#like the fact that trolls and dragons were allies at some point was mentioned offhand in an episode

[aithuzah]

i'm working on this merlin canon rewrite thing and it's taking me such a long time because i still don't know how i'm going to work around all this worldbuilding content (how come kilgharrah is the only dragon left alive? how abundant are certain creatures? what are their politics? why are there so many goddamn powerful sorcerers even tho merlin is meant to be the top dog? etc) and wrap it up in a way that makes. sense.

it’s taking me forever to gestate this merlin rewrite of mine because i’m the type of person who wants to take as many aspects of the original source as possible for translation into another context but this damn show is full of inconsistencies and i’m always debating whether or not to simply do away with certain things in favor of fic universe-specific circumstances. it’s more organic but less recognizable.

OOF, I FEEL YA. Merlin canon feels like a lot of really interesting ideas that are never fully fleshed out or blended into a cohesive, understandable whole. I think the vagueness of it all actually helps the show in some ways? Like, since there’s so much we don’t know about that the characters just barely hint at occasionally, it makes the world feel really lived-in and expansive. It feels like there’s tons of history and culture that exists out in the world, just not where we can see it directly. 

But as a writer trying to work with what they gave us as much as possible while still doing new and interesting things that make sense with canon, it’s…..ugh. What are the rules??? What are the limitations??? How do magic users and magic interact with the world, with each other, with politics, with religion, with nature and all the creatures we’ve seen? How are we supposed to explore those relationships more in canon-realistic ways if we never get so much as a straight answer from Gaius about the way the world used to be before the Purge, let alone any flashbacks?

I don’t know if you’re looking for advice or just wanted to vent, but if you wanted to know what I think…Well the way I’d go about it is pretty intensive. I spent a while going through the transcripts episode by episode collecting information about certain subjects that I was interested in a while ago, and I never really finished that, but it was a great way to pick up on worldbuilding details that stood out to me in the context of the series (as opposed seeing info on the Merlin wiki, or straight up rewatching every episode). I copied & pasted relevant conversations into word documents dedicated to different topics (ex. “prophecies” or “pre-Purge Camelot”). I’d pick out as much explicit info from each snippet as I could, and then I tried to read between the lines. 

Like, any time Gaius speaks it’s kind of hard to parse, because on the one hand, he was ALIVE and a MAGIC USER before the Purge happened and therefore one of our best (and only) sources of that kind of information. But on the other hand, he rarely speaks without very carefully filtering himself in some way, since he’s constantly trying to justify Uther to Merlin, or protect Merlin and himself from Uther.

So are there any more inferences or conclusions we can draw about the world based on the context and subtext of what’s actually said? Do the logical inconsistencies make more sense when we consider where the information came from in the first place? Does information we took for granted suddenly seem less trustworthy based on who’s talking, or who they’re talking to? That kind of thing. 

If you have a solid idea of what kind of story you want your rewrite to be, I’d recommend honing in on what aspects of the series are most important to you to explore. Find as much canon info about those things as you can, and how they interact and work with each other. Use those aspects as your foundation to build off of. Make sure they make as much sense as possible and go from there to decide what should be cut, what needs to be explained, what can just kinda be glossed over, and what you need to make up completely. 

tldr; I totally get all the frustration that comes with the desire to be true to canon when canon is like that, but sometimes you just gotta make shit up and ditch what doesn’t work for you. Don’t let canon hold you back from telling the story you want to tell, the way you want to tell it.

I hope I’m making sense lol. And that what I’m saying is remotely helpful in some way. In any case, good luck!!! If you post this rewrite anywhere please feel free to send me a link or something, I’d love to check it out!