Fanfiction & generally anything cool I come across
mainly Merwaine because my babies deserved better
(((But Merlance is a close second)))
and now I've been propagandized into Merleon as well
These are my current up-to-date fics as of right now. Probably won’t always be up-to-date cause I don’t know what I’m doing, so go to my a03 for the most recent stuff. Imma warn everyone most of these are Merwaine as god intended.
Link to my analysis of Merlin bs
“A white dragon is indeed a rare thing – and fitting! For in the dragon tongue you named him after the light of the sun.”
Guys I love this scene… you want me to ruin it?
Athusia was hope. Athusia was love. Athusia was the personification of all Merlin’s aims for the golden age. Kilgharrah pretty much says it right away, “a white dragon bodes well for Albion, for you and Arthur and for the land that you will build together”, and Merlin has put all his trust in what that dragon says. This is it. The start of a dream that he helped create. The first step for magic to be brought back to the world. A golden beacon in the middle of the night.
And you know what happens…
That dream trusts the wrong person. That dream puts all its cares and want behind someone who was never going to make the change that they both want. And they are, literally, twisted and broken because of that devotion, trapped in the cold, starved in the dark for years, to the point of losing their voice, their body hollowed out and ravaged, their goodness now jagged and murky as they stand on the opposite side of a war with their kin.
They are no longer a hope, but a chilling reminder of what they could have had if they managed to get it right. White turning into gray, light turning into darkness, bones curving torturously, wings that were made to fly riddled with holes so they can barely get off the ground, and tongue supposed to speak of wonders and joy, completely carved out.
The future has rotted. Merlin let the hope he had for the world decay into a shell of what it could have been. He lost everything. And well, in the end, he forces Athusia to fly into the night, away from the fight, away from it all as her mistress dies. That’s it. That’s the future he was promised. Gone before he could have blinked. Damaged beyond recognition. Emptied of everything that once made them be named after the sun.
"They say all the Pendragons succumb to madness eventually. Grief, loss, whatever tragedy they go through, they all end up trapped within their mind in the end."
I'm not a writer but have an AU where Arthur goes mad. The reason? Up the the viewer! Would love to hear your ideas tho heehee
If you were to apply the trolley problem to the Disir the decision Merlin made was to kill one to save many. The decision Arthur made was to let the train run over the one then stab the many people on the other tracks himself. Just saying for all those who blame Merlin for Arthur's decision. Whose choice should we be judging more harshly..
@sneakyboymerlin tags
Revisiting this post and thinking about how Arthur literally was confronted with the trolley problem and his response was unironically to let the train run over the one person that he liked so that he HIMSELF could continue killing the larger group of people he didn't like tied to the other tracks. Also he was the one who tied them to the tracks. And he is the train crushing people. I'm KFKFJFDKSKSKAASSJJCDKSK
seeing fans call arthur “merlin’s true ride or die” as if arthur didn’t dismiss merlin’s beliefs and suspicions out of pocket then overwork him despite merlin’s obvious exhaustion and second job every episode for all 5 seasons
multiple times gwaine and gwen and lancelot had to search merlin out to support and reassure and defend him because of arthur’s lack of faith in merlin’s abilities and overall demeaning attitude towards him
where are gwen gwaine and lancelot’s trophies
Oh you're writing a gay smut fic with a fantasy setting? Don't forget to give one of your characters a
It’s not that mysterious though.
Anyone carrying a bladed weapon carried oil. (More on that in a sec) Oil is what you use to clean and condition steel, especially, since water will rust it.
Many people in the Middle Ages used scented oils for their skin and hair from noblemen to lowly serfs.
Oil was incredibly abundant and quite cheap. The TYPE of oil however does matter in this.
Sheep oil (rendered from their fat) was very common and used for all manner of things from making soap to treating skin conditions. Rendered sheep fat has a very light texture and is a decent carrier oil without too pungent of a scent. Unfortunately it did rancid fast so it was common to add lots of herbs to it to help preserve it, especially rosemary, borage, marjoram and citron peels. This is how it became a common “perfume” oil used to scent hair skin or clothes. Nearly anyone would have had this handy somewhere.
Rendered pork oil was very common too and was most popular as a cooking oil.
Vegetable oil made from walnuts, almonds and flax seed was by far the most common non-animal oil. Nearly anybody had a bottle of almond or walnut oil in their pantry or on their person. These were by far the most popular oils used for conditioning steel, with walnut oil preferred because its tannins also gave armor a patina that kept it better. Only the absurdly wealthy ever wore polished armor. Everyone else blackened it to make it keep better. Walnut oil is good at doing that.
Walnut oil also works well as a lubricant. People back then DID use sexual lube by the way. No prostitute would be caught dead without it. Their favorite types were walnut and olive oil, though almond oil might be used in a pinch. They also used watered down acacia gum in southern Europe, which was sticky but slick and easy to re-wet.
Olive oil though was THE oil in Europe. It was expensive, comparatively, but obviously people considered it well worth its cost because it was found everywhere south of the Seine and frequently seen in even minor lordly houses or knights quarters much farther north. Considering quite a few people of the time thought it had aphrodisiac qualities when applied as certain way (likely because raw olive oil has a warming effect) I think you can imagine the most common reason it was sought after by men in particular.
Olive oil was also used in medicine and just about any church had some floating around somewhere because it’s conveniently good at treating minor infections and is wonderful for toothaches.
So the mysterious vial of oil isn’t at all mysterious and even if he were carrying it around with the sole intention of using it for sex, that wouldn’t actually be that strange either.
Arthur looks really goofy in that big ass crown when he welcomes Mithian to Camelot, I would have never taken him seriously if I was her tbh
Imagine Freya and Gwaine and Lancelot and Merlin all in a cute little polycule!!! Them, sharing strawberries and apples and sweet comments and loving gestures. Warmth and cuteness and love and passion on every breath. Lifting each other up and healing wounds that had been left to fester. All four of them finding self-esteem where it was severely lacking.
Merlin gets to have fun with his magic while learning about who he is outside of a prophecy. Gwaine gets to flirt and make jokes in the safety of an adorably soft relationship he had thrown himself into, completely and fully, finally hanging up his beaten and worn traveling boots for something good and real. Lancelot gets a purpose so much more fulfilling than knighthood as he protects them all while allowing the softness and honor of his character to be fully displayed, loved as much as he loves. Freya gets a family full of compassion that adores her unconditional, no more curses or killing, just care.
And don’t even talk to me about the sex! That shit would be freaky as fuck, no way in hell Freya doesn’t shift at least once, and we all know Merlin and Gwaine def have some stuff to work out through some dom/sub play, Lancelot’s just along for the ride but he’s not complaining. And then they would all cuddle afterwards and make sure they all felt good about it (they all always do) while drifting softly to sleep!
just like her stupid father
I made two versions cause let's be honest, both can be and are true.
credit to whoever initiated this trend/meme/comic? idk and to all the amazing artists that came before me on this.
Chapters:
1/1
Fandom:
Merlin (TV)
Rating:
Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings:
No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships:
Gwaine/Merlin (Merlin)
Characters:
Gwaine (Merlin), Merlin (Merlin), The others are in it but not for very long
Additional Tags:
Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Golden Age (Merlin), Merlin having a mid life crisis in his mid 20s, Gwaine Being Gwaine (Merlin), and by that I mean wanting to help Merlin, Merlin Needs a Hug (Merlin), he gets one, Don’t you worry, slight misuse of alcohol, Self-Worth Issues, finding yourself when the world has told you exactly what you have to be, Gwaine Loves Merlin (Merlin), Merlin Loves Gwaine (Merlin), He’s just super repressed about it, Not in the internalized homophobia way tho, In the way of he had to put everything else aside to try and get a golden age and he didn’t give himself time to marinate on it, Observant Gwaine, i will make that a tag so help me, Maybe some passive suicidal tendencies
Series:
Part 16 of Dialogue I wrote in my notes app
Summary:
He was supposed to be happy. He should be happy. He needed to be happy.
It was everything. An offer of a job he didn’t, couldn’t, even dream he would have carried one day. A hope finally becoming a reality. A future set in gold. A life he never imagined.
A promise told to him in that way Arthur always seemed to. As if it were an inevitability. As if there were no decision to make at all. As if it was an apology not needing words, recognition and so much more.
Court Sorcerer.
i.e Merlin getting everything he thought he wanted and it not being enough
Merwaine makes me happy because the two of them are constantly trying to lift each other up, to help in each other’s problems, to say things with no words at all, just a look directed in the other’s direction or a smile in the midst of misery.
They make me happy because they are doomed and yet they walk into hell with a smile on their faces just knowing that they got to meet each other.
I wanna talk about this scene. Because I’ve seen people trying to defend it as a one time thing, and I couldn’t disagree more.
We see Merlin come down the stairs and, quite literally, right away get on all fours to have Arthur step on him. There wasn’t a word exchanged or a raised eyebrow at the request. No argument, nothing. Just him falling to the ground and allowing Arthur to do that.
It proves to me that this is their normal. That this wasn’t a punishment, but a constant use of Merlin to quite literally step on. And Merlin, as quick as he is to tell Arthur when he’s being an ass, is already fine with it, considers it one of his duties even. (I hate how quick he is to get accustomed to abuse in the show. He was so good at pointing out Arthur’s bullshit early on and already by season 2 he’s sort of given up (probably because when he does he gets punished for it as we see later in the episode))
No one makes a comment to tell Arthur how wrong he is for using people like this (Gwen does in later episodes about his treatment of her but even that is not really resolved fully). Arthur doesn’t even really apologies at the end of the episode. No, instead, he throws his armor at Merlin for him to clean. There is no lesson permeating Arthur’s skin on his treatment of servants, he doesn’t make a change to start listening to Merlin more, he doesn’t look at his actions and see how unfair they were, nothing.
And that’s a problem. The lesson is never learned. The wrongs never righted. All of it is treated as ok, or worse, funny.
This is a pattern of behaviour for Arthur. Eventually people stop challenging him on it when they realize he will never learn, normalizing the behavior and having him search for an even more belittling thing to do (Don’t even talk to me about that stupid juggling scene, I wanna scream). It’s like he’s stuck perpetually in a child’s mindset of ‘the world revolves around me’ because at some point Merlin gave up trying to teach him and Gwen can’t be there to see everything.
I want him to learn, I want him to be better, I want him to stop treating servants like they are lesser. But we never see it. And I’m tired of the excuses for it.
