3, mostly because she is so much shorter than the Winx in a lot of the shots (though her relative height compared to them seems to change a lot - sometimes she’s up to Flora’s waist and sometimes to her chest. Ugh, inconsistent art is the worst).

In seasons 6 and 7, she looks like she could be in her early teens, like 15 at most (and most of her classmates fit that age range, too).

She doesn’t have an official age, as far as I could find, but I’m headcanoning her as being 10(ish) in season 3 and 14(ish) in season 6.

Final headcanon age: 10 (season 3), 14 (season 6)

2) Roxy

Roxy does actually have a canon age, but I’m chosing to ignore it, because it doesn’t feel accurate.

Roxy is supposedly 15 in season 4, but the thing is, she doesn’t feel that much younger than the Winx, who are at least 19, 20 in Stella’s case, possibly even a bit older (the time skips between seasons aren’t exactly clear). Like, don’t get my wrong, she does feel younger than the Winx, but not by 4-5 years. I’d put her at like, 17(ish) in season 4.

One more reason I headcanon her to be older is simply because the younger she is, the more plotholes there are in the whole “The magic on Earth has been gone for a really long time” thing (especially if you could the later seasons and the Selina plot, but that’s a rant for another day). To sum it up, if Roxy was 15 in season 4, it would mean she was born when Bloom was 4 or 5, already on Earth and that Morgana would have been captured around the same time Eldora took Selina under her wing (aka, Bloom and Selina’s magical power were already noticable) and that’s assuming Roxy was just 1, when Morgana was captured. Which would raise the question why the Fairy Hunters, who have spent the last several centuries hunting down fairies, wouldn’t notice two other fairies living a few blocks away from Morgana.

Aging Roxy up makes the timeline make more sense as most of the plotholes created by season 6 are eliminated if Roxy is closer in age to the Winx.

Final headcanon age: 17 (season 4)

3) Daphne

Daphne, again, doesn’t have a canon age, and, in fact, her seeming age changes a bit here and there. Both her picture in the book of Fate (1st movie) and her voice in the (probably fake) memory in season 2 make her appear to be younger than in any of her other appearances, but since the first is from a movie (which have questionable canonicity, especially, when it comes to details), the other is most likely fake, and both of them are at odds with everything else we know about Daphne’s story, I’ll just ignore them.

The youngest I’d go for her is 18, at the time of her “death”, with the oldest I’d go being like 23.

Honestly, I’m very tempted to headcanon her as being 18 or 19, because, like, do you see the angst potential? I mean the whole Domino resurection is an untapped angst mine, but like, having Bloom be the exact same age as Daphne was, way back when? It just adds a bit of something, you know?

It would also be kind of fun to have Daphne be physically younger than Bloom, once she’s resurected, too. Bloom is 20(ish) when she brings Daphne back, possibly older (again, time skips aren’t really clear between the seasons).

I’d also like to add a friendly reminder that, regardless of her physical age, Daphne is around 40 chronologically, when she’s resurected.

Final headcanon age: 18 (at the time of death)

4) Faragonda, Griffin and the others

The others being mostly Griselda and Kalshara, since all of these characters are meant to be roughly the same age, give or take a year or so. And I guess Saladin and Kalshara’s brother, though those two aren’t really confirmed to be around the age of these four.

Faragonda has a “100 years of being a headmistress of Alfea” party around the start of season 6. Even if we say she had become a headmistress right out of school, she’d be at least 120 at that time, though she’s probably at least a decade older than that.

Since Griffin, Griselda and Kalshara have all been in school at the same time as her, it’s most likely they are about the same age as well.

This does give us a lot of insight on the lifespans of people in the Magical Dimension. Griselda looks middle-aged, despite being at least 120. Griffin barely looks human, so her age is hard to guess, but she doesn’t look terribly old either and neither does Faragonda, if you think about it. Kalshara and her brother have that wild magic thing going on, so I’m not really counting them in.

Also, the flashbacks on the old Company of Light show them looking really young, when they would be a least 100, when Domino fell. So, if we exclude continuity errors as an explanation (even though that is the real exaplanation), we’re left with either:

A) 100-year-olds in the magical dimension just look like they’re still in their twenties

B) They’re all vain bitches that make themselves look younger using magic.

C) The Company of Light goes a lot further back than we thought.

Or any combination of those three, really.

And, again, this calls into question how long do people in the magical dimension live? I’m thinking at least the same as wizards in Harry Potter universe (who live to be like 140 on average, apparently).

FInal headcanon age: 130 at least

5) The Earth fairies and the Wizards of the Black Circle

All of the names Earth fairies from season 4 (with the exception of Roxy) have been around since at least the medieval times, as have been the Wizards of the Black Circle.

So, we can assume all of these character are at least like 600 years old.

But

Morgana is strongly associated with Morgana le Fay (literally: Morgana the Fairy) from Arthurian legends in the show - assuming that this isn’t just a reference, but she actually inspired Morgana le Fay in the Winx universe, she’d have to be over 1100 years old at least (since the first recorded version of the legends comes from the 9th century), most likely closer to 1500 years of age (since the legends are set in the late 6th century). That is on the low end, so she might be even older.

As for the other major fairies

Diana has quite strong paralels with the roman goddess of the same name. She is incredibly powerful, so it is quite possible, that she was seen as a goddess by the ancient humans and became the inspiration for that particular goddess. That would make her go at least as far back ar 6th century BCE, if not further. Her temple isn’t much help, since pyramid-like things have been some fo first permanent things humans built and are being built to this day.

Aurora does have some links with the roman goddess of the same name, but those are pretty weak, so I’ll not dive into them much.

As for Sibylla, well, Sibylla’s cave and the Sibyllini mountains are things IRL, named after the Sibyl prophetesses (who are heavily linked to the oracle of Delphi, which you probably know of). Earliest record of those is in 5th century BCE.

To sum up, the Earth fairies are old as sin, and probably don’t actually age.

Which probably means Roxy is also going to be ageless. Now that would be an interesting thing to look into.

6) Valtor

Valtor has a canon “at least this old” limit, if you count season 8 info.

That is, he is at least 1000 years old. We know he wasn’t born, but made, so he might have theoretically been just a few weeks old, when he tried to catch the wishing star last time.

We know the spark that Valtor came from was “lost” around the same time as creation (I’m just now processing that creationism is canon in the Winx universe. Great). The Ancestral Witches were supposedly first evil creatures to exist in the Magical Universe, so they probably came in shortly after. And then they created Valtor, at some point.

So, Valtor could literally be almost as old as the Magical universe, however long that is.

Final headcanon age: Who knows, certainly not me, and since 1000 years is the lowest possible age, I don’t actually want to know.

[make-me-imagine]

Hello Mera! First of all a lovely congrats! I was wondering if I could get a Merlin and Doctor Who what if ship? My pronouns are she/her. I’m very creative and curious. I spend lots time living in a world of my own discovering and exploring ideas. To the outsider I seem incredibly "dreamy" and distant, because I spend a lot of time inside my own mind musing over things. I’m very easily bored by day to day things and will zone out on the majority of people. As for hobbies I’m very interested in the visual arts. I myself am an artist working in both fine and digital mediums. I also love studying symbols through art (I’ve tried to incorporate them into my own art ya know give the viewer a sort of scavenger hunt). I also love films, books, video games, and movies. This is to an extent of over analyzing and theorizing. Let’s just say I’m invested in stories. My favorite genres are probably myths/legends (Arthurian specifically), espionage/mystery (bond movies, sherlock etc), historical fiction (assassins creed), sci fi (Star Wars/Doctor who) and fantasy (Merlin, lotr). Back to studying art which is what I am currently doing in college. I’m majoring in Digital Media Art which is things like user experience, web design, cgi and graphics etc. I also love to workout and kickbox. Lastly, my preference is for either males of females. Thank you once again!

Thank you!

Here they are! This is my first time trying to do a What If ship, so I hope you like them! They are under the cut!

Merlin:

S/O: Guinevere.

How you met: You were brought to Camelot by Uther not long before he died. You were hired to curate art/art pieces for Camelot. You met Gwen when you were touring the castle, and you became friends quickly.

Your relationship: I think the two of you would be close friends for a long time, before your relationship grew, until neither of you could ignore it anymore. You two were afraid people would not approve with your relationship, but you soon found out that your friends had made bets on how long it would b before you started dating. They are actually very approving and love that you two are happy.

Role/Job: As I mentioned above: I imagine you would be an artist, and a curator. You would make and bring beautiful art to Camelot, and adorn the castle with it.

Best-Friend: Merlin of course. You two would be rambunctious together, causing mischief and helping people as well as you could.

Other Info: After Uther died, you were afraid you would not be allowed to stay in Camelot. But Arthur liked you and allowed you to stay, inviting you to continue your job as you had before. + You and Gaius share a love of books and often lend various books to each other to read and talk about.

- - - - -

Doctor Who:

S/O: Eleven & Ten.

How you met: You met the Doctor when he was Ten, after you were trapped in your work place by aliens that had come to Earth to take people for some reason (I'm not that creative right now lol). And you stayed with him until he became Eleven.

Your relationship: You and Ten fell for each other fairly quickly, and become so close, that of course when he regenerated, it was hard for your relationship to continue. There was a rough patch and you fell back in love, but you did! Because even though he was very different, he was the same at his core, and you could not help but want to continue being with him no matter what.

Role/Job: You worked as a digital artist at a popular art museum. But obviously this all changed and ended when the Doctor came and rescued you.

Other Info: You were very useful to the Doctor on your adventures, as you are very knowledgeable, clever and analyzing. You can often see things he misses, or solve problems he is too excited about to see clearly.

^I'll let you imagine what kind of adventure this would have been lol

xx

I hope you liked them!

[ineloqueent]

where the wildflowers grow

Gwilym Lee x Fem!Reader

synopsis: they say there lives a witch in the wildflower woods, but Gwilym has never believed the tales. until now.

warnings: use of medieval swords (no blood)

word count: 2.1k

see the moodboard here!

⭒

It’d been dark when he’d set out that morning, and though it was always dark on his mornings in the woods, this day had begun darker than usual.

He’d dressed by the flame of a single candle and sheathed his sword at his side, fastening the buckles of his boots with practiced hands, for this was routine.

Gwilym liked routine. He even liked his shifts in the Wildflower Woods, and while the other members of the royal guard drew straws to determine which unlucky bastard would be patrolling the woods that day, Gwilym always volunteered.

The woods were quiet, and an outlander might have thought that this silence was what the men feared, the dull buzz that began in one’s ears once exposed to soundlessness for an extended period of time, alone with the sound of one’s breath and the wealth of one’s thoughts, but the outlander would have been sorely mistaken.

The men did not fear silence; they feared what lived in the silence.

It was said that a witch lived in the Wildflower Woods, capable of a dark and terrible magic, magic which the king had long since outlawed, criminalised. There had been innumerable huntings and burnings when the legislation had passed, and to this day, every citizen of the kingdom could hear the cries of the men and women killed for crimes they had most likely not committed.

No exceptions had been made, and everyone deemed a witch had faced a terrible fate upon the courtyard pyre of the Castle Gaerwen.

No exceptions had been made, but one particular individual had slipped from the grasp of the king’s guard.

They called her Morgana, after the enchantress of Arthurian legend, and she was feared as equally as the woman of the legend. It was said her gaze was deadly, and that she could take any form she desired, turn water to liquid poison, revive both the dying and the already dead, and change the weather at will. No one had any power over her, for even the elements bowed to her magic, and so she had been deemed too much of a risk for the royal guard to capture.

And so, the royal guard now patrolled the Wildflower Woods morning and night, to ensure that the witch did not move to attack the good citizens of Daryn.

Gwilym had patrolled the woods for years now, and had neither seen nor heard any sign of a witch. Thus, as all logic demanded of him, he did not believe the tales. The other men called him foolish, shuddered at his naïveté, but Gwilym laughed merrily at their fears whenever he was given the chance. He did not believe the tales, and so he did not fear the woods. The woods were a solace, and in living the life that he did, with chases and fighting and travelling, it was nice to have some time to himself, in a place where the world was quiet.

His boots crunching on the gravel of the path which led out from the guards’ quarters and toward the outer wall of Castle Gaerwen, Gwilym nodded morning greetings to those arriving home from the night shift.

Women stood lined up to draw water from the wells in the courtyard, and a group of them giggled as Gwilym passed. He sighed inwardly. He did not encourage their attentions, and yet, they continued to behave in this manner whenever he was about.

Ignoring the chatter that followed him, Gwilym arrived at the outer gate.

“Morning,” he said to Mercher, his friendly acquaintance and the man whom Gwilym was to share the day’s shift with.

Mercher mumbled his own greeting, and Gwilym smiled.

“Nervous? It’s just the woods, you know.”

The other man grunted. “There’s more to those woods than you think, ffwl.”

“There is no witch in those woods, fy ffrind,” Gwilym countered good-humouredly.

“Perhaps you are right,” Mercher responded, as he tapped his fingers along the hilt of his sheathed sword, “but there are other things too.”

Gwilym raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Mmh. Venomous serpents larger than fully grown horses, boars with tusks longer than your forearm, spiders which will crawl into your eyes if you close them unawares.”

Gwilym’s eyes twinkled; he was amused. “Well then, Mercher,” he clapped his companion on the back and strode forward through the opening gate, “we should get going so that these creatures can have their breakfast.”

Mercher swallowed thickly, standing rooted to the spot. With a shake of his head, he hurried to catch up to Gwilym, who was still smiling to himself.

“By rights, we shouldn’t be allowed to risk our lives like this,” said Mercher.

Gwilym laughed. “You should have been a baker instead of a soldier! Courage, fy ffrind. It will get you far in life.”

⭒

As they were only two, Gwilym and Mercher were forced to split up in their duties. Gwilym appreciated the solace, but Mercher was fearful. The former repeated his advice of courage to the latter, and the two parted ways.

A deep mist hovered betwixt the trees this morn, and so it was difficult to see very far beyond one’s own hand, but it also afforded the woods a mysterious quality, one which only fuelled Gwilym’s lust for adventure; outwardly, he was grown, but at heart, he was still a child, and longed to live the stories of pirates and highwaymen that his mother had told him when he was little.

Gwilym was still searching for his purpose in existence, and though he had yet to find it, he was sure it involved adventure, something more than this little life he presently lived.

Almost as though the world around him were aware of his longing, a rustling arose from the surrounding shrubbery.

Gwilym’s hand flew to the sword at his side, his knees bent, prepared to run.

There was silence. Not even a bird cawed in the canopy overhead, no river water rushed, no wind was heard between the trees.

Something slithered in the undergrowth.

Slithered. It was very distinct.

Hyperbolic images of terrible, scaled bodies with large mouths bearing fearsome, pointy teeth dripping venom conjured themselves in Gwilym’s mind, and his heart kicked up its rhythm.

His eyes flitted about the bushes, the endless wildflowers which carpeted the forest floor and provided the wood with its name, but he could see nothing. It was still rather dark out, and the mist did his eyes no aid.

Then, suddenly, a great, scaly body launched itself from the undergrowth, and before Gwilym could react, tore its fangs down his calf.

He gave a cry of pain, and lashed out with his sword, but the venom must have been rapidly acting, because his vision had already turned blurry.

But with, quite literally, a stroke of luck, he struck the creature, and with a violent hiss, it retreated rapidly back from whence it had come.

Gwilym was left to his solace once more, but now he was panting, and nearly doubled over in trying to lean his weight against a tree.

He shouted for Mercher, once, twice, but no response came.

He was on his own.

Feeling as though he were going blind, Gwilym staggered forward at a pace that was rather quick, fuelled by desperation. Pain lanced through his leg and up toward his heart, and he knew that one must not allow venom to circulate once in the veins, but what else was he to do? Lay himself down to die?

No, for that would be a coward’s death, and Gwilym Lee was no coward.

A light flickered in the mist, between the trees.

Perhaps he was hallucinating. It was not unlikely.

But he held onto hope, and dragged his heavy feet forward until the light grew bigger, brighter.

The light came from a window, in a cottage built of heavy stones. Gwilym imagined the craftsmanship to be excellent, but he did not know for sure. His vision was beginning to grow dark around the edges.

At last, he happened upon the door. With a heavy arm, he knocked against the wood, and collapsed, just as the door swung open.

⭒

He could smell woodsmoke, and heather and all kinds of herbs.

His eyes were heavy, as though he had not slept for days, and a dull pain throbbed in his leg. But it was nothing of the agonising pain he had felt before.

There was a sound like the clinking of metal pots and pans, and someone was humming.

With tremendous effort, Gwilym rose to his elbows, and opened his eyes.

The light was low, but there were candles aplenty, and they flickered softly, in their places about the room— in teacups and saucers, upon plates and wooden carvings, standing proudly in window sills and atop shelves.

On the shelves, there were potted plants and what appeared to be bottled herbs, labeled with names both familiar and unfamiliar to Gwilym’s vocabulary.

His eyes wandered about his peculiar surroundings, before returning to where he lay— in some sort of bed that was really more of a cot, made of linen and crowded with sheepswool blankets and a stitched duvet.

Bless the kindness of strangers, he thought, until his gaze happened upon his host.

She locked eyes with him before he could turn away, and his breath caught, because the woman before him was enchantingly beautiful, and without a doubt the witch of the tales he had not believed.

A slow smile curved over her lips. “My stare is lethal, no?” she said, a thick Welsh accent carving her English words differently from the way Gwilym spoke his.

His first instinct was to laugh, and he almost did, before he thought better of it. There was no telling what this witch was capable of, and presently, he was utterly at her mercy.

But a question had occurred to him as well, and so he asked it.

“However did you guess that my English is better than my Welsh?”

That slow smile touched her pretty lips again. “Like you say, it was a guess.”

“Damn good guess,” Gwilym said, not bothering to hide the fact that he was impressed.

She laughed, a warm sound, and he felt oddly comforted by it. “Us gwrachod do have a talent for those sorts of things.”

“So it is true, then?” he spoke carefully. “You are the witch of the Wildflower Woods.”

“I am. Morgana, if you will.”

He fixed her with an inquisitive look. “Yes, but that is not your name, is it?”

She had been standing by a stove, but now, she wiped her hands on the apron that hung over her full skirt, and walked toward him. She perched in a rocking chair positioned by the cot and leaned back into it, folding her arms.

“No one has ever asked my name before.”

Her voice was quiet, low, and surely as enchanting, as lethal, as her stare. But he detected a loneliness beneath the words.

“Well,” Gwilym said, “I am asking you now, politely, if you will give it to me.”

She narrowed her eyes. “There is much in a name, Gwilym.”

He raised his eyebrows in surprise, sitting up properly. “You know my name?”

She nodded. “A pretty name, no? But a bit long. I like Gwil better. Do people call you that?”

His heart felt strangely light at his name on her lips, even when it was shortened. “They do now,” he said, and thought that her eyes glittered. “And your name?”

She murmured it, and it sounded to him like the songs of old, a lilting melody with an alluring darkness humming beneath the surface.

He rolled the sound over his tongue, and felt a faint blush rise to his cheeks as he said it. Indeed, there was much in a name. An intimacy, too. Gwil did not often use the given names of his acquaintances.

“You healed my leg,” he remarked thoughtfully, shifting it from beneath the blankets.

“And purged y gwenwyn from your veins,” she added.

Her eyes were deep, and he felt himself sinking into her gaze as he met it.

He murmured, “You saved my life.”

“Ie,” she said. “That I did. A witch is not so bad, you see.”

Her smile was teasing, and he knew then that he had nothing to fear from the witch of the Wildflower Woods.

“And for that,” Gwil began, his eyes searching the room for his sword. It was resting just beside him, on the floor by the cot, and he drew it now, standing it upon its point on the stone floor and bowing his head briefly. “I am forever in your debt.”

She smiled, and Gwil feared that more than his honour was indebted to her.

His heart, for certain, was too.

[essays-for-breakfast]

That ominous child

Since everyone seems to argue and hypothesize about the identity of King’s and Diane’s child, and Nakaba can’t be bothered to offer answers, I decided to throw my own hat into the ring. Using The Encyclopedia of Arthurian Legends - the best book EVER - I have devised a list of the ten most interesting and most likely candidates from a variety of Arthurian stories. Most of these have been named by others before, but I’ve come across a few obscure characters that might be worth considering. Five guys, five girls, here we go:

#1 Gawain

I’ve read this take a few times, but honestly, I find him to be an unlikely candidate. As Arthur’s nephew, Gawain has next to no ties to the Fairy Clan (or Faerie if you prefer the old spelling). Gawain also has a track record of becoming an antagonist to Lancelot, including his role in Le morte d’Arthur (Thomas Malory). Could a rivalry between Lancelot and his cousin work in nnt canon? Certainly, but I find it unlikely. I like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (unknown) as much as the next guy, but I have a hard time connecting his personality with either King or Diane. There’s also Gawain’s ability that increases his strength by noon, which is the same as Escanor’s Sunshine. In short, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Gawain make an appearance in The Four Knights of the Apocalypse, but not as King’s and Diane’s child.

#2 Perceval (or Percival)

Now, this one’s interesting for two reasons: his ties to the Holy Grail and his origin. In The Story of the Grail (Chrétien de Troyes), Perceval is said to be raised in a forest by his mother, who doesn’t want him to become a knight. With Diane’s natural resentment to fighting for the sake of fighting and after what happened to Lancelot, I could see King and Diane wanting to avoid their child to follow in their footsteps and become a knight. As for the Holy Grail, which shares resemblance to the Fountain of Youth in nnt, Perceval was one of several knights who found the grail. The list includes Gawain, Bors, and Galahad, Lancelot’s son. What makes Perceval stand out among these, however, is that in a continuation of The Story of the Grail (Manessier), he is revealed to be the nephew of the Grail King and he inherits his kingdom after his death. If we consider Ban the Grail King due to his relation to the Fountain of Youth, Perceval might just be the name of his so far unidentified nephew.

#3 Bors

I heard his name being tossed around in conversation a handful of times, mostly because Bors the Younger is Lancelot’s cousin according to Malory. And while Nakaba seems to take a lot of inspiration from Malory when it comes to family relations (look no further than Tristan’s and Lancelot’s parents), in Arthurian Legends, everyone is related to everyone. In the Historia Regum Brittaniae (Geoffrey of Monmouth), Ban’s sister Ivoire is the mother of Uther Pendragon, which makes Lancelot Arthur’s uncle once removed. What I’m trying to say is, Bors is not the only one related to Lancelot. But to be fair, Bors is a Knight of the Round Table, and therefore a companion to Lancelot and Tristan. So, if King’s and Diane’s child is named Bors, it won’t be entirely out of left field.

#4 Oberon

A popular choice for a reason. Oberon is featured in a handful of Arthurian poems as king of the fairies, so he certainly has a connection to King and the Fairy Clan. The only problem I see is that Kings child, no matter who they are, would likely not succeed him as Fairy King. The Sacred Tree makes that choice. Regardless, while Oberon might never be the Fourth Fairy King, he could feature as first prince of the Fairy Clan.

#5 Galehaut

An interesting side character of Le morte d’Arthur (Malory). Why? Because his mother was the giantess Bagota, which makes him a canonical hybrid. His title as ‘the high prince’ would also fit his identity as King’s and Diane’s child. And as a final bonus, Galehaut is a firm friend of Lancelot and through him became a Knight of the Round Table.

#6 Morgan Le Fay

My personal favorite. While she is Arthur’s half-sister in most stories, when she appeared in Vita Merlini (Geoffrey), there is no mention of her blood relation to Arthur. Instead she is said to fly with wings and be able to change her form. Sounds like another Fairy we know, doesn’t it? Morgan learned magic from Merlin, and since the nnt versions of Lancelot and Tristan seem to focus more on physical rather than magical combat, I think it would be nice if King’s and Diane’s child filled that gap. What’s also worth noting about Morgan is her connection to the Fairy King Hellekin, who in Italian romances became better known as Harlequin. In Li Jus Adan (Adam de la Halle), Hellekin is the lover of Morgan Le Fay, and while that sounds weird as an argument in favor of her being King’s daughter in nnt, Nakaba could always ignore this detail. Or Morgan will be the real name of the Lady of the Lake, who knows at this point.

#7 Nimue

Some sources such as Myths of Britain (M. Senior) argue that Nimue is a variant of Vivian, and that they are the same character. Both are typically identified as a Lady of the Lake. Nnt already has a Vivian, and the way she kidnaps Gil and obsesses over him bears resemblance to what Nimue does to Merlin in Le morte d’Arthur (Malory). Then why did I include Nimue? Because Nimue/Vivian is the the granddaughter of the goddess of the wood, who, in the prose of Vulgate Version (unknown), is named Diane.

#8 Iseult (or Isolde)

This one only works if Kiane’s daughter will have a romance with Tristan. I’m not saying that is impossible, but how often does it happen that the the children of friends fall in love? It’s a nice trope, but if King’s and Diane’s daughter were named Iseult, her fate would be a little too predictable. And I guess this would also mean that the Fairy Realm is the equivalent of Ireland... so it works perfectly!

#9 Caelia

My wild card. She is only featured in one work, as far as I know, A Collection of Early English Prose Poems (edit. W.J. Thomas). Caelia is here the Fairy Queen and the lover of Arthur’s illegitimate son, Tom a’Lincoln. So, if Arthur already has a child at the beginning of the sequel, and if said child is in need of a love interest, King’s and Diane’s daughter might just fit the bill. Let’s just hope that nnt Caelia won’t drown herself.

#10 Laudine

Last one, this post is already longer than it has any right to be. In The Knight with the Lion (Chrétien), Laudine is the lady of a magical fountain in the forest of Broceliande. This creates a nice connection to Elaine, doesn’t it? And if the Fairy King’s Forest will somehow find a new Fountain of Youth, perhaps King’s and Diane’s daughter will guard this new fountain, just like Lancelot guarded Benwick in his father’s place. Laudine later became the wife of Owain (or Ywain), another Knight of the Round Table and Arthur’s nephew.

...

Or Nakaba messes with us and picks a random name out of a hat to assign to King’s and Diane’s ominous child.

[lunararcher]

SPOILERS FOR TALES OF ARCADIA!

Seriously though!! ALL the spoilers, up through Wizards!

Because have I got a RANT for you about some FREAKING CONTINUITY! It’s...kinda long. Proceed below the break at your own risk.

So, we have info on the past Trollhunters from the show (mostly Trollhunters and Wizards, though we get a peek in 3Below at Kanjigar as the Trollhunter REALLY early on in the Trollmarket settlement, though no specific date) as well as some comics, which gives us all kinds of good stuff like Trollhunter names and species and personalities and when they served and all that! Trying to make a combination of these coherent, though...kind of ruins a proper timeline, especially because of Wizards. Actually, mostly because of Wizards. THAT tells us that Deya was the FIRST Trollhunter because Merlin had only JUST finished creating the Amulet, right?

WELL

Even discounting ANY of the alternate materials and only pulling from the show (which is all I’ve seen, actually. Haven’t read the comics, just heard of them, so my observations are almost purely show-based) this doesn’t really make any sense. AT ALL. See, because Gunmar’s war had been going on for a long long time, right? Before Killahead ended it (sort of). And Trollhunters were there to protect good trolls from just such a thing. A great many died in this service, while none could defeat Gunmar. Kanjigar even SAID that the blade of Daylight has fought Gunmar many times, but has never beaten him. If you look at the Wizards timeline, though, Deya apparently got the Amulet first, fought Gunmar in her very first battle with it, then successfully banished him and all the rest of the Gumm-Gumms (except for dearly departed-by-YEET Bular) into the Darklands via Killahead. So...if Deya really WAS the actual first Trollhunter (which no one SAYS until Wizards, they just say she’s the GREATEST) then it wouldn’t be true that Daylight has fought Gunmar many times; it didn’t even fight him TWICE.

(Also, remember that time or twenty when Draal said he’s waited his whole LIFE to be worthy of the Amulet? But then we see him as a grown-ass adult the first time the Amulet is ever even mentioned?)

I mean, this doesn’t even GO INTO Angor Rot’s origin, in which the war was ravaging his village and people so badly and for so long that he became MADLY desperate for the power to protect them, going to a Morgana who was already well-known as The Pale Lady, Baba Yaga, and all the rest of that jazz, but was NOT YET sealed away by Merlin (or Douxie, as the case may be). Then she goes on to command Angor to kill Merlin’s champions, the Trollhunters. All this while Gumm-Gumms are still on the loose. So...either the Amulet was already made, Trollhunters were a thing, and she’s super salty about Merlin taking her left hand for the project, leading to her vengeance motive to sic Angor on the whole lot of them OR, she, like, knew that was GOING to be a thing and wanted to take really extreme preemptive action? If we are to believe Wizards, even Merlin didn’t know he was gonna need Morgana’s hand to finish the amulet and her self-proclaimed hatred of Trollhunters didn’t crystalize until AFTER that. 

All of that to say, look, I get why Wizards did what it did. They wanted to put all of that wonderfully juicy backstory stuff into the time frame when our protagonists could be there to see it. The falling out of Merlin and Morgana (and actually seeing THAT gave us the chance to see Morgana pre-Dark Side, opening up a path to redemption for her via Claire), the creation of the Amulet, the Battle of Killahead Bridge, the first Trollhunter, not necessarily in that order. Those are all really cool things and yes, I am kind of glad we got to see them because they WERE all very cool. I just kind of wish they had been more creative with, like, visions of the past and such to make it happen, instead of trying to cram all of those historically significant events into the period of only, what? A few days? Doing that just massively screwed up their own established timeline. Dropping four modern-day people into the middle of all that is NOT excuse enough to say they messed it all up.

Holy crap, I just wondered if the way to fix all of this would have been to throw different characters into different parts of the past. Douxie WAY the heck back to when Merlin first creates the amulet (using non-show material now, it’s mentioned that Spar the Spiteful was Trollhunter 5200 years before Jim, so that puts him at something like 3180-ish BCE. That’s, like, *brief messy Google search* just before the *squints* first dynasty of Egypt? Apparently? Okay, that’s a little...MUCH, but you get what I mean) and then jumping forward until he meets up with Claire, who is in the past of Camelot for that meeting with not-evil Morgana, but then Jim and Steve not quite so far back being set in the time leading up to Killahead, making the two mages present for the fall of Morgana, then Douxie having to sacrifice himself or something to throw Claire forward in time to meet up with the other boys, Douxie just having to catch up by living his immortal wizard life or something. Meanwhile, Jim and Steve have their own adventure (how cool would it be to introduce Angor HERE and give Jim the chance to keep him away from his super tragic fate? Maybe doesn’t fit great, though) and Jim STILL gets to know Calysta before she becomes a Trollhunter (she’s just not the first; that milestone wouldn’t change anything about her story, really) and in the end everyone STILL participates in the Battle of Killahead. Because as far as I can remember, there isn’t anything that dates that battle, right? Nothing said it HAD to be in the 12th century, unlike the Morgana nonsense, because THAT’S all part of the Arthurian legend and is pretty well fixed in history.

So why do I even care? Because I wanna write a fic from the perspective of the Trollhunters in the Void giving commentary on the events of the show. Because I think it would be funny. ESPECIALLY from the perspective of Deya having already met Jim, but not necessarily recognizing him right away, so writing her ah-HA moment is gonna be a highlight, lol! This is NOT helped by canon firmly ignoring the question of what kind of time-altering path they were gonna take, but I’m ignoring that for the sake of light-hearted fic writing. 

[thornfield13713]

...well.

This has a lovely touched-by-destiny feel to it. It’s an interesting, evocative scene, and I do like the way they’re using bits of Arthurian legend here with the cup and the sword.

I am now going to divert for a brief history of the Holy Grail in fiction.

The first appearance of the Grail is in Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval: The Story of the Grail, and in this version it is not explicitly holy. It is also never achieved by Perceval, who sees it in the castle of the Fisher King, fails to ask the right questions, and is castigated for this failure leading to the ruin of the Fisher King’s kingdom. Chrétien’s original is unfinished, and so the story ends with the Grail still unachieved, although several continuations were written by later authors to amend this.

It is also worth mentioning that the Grail, at this point in its history, was probably not a cup, as such - it’s a bowl or a dish, or a salver of the sort used to serve food at banquets. It is also worth mentioning that in Perceval’s likeliest source text, the Welsh legend of Peredur (although this is a somewhat dubious claim, as our only surviving copies of Peredur date from after Perceval was written, and it is unclear to what extent the two texts as they survive influenced one another, as there are several elements of the Welsh text as it has survived which are incompatible with other Welsh originals of Arthurian stories, such as the use of the French Romance version of Sir Kay, rather than his superpowered Welsh counterpart), there is no Grail, but a salver on which the bloody severed head of Peredur’s cousin is presented to him. 

The Grail did not become explicitly holy until Robert de Boron’s Joseph d'Arimathe, written between 1191 and 1202, where the cup is named as having been the chalice used at the Last Supper, subsequently used by Joseph of Arimathea to collect Christ’s blood on the cross, and then brought to Britain, where Joseph founded a line of Grail-keepers, into which Perceval is eventually born.

The Grail is, in short, an invention of medieval romance, and has no real basis in theology or history. I do rather regret that we’re rather too late for me to start snarking about Dan Brown and and those historians who decided to piggyback off the success of The Da Vinci Code to create thinkpiece documentaries that completely ignore that the context of the Grail is, at the end of the day, purely literary rather than historical.

[yellowmagicalgirl]

Fic Writer Tag Game

tagged by @im-the-king-of-the-ocean​

...it feels like I just did something very similar to this very recently but I’ll do it again I guess. This time I’m gonna include Fanfiction.Net, though, just so I can give different answers. That being said, I’m only going to link to the AO3 version of the fic

Fandoms:

These days, it’s almost all Tales of Arcadia, but my AO3 also has some Miraculous Ladybug, SPOP, and RWBY as well as a crossover with The Hunger Games. In addition to the above, my FFN also has some PMMM, Tai Chi Chasers, Sailor Moon, iZombie, Harry Potter and Voltron Legendary Defender in there.

Number of Fics: 98 on FFN, but only 60 of them ever got transferred to AO3.

Fic I Spent the Most Time on: I know I said I was torn between two fics last time, but honestly? I spent hours looking up the effects of PTSD, solitary confinement, and various forms of torture for the Juliet Dies; Life Continues fics. There’s a reason why when I finally publish Juliet Survives in This I’m gonna contain two disclaimers: one for the Dead Dove Do Not Eat and another for the fact that I’m using magic and the fact that Claire’s not entirely human anymore just so I can find a way to make it so that Claire has a good reason for not being any worse off. The other fic I was writing I only did some research before going, “nah I’m bastardizing Arthurian legend”

Fic I Spent the Least Time on: *looks at old writing and cringes* Raked over Crimson Waves, probably...

Longest Fic: Every Ghost in Me is the longest fic I’ve ever written at a proud 10,188 words... and somehow it’s a oneshot.

Shortest Fic: For actual fics, it’s A Shop Infested on AO3 and Arme Harry on FFN. Though, A Shop Infested is also the shortest English actual fic on FFN for me as well (yes, I have one (1) fic written in German.) However, this doesn’t count my poetry. On AO3 it’s Isn't It Ironic? On FFN it’s In My Arms.

Most Hits: On AO3, it’s I Bet You Kiss Your Knuckles (Right Before They Touch My Cheek) with its 1741 hits. On FFN, it’s Dare, which has 15,174 hits. Though, for comparison, Dare was written in 2015; I Bet You Kiss Your Knuckles (Right Before They Touch My Cheek) only has 348 hits on FFN.

Most Kudos: I Bet You Kiss Your Knuckles (Right Before They Touch My Cheek)

Most Comments: On AO3 my collab with Tuna, Birds, Bees, and Blood Magic, has the most comments, but Juliet Dies in This has the most threads. On FFN, it’s still Dare.

Most Bookmarks: Birds, Bees, and Blood Magic holds this title on AO3. The closest similar thing we have on FFN is favorites, so that title goes to Picked the Wrong Girl.

Total Word Count: On AO3, my net word count is 82,299. On FFN, I had to break out excel, and my net word count would be approximately 136,615 words. Approximately because I can’t separate the fic from the author’s note.

Favorite Fic I Wrote: You can’t make me choose... but it’s probably one of those jlaire hurt/comfort fics I’ve written. Or for that matter, the LadyNoir hurt/comfort fics I used to write when it comes to FFN even though I decided not to move them off of AO3... wait a second. I have a type. Oh no I have a type when writing and shipping and that type is the person who’s associated with light and goodness comforts the person who’s associated with darkness. I mean I’ve written outside of this type many a time but let’s face it so many of my shippy hurt comfort fics more or less boil down to this description.... how did I not realize this before.

Fic you Want to Rewrite or Expand on: I will never actually finish it but every so often I still want to go and give With the Distance Amplified a proper ending. Other than that, I kind of want to go and expand upon I Bet You Kiss Your Knuckles (Right Before They Touch My Cheek) despite the fact that I don’t want to have to watch ML canon to do so properly... oh, and also? I really need to finish the 3Below interlude to Juliet Dies; Life Continues.

Share a bit of a WIP or Story Idea you’re Planning on: so earlier today I posted a Krexie ficlet... I need to do some more editing so that the fic makes me nearly cry as much as the ficlet did and write all the other scenes because the fic is much more than just the kiss but here is the kiss from Krel’s POV:

There is a very full bowl of cat food, and multiple bowls of water. Krel follows Archie, and he finds Douxie, sitting on the floor, curled in a blanket, back to the door. Archie meows and runs away. Douxie doesn’t look up, and so Krel walks around him. Douxie’s head is bowed, and he is typing frantically at his phone, and then erasing what he wrote. There are tear tracks on his face, though they are hard to see, when most of the tears probably crawled into the cracks. Krel kneels in front of him, trying to see what Douxie is typing. The movement catches Douxie’s attention, and he startles. The blanket falls away from Douxie as he scrambles to his feet.

Normally, his reflexes are better. Not so clumsy. Not almost falling over his own long, cracked limbs. Krel reaches out to help Douxie stabilize himself, but Douxie uses a wall instead.

Douxie rips his earbuds from his ears, and for a second Krel can hear a woman singing from the earbuds before Douxie silences the music he was listening to. Douxie takes a breath. It is wet and shaking.

“Krel, why are you here?” Douxie wraps his arms around himself, and Krel isn’t sure if Douxie is cold from wearing a sleeveless shirt or just uncomfortable.

“I saw your text; I worried.”

“I’m sorry.”

Krel takes a large step towards Douxie; Douxie takes a small step back.

“Douxie, you, we’re gonna break the curse, you’re going to –“

“I’m going to die today,” Douxie whispers, looking at his own feet. Krel looks past the soft shorts Douxie is wearing to Douxie’s ankles. They have been taken over by cracks, and they’re advancing.

They are out of time. Douxie is out of time. Krel feels his lower lip start to tremble, and he tries to make it stop.

“You, you should probably go,” Douxie says like he doesn’t mean it. “I don’t… I’m not going to make you watch me die.”

“I’m not going to make you…” Krel can’t bring himself to say the word “die”, like saying it aloud will make it true. And that’s silly, that’s superstition, that’s not scientific, but every scientific way Krel has tried to save Douxie hasn’t worked. “I’m not leaving you alone; I don’t think you want to be alone right now.”

“Then can you-“ Douxie breaks off into a coughing fit. “Can you hold me? If that’s okay?”

Embrace your mistakes, like Mother would have said if she were not dead.

Krel takes another step towards Douxie, and Douxie does not step away, rather, he leans into Krel, unwrapping his arms from his own torso. They take one, two, three steps backward, to where the blanket lays abandoned on the floor. They sink to the ground, arms around each other. Krel cannot save Douxie, but he can make sure that Douxie is comfortable. Douxie clings to Krel with a surprising amount of strength. Krel ignores the urge to wrap his fingers around Douxie’s neck, just so he can keep track of Douxie’s pulse. Krel cards his fingers through Douxie’s hair instead. His other arm wraps around Douxie’s torso and his hand rests on Douxie’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Krel says, hating how his voice sounds when he’s about to cry.

“It’s not your fault, all of you did your best,” Douxie says, voice choked and so very scared. Krel feels his shirt starting to grow damp. “I don’t want to die; I wish we had more time.”

“Me too,” Krel says. A tear slips down his cheek, and he tightens his grip around Douxie’s torso, like he can keep Douxie from slipping away.

Douxie jerks, and Krel fears Douxie might be convulsing, but he’s just pushing himself up so he can look Krel in the eye. “Krel, I…” Douxie coughs, turning away, and when he turns back his glowing eyes are so much dimmer. “I love you.”

Douxie goes slack in Krel’s arms, closing his eyes. Krel presses his lips against Douxie’s and hopes.

A couple tears escape Krel’s eyes as he tries not to think of how he still doesn’t know for sure if he loves Douxie the way the curse wants him too, if he’s too late and he should have kissed or at least told Douxie sooner instead of waiting.

Krel closes his eyes. Douxie’s lips are chapped or cracked or maybe both, but they are still. Passive. Krel exhales through his nose; Douxie’s lips feel dead.

Krel is about to pull away, but then Douxie starts kissing him back. And it isn’t much, just a firm press that wasn’t there before, but it is enough to convince Krel that maybe it isn’t too late.

Tagging (for the record your participation is optional): @clairekatswritingcorner, @fieryartemispublications, @mambo-no-5, @dork-empress, @brothebro, and @akozuheiwa

[shiobookmark]

Binge watching Merlin when you’re familiar with the stories is such a weird experience. I need to vent. 

I have so many problems with the show. They mostly boil down to the fact that there’s an awful lot of character development that drags its feet for several seasons before picking up all at once, meaning characters can seem to never learn their lesson only to make huge strides in the course of an episode seemingly at random. And unfortunately, Arthur is the biggest victim of this. And the show suffers for it. I was doubtful he’d make a good Arthur at first, but mum, who’d seen the series before, assured me it was all in service of his character development. And there is a great arc struggling under there somewhere, but it’s mired down in seasons and seasons of episodic ‘monster of the week’ stuff where Arthur waffles back and forth in his ideals. I know what they’re trying to do but the effect seems more like Arthur is a weak-minded man who follows only what he believes other people think is right. He learns his lesson about this again and again and it never seems to take. The unicorn, the execution at Agravaine’s order, the ghostly child, and just recently the Disir. It’s episode 5 of the final season. There’s only eight episodes left. Yet here he is, prancing into the sacred grove with no regard for the laws and customs, every bit the arrogant jock, much like he did in season one.  It ignores his character development. Arthur knows better by now. Yet for plot reasons all that has to be thrown out the window. He’ll turn on a dime and be forthright and humble a few minutes from now- oh yes, there he goes. How is he still a creature of hindsight? Where was this wise kingly fellow an hour before? Another problem is Merlin. Early on the show really suffered from Disney morality, how Merlin couldn’t be responsible for anyone’s death. Now it suffers from protagonist-centred morality. In the later seasons Arthur just follows along with whatever Merlin thinks is best, even if he resists at first. It’s supposed to show that he’s learned to listen to others, but because he can never make a right decision first time, he ends up seeming more like Merlin’s puppet.

The most egregious example of this is this episode, where Arthur faces a dilemma and outright asks Merlin what he should do... and does it. Which then means Mordred survives and Arthur is doomed. It wasn’t really Arthur’s choice, was it? Not a product of his own beliefs and actions, it could have easily swung the other way. The choice was Merlin’s. How are we supposed to root for Arthur that way? The show’s called Merlin so I understand that it has to follow his perspective, but there are far better ways to do that. Look at the trilogy by Mary Stewart. Her Merlyn doesn’t spend as much time at Arthur’s side, but you could easily write similar stories where he does. Merlyn has his own enemies, his own goals, he loves Arthur and helps him but they are his own adventures. They’ve started calling Arthur The Once and Future King out of nowhere now and it’s weird. Why would people call him that. They have no idea he’s going to die and be destined to return. What the fuck. And it’s not that I dislike the show I actually really like it? It’s got some ‘it’s so bad it’s good’ qualities for the first two seasons but after Richard Wilson (Gaius) finally learned to act with more emotion than a wooden spoon it really picked up. There was good payoff in some bits. Morgana was a bit forced and I could have used a few less false starts with her hatred of Uther (how many times can she almost betray him?) and a bit more exploration into why she hates Arthur other than ‘he’s Uther’s son.’ She loved Arthur until her villain arc what the actual fuck And her actor is terrible but nevermind they all are I just particularly despise the smoozy style she adopts

Uther in general is great I just needed a lot less of him Arthur should have become king at the end of season 1, maybe the middle of season 2. Not season 4. Uther ends up being an annoying thorn in Arthur’s side. It’s a game of ‘what stupid shit is Uther gonna pull this episode and have they beefed up security on the dungeons yet?’ The episode where he comes back as a ghost and Arthur finally tells him where to shove it was brilliant and I loved every second of it. I was afraid it was going to be yet another ‘Arthur doubts himself and reverts to the path of a tyrant before he sees the error of his ways’ episode but it wasn’t, which was nice. They dallied around so much I only really started enjoying the show once Arthur became king. Because there were stakes. We got to see what he was made of. But the biggest problem I have with the show, is the treatment of magic. The old religion had a bit of an image problem within the show itself because other than Gaius and Merlin, no one seems to use it ‘correctly.’ And boy does that open up a can of worms.  But I was willing to roll with it. There’s been a lot more specifically Celtic stuff in later seasons which I appreciate as it certainly works better than the weird grab bag of monsters we had previously. (But what happened to Tristan after Isolde died? He just vanished once he served his narrative purpose.) It’s just as of this latest episode, Arthur is being blackmailed into bowing down before the triple goddess or else he and his kingdom will fall to ruin. And that’s... not okay. That’s the same kind of shit Uther did. It’s Might makes Right.  It’s religious oppression. ‘If you don’t do what we want then you’ll suffer.’ Arthur is supposed to be about Might for Right*. Objectively he shouldn’t stand for this shit. But because it’s the Old Religion ooooooh how mystical and shit, he has to. Because protagonist-centred morality. Why didn’t this happen to Uther? Has Arthur been continuing the executions? Has he been encouraging the hunting down of Sorcerers? We know he goes after the dangerous ones, but is his ‘outlawing’ of magic a ‘supporting them under the table’ sort of deal or is he as ruthless as Uther? We don’t know. And now that the show has committed to specifically the Triple Goddess branch of paganism rather than just vague mostly made up stuff with a Celtic ‘flavour’ it has some really nasty real world connotations. We’ve never seen benevolent magic users outside of Merlin and Gaius, or if we did they died. The Druids are sometimes around but they’re more like plot devices for when the show needs some wise and pacifistic victims. It’s really uncomfortable. They’ve just doomed Arthur by having Mordred live, because he refused to embrace magic. Or as I’d put it: Because he refused to bow to tyranny. Arthur promised to make life better for magic users and he broke that promise. Taking him to task for that is more than okay. Have the Druids do it. Have them demand recompense and then let Arthur do what he does best: Forge alliances.  We’ve seen him do this. We’ve seen him face up to the consequences of his hasty and violent actions before, we’ve seen him behave with grace and humility and turn enemies into friends. It’s what makes him a good Arthur. Instead we’ve got this crap that’s supposed to be about not defying the natural laws of the world, but because it’s specifically a religion it’s just really gross. And finally, Mordred. What even is his deal. He’s given a pisspoor reason to hate Merlin way back in season 2 or something when Merlin trips him up with a tree root to hopefully get him killed by the pursuing knights because he’s destined to kill Arthur And somehow that’s supposed to be a grudge he holds into adulthood. But grown up Mordred seems a nice fellow, he’s put all that behind him. And he’s supposed to be Arthur’s doom. This is going to be rushed as all hell isn’t it? The problem is Mordred was never given a legitimate grievance to replace the one he lost when he stopped being related to Arthur. Going the incestuous bastard baby route isn’t necessary since it’s actually a modern addition, but having Mordred be Arthur’s cousin might have worked just as well. The problem is Morgana has taken all that over. What I would do is have Mordred be Merlin’s character foil. A sweet kid who grew up with the Druids and becomes a Knight because he, like Merlin, believes he’s destined to do great things. But he makes the opposite choices to Merlin about magic. He’s open about his beliefs, hoping to find understanding and instead Arthur rejects him. He looks for support from Merlin but finds none. He swears to hurt Merlin however he can as a traitor to their kind. And the best way to do that is to kill Arthur.

Bonus rant: Lancelot is boring. I like his actor, he does the noble and handsome bit right but his character has no texture or grit to him. Give me TH White’s ugly angst muffin any day. The Lancelot/Guinevere romance subplot was lame as hell and it only really delivered when Guinevere was enchanted into having an affair with his ghost. I prefer to think there was no enchantment but gotta keep things squeaky clean. Guinevere can’t just love two people simultaneously I guess, gods dammit.

It’s Arthurian legend with all the edges sanded down smooth and a lot of pacing problems.