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adickaboutspoons · 8 months

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bad writing where? I don't think you know what bad writing is and I have doubts you understand the core of the characters.

Hi Nonnie! Girl, how ARE you? Because you seem to be taking it awfully personally that I am not enjoying this season as much as you are. To be perfectly clear, if you ARE, I'm DELIRIOUSLY happy for you! I wish I was too! I was SO looking forward to it! And even though I didn't care for some stuff here and there for the first half of the season, there was a LOT that I LOVED, and I was still holding out hope for the rest of the season! After the last 3 episodes, I am decidedly less optimistic. I'm glad to tell you exactly why, and At Great Length, because that's kind of just What I Do, but here's the thing... It's ok if you like a thing that other people don't. It doesn't reflect poorly on you as a person. You don't have to defend a thing that you like as though it was an extention of yourself. Also? You and I don't have to agree. There's room for interpretation. I have mine, but that doesn't make it Objective Truth. My positions are only as good as I can offer coherent, well-supported arguements to back them up. I like doing that. I think it's fun. You may still not be convinced. That's ok. I don't need you to agree with me. And, frankly, you don't even need to worry about other people agreeing with me. I am small potatoes. I have maybe two posts ever that have made it into the low thousands in terms of notes - not reblogs, but notes cumulative. Most of my original stuff don't even break triple digits. Believe me NO ONE is rushing to espouse the doctrine of spoondick llc. And that's fine. So I'm gonna go ahead and give you the benefit of the doubt that you're asking genuine questions and not just lashing out. But I'm also gonna put my answers below a cut. Because, frankly, you may not entirely agree with me, but you also may not be able to unsee some of the things I point out once I do, and I don't want to take your enjoyment of the show away from you.

So second claim first: that I don't understand the core of the characters. I mean... I have written quite a lot and at length about these characters and their motivations. I mean, each of those is a link to a different meta I've written, and it's not even close to all of them. Which reminds me - I need to update my pinned page. So while you may not agree with my interpretations, at the v. least, you can't argue that I haven't put SOME thought into the matter. With regard to bad writing, the qualifiers may vary from person to person, but to me, it mainly comes down to three interconnected things: Inconsistency, telling rather than showing, and contrivance. I feel that there have been a LOT of inconsistencies with the characters, both between seasons and just within season 2 itself. I'm an unapologetic Stede girlie and he IS the main character, so most of my big qualms are with how his character is being butchered handled.

How the are we supposed to square Stede "had multiple breakdowns over Nigel's accidental death and was so traumatized over everything with Chauncy that he walked back to Bridgetown in his bare feet" Bonnet with the man from last night who murdered Ned in cold blood, and then went on to casually set a man on fire and QUIP about it? It's one thing to butch up with a "how to pirate" montage, it's quite another to become a psychopath, completely unbothered by taking a human life.

And about butching up. While I would, and have, argued that a lot of Stede's insecurities in the first season stemmed from insufficient performance of masculinity, I would NOT say that it was because he wanted to BE more typically masc himself - but rather from the way he has been TREATED for being soft, and internalizing the distain and derision of his bullies. Rather, the whole central thesis to his approach to piracy is it's "traditionally a culture of abuse... And my thought is: why? And also, what if it weren’t like that?" He's flattered when Yi Sao clocks his energy as soft. So his mid-season pivot to needing to embrace these "traditional pirate" behaviors? Yeah - I'd say that's a pretty glaring inconsistency.

Speaking of Yi Sao, lets talk about his fight with her. Because Stede in the first season is consistently shown to be a master of improvisation and using his environment and people's underestimation of him to his advantage to overcome stronger and more skilled opponents. He sends Officer Show Daddy rowing back to the British ship with some impromptu mannequins to give the Revenge time to escape after Nigel's death. He uses distraction and supersition to get the upper hand on Izz during their first encounter. He bests Izzy again in the duel using gunpowder to the eyes when he's pinned, and then using what Ed taught him about taking a stab angling to have it happen against a mast he knew would cause Izzy's sword to break. This initially carries over to the second season with Stede using his lowly position in Towels to acclimate people to deeply inhaling the scent he adds to the towels, and later uses that to his advantage to knock out the guards and escape. So it might have been one thing if Stede was in his cups and mourning Ed's departure that led him to getting overly possessive of his remaining crew and pick a fight with Zheng as a parallel of the Art Exhibition scene from season 1, and getting his ass handed to him as a parallel to Mary's attempted murder/an expression of what a deep impact Ed leaving has made on him that his normal strategizing fails him, but instead, he's getting emotional support (from IZZY of all people) and doesn't even seem tipsy, so he's got no reason to fail so profoundly, and it's played as though Yi Sao is RIGHT about him being "a mediocre man who thinks he's exceptional" when he legit JUST bested her with fucking tea towels 4 episodes ago.

Another big inconsistency for me is Stede's attitude toward Ed, over the first half of the season especially. At the end of season 1, we have Stede irrevocably torching his life as a gentleman of leisure to the ground because Mary has helped him to realize that 1) no body's life in improve by him doggedly trying to insert himself into a life he never wanted or chose for himself, and 2) he and Ed are in love with one another, and he should got find Ed about that. Then we get Stede dragging his heels in the Republic of Pirates while he "earns enough money," but his convo with Blackbeard's wanted poster reveals that he's afraid Ed's life is better off without him. Which? Real Chauncy-coded take there (and also, really? When Stede KNOWS that Ed is weary of the pirate life, but the wanted poster and rumor mill suggest he's thrown himself into it full tilt?). I could understand being worried that Ed doesn't love him anymore because Stede broke his heart, but NOT that "his life is better." But still, Stede IS determined to get back to Ed - he's just nervous about what he'll find when he does. He won't stop talking about it to anyone and everyone. He even yeets himself overboard shouting for Ed when he hears that the Red Flag has come across the Revenge. And then he thinks that he's come too late - that Ed is dead. And he manages to forestall his grief over that long enough to effect an escape, but then goes to do his mourning in private. But wonder of wonders! Ed is still alive! Stede didn't lose him after all! Imagine the rapture within his heart! And then he lets Ed leave without so much as offering to come with, when Ed has barely recovered from 1) a coma, & 2) a suicide attempt. It just doesn't make any sense in any possible world.

I also have a big problem with Mr. "Talk it through as a crew" running away from Lucius when he finally started opening up about the traumtic things he's lived through since he got shoved overboard. I've seen some posts suggesting Stede isn't doesn't prioritize or seem to care much about his crew, but that's just demonstrably not true? His first concern on awakening from being gut-stabbed was about his crew. He apologized when he lost his temper about the fuckery (Never heard an apology, Roach? Really?) and incorperated all of their ideas into the final product. Before he bought the treasure map, he inquired and found out there were no oranges for sale in St. Augustine due to a blight. Stede let Olu crash on his couch instead of having him bunk down with the rest of the crew because they were the charter members of the "my crush just left me for their old life" club and misery loves company. Even in the new season, he set aside his grief over Ed until he made sure his crew - INCLUDING the ones he thought were the ones who MURDERED THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE - were safe. So Stede running away from Lucius in his moment of unburdening himself? And it being played for COMEDY? Is not only antithetical to the established character, but to the central thesis of change being effected by the application of loving support that (I THOUGHT) was central to the whole show.

With Ed, it's mostly better, but even he doesn't escape unscathed. I'm absolutely baffled by the suggestion in episode 5 that Ed doesn't know how to be quiet and sit with his feelings when we see him: 1) stimming quietly with his silk after the "donkey" comment until Stede invited him to open up 2) stimming quietly with his silk after the French Boat Party 3) staring broodingly out to sea after the doggy heaven convo 4) isolating himself in the tub after his kraken meltdown 5) quietly sitting and folding socks 6) pillow fort isolation pod 7) standing quiet and alone after the Izzy confrontation, and apparently not seeing anyone until that night 8) stimming with silk before giving Lucius impromptu late night swimming lessons 9) playing with his dollies 10) cry alone in his room multiple times And maybe it's just that Fang doesn't see those times, because, for the most part, Ed self-isolates when he's feeling particularly emotionally vulnerable. But the show frames it as though Fang is correct? Especially in the after-credits scene where we're listening to Ed's non-stop internal monologue as he fails to sit quietly?

There's more with other characters, but, like I said, the categories are overlapping and inform one another, so I'd like to pivot to Tell-Don't-Show. Because whooo boy is there a lot of it going on. The most glaring one to me is Izzy's whole arc. I've seen a lot of people talking about extending unearned grace and how it's for the healing of the crew, not for Izzy, and that the crew are showing that they've embraced the loving support model they experienced under Stede's tenure as captain. But that doesn't change the fact that Izzy was SUCH a dick that even human-ray-of-sunshine-OLU was rooting for Stede to stab him in the duel, and by the end of last season Izzy sold them out to the English and did such a shit job at captaining that the crew (of which Fang and Frenchie were a part) unanimously voted to throw him overboard bound hand-and-foot. SOMETHING must have happened in the interim to move the needle from "gleefully ready to murder him" to "giving him hugs and unconditional positive regard therapy". But whatever it was happened entirely off-camera. We're just being asked to go along with it. And, to me, that's just bad, lazy writing.

The rest of his arc isn't much better, and highlights more of those inconsistencies. Last season, Izzy was openly dismissive and derisive about sharing feelings - it was one of his driving motivations at taking down Ed and inducing the Krakening. And now he seems to have taken the season-1-Lucius role of being the ship's emotional intelligence? Offering coping advice to Lucius. Suggesting to Ed that he should talk his feelings through. Giving support to Stede after Ed left him (again). Where would he even have accrued that skillset? I'm not saying that it's impossible for him to have changed with the loving support of his crew and in the wake of an identity crisis when he has to figure out who he is if not Blackbeard's right-hand man. What I'm saying is that very little of the actual changes happened on camera. And THAT'S what I have a problem with.

Similarly, I have a problem with the whole Yi Sao-Olu-Jim-Archie relationship tangle. Olu didn't even seem to realize Yi Sao was flirting with him until she said as much. I think he was flattered by the attention, and not averse to the idea, but that's not the same thing as being into her in return. And then, when it's relevant to the plot, we're meant to just trust that he's been secretly pining this whole time? Compare to when Jim left - before they'd even kissed. Olu spent his time mooning over the railing, telling everyone how much he missed JIm, getting drunk, and giving away his room. Since he left Yi Sao, there's been not a single word about missing her, not a moment where he even looks slightly broody. We HAVE seen him bonding with Jim and Archie. Hunkering down against the curse on the same bed as Jim and Archie. Dancing with Jim and Archie. Do you see how this LOOKS like the show is possibly moving in a throuple direction? And then we suddenly get Olu saying out of nowhere that he misses Yi Sao, Jim playing matchmaker for them, and Olu announcing that he's going to leave the revenge to be with Yi Sao. Bye, I guess. And this level of Telling-Not-Showing and inconsistency smacks of Contrivance. And Contrivance really feels like the engine that is driving most of the season to me. It looks an awful lot like the writers had an end-goal in mind, and worked backwards to get there, and along the way did all the hand-waving they had to in order to get where they wanted. Gotta have Stede & Zheng team up against Ricky for an Epic Beach Battle that pits Pirates against The Crown, but why would she want him - especially if she thinks he's "a mediocre man who thinks he's exceptional"?

Oh, what if she loses all her ships because Ricky blew them all up with the world's most contrived bombs?

But why wasn't she on the ship?

Well she was beating Stede's ass at the time.

Why was she beating his ass?

Because he picked a fight with her because he was drunk and she was poaching his crew?

Why are some of Stede's crew willing to leave him even though they were literally ride-or-die even when he was trying to find the guy that marooned them?

Oh, Olu's been in love with Yi Sao this whole time, but, like, never fucking mentioned it, just trust us.

Why was he drunk - Stede thinks drinking 'til you puke isn't fun, remember?

Oh, he is getting plied with drinks because all the pirates love him now.

Why do all the pirates love Stede now?

Because he killed some Big Name Pirate.

Stede? "I'm having a bit of a hard time adjusting to being a mur... mur... murderer?" Stede? Are you sure?

Yeah. He's totally butch now.

....How?

He trained on how to be a pirate with Izzy.

Izzy. The guy that conspired with the British specifically to murder Stede Bonnet? Why?

Ed said he needed to work on his "mean voice" and be more dom assertive.

Why would Ed ever say that? He loves that Stede is out there doing things like no one else.

Because Stede doesn't feel like a captain.

Even though he's calling all-hands meetings and mediating crew grievences and rescuing his crew and no one is challenging his authority or even questioning whether his devotion to his boyfriend is possibly compromising his ability to do his job?

...Yes?

But why Izzy? Stede hates Izzy. Izzy hates Stede. Surely these are universal constants.

Izzy's nice now. He's been rehabilitated by the love of the crew.

...How?

Jingly keys.

#I'm gonna stop there because I've already devoted 3 hours to you nonnie #if you don't believe me by now that I'm not just having thoughtless knee-jerk reactions I don't see how I could possibly convince you #anyway lots of love and I hope you're able to keep enjoying the show #but if my grousing is gonna imperil your enjoyment the block button is v. convenient I've been told #ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd s2 spoilers

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wild-whispering-woods · 28 days

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Well, I'm back here, after almost seven years. This is going to be a rather intense post, but there is a lot of stuff that I have only very recently been facing, and I need to get it off my chest. Trigger warnings are in the tags, but I'll list them here as well, just to be sure: mental abuse, gaslighting, sexual abuse.

Let's start with a seemingly really random topic.

The series BBC Sherlock has always been a sensitive subject for me, as it was used by someone to mentally and sexually abuse me when I was quite young. In an attempt to mentally disentangle myself from the abuser, I became part of the Johnlock community here on Tumblr. I devoured the meta that was being written by the community, and it made the show make more sense to me. At the same time, it helped me mentally distance myself from my abuser, as this was a reading they completely dismissed. See, both my abuser and myself identified with Sherlock, only they took Sherlock's self-proclamation of being a "high-functioning sociopath" at face value, whereas I saw Sherlock as being terrified of being emotionally vulnerable and doing his best to suppress his feelings to avoid being seen and hurt.

I have shipped Johnlock since I was about 13 years old, and I became part of the TJLC community as it arose from that part of the fandom.

I have hated creating literary analyses for years now and avoided it as much as possible (difficult though that was in school), because it is so subjective, and it always confronts me with the fact that being mentally abused destroyed my trust in my intuition, thought processes, and ability to read people. It makes me feel like my life used to- the rug being pulled out from under you, a constant mental strain, having to be alert to everything at all times. I have been trying to read abusers' behaviour for most of my life. For every action of everyone around me ever, I analyse all possible motivations someone could have that would lead to the behaviour they display, but I could never know for certain what the right conclusion was. After all, you can never truly get into someone else's head- especially not someone who has made you doubt your own perceptions of the world in order to keep you under their control. What was real, what was a lie? I think this is why I have always loved reading meta; for once, someone else was laying the explanations out for me- and not only that, but they made it into a coherent storyline that made sense of everything. And I so wanted everything to just have a clear explanation. So when, in the fourth series of Sherlock, everyone and everything felt so completely wrong- motivations being off, details that must have taken a lot of effort but weren't right, entire scenes that didn't make any sense- I had to distance myself from it all, because no matter how much sense meta writers could make of it, the experience of watching the season brought back every feeling of wrongness and manipulation and self-doubt, and destroyed the trust in my intuition that I had been trying to rebuild. I must add that obviously I don't blame the writers for this, they weren't responsible for any of it- they were making something they wanted to make, someone else used it to completely fuck me up, and it was my choice to keep interacting with it- but unfortunately it had quite a devastating effect on me because this piece of media had been so entangled with the abuse and consequent attempt to break free of that.

I left the fandom because the mindfuck was quite literally bleeding through into my actual life. I have never been able to believe that the way I interpreted the series was not the, or at least a, way the writers meant for it to be interpreted- but I couldn’t keep being confronted with it, because 1. everyone else was saying I was out of my mind, and 2. the series was, for the foreseeable future at least, finished. To me, season 4 couldn’t be an end to the overarching storyline. Many things had gone unresolved, and unfortunately, I applied that feeling to my life; Sherlock and John never got to have an actual open conversation, not even implied. As the commentary said, for this season, who they are as people didn’t matter. They just… continued surviving, all their demons still beneath the roads they would walk. It felt like my story, like I was doomed to keep my feelings and experiences locked inside of me forever. It made me despair. I knew that for me, hoping for an eventual season 5 was a road to madness- Anderson’s mental breakdown style, without resolution. To protect myself, I had to withdraw entirely and find something more immediate to be a crutch for me to deal with my trauma. It was never healthy to put that much of my life into a TV series, although then again, someone else had decided that for me when I was still a child.

Eventually, I broke free of my abusers and I have continued with my life in the hope that I could heal, but instead of unraveling the trauma, I buried this tangled knot somewhere in my brain and I can't undo it myself. Yes, I have sought professional help multiple times over the years, but I have always been told that they could not help me because I have too many problems that are seemingly unconnected- so here I am, going back to the start of it all and pulling a John. Hopefully, writing a blog will help me as well. We'll see! It feels absolutely terrifying to share pretty much anything, anywhere, because I'm not used to doing that and also this: part of the mental abuse was someone else telling me what I was really like, or what I really felt or thought, or that the way I was, is wrong, and they would fix me, and I have never fully recovered from the idea that I don't know myself and my own feelings. Writing things down freaks me out a lot, because every minute that I think about my motivations, I seem to find a different reason for why I did something- and often, I still don't know what the real reason is. It's really scary to be confronted with the fact that I don't feel like a person, but just a jumbled collection of corrupted memories and disjointed actions. I think, though, that the only way in which I'll be able to find myself is to start a dialogue. With myself. Eventually, a pattern must emerge, right?

So, how did I get to this point? This week, I actually rewatched BBC Sherlock for the first time since season 4 aired- the whole thing, in one sitting- and it made me feel unexpectedly, strangely good. I realised that, even with the emotional distance now, what I saw in the series is still there, and I was right for not believing I was crazy for thinking what I did. It was pretty affirming to be confronted with the idea that my interpretation of things wasn't completely off the rails. I also must say that I was grateful to season 4 for the imagery of Sherlock being on drugs and in a lot of (emotional) pain, because it mirrored how I have been feeling for a long time. Of course, I don't want anyone to suffer, but it's nice sometimes to see yourself on screen.

And finally, I am grateful for these lines: "What is the worst thing you can do to your friends? Tell them your darkest secret. Because... if you tell them, and they decide they'd rather not know, you can't take it back. You can't unsay it. Once you've opened your heart, you can't close it again." I have never shared specifics with anyone, because I can't live with the idea that they won’t believe me. Or that I will look at a loved one and see what I told them behind their eyes. Even if they wouldn't be thinking about it. I would. I would know that they know. And I want it not to be true. But when I've told them, it will be real. And they will remind me of it.

#tw: sa #tw: abuse #cw: sa #cw: abuse #tw: gaslighting #emotional abuse #mental abuse #long post #tjlc #complex ptsd #ptsd #tw: ptsd

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daz4i · 11 months

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Hi hi my love!! ^^ So you asked for asks right? :3 I realize a lot of the times when I send you these I tend to ask you to rank stuff lol so I guess I'll lean into it? How about top 5 (or 10 if you have enough) anime series or top 5 (or 10) animated movies? :3 It's pretty general but I figure it should give you a lot of room to go over some of your favorites ^^ Sending love and good wishes!!! ❤️

ehehe thank you my love 🥺👉👈🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤

i wanted to do both but then i did the top 5 anime and i got very carried away with my explanations so i kept it as just that. anyway:

1. haikyuu!! probably my favorite show ever tbh. i think hq has a perfect story, like it uses its genre to do everything right, and its impact on the outside world is amazing as well. as for the series itself, it's just beautiful (ignoring that one episode in season 4) and has a very unique style, stellar voice acting, awesome soundtrack, delicious symbolism, and it really gets you hyped for volleyball :P it's very easy to get attached even to the most minor character bc the story is written in a way that lets almost everyone in this HUGE cast (well over a 100 or even 150 named characters, i'm pretty sure) shine, and you're guaranteed to find someone you like. the only downside is you'll probably end up rooting for every team so eventually a team you like will lose a game (likely to another team you like) and that hurts every time fr. and still!!!!! it manages to be so feel-good and optimistic and really gets you pumped and inspired!!!! i think anyone who is even just open to try sports anime should check it out, it's def one of the most accessible I've seen in that genre (in a sense that it doesn't expect you to already be familiar with the sport to understand the story)

2. honestly?? osomatsu-san. probably bc it's very dear to me like emotionally, season 2 was still releasing when i was stuck in the hospital for a few months, and it was like a light i held onto every week (i was also following a few mangas back then but those were harder to follow. due to oso-san's skit nature it was always a good time) and i mean, ichi was my first f/o before i even knew that term existed hehe. it's one of these shows i wouldn't actually recommend to anyone unless i know they're ok with gross or edgy humor but i do think it's really good, i love how meta it is, and i think it uses its premise to deliver maximum entertainment!

(oh my god that was so much gushing abt a silly skit show i am so sorry <- guy who wrote most of the hq gushing after typing this part up. he was not aware)

3. ok so this one's really niche, idk if any of you have even heard of it heh. it's called bungou stray dogs-

ajdkflhlh while i have my gripes with how they adapt the manga, i do still think it's a very good anime as is. it was good enough to get me hooked on the story and characters and want to learn more and follow the story further, yknow? it's beautiful and i love its use of colors for symbolism, it has really great voice acting, and the energy is kept up throughout it enough to remain engaging. it's honestly a show I'd recommend everyone to at least try 🤔!

4. persona 4!!!! from one mediocre adaptation to a GREAT adaptation. i think p4's anime is really really well made - it manages to translate a game this long into a coherent and interesting story, gives its characters time to shine, and maintains a perfect balance between fun and emotions. also it has probably the best dub I've ever heard. naoto's anime voice dni. also i think episode 26 is a true masterpiece i think everyone should watch it

5. ngl. it's a three way tie for me. between shows i only watched once and don't have a lot of attachment to beyond that, but i think they're really good for very different reasons. gekkan shoujo nozaki-kun / great pretender / blue period. i won't go into details on why i love them all bc this post is already long enough. but if you're reading this you should check them out 🫡

also if this post convinces you to check out any show mentioned here you legally have to tell me ok? esp if you end up liking it 🧐🔥🔥

#long post #bc i can't shut up. sorry #thank you for the ask my dearest 🖤🖤🖤

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milfmacbeth · 2 years

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From Ur post about wasted potential in media... What r some of your fav examples of this ^__^

hi anon!

so when i made this post i was thinking about supernatural. other stories that are still rotting my brain even though they ended years ago and i really should be over it by now include (but aren’t limited to) the magnus archives, game of thrones, naruto, and pirates of the caribbean. all of these are stories i love(d) but they either ended badly or have some massive but easily fixable flaws which is why they drive me insane.

the short(ish) version: (disclaimer that this is only my opinion which is of course objectively correct and should be taken as gospel)

supernatural went on for too long, ended badly, and only ever scratched the surface of everything it could’ve been

the magnus archives seasons 1-4 are damn near perfect and season 5 is… there.

game of thrones season 8. (do i even need to say anything about this one!?)

naruto suffers because of kishimoto’s misogyny and because the wrong characters die/survive

pirates of the caribbean should’ve been a trilogy and we all know elizabeth should’ve ended up a pirate

the unreasonably long and extremely spoilery version under the cut (you have been warned)

supernatural: by tumblr standards i’m downright normal about spn but i did watch every episode at least once and i was obsessed with it as a teen so i’m not really one to talk. i’m following someone who’s just now getting into it and who has some very good takes (specifically about dean and john), and i’m being dragged back into the fandom kicking and screaming…

ANYWAY

supernatural starts out as a monster of the week thing but then the plot thickens and you’ve got angels and demons and lucifer and the end of the fucking world and even though the later seasons have their moments, i’m a “supernatural should’ve ended with season 5” truther.

and don’t even get me started on the winchesters. it’s like… you have a deliciously fucked up family dynamic, including codependency, incest-subtext, and two brothers who would end the world for each other. god as an absentee father-figure who will not save you. free will. characters that have witnessed history. an angel who almost stepped on the first fish crawling out of the sea, who dragged a man out of hell and fell for him in every sense of the word. the humanity of the monstrous. the inhumanity of the divine. magic. americana. mythology. empty roads and neon signs and dilapidated motels. Death who tells dean that he will reap god when the time comes. i know i’m not being particularly coherent but no one can tell me that what we actually got was the best they could do when they had ALL THIS to work with. and the fandom gets it. the fic and meta writers get it. i’ve seen so many transcendent takes by supernatural girlies whose third eye is wide fucking open. i know it’s possible. supernatural’s problem is that it was written by straight us-american men and aired on the cw. in conclusion, make it darker and grittier and let dean say fuck.

that being said, even though it was garbage storytelling, i will never forget the wonderful night of mass hysteria that was the 5th of november, and i almost choked laughing when i saw dean get nailed by a vampire clown and sam in the shittiest wig imaginable. probably not the intended audience reaction though. (you’re better off just ignoring that 15.20 happened at all)

the magnus archives (season 5): oh boy where do i even begin? i rarely talk about this anymore because it just makes me so angry and i’m not having any fun. i like to pretend that season 5 doesn’t exist which works excellently because while the first 4 seasons are a cohesive narrative whole, season 5 feels like it’s tacked on at the end. (“do i like this story more if i just ignore the ending happened” is a very good question to ask yourself regarding the quality of a finale).

the magnus archives season 5 has several problems, some of which don’t even concern the narrative but are instead fuckery related to the story. i’ll get those out of the way first.

first of all, the fandom is the most vile cesspit of people with no media comprehension i’ve ever had the misfortune to be in. among such hits as “why is Bad Person treated with sympathy” and “why is the horror podcast about horror and not about gay shipping”, what bothers me most are the headcanons treated as law.

i’ve personally witnessed takes like “daisy is bad representation for butch lesbians” (daisy is not canonically a lesbian or butch. the fandom made that up), and “jon is brown therefore xyz portrayal is racist” (again, jon’s skin color is never mentioned. him being brown is just the most popular HEADcanon). why am i telling you this in this already way too long post? this might be conjecture but i really believe that if the fandom wasn’t so godawful, the story could’ve been better. the creators caved to fandom pressure. this is one of the best examples of why there needs to be a boundary between audience and creator and why the fandom should have absolutely NO say whatsoever when it comes to what happens in the story.

the other thing that’s a bit meta and not in the story per se are the promises the creators made. jonny sims said two things:

1. the story will end in tragedy: it didn’t. the ending was ambiguous and i wanted it to leave me devastated the way the s4 finale did. instead it left me indifferent and vaguely confused.

2. there will be no romance and if there is, it’s not going to be the focus of the story: so that was a fucking lie. season 5 is nothing but jonmartin shoved into your face for 40 episodes. a lot of aros, aces and people who were there for the horror and not for the shipping were understandably disappointed

now, as for the actual story ,i’m a “jon should’ve had a corruption arc” truther. (here's a thing i did). i think it would fit with his character development since he’s been getting more monstrous with every season. elias has been manipulating jon into becoming an avatar of the Beholding and ending the world, and jon hates him for it. jon kills elias and takes his place and if they just stuck with that, with elias being destroyed by the god he created and jon ascending to be the fucked up evil king of a ruined world. fuck, it would’ve been so good. it would’ve been so delicious i’m going insane every time i think about it. this is the secret good season 5 that lives in my head.

instead they went with parallel universes, which is a concept that you probably shouldn’t introduce 3 episodes before the ending. it’s not a bad concept at all. they could’ve done it justice. but making parallel fucking universes the thing on which your finale hinges even though you’ve barely introduced them? yeah i’m gonna go ahead and call that an ass pull. it turns out that the Web has been manipulating everyone blah blah who cares the important part is this: the Web wins. the Web gets what it wants and this could’ve worked if it was framed and presented to us LIKE A TRAGEDY. it’s not. it’s presented like a bittersweet ending. the morality of the finale is extremely protagonist-centric (and by season 5 i started to hate everyone except jon). the protagonists decide to release the Fears, dooming a potentially infinite number of people to a life of horror, but fuck those guys, right? the important thing is that the protagonists are okay. i’m going to fight jonny sims in a parking lot.

one last thing. jonmartin fucking sucks. but it doesn’t have to. jon and martin don’t know each other. they’re completely incompatible. they’re together out of guilt and circumstance. they’re dysfunctional and they’re very realistically dysfunctional. i personally ship jonelias. don’t worry this is not about a shipping war, but one thing i’ve noticed is that jonelias is fucked up in an “i’ve made you a monster and then a god. i’ve used you to bring about the apocalypse” kind of way which i’m guessing not many people have personal experience with. jonmartin is fucked up in a “we’re not communicating and we’re only together because neither of us wants to be alone” way. that’s relatable. hell, that’s depressingly common. jon doesn’t love martin, he just wants to cling to his humanity. martin doesn’t love jon, he loves the idea of jon. THAT’S POTENTIAL! take that and work with it. what did they do instead? gave me a pairing of two people who absolutely should not be together, shoved it into my face for dozens of episodes, and then portrayed jealousy and miscommunication like something cute and romantic. literally what the fuck are they on.

game of thrones: *deeep sigh* ok there are about a billion 3hour video essays detailing everything wrong with season 8 but the main things for me are:

jon is a targaryen. he’s azor ahai. his is the song of ice and fire. and NONE OF THAT FUCKING MATTERS OH MY GOD AT LEAST LET JON DO SOMETHING LITERALLY ANYTHING EXCEPT STANDING AROUND REPEATING THE SAME TWO LINES AD NAUSEAM.

daenerys descent into madness and villainy could’ve been great if it had been properly set up instead of done in a minute (this is not an exaggeration. her character goes from “slightly mentally unstable” to “war criminal putting a city of innocent people to the torch” in ONE minute. i counted.)

i read the books and euron greyjoy is so fucking cool in the books. i don’t know who the fuck that other guy is but it certainly ain’t him.

arya killing the night king and bran becoming king. i wish i could say something funny or insightful but i genuinely have no words.

naruto: it’s been a while since i watched naruto. i’ve seen plenty of male writers being shitty but i’ve never seen misogyny drag a story down quite this much. personally, i’m done making excuses for this shit. if you can’t write women, you’re a bad writer. period.

the problem with naruto is that the women are literally just... there. doing absolutely fuck all and being generally useless. this is not even a matter of social justice, this is a matter of storytelling. even if you’re the biggest macho dudebro around you’ll have to admit that one third of your cast standing around and being incompetent doesn’t make for a very interesting story, does it now?

and then there’s the matter of madara being nerfed in favor of kaguya. yeah… that one was an ass pull.

but what bothers me most is that the wrong characters die or don’t die respectively. some examples:

hinata should’ve died (instead of “almost died”) when pain attacked konoha. it would’ve made her sacrifice more meaningful and she would’ve come back one way or another. in my opinion she should’ve stayed dead for good because her arc was mostly done by that point and she doesn’t really do much after that except cheer on naruto (see misogyny above)

when madara fought the five kage, he almost killed all of them. keyword almost. i get that tsunade is a good healer but that fight would’ve been more meaningful if someone (literally any ONE of the kage) had actually died.

gai should’ve died. listen, you can’t build up the 8th gate as this super special technique that you can do only once because it costs your life and then not have gai die. it cheapens the entire thing. what was the fucking point?

neji should’ve LIVED. a monumental part of his character arc was realizing that he’s worth just as much as the main family and that he doesn’t have to be subservient to hinata. and then he sacrifices himself for hinata. yeah that felt like one step forward two steps back.

in conclusion: kishimoto needs to drink his respect women juice and learn when to kill characters and when to let them live.

pirates of the caribbean: i tend to ignore that part 4 and 5 even exist. please let the franchise die i am begging.

i don’t have that many examples of wasted potential but you can’t tell me that PIRATE KING elizabeth swann would stay on land being a good housewife. fuck no.

so yeah. i’m done. thank you for asking, this was a lot of fun to answer and i hope you enjoyed Do You Love The Color Of My Incoherent Ramblings

#i think one of the biggest sources of wasted potential is telling the audience something but showing them something else #you can often guess what the narrative wants you to think #and how something is framed/presented by the narrative is just as important as what actually happens #if something fucked up happens then i want the narrative to either acknowledge it's fucked up #or (much better) stay neutral and let me make up my own mind #but don't give me something fucked up and then act like it's Good and Righteous

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darkshrimpemotions · 3 years

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I think I'm just fully realizing, as I’m half-rewatching the show via YouTube reaction videos...we really weren't supposed to love Dean. And we really were not the target audience, and by we I mean a much larger segment of folks than you may think. Eric Kripke (and also Robert Singer) didn't want a bunch of queer OR mentally ill folks OR women OR people of color OR abuse survivors. Hell, he didn't even really want an audience of macho manly men!

Eric Kripke was aiming for an audience of Eric Kripkes--the kind of whiny pseudo-intellectual nerdbro who finds men like s1 Dean threatening in real life, thinks being rejected romantically by a woman is comparable to real hardship, views any unfamiliar form of intimacy with some base level of suspicion, and expresses disgust at other men’s promiscuity not because he has more “respect” for women (and don’t get me started on the puritanism of equating sex with disrespect automatically), but because he resents that he can't do the same.

Eric Kripkes hate men like Dean and envy them in equal measure. Dean is aspirational, a power fantasy, but he’s not the character Kripke actually identifies with. That's s1 Sam: the soft-spoken, smart, nerdy, sensitive guy who is special and whose niceness is rewarded by women improbably throwing themselves at him.

Dean’s hook-ups in the early seasons are almost all girls he blatantly, openly hits on or pursues in a way that, according to Nice Guy(TM) logic, would be creepy if he didn’t look the way he does (it’s still creepy, to be clear, only Nice Guys(TM) ever think it’s not). Whereas Sam’s hook-ups during these seasons almost always initiate things first, despite being in situations where hooking up with the 7-foot rando who just rolled into town would realistically be the furthest thing from their minds.

Dean is the Nice Guy(TM)’s power fantasy of being able to “get away with” whatever he wants by virtue of being hot (and assuming all women are just completely shallow), whereas Sam is the Nice Guy(TM) self-insert that, in fiction, actually “wins” girls by being comparatively respectful.

That’s why Dean is written the way he is in the early seasons, where he rides this weird line between being downright irredeemably sleazy and accidentally actually deconstructing toxic masculinity in his characterization. Kripke wants to be Dean but also resents the very existence of Deans (that is, the surface-level Dean, the Masculine Performance) in the world, and resents his own inability to inhabit that role.

They confuse him, and they make him feel insecure, but instead of bucking that whole worldview he fully buys into it via the way he makes fun of it. So Dean becomes this weird hodgepodge of highly performative toxic masculine traits interspersed with moments of genuine emotion that were probably intended to read as weakness. And it’s supposed to be over-the-top and vaguely ridiculous and ultimately, kind of pathetic.

But then he made the inspired mistake of casting Jensen fucking Ackles, the man who’s forgotten more about gender performativity than most of us will ever fucking know, in this highly gendered, highly contradictory role.

When you hand Jackles contradictions he just turns them into character complexity, so suddenly instead of watching a show about Regular Guy being sucked into his toxic family’s heinous world of monsters, you’re watching a show about Manly Guy desperately trying to hold his family together against impossible odds through increasingly self-destructive means while his facade of masculinity systematically crumbles around him.

And it’s fucking fascinating, so fascinating that every subsequent writer leans further into that, until that’s almost the entirety of the show. Hell, even Kripke leans into it somewhat, maybe subconsciously, fairly early on. Watch the back half of season 1: it’s extremely Dean-perspective heavy where the first half of the season was more evenly split. Still, the perspective remains more or less balanced in seasons 2 and 3, only to slant extremely far towards Dean in season 4 and never really course-correct after that.

In retrospect it should’ve been obvious that Ruby was playing Sam from the get-go, because the show simply does not invest much time or effort into getting you invested in her relationship with Sam. Certainly not as much time and effort as it expends on making you feel Dean’s worry and distrust, or in building up his parallel relationship with Castiel. And boy, once that relationship takes off, there’s really no more hope of this ever being the Sam show again.

The most it can hope for is to evenly split focus between the two brothers, although most of the time it doesn’t even manage that. By the time we get halfway through the show, it’s pretty solidly the story of Manly Guy having a constant gender and sexuality crisis trying to keep his increasingly queer found family together from within the confines of his glass closet, while the angel who pulled him out of Hell chips steadily away at the closet’s walls.

There are hardly any women in the story at that point that aren’t written as sisters or mothers to the main characters. There are precious few hook-ups for either brother anymore, either, pursuing and pursued alike. There’s no power fantasy to speak of, and no low-key competition between the brothers related to any of these things.

Instead you have Manly Guy embracing his homemaking skills while forming affectionate homosocial bonds with men who are more secure in their masculinity than he is, which he finds both freeing and comforting. And you have Regular Guy setting boundaries, going vegan, and bonding with the women in his life over surviving similar kinds of trauma.

They co-parent a child with their gay angel best friend who likes pop music and is Manly Guy’s most profound significant homosocial bond. Oh yeah, and they also hunt monsters and save the world sometimes, but mostly those plots exist as allegories for the things they’re working through, or catalysts for their continued character development.

Like no fucking wonder Kripke (and later, Singer) didn’t get the audience he was after. And also thank fucking god he didn’t.

#supernatural #dean winchester #dean studies #spn meta #spn gender studies #eric kripke #lizawords #this is the least coherent meta i have ever written #i was just watching sesskasays' reaction videos of season 1 of spn #and at some point toward the middle of the season it hit me that OH #we're not actually supposed to like dean that much #we're not supposed to find him interesting or funny or lovable #that's all coming from jackles it's really not in the writing at all #and the more i looked at it the more i could see it #and now i can't UNsee it #anyway this is VERY kripke-critical if you can't tell from the first two paragraphs #but let me be clear this absolutely also applies to robert singer and to a lesser extent andrew dabb as well

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staboteur · 6 years

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Drama Queen

For some reason, Spy is just a drama queen. Well, obviously there has to be a reason, right?

To René, being dramatic is just a part of self expression. It’s his way of trying to joke around and be funny, although it doesn’t always come through. With his completely deadpan face and often too theatrical acting, it can come off as completely serious. The only thing is, it’s when he isn’t being dramatic that you should be worried.

But back on track with the whole drama shebang. I think it’s about being noticed. The more dramatic he is, the more likely he’ll be noticed. The duality of being a spy is that you will never get any attention, even when you think you deserve it. It happens to René often enough. When his presence isn’t felt, it’s usually because he’s either doing his job too well or not well enough. Usually, people assume it’s the latter. Yet he can’t help feeling under-appreciated when someone steps over the scraps of the sentry gun he just dismantled, or when the RED Medic drops his uber at 99% in the last sixty seconds due to a bullet to the head. He can’t help but feel like no one is noticing his efforts, feeling like his teammates chalk up their encounters with felled obstacles to sheer dumb luck. Obviously, it wasn’t. René had every step of said obstacles’ demise planned in his mind. Nothing in the world of spies should be left up to luck. So it’s really no surprise that he wants to make a big deal out of small things, if just to be noticed a little bit. Obviously, in order to be noticed, he just needs to spice it up a little, and what better way to do that than to dramatically proclaim his most insignificant woes to the world?

There are better ways of course, but it’s the only way he can feel safe doing. Aside from having the benefit of sometimes garnering the attention that he wants, it’s also an opportunity for him to vent some of his sorrows. With his most pressing issues, and even some slightly more minor ones, he has to be utterly close-lipped about it, whether out of personal comfort or physical safety. With minor complaints however, he’s going to milk them for everything they’ve got. Stubbed a toe? Got blood on his suit? A speck of dust in his eye? You’re going to hear all about it nonstop for the next while. Facing a depressive episode? About to die from a grievous wound? Generally unwell on an emotional level? At most, a growl to stay away.

I think overall it’s just yet another coping mechanism he has. He makes insignificant things significant in order to mask the fact that he makes significant things out to be insignificant. He wants to put up this veneer of “nothing is wrong with my world”, and perhaps complaints about minor things imply that truly, nothing is wrong with his world if the smallest things seem like a huge disruption.

#{ headcanons | another day another back with a gaping stab wound }#{ ic | the dashing rogue }#//yknow i noticed i tend to make more of these the later it gets at night #//also none of these are proofread just saying #//pure stream of consciousness with decent grammar and punctuation #//it's literally just my thoughts about rene #//something to fill in the gaps so to speak as my queue runs #//based off a conversation i had with alois mun or something #//i mean i just kinda mentioned it offhandedly so there's that #//i feel like i post a lot of these but do people even read them?#//i mean they rarely get likes and all but i guess people do #//i mean at least i can get my thoughts out there lmao have them written down somewhere #//maybe i should tag these as rene metas with rene muno r something #//'midnight meta'#//ooh #//maybe bc i tend to do these literally at midnight every single time lmao #//maybe it's bc my thoughts flow most freely during this time?#//i mean i usually read these back to myself and think 'jesus fuck what were they even thinking???'#//bc like im rarely ever coherent for these #//also the reason why i don't do replies late at night #//i instead channel my creative energies into this #//... and not applying for that summer job at aaron brothers'

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cloodcuckooland · 2 years

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some thoughts about TSOA

(I don't really make posts, much less long ramblings like the one below but my chest was going to burst if I didn't write this so here goes nothing) (TLDR: ideas about why Thetis, Patroclus and Achilles are written the way they are in The Song of Achilles)

So now that my brain has more or less finished digesting TSOA I would like to formulate opinions about it, especially since I see quite a lot of people thinking it's the Worst Thing Ever, and I can't really wrap my head around that.

One of the main argument I saw directed against TSOA is that Thetis has become evil for no reason, whereas in The Iliad she's a good mother and doesn't seem to have any particular hate towards Patroclus. Or that Patroclus being not good at fighting is not coherent with how he's depicted in the Iliad, that he has been reduced to Achilles's wifey,, and I totally understand that you might not like those changes, that you prefer the Iliad version of those characters, but I needed to voice out why the author would have made those choices and why it's coherent in the narrative. (i'm really going to write an essay, aren't i...)

First Thetis. It's not so much that she's depicted as evil, as that Patroclus's view of her is where she does not really show her nicest self. I haven't read a lot of theories/meta about TSOA or even the Iliad but here is how I see it: Thetis is hostile to Patroclus because he's like a literal embodiement of Achilles's humanity. Thetis's story is that she wants her son to become a god, to become better than her father (possibly to spurn the gods who were cruel to her by making her marry a man she didn't love?). She will go to extreme lenghts to protect him, but she also wants him to rise and become divine. So she has him train in secret from a young age, then has Chiron, teacher of heroes, educate him, all so he can be better than he is now, and maybe have a chance to becoming like Herakles, who actually became a god thanks to his heroic deeds.

And then you have Achilles who chooses Patroclus as his closest companion, his lover. Patroclus, who is not very good at fighting, not paticularly strong or quick, or interested in heroism at all. Of course Thetis would hate him and would want to separate them, he's everything she doesn't want her son to be! Just Some Guy™ ! (And of course, we know that he isn't just some guy, that his qualities lie elsewhere, and that's why Achilles love him). She's like one of those parents that want the best for their children, to the point that they try to control their lives and their relationships if they don't fit their vision. And since TSOA is framed from Patroclus's point of view, we just see her hostile side, and she has this image of a negative character.

It's even more symbolic than that, Patroclus has those very "humane" qualities: he's compassionate, gentle, mindful of others, modest. Now we recognize those traits as positive, but those are still seen as "feminine" and judged badly in a man. Even more so in a context where people are encouraged to go to war or whatnot for glory... And you have Achilles. He's not a psychopath, but he doesn't really care about people, at least not so much. He doesn't see the other boys that his father foster back in Phtia, he doesn't remember the names of soldiers during the war. He just loves Patroclus, and he will go out of his way to help him. If Patroclus says to save girls, he will try and save them. Patroclus is his tether to humanity... so when he dies, Achilles loses his humanity and on a that famous murderous rampage.

So, why make Patroclus so weak physically, not a fighter contrary to his Iliad version? I personally think it reinforces those humane qualities in him, that are already present in the Iliad, where everyone basically loves him because he's sweet and nice. But also (and I'm going to get emotional here) but it's also such a strong demonstration of love from Achilles's part. Achilles loves Patroclus not despite the fact he's a fighter, he loves him entirely. It's right there at the very beginning of the book, when Peleus asks Achilles why he would choose Patroclus, and Achilles says he's different. And then they have this exchange, where Peleus comments that Patroclus won't give him any glory, and Achilles just answers that he doesn't need him to.

He doesn't need to be strong, or win wars, or love fighting and glory. Of course it's implied that Achilles also means that because he will be glorious enough for the both of them. But it also shows that he just accepts him as he is. He doesn't ask him to change, and when Patroclus has always been rejected by his father because he was never enough it's just so meaningful.

And the contrast between them, the fact that they're so different, that Patroclus has qualities which are not positively seen in that era, and Achilles sees that and still loves Patroclus more than anything...

#i love you just as you are #second best to Achilles #the song of achilles #patrochilles #the iliad #long post #well well that was a thing #can you believe that we're writing about characters which have been around for more than two millenia?#the theme is very dear to me #and tsoa does it so beautifully #like i get you would prefer have thetis has a nice mom #or patroclus as like in the iliad but #i think those changes make sense

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veliseraptor · 3 years

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Hi, lise...If you don't mind, can I ask, what are your favorite yunmeng shuangjie scenes/moments? And why? Sorry if you've answered this question before....

hoo boy okay I hope you’re ready for long because I’m constitutionally incapable of answering these kinds of questions without going hard. which is why it takes me so long and that’s why I have a backlog of 5 million inbox messages but what e v e r

I limited myself to five here because if I didn’t I’d just start listing every scene they interact in, and nobody wants that. or, well, I don’t want that, I’d lose a lot of time that way.

putting this under a cut because...yeah. long.

1. the original Yunmeng Shuangjie conversation in episode 14.

like! augh. I’m not sure that this was the place where I was officially painfully ridiculously sold on their relationship as my favorite part of the show so far but it was a major contributing factor. There’s just so much going on here! In the way that it speaks to their history together, and in their family, and the roles they play.

I love, too, that Wei Wuxian specifically goes “twin jades? pfff. we’ve got our own thing going on that’s just as cool” because it’s doing double duty of making them a special thing in their own right and also, maybe even more importantly, reaffirming their bond as primary where Jiang Cheng at this point has been...well, a little uneasy about the space Lan Wangji has started to occupy in Wei Wuxian’s life. To say the least.

But maybe even most of all why this is such a gut punch for me personally: the promise Wei Wuxian is making to Jiang Cheng is one that you, the viewer, know isn’t going to work out. Thanks to the opening of episode one, and their interaction in episode two, it’s abundantly clear that something is going to go horribly wrong, and this close relationship is going to break, catastrophically.

And me being me I love the piquant taste of dramatic irony in the morning.

2. the argument in episode 27-28.

This is one of those moments where I never fail to get extremely emotional about it every time I watch this scene because it is so very ouch. The way that Jiang Cheng approaches Wei Wuxian with this guarded wariness, this prickliness and doubt, and how that breaks by the end into his desperate plea: “if you continue to protect them, then I can’t protect you!”

(different subtitles, so sue me.)

and I cry.

I’ve written before about how there’s...so much going on here. To break it down a little bit how about a bulleted list:

Jiang Cheng has been personal witness to - and personal target off - the current political winds, in a way that Wei Wuxian is not. He’s seeing and hearing how the cultivation world is talking about Wei Wuxian. He can see the way the wind is blowing very, very clearly, and what he sees is that Wei Wuxian is doomed if he stays the course - something Wei Wuxian either doesn’t or doesn’t want to see.

Jiang Cheng desperately wants Wei Wuxian to come home. Wei Wuxian can’t without abandoning the people relying on him, which would be both an ethical and emotional violation for him. His conflicting loyalties are coming to a head here but he still wants to have it both ways.

What Wei Wuxian sees as a mercy or releasing of obligation, a way of keeping Yunmeng Jiang and specifically Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli safe, Jiang Cheng sees as an abandonment/rejection - an affirmation that he, once again, just doesn’t matter enough.

It’s just...I cannot get over how clear-eyed Jiang Cheng’s assessment is. Whether or not you agree with his choices, he’s right, on a factual level. And I think Wei Wuxian knows that. But he’s on this road and he’s going to see it through, and he refuses to accept that he might not be able to.

and I just. I cry.

3. the conversation post resurrection.

Jiang Cheng cornering Wei Wuxian with the very animal he swore to always protect him from! party foul, yes, but also oh boy psychologically crunchy in every way. This confrontation, their first after Wei Wuxian’s resurrection where they both know and know they know the truth of who Wei Wuxian is, is so full of pain and hurt and anger.

it’s just! so much. Jiang Cheng’s see-sawing back and forth between “why didn’t you come back home!!!” (the question he’s always had) and “why aren’t you still dead!!!” Wei Wuxian murmuring about wanting to go back to Lotus Pier, calling for Jiang Yanli (Jiang Yanli, the biggest wound between them, her absence so very palpable in that moment).

There’s so much both of them want here, and so much that’s not being said, and can’t be said. The overwhelming pressure of their history - Jiang Cheng’s sixteen years of grief and anger raw all over again, and Wei Wuxian's exhaustion and misery.

it’s excruciatingly painful and I love it.

4. the conversation in Guanyin Temple.

so I spent, like, most of the latter half of the show waiting for a moment between Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng where things would break and I’d get the emotional sibling catharsis feelings that I needed and boy did this deliver. like! other people have written far more coherent meta about this scene than I probably ever could because when I think about it I’m just sort of reduced to dragging my hands down my face and making distressed noises punctuated with wild gestures and cries of “THEM!!!”

the crying! the ugly crying, the ugly emotions, the big secret between them that set off the beginning of the rift in their relationship laid bare. it’s this moment of naked emotional vulnerability for both of them, and while it doesn’t resolve things, while it leaves them both in a place, I think, where they’re prone to go ‘well, he’s done with me now’ - it also opens a door where that doesn’t have to be the case. Wei Wuxian’s tenderness. The gesture he makes here, too, touching Jiang Cheng’s face, echoes the gesture Jiang Yanli makes touching Wei Wuxian’s just before she dies.

(echoes what jiang fengmian does before he goes off to die. how’s that for pain?)

it’s just. wild gestures. them. oh, boys. so much hurt, so much pain, and at the root of it so much goddamn love.

I’m going to go on and slide in here additionally the moment where Jiang Cheng tosses Wei Wuxian Chenqing because boy does that say a lot in a relatively simple gesture.

5. meeting in Yiling with Jiang Yanli.

This scene is...I described it from Jiang Cheng’s POV remembering in a fic as "like looking at children in the path of a rockslide, unaware of what was bearing down on them, such a short time away. Oblivious.” and that’s how I feel watching it. It’s so cute, and sweet, and Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian love Jiang Yanli so much, and Jiang Cheng has suggested Jiang Yanli ask Wei Wuxian to give his unborn nephew his courtesy name and then gets embarrassed when she outs him about it, he and Wei Wuxian tease each other.

I love it. There’s just this sweetness and happiness that they’re having, in this moment, in this tiny courtyard, because this little separate hidden place is the only place, now, where they can be together, where they can be family as they once were.

And it’s not going to last. And the viewer, once again, can feel the gathering storm bearing down on them, and know it’s only going to end in tragedy.

This is the last time they see each other before it all goes wrong.

BONUS:

#thanad zid #conversating #but also like. so many others alkjsdlkfjsdf #long post for ts #jiang cheng #wei wuxian #yunmeng shuangjie #like...seriously though. the golden core reveal? the confrontation in the shrine?#their fight after lotus pier falls where jiang cheng makes a go of strangling him?#jiang cheng giving himself up?#EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING #the sad queer cultivators show #lise does meta #...i guess

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beyondthetemples-ooc · 3 years

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OC-tober Day 2: Glass

OC-tober prompts put together by @oc-growth-and-development! I have to ramble in meta instead of write, because my brain is Mush lately. (I know I’m behind but I have a lot pre-written, I just need to put it into coherent words!)

This one especially can be rambled about at length, because the most important “glass” object in my stories is one I greatly enjoy exploring: Dove’s mindscape mirror!

^ I drew it forever ago; here’s the deviantArt link if you’d like to see the big version!

https://www.deviantart.com/ravenshiddensoul/art/Dove-s-Keepsakes-Mirror-and-Box-284227087

It’s largely modeled after a bird stretching its wings upwards, with a handle like a tail and certain details are inlaid with Azarathean gold to better channel its magics.

Now, this is where the rambling begins: The mirror’s backstory, and I’ll be exploring one of my favorite things to develop in all of my stories: Dove’s mindscape!

Dove's mirror isn't one of her most prized possessions, nor super incredibly sentimental, but it IS an object touched with her mother's magic, it has flourishes of Azarathean gold (some of the last pieces to exist), and it's useful for introspection and self-soothing, so it does have some value and importance.

Dove struggled with meditating quite a lot as a child, and there was only so much her mother could do to help. Meditation was pretty important to them as both a means of helping Dove control her powers, and as a staple of Azarathean spirituality. As she so often did, Alerina poked around and asked enough questions around the temple that she was told about Raven's mirror, and she decided to replicate it for Dove. She custom ordered a gold-lined wooden hand mirror, and then cast the spells to connect it to Dove's inner world herself. It took a few tries (it's much harder to connect something to someone else's mind than your own, after all), but she was nothing if not determined to help her daughter, and eventually figured it out.

As for its main purpose: Self-reflection! (If you'll pardon the pun.) Dove uses it to meditate, but where Raven uses hers for centering and compartmentalization, Dove uses it more as a blend of escapism and a focusing aid.

Much like Raven's, Dove's mirror acts as a portal to the depths of her mind, and this is where it gets fun!

The vortex that transports the users is usually white and gold, imbued with the same energies that give Dove her powers, at least on her mother's side. It's noticeably touched with black and red in DDD. (Dove's evil side starts taking over her mind, and thus its energies manifest through the mindscape, and Dove's portal into it, hence: black and red energies instead.) It tends to open up like a light tunnel and almost opens the mental world around the user, rather than dragging them in.

Once inside, one can't expect to navigate the same way as Beast Boy and Cyborg did in "Nevermore". Every mind is different, after all! We saw Raven's mindscape divided nearly into emotional sections with a neutral space between them, and the way through each area was preset and linear. While different parts of Dove's internal world manifest in different "areas", they're not so totally divided and separate, and there's no real "neutral" zone except at the very "center". The scenery changes, but it's more of a gradual transition, and though Dove employs thresholds to mark key areas, they're very much just visual aids.

Dove's mindscape is laid out more like a series of rooms and courtyards in a very (very, very, very) large mansion. The ground is generally of crystal, spires and columns decorate the scenery, and the thresholds are modeled after birds with their wings outspread. (While this seems like a play on Dove's namesake, it's actually based on Azarath's architecture, particularly that of George Perez's Azarath in the 1980's New Teen Titans comics.)

Dove's sky shows various stars and often casts moonlight from an uncertain source, particularly when she's introspecting. The ambient temperature varies amongst the locations, chilly in the regions ruled by fear and sadness, uncomfortably warm near her demon's domain, and comfortable and breezy where her peace and contentment reside.

One could easily get lost in her mindscape if they don't know where they're going. The place can shift and change on a whim.

Where Dove spends her time building that peace and contentment, it's very closely modeled after her mother's memories of Azarath (which is where she learned how to find peace, after all): there's marble and gold everywhere, and the stars twinkle with dozens of colors in the sky.

Where Dove retreats when there are feelings of timidity, her excruciating shyness, her grief and doubt, the world becomes shrouded in thick fog. Broken buildings and pale light litter the grounds.

Where she built her love for reading, for history, for creativity and study and learning, it's arranged as rooms with dark marbled tile and a carpeted path, the floor for dozens of feet on either side littered with piles of books.

Dove's inner happy place is an open field on gently rolling hills, where thoughts take the form of birds and somehow the sky holds both the stars and suns. One might find trees, flowers, abstract forms of cottages, and forts loaded with mugs and cozy cushions. If you wander far enough you'll find very tall stone walls surrounding it, because Dove's mind is such that her happiness is one of the few things she really truly believes she needs to protect from the rest of herself.

And then there are the aspects of herself that she shoves the deepest down, secreted far away from the surface: the anger, the hunger for power, the mean streak. (Yes, believe it or not, Dove does have a mean streak! You just have to work especially hard to bring it out. Or trigger her in just the right ways around sadism, violence, war, or death. It's very much Not Recommended; bringing too much of that mean streak out could mean Dove loses control of her powers, or worse: her demonic aspects.)

Those secret forces aren't so much located in one particular space of her mind as they're hidden in every dark corner, coursing through the underside of all the ground, a tantalizing power running through every part of her, only ever set free enough to use the dangerous powers to her own ends.

Her places for Fear and Curiosity in particular will be explored in the upcoming Missing: Raven rewrite. (As they're the strongest things Dove is feeling in that story, that's going to be what Beast Boy and Cyborg encounter.) I also explored the way these things manifest in DDD, and in that same story Dove will focus on rebuilding Peace in the final chapter.

I can't talk about Dove's mindscape without mentioning the "emoticlones". These fun little guys are called by the fanon term given to Raven's "emotion clones", the separate parts of her that express a specific set of traits based on particular aspects of her personality. I had so much fun playing with their voices and thoughts in Dove's head during DDD, you have no freaking idea! I also copied the concept of them having Colored Cloaks from Teen Titans canon, because honestly it's a quick and easy way to identify them, and the fandom's familiar with this system through Raven.

Which colors mean what was more inspired by details from a really old, now-defunct website called Cartoon Orbit that had separate "online trading cards" for each of Raven's emoticlones! On that site, Raven's were labeled as such, and this is what I based Dove's system on, loosely: - Pink: "Raven Happy" - Red: "Raven Rage" - Orange: "Raven Rude" - Yellow: "Raven Smart" - Green: "Raven Brave" - Brown: "Raven Fear" (I'm pretty sure there was a purple one, but I don't recall what it was called. "Love" maybe? That might be from fanon; this site was running like 15 years ago, and I was like 10 years old, so I hardly thought to pay Super Special Attention to it...)

But I digress. The point is, I adapted that system for the key aspects of Dove's unique personality, and came to understand them as follows:

- Pink: Joy, relief, coziness - Red: Cruelty, impulsivity, anger - Orange: Apathy, indifference, disregard - Yellow: Curiosity, study, intrigue - Green: Courage, determination, activity - Blue: Contentedness, pacifism, spirituality - Purple: Compassion, friendship, romanticism - Gray: Sadness, grief, longing. - Brown: Fear, fear, fear!

But for Dove's mind in particular, it's not only HER experiences and personality that form the world! She's a telepath, and though she holds others' privacy in very, very high regard and tries never to read someone's mind without their permission, her sense of receptive telepathy is ever-present. Echoes, lights, shadows, reflections of others' memories and thoughts might affect the very edges of her mind. It's a constant sense, but it only ever causes very ephemeral changes unless something deeply affects her.

Her mindscape also grows and changes as Dove grows and changes, experiences life, learns to cope, and changes how she handles her own emotions.

Most notably, the internal struggle in DDD tore her mind apart. Initially it was due to a breakdown of certainty and confidence, hastened by guilt and grief, but it soon became a deliberate tactic to wage war on the parts of Dove's mind that were trying to resist the evil; eventually her inner demon began intentionally breaking/corrupting everything it could touch.

By chapter 20, that evil is the only strong and stable thing in Dove's mind. Raven's attack to remove the evil in her took away that stability, and strength, and thus took away what was essentially the last support holding Dove's mind together. As it says in the story: "everything collapsed". Dove's mindscape was utterly destroyed, and only the most basic aspects of her remained.

For awhile, that left Dove unable to remember things clearly, or feel emotions without great pain. Rebuilding it to the point where she was able to talk and feel Mostly Normally again took months of meditation.

When Dove is kidnapped and Leyla has distressing dreams about her mother, she, Srentha, and Raven use the mirror to check on Dove by accessing her mindscape. With her powers stripped away, surrounded by people who mock her, and certain Fauni rituals sickening Dove to her soul, naturally her mind is very different: shadowy forms flitted at the edges of vision, the ground wavered, her discomfort was thick in the air and the constant fear made everything so, so cold. "Shadows" of others' thoughts flashed in and out of existence, and Dove's desperation manifests as fleeting voices on the wind. It's uncomfortable to be in her mind while she's so distressed.

It's also worth mentioning that her mindscape changes again, essentially "growing" the part of her that belongs to Love when she finally lets herself love Srentha, and it expands again when Leyla's born and Dove once more finds depths of love she didn't know she could carry.

#oc tober #oc tober 2021 #rhs has ocs and this is the tag about them #iala yona #ddd #rhs oc tober

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elizabethrobertajones · 4 years

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SPN deserves flak for handling sensitive topics irresponsibly, especially since it has a teenage audience. Castiel confessed that he's suicidal in season 8 (written by dabb!), the brothers were in a toxic codependency, Sam was sexually harassed by lucifer, a little kid -Jack- was driven to self-harm/suicide. and none of those issues were addressed or solved in 15 years. instead, the message was that people with troubled pasts could only "be forgiven" if they sacrificed their lives (Jack) or died

Yeeeeaaaah that’s something it was always getting criticism for consistently as it went along as a case- by-case basis of the treatment... There were some woke episodes later on with the newer writers which did handle some subject better but honestly usually in a motw way with side characters proving better examples to the Winchesters’ messed up coping.

I guess one thing that I was leaning on a bit was that if it was all going somewhere that the resolution would be okay because the writing was aware that they did have these issues. For example, Carver era was really heavy on the codependency stuff but it was painting it in such a bad light that it was beyond romanticising it in any sense and the message seemed to be that the writing wanted them to heal. I personally think this was healed a fair amount over Dabb era along the way... But the finale as far as I can tell let Sam move on with his life and break the cycle or whatever, but also was so wildly unsatisfying on every front it probably would have been HEALTHIER for the fucker to go straight to Hell and petition Rowena for giving her an eternity of foot rubs in exchange for Dean back. Just so he could be like “what the hell what that, you nearly married that BLURRY WOMAN? What’s WRONG WITH YOU”

(I don’t know the fine details on this death scene to know or care how the Sam and Dean relationship wrapped up because it was clearly garbage and in my head they’re both still happy and alive and have a normal freaking relationship :P)

In any case, I know so much was carried by these characters that, to be serious for a moment, I don’t know if they ever could have lifted the whole weight of what we needed them to be, even in an ideal end. But I do know that by giving the show such a shaky resolution, especially with bringing Cas back off screen and not giving any real closure and telegraphed final scenes with anyone - i mean even the love confession and empty yeeting feel like Dean’s supposed to have another moment with him later and it doesn’t feel death scene-y enough to me because of the complete lack of closure the confession gives it by opening the new possibility moments before death - vast amounts of character work which could have HELPED bring some of these things to a conclusion just never showed up, it seems.

Like, Sam’s Blurry Life With The Blurry Wife seems like an even worse state than his season 7-8 hiatus time with Amelia because at least she had a FACE and BACKSTORY and LINES ON SCREEN. At least she and Sam talked through their issues and related to each other and they had a reasonable reason for it not working out and they got to see what they both needed from each other at the time and what they couldn’t get from each other moving forwards.

Even ignoring that Sam got the perfect endgame with Eileen, a Generic Blurry Wife ending for him is such garbage because so much of his bad coping is bound up in his hiding and running away... Just because Dean once waxed poetic about wanting Sam to grow old and boring and live a normal life doesn’t mean it’s what his character was best suited to or what he would really have been comfortable with long-term, especially when as far as I can tell Dean dies and he just up and abandons his hunting life and goes to be normal. If for garbage reasons you were ditching Eileen a happy ending for Sam would still probably involve a hunting-connected life, even if it was a montage showing him holed up in the Bunker being the new Bobby while nothing else changed and Dean was having bad drinks with the original Bobby in Heaven. Like just that one change would make Sam’s journey make sense that he stopped running away and accepted who he was and that the trauma shaped him but didn’t break him, and that he had moved beyond the harmful relationships with women who he valued for their normality, who he then told nothing about his life, bottled up his trauma and dismissed his past and then lived a sliver of existence right on the edge of sanity and coping. Blurry Wife might have the benefit that theoretically the cosmic nonsense is over and Sam might not be called back to that battlefield but the toll on Sam’s life from his history can’t just... disappear overnight. Literally his entire mental health arc which was based on his trauma and addressing it and overcoming it, and how Sam learns who he is beneath it and how it has made him uniquely Sam and stronger for it is all washed away.

And that of all the examples you mentioned is like the only one I can talk about with any coherence without devolving into screaming about how better endings were owed all around. If the characters are denied meaningful narrative closure than everything they’ve carried with them, from just the way a plot will feel resolved or not, to all the stuff we reflect onto them about our own issues that we see in theirs, ends up dumped to the side and it leaves painful holes.

I don’t think a better ending in terms of just wrapping up the show as it seemed to be on track to, until it abruptly wasn’t in the finale, would have ever fixed all of it or meant enough to some of us when it comes to things we’ve carried alongside the characters for a long time. Like I doubt even a full canon Destiel ending by their pen could have addressed ALL the issues we put on Dean and Cas and in our explorations in fic and meta and headcanon and crackposts and whatever else, feel like they’d need to talk out or resolve to be fully content on screen with each other. But there sure were things that could have been done with a few meaningful lines here and there and obviously Cas visually on screen with Dean at the ending that would have made things easier, or provided the paths to seeing these things resolved in our ongoing imaginings.

A lot of the finale pain seems to be the abrupt wall that the story just STOPS like that and so much of this is all left hanging and we’re all feeling the pain of many things that we forgave the story for along the way because there was a trust in the way storytelling works that we’d get that catharsis and closure at the end, and that all the painful stories we were told were being told for that reason. Like, the main reason to write painful stuff and dark themes is to explore it and look right at the horrible stuff, but then to find ways to bring it back down and let some of it go. And most of why I’m refusing to watch the end of the show is simply because it sounds like none of what any of us wanted to get out of it actually happened and there were NO paths to get these things we needed out of it. And at which point many of the terrible things that happened along the way now feel uncomfortable in a way that it’s torture porn without any relief or reason for doing it. The feeling is so universal and the descriptions of that last episode so laughably bad on that front that it’s the main reason I don’t want to watch it. Like, I can get a better sense of satisfaction bitching about how it should have ended than I’d get watching it so why would I do that? :P

Anyway. Guess you got me ranting but this really is something I think in hindsight that might make rewatches really awful way back into the show just because you’ll be watching something and realise that for all the character is going through, they’re not going to get a resolution that actually would do anything to make any meaningful comment at all on what they’re going through. So now you’re just watching them suffer for the hell of it? Idk, this fear haunts me >.>

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panharmonium · 4 years

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you can be my ride or die: a staggeringly long essay about a deceptively short appearance

(aka, pan’s personal depository of notes about prince william of ealdor.)

now that my fic is long since done and posted, i can finally transfer this monster piece of meta out of my google docs and onto my blog, where it can serve as an unasked-for, absurdly detailed, beginning-to-end analysis of my obscure fave.

(whose line ‘yeah, and i’m prince william, of ealdor’ is still the funniest damn shit i’ve ever heard and also the most shocking burn arthur has ever received; i hope he thinks of it sometimes and remembers that humility is a virtue)

(the BRISTLING DISRESPECT! the ZERO FUCKS GIVEN! i love him! please can someone else talk to arthur like this! he needs it!)

disclaimer before we begin: i wrote this over a year ago, as a character check for myself during the very early stages of working on my fic. i kept messily adding bits to it over the course of a couple weeks as i explored what i knew about this character and who i understood him to be, but at the time, i didn’t intend on posting it; it was just prep work for my own story-making. it’s still essentially just a record of my train of thought as i pieced this character together - i’ve cleaned it up a bit now and added some recent links to make it more coherent, but it was never meant to be a posted essay, just a collection of notes for myself.

be forewarned, it is more comprehensive than the things i’ve written about this character since, and it goes on for years. if you are not interested in many, many pages of super heavy in-depth musings about a character who appeared in one episode, now is the time to scroll on by. i promise i won’t mind in the slightest; i wrote this for my own purposes and don’t really expect people to read it - i’m posting it just to have it archived with the rest of my merlin stuff.

if you are interested in that sort of thing, however - hit the jump, and off we go!

i really love the episode where we meet will, though i’ve started to love it for new reasons since the first time i watched it.

the first time i watched season 1, 'the moment of truth’ was my favorite S1 episode overall, because it was the first time the Fab Four went off on an adventure together, and that was very exciting; and i also loved it because all the character stuff in that episode was so good; and i also loved it because look, all of us are suckers for that classic seven samurai plot, you know - i loved it in TCW, i loved it in the mandalorian, i loved it in merlin. not gonna get bored of ‘simple farmers defend their homes with pitchforks’ anytime soon. it is overall just a solid, self-contained plot with clear emotional arcs, and it sticks its landing well. it’s a simple, strong story.

nowadays, though, i also love it because of will.

i. will whomst?

prince william of ealdor, that’s who!

will straddles a kind of weird place in canon, because he feels like a minor character to the audience but is very much not a minor character for merlin, who has known will much longer than the brief hour we get to spend with him and who has spent his entire life with will as his sole friend.

but, because will only appears once - let’s start with a round-up. what do we actually know about him?

he’s a peasant farmer from ealdor, like merlin

his father was killed fighting for king cenred (as a foot soldier - these people are not wealthy enough or high-status enough to afford or be accepted into the knighthood)

his mother is either dead or absent

he’s painfully class conscious and doesn’t trust the nobility

he’s a “troublemaker” (the interpretation of which is...well, it’s left to the viewer’s discretion. fandom seems to jump to ‘fun mischief and pranks,’ though i personally don’t get that vibe from this episode. “troublemaker” in will’s case seems to mean more “doesn’t know how to keep his head down/can’t go along to get along to save his life.” it means when he sees something that he thinks is Wrong, he absolutely will not shut up about it even when all his neighbors are sick of him and want him to just let it go. it means he can’t stop rocking the boat even when rocking the boat makes everybody want to strangle him.)

he supplements his agricultural pursuits with carpentry. you can see in his house big piles of hewn timber along one wall, as well as a grindstone and a shaving horse, and when he comes out of his house on two separate occasions he’s holding woodworking tools (mallet, chisel, etc)

he knows about merlin’s magic - for how long this has been the case, we’re not told. it doesn’t feel like a new thing to me, but ultimately that’s guesswork.

he appears to have just one friend

that one friend is merlin

will loves merlin enough to die lying for him

merlin left will behind.

ii. it wasn’t what i wanted

so let’s talk about that.

merlin is asked “why did you leave?” twice in this episode, first by arthur and then by will. he gives completely contradictory answers to the two of them, and it’s worth remembering, before examining both responses, that one answer is inherently more honest than the other, because merlin is only able to tell the whole truth to one of these people.

so when merlin talks to arthur, it goes like this:

“why did you leave?”

“things just...changed.”

“how?”

*silence*

“come on, stop pretending to be interesting and tell me.”

“i just didn’t fit in anymore. i wanted to find somewhere I did.”

arthur has to drag this answer out of merlin, and it’s not because merlin doesn’t feel like sharing (i mean, come on, we know merlin; merlin wants to be in everybody’s business and he feeds off human connection like a starving man; he’d be thrilled that arthur was interested in his life) - the problem isn’t that he’s shy; it’s that he’s not exactly telling the truth and he’s trying to figure out how to do it in the least deceptive way possible.

i just didn’t fit in anymore. i wanted to find somewhere i did.

that’s nice.

it’s also a lie.

it’s not a total lie, of course - there’s an element of it that becomes true, after merlin gets to camelot and realizes that working for arthur is “not totally horrible all the time” - that he sort of likes the excitement, and the newness, and being somewhere where nobody knows him and nobody will judge him - but that’s the reason he stays in camelot, not the reason he leaves ealdor.

by contrast, when will asks the question, merlin gives a completely different answer:

“why did you leave?”

“it wasn’t what I wanted. mother was worried. when she found out you knew - she was so angry.”

it wasn’t what I wanted.

can we digest that for a moment?

merlin didn’t want to leave home.

not that he isn’t enjoying himself in camelot now, of course - which he conveniently doesn’t mention in this conversation, because will is upset with him and merlin feels guilty that he’s been off enjoying his new life while will has been struggling at home alone - but at the point of departure, merlin didn’t want to go.

his answer to arthur about finding a place where he belonged is certain-point-of-view bunk. he didn’t just up and decide that he wanted to run off and find a place where he fit in better. he didn’t leave because he wanted to escape a place he didn’t belong. he didn’t set off in search of adventure and a new life. it’s true that he didn’t feel like he fit in in ealdor, but that’s not what sent him packing. he left because his mother found out that will knew about his magic, and she panicked and sent him away.

iii. why did you leave

most fannish things i’ve encountered tend to interpret merlin’s departure in a much more generous light than i do, with merlin explaining to will that he’s leaving and will being unhappy about it but eventually understanding and kind of like...giving his blessing before merlin goes. this is fine, of course, but it did surprise me, when i started dipping my toes into fandom, because i never interpreted events in this episode like that, and i don’t think it’s even a plausible read, not from the conversations we’re actually given. the antipathy that accompanies merlin’s return doesn’t make sense under those circumstances, and moreover, from the way things actually unfold in this episode, we’re told, in order, the following three things:

1) the fact that will asks “why did you leave” tells us that he and merlin did not discuss it prior to the point of departure. there’s no other reason for will to ask this question. everything about will’s tone and body language in this scene indicates that he’s been stewing over this for a long time, that he doesn’t understand, that this is something profoundly difficult for him to address. and while it might be nicer to think that merlin sat down and discussed things with will before leaving for camelot, that’s not the inference we’re being asked to make here.

2) there is absolutely no way they wouldn’t have discussed it, if will had known that merlin was going to leave. like - if your only friend in the world told you they were moving to another country tomorrow, there’s no way “why?” wouldn’t be the first question you asked. there’s no way you wouldn’t have that discussion, at the most basic level, before separating. it just wouldn’t happen.

3) so, given that information, the unfortunate, inescapable conclusion is this: will didn’t know merlin was going to leave. merlin left without telling him.

everyone is free to continue to headcanon this in their own ways, of course. but this is what we’re actually being told.

iv. we don’t want your kind round here

the fact that merlin vanishes without so much as a word to his best friend goes a long way towards explaining why merlin is so uncomfortable when he first sees will in the street.

when they first encounter each other, merlin looks so apprehensive and wary, and the writers are playing it like ‘uh-oh, someone saw him use magic and now he’s nervous about it!!!’ but two seconds later, you realize that this can’t possibly be what’s causing merlin’s concern, because it’s made immediately clear that will already knows about merlin’s magic and isn’t going to say anything about it.

merlin isn’t afraid of being outed, in this scene. but he might, however, be afraid of the reception he’s going to get, given what we just discussed.

merlin just up and disappeared from home, and not so much as a letter since - we know will’s had a secondhand update, probably from hunith (“how’ve you been?! i hear you’re skivvying for some prince”) but he very clearly hasn’t had any direct contact with merlin since before merlin left.

merlin knows this was a big fuck-up. he feels guilty.

(and to be clear - i think there is a lot to be said about just how merlin’s departure unfolded, and what stopped him from getting in touch. it’s a complicated enough topic for its own piece, and it’s not quite within the scope of this essay, but suffice it to say for now that i don’t believe it stemmed from deliberate thoughtlessness or callousness on merlin’s part; it’s...deeper and more complicated than that. honestly, i think merlin looks back on this as like...the first major mistake he ever made in his life, his...original sin, sort of. and i don’t think he’s ever forgiven himself for it, either, but again, that’s a story for another day.) the point here is that merlin didn’t necessarily want to cause harm, but he knew that’s what he was doing regardless - he knew that leaving without a word was the wrong thing to do. and in this moment he feels rightfully guilty about all of it, and he’s afraid that his friend won’t welcome him home.

merlin’s moment of uncertainty is real, when will pretends to greet him with hostility. merlin is afraid that will is angry with him for leaving him behind.

(and let’s not kid ourselves, will definitely is)

it’s a festering thing that keeps boiling to the surface as we progress through the episode. it shows in the way will finally asks why did you leave, avoiding merlin’s eyes, the question laden with vulnerability. it’s in the exchange “are you going to abandon them?”/“what, like you did?” there’s real pain there, and confusion, lots of hurt feelings.

but.

despite all of that, will doesn’t freeze merlin out, when merlin comes riding back into town. merlin is rightfully afraid that will might not want to see him, afraid that “we don’t want your kind round here” might be less of a joke than it ought to be. and while all of the troubles that merlin is worried about are absolutely real and poised to cause friction later, the truth is that at that exact moment, when merlin comes walking up the road - none of it matters. will has been nursing a collection of hurt feelings for months now, yeah, but in the immediate moment, when it comes down to it - he puts them aside.

they both do. nerves, guilty thoughts, bruised feelings - they temporarily abandon all of that in favor of a momentary joy. you can see how excited they are when they reunite. how they start smiling at the same time. how they laugh their way into that hug. they’re so happy to see each other.

people get pretty worked up about ***That Time Arthur Finally Hugged Merlin!!!***, but i don’t know. i think it matters to remember that merlin had people who knew how to hold him long before arthur was even a flicker of a shadow in merlin’s mind.

v. why are you being like this

so they reunite!

and then they fight. D:

but what really matters is how they fight, because even when they’re having an argument, they never let things escalate quite to the level of interpersonal nastiness, certainly never to the level of cruelty for cruelty’s sake - just a few hard truths and a pile of hurt feelings:

“i trust arthur with my life.”

“is that so? so he knows your secret, then?”

...

“face it, merlin, you’re living a lie, just like you were here. you’re arthur’s servant, nothing more. otherwise you’d tell him the truth.”

the delivery in this scene is essential for understanding how these two interact with each other. it’s so telling. merlin and will are having an argument, and will is angry about everything we’ve already discussed, and on top of that, some prince is trying to round up a bunch of will’s neighbors for a fight that’s going to get a lot of people killed, and will sounds so sharp when he’s talking, up to and including the challenging “is that so?”

but then when he sees that he’s touched a nerve there and merlin knows he’s right, his voice drops those edges and goes gentler, regretful, like - he and merlin aren’t all hunky-dory right now, but he’s not out to rub merlin’s face in it, either. he’s not trying to “get back” at merlin for leaving him. he’s not like...happy that merlin’s situation is shitty.

vi. if i broke it (would you quit?)

we mostly only see these two in a tense season. they’re arguing with each other for almost the entire episode, and yet even in this at-odds state, there are little things that remind us of what they’re usually like - that they don’t want to be arguing, that this isn’t a natural at-rest state for them, that this isn’t what they’re used to. they butt heads, but they keep swinging around back to each other, and trying again, and trying again, and trying again. they never write each other off. they keep trying to make it work.

examples: merlin asking “why are you being like this?,” the implication being that will isn’t usually like this, that this isn’t how they usually act around each other. the two of them together in the background of arthur’s pitiful training session, coming right off the tail-end of another argument and busying themselves with their own work, but still reflexively hanging in each other’s orbit. merlin, even in the middle of a strained conversation, helping clean up the mess that the bandits made of will’s house, without asking or being asked, like it’s just the automatic, reflexive, natural thing to do. merlin using will’s proper name when discussing him with other people, but always the diminutive when they’re talking to each other. merlin following will every time will walks away; will doing the same when merlin’s the one who’s leaving. that moment up in the hedgerow, with will’s embittered “you know why,” which sets them to arguing again, except instead of it pushing them apart, it pulls them closer together - will climbs right up into the hedge where merlin is standing so they can sit next to each other and talk.

like. he’s angry! but the instinct isn’t to storm away, it’s to get closer.

i love that so much. i love how they’re starting to have another argument and merlin stands there and says “why are you being like this,” to which will, already upset, responds “you know why,” BUT -

but

will stalks up into that hedge and plops himself down right next to merlin, and merlin, without a moment’s hesitation, sits down beside him.

i love that. they’re angry with each other, but their first instinct is still to close the distance.

i wonder, sometimes, how much of that is a function of them only having each other. when you’re on the outs with someone, usually you can lean on your other friends, but what can they do? it’s different when the person you usually seek out for comfort is the same person who’s pissing you off. you don’t have anyone else to run to, so you can’t ever really storm off. you have to learn how to hash things out. you have to learn how to make it work. you have to learn not to give up on each other.

vii. she was so angry

the implied backstory for how merlin actually ended up in camelot is so painfully fascinating and, quite frankly, wrenching to think about, given how this episode eventually ends.

when will asks merlin why he left, merlin tells him, “it wasn’t what i wanted. my mother was worried. when she found out you knew - she was so angry.” this is telling us that merlin’s departure for camelot was directly preceded by his mother discovering that will knew about merlin’s magic. that is what ultimately prompted her to send merlin off to camelot. of course there would have been other contributing factors - it’s evident that merlin’s situation in ealdor has always been precarious - but her immediate reason for sending him away was the fact that she found out that will knew about merlin’s magic, and she was angry and afraid to learn that merlin had been lying to her about something that put him at risk.

“i wouldn’t have told anyone.”

“i know you wouldn’t.”

but merlin’s mother didn’t believe that, or she wouldn’t listen to him when he tried to tell her, and she shipped him off to camelot anyway, despite the fact that camelot is arguably more dangerous for merlin than ealdor ever was.

the web of how this played out is such a tangled mess. is it my fault, thinks will, before the episode even starts, desperately trying to figure out why merlin would abandon him like that. it’s my fault, thinks merlin, at the end, knowing that if he had used his magic sooner, or come back alone, events would have unfolded differently. it’s my fault, thinks hunith, realizing that the particular fear upon which she based merlin’s entire departure was utterly unfounded.

merlin doesn’t blame her for it, even though he has reason enough to be angry about it, by the end of this episode. he understands that she was just trying to protect him. but the truth of the matter is that she did make a mistake. she was afraid for him, and she saw danger everywhere, and so she made a misjudgment.

it’s the miniest of mini-arcs, but it’s there. at the end of this episode, right after will drops the Big Damn Lie, merlin looks desperately around for the only other person in the room who understands, and the camera rests on hunith’s face for one lingering moment, as she realizes what’s happening. when she’s exiting the house, there’s a shot where she pauses for a minute on her way out the door, staring back at her son's dying friend, who just offered himself up as a willing sacrifice to keep merlin’s secret safe.

she and merlin are the only people in the room who understand the real import of that moment, the real meaning of that gesture. they’re the only ones who know what’s happening, what it really means for will to say “i did it.”

hunith knows she misjudged that kid big-time.

viii. you can be my ride or die

so. will.

why am i even interested in him? what is it about this character that makes me want to write about him?

number one: i love him because he’s the only person we ever meet who cares exclusively about merlin.

everyone else merlin has met up until this point is either a) as beholden to camelot and arthur as merlin is himself, or b) aware of merlin’s “destiny,” which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but does change the way people talk to him and treat him.

it’s not that merlin doesn’t have people who care about him, but those relationships are not the same as the one he has with will. merlin is obviously #1 in his mom’s life, of course - but, importantly, even hunith’s immediate reaction to merlin’s uncertainty at the end of 1.10 is to tell him that he has to go back to camelot, that arthur needs him, that he’s “the other side of a coin.” this despite the fact that hunith has known arthur for all of five minutes and that merlin, in the moment where she talks to him, is in a lot of pain, and maybe it isn’t the most appropriate moment say, ‘hey, you absolutely must devote yourself to that guy i literally just watched lecture you about the evils of magic while attending your (supposedly magical) dead best friend’s funeral.’

and when it comes to merlin’s camelot network, well - he’s #1 in gaius’s life, too, but gaius also is deeply concerned with the greater good, with the future emergence of albion, with what merlin is meant to become and do. morgana and arthur - well, they don’t know merlin, first of all (really know him, all of him, the important bits) - they definitely like him well enough, and care about him in their way, but ultimately they’re royalty or pseudo-royalty and they have priorities that go beyond merlin, who, at the end of the day, is still a servant. gwen comes the closest to being on merlin’s level, but she doesn’t know him-know him either, and as time goes on she gets more involved with the Crown, with arthur, and with the responsibilities all of that brings. even merlin’s later friends all go on to have other missions - they absolutely all love him, but they all become knights, and they are as concerned about the well-being of the realm and the king as merlin is. even merlin HIMSELF puts arthur’s life ahead of his own - he defines his worth by how well he can protect his prince.

but will is the only person we ever meet who just cares about merlin - merlin the regular person, not the servant he pretends to be, or the legend he’s supposed to become. not the fake, non-magical merlin facade (which is what almost everyone else needs merlin to be before they can condescend to be his friend) and not some destiny-laden figure out of prophecy, either. will doesn’t know anything about destiny or prophecies. he’s never needed to know about any of that stuff to care. he’s always liked merlin. just merlin. just as he is.

that matters. all merlin ever does in this show is deny himself or be denied of the things every regular human being needs to thrive - love, acceptance, truth, safety. he constantly puts or is forced to put other priorities ahead of his own interests, to a point where now, by season five, he’s spent years defending a regime that oppresses him, protecting kings who would execute him.

will, in a display of true-to-character contrariness, upsets that entire narrative, because he does not care one whit about any of the things for which merlin is supposed to sacrifice his life. will gives less than zero (count them: negative zero) fucks about arthur pendragon, and he doesn’t care about camelot, and he wouldn’t know what “albion” meant if he heard the word. and it is refreshing - a blessed, beautiful, heartbreaking relief - to see one person in the world who only cares about merlin, for whom arthur pendragon, in comparison with merlin, isn’t the slightest bit important. arthur isn’t even on the map. he’s a non-entity. he doesn’t exist.

it’s a complete inversion of the way things are supposed to go, in this story. you know how it goes - arthur is the once and future king, and merlin’s job is to usher in his reign. "maybe that is its purpose,” gaius says, about merlin’s magic being meant to protect arthur, about merlin being born this way for that particular reason. it’s merlin’s job to save arthur’s life. it’s merlin’s job to teach arthur to be a better person, at his own expense. it’s all for arthur. i give my life for arthur’s. his life is worth a hundred of mine. what is the life of a servant compared with that of a prince?

will delivers the biggest fuck-you to that entire framework, because he doesn’t assess merlin’s worth based on what merlin can do for some random prince on the other side of the border. merlin’s magic wasn’t purposed for anything, as far as will is concerned. it doesn’t need to justify itself. it just is. it’s just who merlin is.

and who merlin is has always been just fine.

ix. am i the only one wondering who the hell this is

for will, it’s people like arthur who need to justify themselves. arthur with all of his power, arthur riding into little villages with his sword drawn, arthur and his bossing around and his “now, merlin!” conversation-interrupting. will makes no allowances for wealth and couldn’t be less interested in royalty - his frame of reference isn’t you’re the once and future king and merlin exists to prop you up; it’s who the hell are you? what gives you the right to be here? what did you do to earn what you have?

will, like gwaine after him, is acutely aware of the injustice of the reigning social system, and he’s not afraid to throw it in arthur’s face. he knows that people like himself and merlin and all of their neighbors are unjustly disadvantaged from birth until death, and he knows they’re disadvantaged solely because the people at the top of the social chain are greedy lords who sow no seed but reap all the grain, who do no work but enjoy the greatest rewards, who steal from the people with impunity and call it divine entitlement. will knows that he and merlin and all of their neighbors are considered no better than plow-beasts or war-fodder, and he knows that there is absolutely nothing they can do to stop the nobility from either taxing them into starvation or sending them off to die in a ditch - which makes him impossibly angry, and, unlike everybody else in his village, he’s not shy about saying so.

will is, at this point, literally the first non-villain to look at arthur and not immediately see some messianic pinnacle of human greatness - which is refreshing, to be honest, and fair enough besides! he’s evaluating arthur from merlin’s side of things, after all, which nobody - including merlin - ever does, and while i love arthur as much as anybody - for the people’s hero that he could be, and for what he is, sometimes, if not frequently enough - the truth is that he’s not good for all of his people, not yet, and he’s not good for merlin, not the way things stand right now.

will knows that. he looks at arthur and sees a guy with a lot of power, who also happens to rule over the the least magic-friendly place in the five kingdoms, to whom merlin needs to lie in order to avoid the executioner’s block, and he sees merlin deluding himself into thinking that this supremely unequal, extremely unsafe situation counts as friendship.

now, is will’s assessment of the situation a snap judgment based on personal encounters with an unjust social system and very limited knowledge of arthur as a person? yes, definitely. are there nuances to merlin and arthur’s relationship that he’s missing? absolutely.

is he wrong?

not really. and merlin knows it.

x. friends don’t lord it over one another!

i think about that line every damn episode.

over and over again, it comes back to me. i hear it every time arthur gets On His Shit and invokes power he pretends not to have, every time i see more evidence of how this supposed “friendship” between him and merlin is inherently imbalanced. it’s my favorite thing will says in all of 1.10, because it is so true and yet, most of the time, so unacknowledged as a dynamic.

we’re meant to love arthur and merlin together, and we do - i do; i do; when i see those moments that approach true mutual respect and care between them i am as swept up by the potential beauty of this friendship as anyone - but i still think about this line all the time. it’s not right, the power dynamic between the two of them. it’s not just about servants vs. royalty, though of course that’s a structural part of how it plays out. it’s about the fact that, in a real friendship, one person can’t just whip out “you ever say anything like that again, and i swear you’ll join her in exile forever” to shut down a conversation and cow you into silence. one person can’t just throw you in jail to spend a night “cooling off,” and they definitely can’t arrest you whenever someone levels a random accusation at you. in a real friendship, it’s not one person who has all the power.

but when it comes to arthur and merlin, that’s exactly what happens. arthur gets to decide when he and merlin are and aren’t friends. arthur gets to call merlin in or send him away. arthur gets to make all the decisions about when to listen, when to ignore, when to trust, when to believe. merlin can nudge, encourage, suggest, even defy, but ultimately, when you get right down to it, arthur is the king, and merlin is his servant, a dynamic which is compounded by the deadly particulars of merlin’s situation. the relationship isn’t unequal solely because of a difference in social class, it’s unequal because arthur literally has the power of life and death over merlin. arthur could (and would, as far as merlin knows) have merlin executed any day of the week, if he found out who merlin really was.

that’s why when merlin tries to tell will that arthur is his friend, will snaps, “friends don’t lord it over one another!” it’s not that you can’t care about someone who has more power than you, and it’s not that you can’t have some kind of relationship with them, but it is not real friendship if you think your “friend” will kill you when they find out who you really are. it is not a real friendship if you have to pretend to be someone you’re not in order to preserve the relationship. real friends don’t leverage impossible amounts of power to shut you up when you say something they don’t want to hear. real friends don’t say things like “you’ll be a friend for life if you do [x thing]” to convince you to lie to their dad while they go out with a girl and thus get you clapped in the stocks three times in a row, and then turn around and show their appreciation by letting people raid and ransack your house multiple times, throwing you in jail at least twice, accusing (and once nearly executing!) your loyal long-serving mentor more than once - among innumerable other issues. real friends aren’t “you’re my friend when i need you to be, but not when it’s inconvenient.” they don’t have the kind of power to turn things on and off whenever they want.

i love that will is the only person who ever acknowledges this, across five seasons of this show. i love that he spits it out immediately, without hesitation, the minute merlin tries to makes things sound better than they are. i love that he says it unapologetically, to merlin’s face, because he says it for merlin’s sake, after all - the point of saying ‘friends don’t lord it over one another’ is to say ‘that guy doesn’t appreciate you the way you appreciate him/this isn’t reciprocal and he’s taking advantage of you/this isn’t the friendship you want it to be and i don’t like seeing you settle for this.’ will is that friend who watches you interact with someone and then later gets in your business like ‘EXCUSE ME! I DO NOT LIKE HOW HE TALKS TO YOU! I DON’T LIKE HOW HE TREATS YOU!'

will knows that merlin deserves better than arthur pendragon, even when merlin himself won’t concede that point. merlin won’t advocate for himself, so will tries to do it for him. merlin can try to convince himself that arthur is a real friend all he wants, but will knows what’s up. he knows. he knows where this is going, if merlin’s relationship with arthur is allowed to continue on exactly as-is. will knows, from the very beginning, that this is a recipe for disaster.

[addendum 2020: speaking from a post season-5 perspective...will understood where merlin and arthur were headed long before even we the audience did.]

xi. friends don’t lord it over one another [reprise]

you know what real friends do do for each other, though?

a) listen - even when they don’t like what the other person is saying

b) care - even when they’re angry

that’s it. that’s what matters.

we don’t need more than an hour of watching will and merlin onscreen together to see that this is how they interact with each other. they’re arguing for most of this episode, and they’re both right, in different ways, but by the time they’ve had it out with one another, they both understand where their own arguments were wrong, too. they listen to each other despite the fact that they’re angry, and despite the fact that they both have very strong feelings about their respective positions. they care enough about each other to look past their personal injuries and accept where the other person is coming from.

merlin starts off this episode absolutely dead-set against using his magic to help ealdor, if there’s any chance arthur could find out about it. but later, before he and will have even officially reconciled onscreen, we can already see that he’s been listening to what will’s been saying, that he’s come around to will’s way of thinking, because he tells his mother “if it comes down to a choice between revealing who i truly am and saving lives - that’s no choice at all,” hearkening back to will’s “are you telling me you’d rather keep your magic a secret for arthur’s sake than use it to protect your friends and family?” and: “if arthur doesn’t accept me for who i am...well...then he’s not the friend i hoped he was” (you’re arthur’s servant, nothing more. otherwise you’d tell him the truth.)

merlin has been listening the whole time, even if he didn’t like what will was saying.

and the same goes for will, too. he’s (understandably!) bitter about merlin’s situation, about the way merlin left, about the new life merlin built for himself while will was suffering in a confused limbo of abandonment at home - and will also obviously thinks the Farmers’ Resistance is a total disaster, a noble-spun farce that’s going to get good people killed - but even though he doesn’t trust the camelot contingent and couldn’t give fewer shits about prince arthur pendragon specifically, he trusts merlin. he listens to merlin, even though they’ve been fighting. he comes back because merlin keeps telling him it’s the right thing to do.

they both listen, even when it seems like they’re just arguing with each other. and they both acknowledge where the other person was right, even when it means making themselves vulnerable. will comes back to help his neighbors fight a battle against hopeless odds. merlin exposes his magic to save people’s lives.

they teach each other how to do the right thing. they make each other brave.

xii. you just saved my life

let’s talk about being brave, then.

this kid jumps in front of a crossbow for a guy he doesn’t even like.

can we be clear about that? will doesn’t even LIKE arthur. he doesn’t particularly care about him. he doesn’t accept him as the noble savior of all mankind. he isn’t interested in defending the nobility, and he certainly hasn’t jumped on the camelot bandwagon. just because he’s seen that arthur wasn’t planning on sending them all to their deaths without risking his own neck doesn’t mean will is suddenly going to start flying the pendragon crest from atop his house.

but he isn’t going to step back and let a coward shoot another man in the back, either.

arthur’s still a prince, yeah. arthur’s still sitting at the tip-top of an unjust social system, benefitting from all kinds of privileges he didn’t earn. arthur’s still a crappy friend to merlin. heck, two seconds before that crossbow gets fired, arthur’s gone full-on inquisition-mode, interrogating merlin about sorcery, which, given that arthur can just go ahead and have merlin executed with a snap of his fingers, isn’t a great way to earn will’s respect or trust.

but you know what? when it comes down to it, will’s automatic, reflexive reaction upon seeing someone in immediate danger is to Get In The Way.

it doesn’t matter that will doesn’t like arthur. it doesn’t even matter that he actively dislikes arthur. will doesn’t even think about it, he just moves. instinctively. automatically. he isn’t going to let anyone standing right in front of him get murdered with their back turned, no matter how much he can’t stand them.

let’s all take a second to remember and acknowledge something in arthur’s stead, since i’m not sure arthur will do it himself - arthur pendragon would have been dead right there if it weren’t for a dirt-poor peasant farmer from cenred’s kingdom who never had anything nice to say to a prince but still stepped between a pendragon and a crossbow in the name of doing the right thing. without will, the story would have ended in season 1, episode 10. albion itself owes its future existence to a young man with no surname who will never be acknowledged or recognized for anything he did, not for teaching the future king a lesson in humility, not for saving the prince’s life, and certainly not for the greatest and most noble move he ever made, because that gesture’s success is predicated upon its remaining a secret.

this kid saves the entire World That Will Be. the show would have ended before it ever really began, if not for our man prince william of ealdor.

merlin knows that, and merlin never forgets it. but i’m not so sure about everyone else.

xiii. yeah, don’t know what i was thinking

let’s talk about defiance.

this kid is dying, and he’s still full of piss and vinegar. when arthur says, wide-eyed, “you’re a sorcerer,” will responds, “yeah. what are you going to do, kill me?”

what a power move. what a thing to say.

that’s not a question. that is a no-fucks-given, shame-and-blame challenge.

what are you going to do, kill me?

merlin uses those exact same words during his confrontation with morgana in 3.02. when he’s trapped - when he’s cornered and betrayed and angry - he reaches for the kind of defiance he once saw exercised on his own behalf, for a shameless bravery that burned itself into his brain. for the kind of strength he wants to channel himself.

when it comes to holding your ground in front of the pendragon dynasty, merlin learned from the best.

xiv. and i’m prince william, of ealdor

let’s talk about names.

william: from wil (will or determination) and helm (protection, a helm)

hence the common translation of resolute protector.

which, given the events of 1.10, seems very fitting.

xv. i did it

let’s talk about lies.

because resolute protector rings even more powerfully true when it comes to merlin than it does for arthur.

at the time of this writing, i have four more episodes to watch before i’m done with season 5. at this point, at the end of the show, merlin’s magic is still a secret. merlin’s gotten involved in a lot of dangerous situations, risking his life in other ways, but the one danger he’s never had to really confront is the executioner’s block, because none of the pendragons know his secret.

and the reason none of the pendragons know his secret is thanks to our boy prince william of ealdor, who turns his own untimely death into a last-second rescue operation by telling the Biggest Damn Lie of his life and then doubling down on it when merlin tries to tell him no.

will is the one who secures merlin’s next five years of relative safety. not from all of life’s dangers, of course; no one can do that - but when it comes to merlin’s greatest fear, the worst outcome, the prospect of being dragged out of his home in chains and murdered in front of an ogling crowd for just existing - will buys merlin’s escape from that fate with his life. merlin remains hidden and unexposed to this very day because will died protecting his secret, because will lied to the prince of magic-hunting and invited upon himself all of the risk and scorn and danger and condemnation that a false confession like that entailed.

i honestly don’t know how to express clearly enough the enormity of that moment. the momentousness of that gesture. i called it a bold and tremendous lie in some other post somewhere, and i don’t know how else to capture what it was. the thought of what it would mean, to be merlin, and to see someone throw themselves on the block for your sake, for your safety and your future and your freedom, when the rest of the world and every message you’ve ever absorbed says you don’t deserve to be safe, you don’t deserve to be free, you don’t deserve to exist.

it is impossible to overstate how much that matters. merlin carries that with him for the rest of his life.

xvi: i can’t fight you anymore (it’s you i’m fighting for)

let’s talk about love, okay?

this ep is called the moment of truth, right?

so here are some truths about will. in the time that we spend with him, we come to understand that he is the following:

a poor peasant kid with nothing to his name

a kid whose father is dead

a kid whose mother is either dead or absent

a kid who “people are used to ignoring”

a kid who’s been making his own way through this backbreaking subsistence-farmer’s life with no grown-ups to hold him or help him or listen to him when he comes home at night

a kid who isn’t trusted to protect merlin’s secret, even by merlin’s own mother, whom will has known for his entire life

a kid whose only friend in the world fucked off to the country next door without a hint of warning or any indication that it was something that should matter to either one of them, making will think he misread the only meaningful relationship he’s ever had, because if merlin can just vanish to nowhere and not even bother to send a note, then either merlin wasn’t actually his friend to begin with or merlin was his friend at one time but doesn’t want to be anymore, both of which options are soul-crushing

a closed-off, heavily-armored, hurting kid who’s been unspeakably lonely for the past few months but also angry and ashamed at himself for feeling that way, because how stupid did he have to be, to think that he mattered to someone, that someone would ever want him or love him or need him or miss him, to think that this time would be different, that this time somebody wouldn’t leave him -

and even in this state - even in the midst of all this -

at the moment of truth, he still puts himself on the chopping block. he still says, “you’ll have to go through me.”

he comes through for merlin. of course he does. the irony is bitter and beautiful - hunith sent merlin away precisely because she didn’t trust that merlin would be safe with will knowing about his magic, but in the end it’s will who gives up everything to keep merlin’s secret concealed.

not just to keep it concealed, even - to reverse merlin being outed. merlin had already been exposed. the deed was done! the magic was seen! it was all over - and then, miraculously, it wasn’t. what will did was the only way merlin could ever have slipped safely back under the cover of secrecy.

will didn’t have to do that. he didn’t have to lie about performing magic, and he didn’t have to save arthur, either. it would have been better for will to let arthur die, in fact, and it would have been better for him to let merlin get caught, too, because ‘maybe then merlin would have to stay here with me’ - but will is so much better than petty revenge. he’s so much better than anybody ever gives him credit for, merlin excepted.

the fight will has with merlin doesn’t matter to him, in the end. it was a complicated situation for both of them; will knows this. if he weren’t dying now, he and merlin would have talked it out and made up - will knows that, too. things could have gone a little smoother between them, maybe, and will still thinks going back to camelot is less than what merlin deserves, but it’s what merlin wants, and the mark of truly loving someone is when you want the best for them, even if it means you don’t get what you want for yourself. so ultimately, when it comes down to it, the truth for will is this: he wants merlin to have a good life. he wants merlin to be safe. he wants merlin to be happy. he wants merlin to be with him, too, but if he can’t have that, it’s no reason to withhold any of the other gifts he can bestow. if one of those gifts is freedom, if one of those gifts is safety - it’s no choice at all.

merlin is will’s one good thing. merlin deserves everything will can give him, as far as will is concerned.

xvii. the only place worth being

this place has been boring without you.

what a thing to tell someone.

what a powerful thing to say to someone whose entire life up to this point has been a litany of ‘there’s something wrong with you,’ ‘you don’t belong here,’ ‘you’re cursed/broken/wrong/unnatural.’ what a dauntlessly loving thing to tell someone whose entire life has been the message ‘people like you deserve to die,’ over and over and over again.

what a singularly beautiful thing it is, for someone like merlin to hear ‘you are what makes this place worth living in.’

xviii: the only one worth seeing

likewise it’s good to see you again.

because it’s not just “it’s good to see you again;” it’s an acknowledgement that merlin is the last person will is ever going to see.

and will is like, okay.

he’d rather be alive, yeah, but if he had choose - it’s good that it’s you.

xix: the only bed worth sleeping in (is the one right next to you)

the most devastating moment in this sequence, for me, is at the very end, when will confesses fear.

it doesn’t happen until everything else has been taken care of. arthur’s been fooled, merlin’s been safely shuffled back under the cover of secrecy, everybody’s been taken in by the ruse and sent away, none the wiser - all the necessary and important business has been dealt with.

only at the very, very end does will’s own predicament rear its ugly head. only after everything else is done does he even allow himself to feel it. he’s spent the rest of this sequence making jokes and roasting arthur and keeping it all together, but at the last second, when he falters, he comes undone for the only person he trusts, the only person who understands him, the only person in the world who gives a damn about him. his defenses come down, in that last moment, for merlin - and it could ONLY be for merlin - when will says, “merlin, i’m scared.”

we don’t need anything else, to understand their relationship. we’ve seen enough of will by now to recognize that he keeps the world at arm’s length, that even his walls have walls, that this is just not the sort of thing he would ever admit to. confessions of pain? acknowledging vulnerability? never. he’s not that kind of character. we know he has a big heart - look at what he’s doing - but we also know he’s had a hard life. he’s wrapped himself in layers upon layers of protection - snark and anger and deflection and sarcasm and still making jokes at the prince’s expense after being shot in the chest - nobody is allowed to see him open and undefended, never.

except merlin.

will is dying. he is so young. he has been so alone, for so much of his life, and he’s so young, and he’s dying. he clutches for this lifeline like it’s the only thing he has, because it is the only thing he has - merlin is his only friend. merlin is the person will loves best in the whole world.

merlin, i’m scared.

that is so unbelievably vulnerable. that is so utterly naked. that is totally defenseless, exposed, belly-up and barethroated under someone else’s burning gaze.

that is absolute trust. will would never have said that in front of anyone else. he would never have allowed anyone else to see him like that.

his confession is, like pretty much everything else he ever does, for merlin alone.

xx. your heart is on my sleeve

merlin, will keeps repeating. merlin.

how much do you have to love someone, to make their name your last words? how much do you have to care about someone, for that to be the only thing you can think to say, again and again, in your last terrified moments on this earth?

that’s a rhetorical question.

i know how much.

xxi: i missed you too

i think, sometimes, about will, when i watch the later seasons of merlin, and about how he would feel if he could see what merlin’s life has turned into.

i sometimes wonder how he would feel, if he could see how merlin allows himself to be passed over, disbelieved, disrespected. if he could see how merlin has started to define his worth in terms of how well he is able to protect Some Dude who doesn’t even know who merlin is, who keeps people like merlin trapped in the shadows of subjugation, hidden citizens in their own kingdom. if will could see how merlin has laid his entire life down for other people’s enrichment, if he could see how little hope merlin now holds for his own happiness, if he could see the way merlin in S5 has given up on his own liberation -

i don’t have to guess what will would say about it. i know how he would feel. if will could see merlin in season 5, his raging little heart would break.

i wish he were here to tell merlin exactly what he thought about it. merlin does all this self-sacrificing for the sake of his “destiny”; whereas will would think that any destiny making merlin this miserable was a steaming pile of trash. will would tell kilgharrah to get lost, and to take his questionable advice with him. will would tell arthur to fuck off - he’s done it already, in slightly less explicit terms.

does that mean i truly think merlin is supposed to abandon his mission and ditch camelot and run off to live his own life? no. merlin cares too much about making the world a better place to be truly happy with that kind of existence; he wants to change things for the common good; he wants to help the people he cares about. but merlin, as he tries to fulfill his mission, is desperately missing will’s kind of support in his life. merlin needs someone who is only here for him. he needs someone who is going to get up in his face and remind him, “you matter.” he needs someone to tell him, “you deserve better than this.” he needs someone who isn’t afraid to tell destiny to fuck off, when telling destiny to fuck off is in merlin’s best interests.

merlin needs someone who is on his side.

not camelot’s side. not albion’s side. not arthur’s side.

HIS side. merlin’s side.

xxii: he still is

the thing about will, then, for me, is this: i can’t minimize him.

i can’t do it. i can’t diminish that part of merlin’s life.

i don’t think it’s possible to overestimate his importance, frankly. merlin, when we meet him, has only ever had two people in his life. that is such an...unfathomable experience, for many of us. just two people. just two people to know you. just two people to love you. just two people, for your whole life.

will wasn’t just some friend. will was half of merlin’s world.

fannish pursuits that i have seen...the things where will appears are already so limited, and of course that’s completely understandable - it’s not like he’s a main character, or even a side character, by any means; i totally get that. but - so much of what i see is him serving solely as a set-up for merlin/arthur, or otherwise being shoved out of the way as soon as arthur shows up on the scene, or showing up only to be a receptacle for discussion about arthur and merlin’s developing relationship - even will and merlin’s own ship tag is 90% merlin/arthur fics.

and there’s nothing wrong with this, ultimately; everybody should continue to write exactly what they want and enjoy exactly what they want; that’s the fun of fandom. i mention these things here only because for me, personally, the whole point of will’s character is that merlin’s life is bigger than just arthur. the most important relationship merlin had for most of his life had zip-zero-nothing to do with arthur pendragon, and it still has zip-zero-nothing to do with arthur pendragon, after will is dead.

you remember will’s funeral at the end of 1.10? arthur has an entire conversation (a horrible one, fyi) with merlin, and merlin doesn’t look at him once. he answers arthur’s questions because he has to, but his eyes never once leave the pyre in front of him - not while he’s listening, not while he’s talking, not once. not ever. arthur comes, arthur chastises, and arthur goes, all without being granted so much as a glance, because this isn’t about him. this is none of his business.

the whole point of will is that it is possible for someone to love merlin and not give a tinker’s cuss about arthur pendragon. the whole point of will is that having someone love merlin without caring about arthur pendragon is, in fact, a good thing. merlin needs somebody like that in his life. he struggles when he doesn’t have someone like this around to advocate for him. just look at where he is in season 5 - look at what his life has become, when it’s been years since he had an in-the-know friend.

merlin suffers when he loses this kind of support. it’s easy to say that will is never mentioned again after 1.10, but there are real reasons why merlin wouldn’t be willing to explicitly mention him, and the lack of explicit references doesn’t mean we can’t still see him, if we pay attention. we see the immediate impact of his death in merlin’s attitude shift in 1.11. we see him in 2.02, when merlin names his fake tournament knight sir william and spends the rest of the episode roasting arthur to within an inch of his life. we see him in the season 3 opener, when morgana levels her sword at merlin and the first thing that pops out of merlin’s mouth is “what are you going to do, kill me?” we see him in gwaine’s intro episode, when merlin immediately cleaves to this class-conscious ‘people get sick of me too quickly’ stranger whose father was killed fighting one of the king’s wars. and his absence is felt, more generally (as is lancelot’s) in how quickly merlin’s life starts to spiral out of control once the only two honest friends he ever had are gone. their loss doesn’t have to be explicitly referenced for us to understand that merlin, without that kind of support system, is faltering. we see it happening with our own eyes.

[edit, post-viewing-of-S5-finale: and we see where it eventually leads, too.]

so, once again, as i said - i can’t minimize this character. i can’t overstate the positive impact of merlin having somebody who was here for him and only him, who affirmed merlin’s value independently of arthur pendragon’s fate, who knew and loved merlin without caring about a “destiny” that ultimately, in the end, turned out to be a cruel joke made at merlin’s expense.

if will had lived, i’m not sure we would have ended up in quite so dark a place. we might have landed in some other tight spot, sure, but i can tell you one thing for certain - will would not have sat quietly by and allowed merlin to throw his life away, not for camelot, not for arthur, and certainly not for a parade of empty promises.

xxiii: where you are, there i’ll be

the bottom line is this.

merlin spent the first two decades of his life with one friend.

one.

loved by one friend.

one.

merlin had his mother, who was there for him from the beginning, whose love was unconditional, who was an “of course.”

and he had will, who chose merlin, who kept choosing merlin even after merlin told him the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Secret. will’s presence in merlin’s life is the only reason merlin grows up believing himself to be deserving of love from people who aren’t his own mother. his presence in merlin’s life is the only reason merlin knows how to have and be a friend. his presence in merlin’s life is the only reason merlin is who he is - a merlin who’d spent his entire life without a single friend would not have been the same confident, optimistic, gregarious person who later walked into camelot and told arthur pendragon, “i’d never have a friend who could be such an ass.”

will mattered. we don’t talk about him much, because he only appeared in one episode, but it wasn’t “one episode” for merlin; it was closer to twenty years of companionship, of elbows in ribcages and smirks exchanged across the room and someone to natter on at, a person to sit next to and walk beside, in every season and all sorts of weather.

will chose merlin, and he kept right on choosing him, until he breathed his very last breath. that is enough for me to love him, to feel grateful that he existed. i don’t care how rough he is around the edges. i don’t care that he hates arthur pendragon’s guts, that he has a big mouth, that he speaks out of turn, that he has no tact, that he can’t suffer fools, that he has a chip on his shoulder the size of a minor planetoid and wings it at people’s heads when the mood is on him.

he loved merlin. actual, magical merlin; merlin as he truly is, merlin in all his gifted, unnatural, beautiful imperfection.

that is a desperately rare thing. that is worth celebrating.

#the once and future slowburn #no kings no masters #meta #<3

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flying-elliska · 4 years

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S5 Review pt 2 : the Bad

So in my last meta I listed a lot of reasons to like this season...but then why did it not (at least to me) all add up together ? Looking back, I can think of so many clips that I thought were incredible. But looking back at the season in general, I just feel a big ‘meh’ and it’s sort of puzzling - why exactly ? Here is where I thought the season could have been a lot better :

I loathe love triangles : I hate the trope in itself. Is S5 the worst example of it ever ? No, it served somewhat of a thematic purpose and the resolution was interesting. But I can’t help it, when I feel a love triangle coming on, I generally disconnect emotionally because I have been annoyed to hell and back by it before - one big offender being Skam France s4, in which the love triangle/quadrangle marked the beginning of the season going down in flames, with it overshadowing everything else and making the characters behave in completely obnoxious and puzzling ways. S5 isn’t quite as bad, it feels more respectful of the characters, but I find it weird that the writers chose a love triangle again on the heels of the reception of s4.

The problem with this trope is not ‘oh we don’t want drama ever’ it’s just so bloody annoying, so trite and overused. It rests on centuries of sexist tropes : either a wishy washy girl in the middle who doesn’t know what’s good for her/her own heart ; or two girls competing for a man’s attentions. It often ends in the fandom villifying the women involved no matter the shape of the triangle, comparing them against each other, which definitely happened this time (Twitter was just so annoying this season), and this whole ‘team x’ thing gives me hives, as the assumption that this is what young women viewers care most about.

Also it generally involves the characters showing that they have very little self respect, letting themselves be walked over, bad communication, implications about what the ‘better woman/man’ should be like, cheating, etc...it’s very rarely fun or interesting to watch because we’ve seen it a thousand times before in teenage soap operas. Again, the s5 ending avoided the total trainwreck but this is a show you watch in real time, and for weeks I was afraid it was going to be absolutely terrible, and it ruined a big part of my experience of the season. When they introduced Noée I started being scared, and when it became clear Arthur was developing feelings for her, I basically noped out emotionally. I started following it in a much more detached manner, I wasn’t looking forward to the clips anymore, I stopped writing meta so much. And it sucks. I wanted to love the season. But this was just not a ride I really wanted to be on.

Alexia (and Noee) deserved better : I love Alexia and developing her character is one of the best things Skam France ever did. In OG, the character of Chris, if interesting, is just continually reduced to the ‘funny fat friend’ persona and it really sucks. So giving Alexia a real personality, making her bisexual, giving her more of a role in s3, making her a dancer and a singer was really cool. I’m bi myself and I spent most of my high school struggling with my weight and if I’d had a character like her, who radiates self-acceptance, it would have meant so much to me. I was really stoked for her to have more of a role in s5 - only to spend most of the season feeling really sad for her. It was just...not fun. I so wish she could have had her own season and her own story that didn’t revolve around a dude she was so supportive of and still ended up treating her like shit.

Also, real talk : when is a curvy girl actually a love interest without it being shown as funny or not good enough ? Especially of the main character ? Almost never. Coline might have lost some weight, but she’s still written as a curvy girl this season and it’s an important part of the character. So for her to have this particular role this season - the girl that isn’t romanticized, that doesn’t get to have the cute and thrilling moments, that is just sort of there and patient and understanding as if she couldn’t get anything better, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Sure the end of the season did her more justice but god it took so long and in the meantime, it just felt...very ill considered and careless.

In the same way, I wanted to love Noée, I thought she was amazing, but because of her role in the plot I just felt this instinctive defiance towards her character. It would have been so cool to have her in a friend role, or even a love interest outside of the triangle or I don’t know like...have someone else fall in love with her. Also, I just did not understand why she loved Arthur ? Like she just met the dude a few times, and he’s mostly been a total asshole to her, who makes very little efforts to communicate with her...I get she could get attracted to him but love ??? The moment where she tells him ‘I love you’ felt demeaning to her, like the moment in OG where Noora falls after running after William. It’s like, Arthur has just been an enormous asshole to her, and she pushes herself to do something she’s never been comfortable with in the first place ? Why ? This show romanticizes teenage boys being assholes and girls being desperate way too much.

The Skam dilemma, love vs politics and “Let’s all just be nice.” : There is a reoccuring problem accross all Skams, starting with the OG : they bring up very political topics, usually in the beginning of the season, and then they...don’t really do anything with them. In the OG, Noora’s feminism is really just window-dressing and we see her bend over backwards to accomodate this super toxic asshole into her life. And we see Sana’s struggles as a Muslim in Norwegian society, but then love drama takes over, and it’s waved away with an insulting ‘everyone should just communicate more’ ending. Skamfr s4 made it even worse, by making the girl squad a lot more overtly racist, never having them make a big gesture for Imane, putting her in a position to apologize, and never showing that the girl squad had an idea of where they messed up or real growth. It was insanely frustrating, especially since the beginning of the season was so good at showing all the little micro-agressions. In the end it felt like all the racism was just there to motivate Imane’s breakdown for plot reasons and not to actually say something. S5 never stoops quite that low, but there was a bit of a similar dynamic at hand here. Instead of the boys actually have a real conversation after their fight, most of the denouement of the show was consecrated to talking about the love drama. It was, again, as if the focus of the show was on the wrong things, and it robs you of the catharsis you’re expecting. As if they used the love drama for a metaphor for the actual issues, have it do all the emotional heavy lifting, and in so doing bypass having to adress the actual problem. There is this weird ideas that the audience of the show - teenagers and young women, mostly, in the end care the most about the love stuff and that everything else has to take a backseat and...this feels neither a good message to send, nor realistic to me. I like it when shows about teenagers decenter love and show the real complexity of their characters’ lives without making them paragons of virtue or wokeness - Derry Girls is a brilliant example of that. Skam, and Skam France in particular, feel a bit immature still compared to those, punching below their weight for shows that pride themselves on their social impact.

Hit with the idiot stick : Speaking of underwhelming resolutions - yes, the boy squad messing up with Arthur, I found relevant and realistic. But...did they really even adress it ? I was really hoping for the boys to have more of a conversation, for Arthur to open up to them about what he went through, about his father, to tell them that they should have asked him/listened to him more, etc...and I know ‘teenage boys’ or whatever but ...aren’t they trying to change those stereotypes too ? Like when Arthur went to see Basile, they must have had a conversation, why the fuck did we not see it ? That’s the emotional bond I cared most about ! And we just had a hug ...underwhelming tbh. Same Arthur talking with Lucas but then it was just about their love lives ? Or when they came to the hospital, again, it was just about the love drama ? God it really sucked out the oxygen out of the season. The resolutions of those things just being hugs or speeches or handholding at the end felt hollow, and a lot less powerful than they could have been. And again, there has to be a tolerance for messiness, but I found the boys so incredibly dumb at several points in the season. Especially them being like ‘oh cheating isn’t so bad’ after they found out that Arthur’s dad was cheating on his wife ? Like why the fuck did they take Patrick’s side ? What kind of lack of empathy ? It would feel a lot more coherent for teenage boys to be furious at the destruction of a friend’s family, not talk like cynical 50 yr olds who just divorced for the fifth time. It felt so unrealistic and stupid and just meant for Arthur to finally clue in to the idea that cheating and lying is bad maybe, himself first without external clues from characters that really should have known better by now. Especially Yann and Lucas advising Arthur to keep his mouth shut after what happened in s1 like...did whoever write this read the previous seasons of the show ? There were just too many times where the boy squad felt out of character and mandated to be idiots just for plot reasons, and it felt...very crudely drawn. Disappointing, because the beginning of the season was awesome. But again, Skam France failed in delivering real growth for their friend group. At times, it even felt like character regression. Them holding hands at the end of the season made me emo but damn it could have been so much more.

Also some plot twists - the car crash in particular, just felt dumb and unnecessary, seriously.

A too distant main : In the end, like I said before, my main issue is that I didn’t feel as connected to Arthur as I wanted to. I mean, the cheating bit was just very unrelatable to me, after how they showed how supportive Alexia was and how she supposedly made him happy like...why. But maybe that’s just me. Regardless - in the first few episodes he felt distant in an interesting way, because it made sense for his character to be so walled off. But...I felt like his self discovery was way too blurred with the ‘oh I like Noee’ part to the point where it ended up being obscured. I would have loved more clips on his own, maybe something more about him questioning his path in life, whether he truly wants to do medecine. And like apparently he liked fine arts ? Then, why didn’t we see anything about that ? Did he paint the x-men painting ??? That feels so relevant, why the fuck didn’t we see that ? Also why didn’t we see him take those LSF classes with Camille and actually make an effort this time ? Having almost all of his realization moments tied to Noee was just...the manic pixie dream girl trope. That’s what it’s called, when you use a quirky female character as a device for the emotional development of the male one. It’s...not flattering tbh. And then that farm episode - it was funny but for a week I felt like I completely lost touch with Arthur’s POV ? I’m really not sure that was the right choice. All in all, there were just not enough introspective, small, intimate clips for it to really feel like Skam, and that’s a shame tbh. I recognize a lot of myself in Arthur, and Robin acted his heart out to make him relatable, but because of the writing, there were way too many times where I was reluctant and puzzled instead of in it. I saw several people saying it was too much tell and not enough show and I think that’s very on point. I feel like a lot of Arthur’s actual character development happened behind the scenes in moments where we didn’t see it.

Yeah...I think as a conclusion most of my issues are tied back to the preponderance of the love triangle. The season wasn’t bad but god it could have been so excellent if they hadn’t gone that route, and this swerve from greatness is just sooooooo frustrating. I don’t think it’s enough to condemn the whole season but...

Next up : some things I’m just very ??? about and a general conclusion.

Bonus bitching round, fandom edition : oh my god, I don’t get into this often but...the fandom was so bloody annoying this season. Starting with the people sending death threats over a tv show (like...what the fuck) or thinking them being nasty assholes is somehow for the greater good (???), from people that don’t want anyone to use even 1 analysis capacity (especially on Twitter) and go beyond praising everything on the show, or the people either villifying Alexia and Noee and indulging in that ‘team’ crap, to the people that shoot down every single detail of the show without discernment or accuse the creators of being ableist sexist garbage or maltreating their actors ... And then you have the other remake stans coming to pollute the tags talking about how we were all stupid for liking the show in the first place. Like...seriously, what is up with you people. I really loved the block button this season, damn.

#skam france #skamfr s5 #my meta #arthur broussard #skam france meta

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