Merlin

[brigdh]

I finished the last episode of Merlin! The slow-motion, uber-dramatic long shot of Uther carrying Arthur across the courtyard? Hilarious. I mean, it is probably bad of me that I found it so utterly funny, but- the slow-motion! The swelling music! The close-ups of Uther's face! Arthur's really obvious Christ-symbolism pose! The strange lack of other people to, you know, help the King out as he wanders across the main part of the castle! I almost fell off the couch laughing.

Also, I found the choice of which character was going to die to be a really cheap shot. I mean, clearly it wasn't going to be Arthur, but I was sure it would be either Uther or Gaius. But instead, Nimue (that's probably spelled wrong)? Seriously, show? You cannot pose a complicated moral question of sacrifice and what a king's life is worth and then have your protagonist solve the problem by defeating the bad guys, yay! Merlin's mother would also have been unacceptable, since one episode does not an audience connection make, but at least it would have been emotional for the characters themselves. And would have actually have been playing within the rules of games.

Also, also, the magic system in this universe is really inconsistent. Why does life have to be balanced by life, but floating swords/lightning bolts/making the pages in a book turn really fast don't have to be balanced by equal exchanges of energy?

I find that I don't really have the emotional connection to the show that would make it be a real fandom of mine. But it's so close; I feel like I kept seeing the shapes of something that would have been really interesting around the edges of what the show actually is. There's the connection to the vast body of Arthurian legend, of course. Or the story of what makes a good ruler, if peace can be justified by the many bad decisions and tyrannistic tendencies of Uther. Or the story where the choice to use or not use magic was a difficult decision with arguments on both sides (not just the random prejudice of one dude) and real consequences (do neighboring countries still have magic? do they have advantages therefore? Also, why are unicorns okay but not sorcerers?). Or the story of a group of young people learning to govern, balancing idealism against realpolitik. Or the story that's a comment on class and status, where the power behind each noble is their servant.

But none of those are actually Merlin.

Still! I am now looking for fandom things. Rec me vids, stories, authors, whatever you find neat. Rec yourself, please! There are, obviously, a few authors I already know I want to go read, but tell me them anyway, in case I forgot someone. What do you guys like?

Comments

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Dorian pointed me toward a vid called "Unsteady Ground" that is really astonishing -- it's the show Merlin should have been, the one that would have riveted all of us and been so good that writers were afraid to mess with it. Unfortunately I've lost the link -- I downloaded the vid itself and rewatch it from time to time, which I don't do with many things -- but I'll look for it. Or if you check Dorian's own vid or recs tags, you'll probably find it easily.

Utterly, utterly worth the trouble.

As for fic -- well, I pretty much stick with Dorian's work, because she's worth reading no matter what. And with Veleda, because she's done some neat Gwen/Morgana stuff. Sadly for me, venturing beyond that tends to be chancy: there's lots out there, and lots that's very well handled, but the fandom seems to tend toward (i) your basic set of romance formulas, and (ii) an overlapping set of Arthur-finds-out things. Neither of which is my flavor of choice.

-- But, wait! This past round of remixthedrabble generated a bunch of really terrific Merlin pieces, including a charming thing from the dragon's point of view. Definitely worth checking out!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I am currently going back through Dorian's journal to read her Merlin stories (and occasional gift-fics for me, apparently!), so I'm sure I'll stumble across it. The discussions between you and her in the comments have also been really fascinating. So far, I particularly like the one where you tried to decide what historical period the show was set in, and your comment-story with Uther as competent. I know you didn't do it for my benefit, but I am absolutely enthralled by all the things you two point out.

Thank you for the recs. I have to agree that, for this fandom in particular, I'm not really interested in the standard romance/fanfiction tropes. I may have enough emotional investment in Hisoka to read awful Harlequin things, but I need more of a payoff to spend more time with Merlin.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

But of course we did it for your benefit. In a way, I think that sort of conversation is a kind of performance art at the same time that it's a genuine conversation: you want it to be the kind of thing that friends can read with pleasure if they stumble into it months later.

And I'm delighted that you liked that Uther snippet. The show did go and wreck the premise of it a bit later (or some of the premise, anyway), but I still prefer to adopt Dorian's working theory of the show, which I think she laid out in comments somewhere in my LJ: namely, that the show as we see it represents not an accurate narrative of events in this imaginary kingdom, but rather the incomplete and inevitably distorted narrative cobbled together from the perceptions of the viewpoint character, who at this stage of his life is brainy and powerful but has no clue at all about the court, or how a kingdom works, or large or small political issues, or military issues, or anything. So he does what any human being does, which is to construct a narrative out of the bits and pieces that he's able to observe, and out of what people tell him, and he gets stuff wrong all the time. And 'wrong' includes emotional issues and questions of character, not just objective inaccuracies in events, or the inevitable things he isn't able to include because he never finds out that they've even happened.

If I go with that, I can tell myself that the Uther who had that conversation with the dragon could be the show's Uther after all.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I could see that. The particular scene that really strikes me as indicating an unreliable narrator is at the beginning of the episode with Merlin's mother. Uther decides not to send the knights to help and the other characters and the episode itself takes the same adolescent 'Uther's so meeeeeeeean' tone that they do when Uther's attempting to execute small children.

But really, one cannot invade a foreign country, and no, not even if this one villager asked you to. Uther's decision was clearly reasonable.

I'll have to go and track down that conversation; it sounds interesting.