Do you ship Merrill/Carver? Struggling to find fanart or fanfic for the pairing for you to enjoy? Or have you created art or fic for the pairing, and struggle to reach other people who also ship this rare pair?
Then look no further – @carvermerrill is the place to come for all your shipping needs! We’ve only been around for a few days, but we have some great content lined up to share with you – so come and check us out!
1) What will you be featuring?
Fanart, fanfic, headcanons, meta, you name it! The goal is to feature works that have Carver/Merrill as the primary (or only) pairing, because it is so hard to find, even though there’s plenty of it out there.
If you have ever created anything Carver/Merrill ever, please do submit it to us or drop us a message and we WILL feature it!
In time, we are also hoping to run fic and fanart giveaways and events. Drop us an ask (anon or otherwise) with any suggestions for what you want to see!
Please note we will NOT be posting anything that only has Carver/Merrill as a background ship or background mention. There’s enough of that on AO3.
2) Why have you created this blog?
Because they’re my rare pair OTP, and because people have complained that it’s almost impossible to find content for this pairing, even though there is plenty of content out there – it just gets drowned out by other things, or lost.
For example, at this point in time, out of the 179 fanfics currently in the Carver/Merrill tag on AO3, only 72 are actually Carver/Merrill fics. That’s only 40% of fics tagged Carver/Merrill that relate to the pairing – making them EXTREMELY difficult to find for people who want to read them.
Also, there are so many ship names for the pairing that finding fanart is tricky. I personally am most familiar with the ship name “Carrill”, but I’ve also seen things tagged “Merver”, “Carvrill”, “Carvermerrill” and “Marver”.
So… after the fourth or fifth person who lamented to me that they’d been looking for Carver/Merrill content for ages but just couldn’t find it, I decided to create this blog to keep it all in one place!
3) Will you tag, and if so, what?
Anything that depicts Carver/Merrill as the primary pairing – and in a positive light will be featured, so Templar Carver, Warden Carver, Act 1 Carver, or AU Carver and Merrill – all of it will be featured and tagged appropriately.
Background pairings/ships will also be tagged, so that anyone who wants to filter out a background NOTP is free to do so! No ship hate for any other ship here! Just let us know if there’s anything else you’d like us to tag.
NSFW fanart or fic will be tagged as such, although we’re currently debating how explicit we should allow, content-wise.
4) All sounds great! Where can I find you again?
Awesome! Come visit and follow us at carvermerrill.tumblr.com, and we will be delighted to have you!
What do my party members do when I’m not there? They drabble, that’s what.
The first thing Carver did after the caravan vanished from sight was visit Merrill.
Children laughed and played in the late morning sunshine, sprinting around the tree and under his knees, unafraid of the curious shemlen with the fur-lined vest who sometimes joined in their games. As he passed, Nyssa waved to him from her stall. Maybe it was just a trick of his foul mood, but Carver thought she seemed paler, more tired than usual.
He knocked on the door to Merrill’s house. At its touch, however, it creaked open.
She sat at her knobbly table, the one Carver had salvaged from the Hanged Man, looking lovely and small and perfect. Head in her hands, she stared unblinkingly at the cover of one of her books.
“Sorry, uh, to barge in. The door was open,” he said. He took a hesitant step toward the table. “He didn’t take you either, I see.”
I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT! I finished Fair Child!
Thank you so much to all my readers over the years, and all those who asked after it in the hiatus. I know it’s been a hell of a ride, and an even longer wait for the finish, but your enthusiasm kept me going – without you, I never would have finished.
Thanks also to my wonderful betas jkateel and bossuary, without whom I would have been completely lost in a world taken over by plot holes and grammatical errors. You two kept me churning on this, even when–especially when–I got frustrated or annoyed or distracted by Garrett and his blindingly white teeth. THANK YOU.
Anyway, enough with the speeches. On with the story!
Story Summary: Sabrina AU. Merrill, the daughter of the Amell family chauffeur, has
been in love with Garrett Hawke all her life, but the flighty,
charismatic playboy doesn’t even know she exists. All that changes when
she returns from Val Royeaux the very picture of beauty and
sophistication. She catches Garrett’s eye, but is it his brother,
Carver, who is really her ideal match? Pairing: Carver/Merrill Chapter Word Count: 3,342
Merrill watched as a half-grown girl with red cheeks leaned over the railing of L’Éléphant Libéré and waved to a white-haired man on shore below. “Au revoir, papa!” the girl cried.
“Bon voyage!” he shouted back. His posture was as crisp as
his clothes, his hair immaculate and well-oiled. Clearly he was the man
of a great house: a valet, perhaps, or a butler. Someone of superior
rank, Merrill thought bitterly, as far as that ever went among servants.
“Je vais tu manquer!” shouted the girl as she brushed sea-swept hair from her mouth and cheeks. She was young, Merrill noted, very young. “Je promets d’ecrire!”
Brushing a hand across his eyes, the girl’s father beamed and said nothing.
She continued to wave down at him, nearly knocking over the large
black bag at her feet. It was an artist’s portfolio. There were always
girls carrying them around in Val Royeaux, particularly in the Grand
Cathedral square, where they sketched the grand friezes and the statues
of Orlesian conquerors for judgement by the Masters. And now this
girl–this silly, naive girl–would be the next to join their ranks.
Merrill felt a sharp stab of pity. How long would it take for her to
realize that there was no room in the art world for the daughter of a
valet? Would it be when her Master singled out her work for its
crudeness on her very first day? Or when she fell in love with an
Orlesian boy who, when he found out she hadn’t a penny to her name,
would forget her for the woman he’d been betrothed to all along?
“Carver,” said Merrill, “I’ve decided you need a pet.”
In retrospect, that really should have been his first warning.
Hands behind her back, Merrill struggled to maintain her grip on something unseen and, apparently, very wiggly.
That should have been his second.
“Vhenan,” he said, the word tumbling, still awkward, from his chapped lips, “you don’t have to—”
Merrill cut him off with a wave of her hand and, in so doing, almost dropped her burden. “Nonsense,” she said, readjusting. “You do nice things for me all the time. Let me do a nice thing for you.”
Inspiration for this fic was taken from this link. Takes place in a modern AU of Kirkwall.
Never Gonna Give You Up
It starts innocuously enough, with a link Hawke sends to Varric via text.
That’s Hawke. Totally scatterbrained. She doesn’t even bother to cover it with words or somehow try to trick him into clicking, and dammit, that’s her strength. Everyone expects the random video of birds mating set to the catchiest new pop song to come from Hawke—without explanation, without cushion.
Bemused, wondering what miracle of nature he’ll be subjected to this time, Varric clicks the link.
“We’re no strangers to love—”
He nearly drops his phone in his haste to go back, back, back away from the horrible song pouring from his speakers.
“Hawke,” he mutters, uttering the name like a curse.
I can’t, for the life of me, find the original message in my inbox, but it was still hanging out in my e-mail, so: flutiebear requested, You know me, I’d do anything for a Carver/Merrill or Bethany/Varric ficlet. And since I’m in a World Cup kind of mood – how about a modern AU in which they go on a date to a soccer game? :)
Forgive me for the following: I know nothing about soccer that I haven’t learned from The IT Crowd or Wikipedia or watching the boyfriend play FIFA.
Underhanded Tactics
Merrill didn’t really see the point of all this, but she smoothed her borrowed jersey down just the same. It drowned her; Carver was decidedly bigger in the shoulders than she was. The garment fell halfway to her knees.
But Carver grinned when he saw her, for all the world like she wasn’t wearing a burlap sack. “You look great,” he told her, only a little bit of pink in his cheeks, and dropped a hat to her head.
She tucked her hair behind her ears and looked up at him. “You’re in a fine mood,” she commented, smiling.
“There’s a lot to be happy about,” he said–a touch evasively, as always–and draped an arm around her shoulders. “Come on, we’re going to be late.”
They weren’t going to be any such thing, but she let him steer her away from the car and toward the stadium. Most everyone else was still tailgating, drinking cheap beer and eating just-cooked sausages, but Carver seemed eager to get to their seats. She watched the people on their way in, and when they got boring, she watched Carver.
An object cannot make you good, or evil. The temptation of power, forbidden knowledge, even the desire to do good can lead some down that path. But only you can change yourself.
