my-smial

[my-smial]

what would have happened if bbc merlin ran for fifteen seasons do you think. answerer's choice if that means 2008 to jesus christ 2023 or 1997-2012 or anything in between.

sam first of all i need to let you know that i have been thinking about this ask for the last nine days. not to any productive effect just rolling it around in my head like a shiny little marble and not denting its surface whatsoever

secondly i'm going to roll with the original 2008 pilot date here because i TRULY do think that the concept "what if we did a show about arthurian legend but completely randomly and arbitrarily made the central idea of the show that magic is both illegal in camelot and a metaphor for homosexuality, an idea which is not even remotely present in the original myths that revolve around the CENTRAL premise that merlin is 1) an ancient man and 2) does magic with arthur's full knowledge consent and encouragement" could really ONLY have been pulled off in its particular homophobias of that era. well i wouldn't really know i was like doing multiplication tables in 2008. but it's just SO early 2000s network tv. also as previously established anthony head was doing buffy in 1997 and i refuse to sacrifice rupert giles for anything.

ANYWAYS. i really do think that a 2013-and-beyond merlin would have to finally sacrifice its core premise of "nobody KNOWS about merlin's MAGIC" and actually you know sort of conceptually attempt to deliver on what was promised from the pilot. again like merlin would still be terrible i need to make this what merlin WOULD be not what i would WANT it to be but i AM picturing like. arthur survives by the skin of his teeth in diamond of the day part ii. merlin carries his wounded body home and maybe like....... seasons 6-10 are The Slow And Painstaking Legalisation Of Sorcery Across Camelot. like i'm talking star wars prequels space bureaucracy level of vibes. merlin has never been particular interested in the "details" of how "a government" might "work" so i'm picturing like whole episodes dedicated to arthur pitching up to some town where his father enacted unspeakable crimes of heinous genocide and being like "right listen chaps! why don't we all just get along :)" and some pale limp-wristed local sorcerette gets all pissy at merlin specifically and tries to do murder about it and there's a Very Big Fight that lasts for Twenty Minutes except for merlin gets to use magic in front of arthur and the knights this time and it all ends with some brisk handshakes and "the treaty has been reached good job old chap :)" and they gallop on home with some light-to-medium horseback slapstick

merlin starts dressing differently throughout this, to signify that He Is A New Man Who Has Earned Arthur's Grudging Respect. his neckerchief is purple now and he's getting into burlap cloaks. the whole shenanigan is interspersed with Soft Touching Scenes of arthur Trying To Figure Out His Fraught Relationship With This New Magical Merlin where they like almost brush cheeks before somehow making physical fart noises about it. like they will play this queerbait fiddle till the cows come home. the phrase "two sides of the same coin" increases to a frequency of once every 2 episodes. nobody does anything about it.

season 11 gaius dies. it's DEVASTATING. people make gifsets upon gifsets about it. colin morgan does that little scrunchy thing with his eyes and hearts break everywhere and there's a whole episode musing on the nature of fatherhood. luckily nothing ever stays dead on [bbc merlin] and the entire 11th season the big bad is like The Notion Of Ghosts Themselves. they bring EVERYONE back. buddy they're running out of ideas i'm talking ghostmorgana, ghostgaius, ghostelyan ghosttom and of course our dear best friend ghostuther. they pull some tertiary arthurian character completely out of context to be the Ghost Mastermind and it's all very heavy-handed stuff about how you can never escape the bearing of the ones you love. web-weavers go wild.

season 12 ratings are dropping like a stone and someone points out that maybe it's like, not a great look that gwen is the only living woman and only living black character on the show and has been reduced to like a clothesrack for medieval gowns. so this season is SUPER gwen-centric. arthur gets stuck in an enchanted megabog or something so the whole season is just merlin desperately hunting down arthur (why mess with perfection?) while gwen rules the kingdom with the knights by her side. it's executed incredibly poorly, and everyone eats it up. she girlbosses her way to like finding an optimal way to redistribute albion's grain stores and gets really into forging weapons agai wait actually i love this. gotta circle back to make it worse.

season 13 big bad is some totally real guy who actually lived in a completely different period of history. quite possibly king louis the xivth. there's discourse about merlin's nascent francophobia. there's only one bed. there's a gag episode where the guest star is david walliams with the head and tail of a donkey. season 14 they REALLY double down on the hibernophobia for no reason and also, unrelatedly, ealdor burns down. the villain is like king mark of cornwall or sir lamorak. merlin is like a total mary sue by this point who can dissolve castles with a snap of his fingers. he still cleans arthur's armour.

season fifteen and GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH IS BACK BABY to engage in constant recording of arthur and merlin's exploits. the whole season is a VERY poorly conducted but nevertheless compelling debate around how "greatness" is to be "remembered" as albion crests into its age of great glory and good english hearts swell or whatever. there is no conflict until the final episode WHEN arthur is randomly stabbed by a farm boy raiding the food stores. merlin's powers are incapacitated and he dies in his arms as before, BUT NOT BEFORE, muttering and uttering the words, "i love you," sending the internet into a tailspin. sorry for doing supernatural again but it's the only way i can conceive of anything occurring, ever, for all of recorded time. just call me geoffrey of monmouth.

finally, and this is key: merlin never once apologises

[my-smial]

Princess with an empathic link to her sworn protector but she has severe anxiety so her door keeps getting thrown open and someone in full armor runs in yelling I'LL PROTECT YOU MY LADY, WHERE'S THE DANGER? and she's just got outlook open and there's two (2) emails she needs to reply to

[my-smial]

i really like this thing where websites will have separate "log in" & "sign up" buttons and if you click "log in" it takes you to a sign-up screen anyway so you have to click "i already have an account" and then it will ask if you want to sign in with your facebook account or with instagram or linkedin or deviantart or whatever, and if you choose "username & password" it asks if you want to put in your username or use your thumbprint, and once you put your username & password it emails you a confirmation code, and once you put in the code it says "do you want to give us your phone number for future sign-ins? do you want to sign up for facial recognition? do you want to give us your bones? give us your fucking bones?

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My paramotor was stolen.

The UPS guy just left it on the porch. Didn’t ring the bell. Didn’t try to get a signature.

Minutes later, two assholes in a suburban pulled up, shoved it in the back, and took off. I heard the squealing of their tires as I was walking down the stairs, checked the camera, and realized what had happened.

I’m devastated. And furious. Even if I’m able to recoup the money from a claim, A. That’s going to take forever and B. due to my small size, finding another small/light enough engine in the states will be all but impossible and C. due to super high tariffs, it’s really hard to get the engines from Italy right now. So. I thought I’d get to fly in a week. Looks like it might be months before that happens. I’m so angry I can hardly type. And I feel so useless. Like there’s nothing I can do. Fuck.

[my-smial]

Hello! I made a dress from scratch for the Renaissance Faire. It took me six months to make the chemise, hoop skirt, under skirt, over skirts, French knot embroidered bodice, crown and jewelry. I am very excited to wear it this year despite how serious I look in the photos!

[my-smial]

RENEE

[my-smial]

Insane things I have learned from this article about Polo, as a certified Horse Kid™:

They ACTUALLY ARE cloning horses for polo and have been for over a decade.

Argentinian Polo players are affectionately nicknamed hired assassins by their fans?????

In order to get rich people to bankroll the dozens of million-dollar horses needed for a single polo team, they've created a system where players are ranked and team composition is capped by total rank, thereby requiring you to let your rich sponsor who sucks at polo play with you <- wild statement. Imagine if we decided Massi was too good at soccer and so they had to hire a couple of high schoolers for his team. Or like, millionaires. The Chiefs have won the Superbowl too many times so now they have to put Tom Cruise on their team.

The top polo player (Cambiaso) who started all this cloning was betrayed by his best friend and business partner (Meeker) selling his clones out secretly, without permission, and Meeker decided to come clean the night before finals to rattle him. (this didn't end up happening, gossip/spying got there first)

"Meeker told Cambiaso he dreamed of a day when his son, Aiden, would sponsor Poroto Cambiaso’s team and the two boys would ride on cloned horses together." Another unrelatable rich person statement. Imagine being proud of saying "damn, your son is so good at polo, I dream of the day my failson is rich enough to buy his way into playing with him." why does it work like this.

If this continues all of Polo is going to be an eerie field of the same 3 horses. i hate this.

In conclusion, Polo is the weirdest sport on the planet. Imagine trying to be an up-and-coming college polo player. what do you even do when confronted with this level of wealth every single day.

[my-smial]

it’s funny that people on twitter hate tumblr so virulently bc i get it if you are logging on for the first time in 2025 tumblr probably does suck. however i wouldn’t know because i have been carefully curating my dash experience and mutual circle since 2011 and my circle of tumblrinas taken by itself is the greatest social networking site of all time

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"This has nothing to do with you," Riko said. "Stop being so selfish," Neil said, and Kathy gaped at him. Kevin pinched his arm in warning, but Neil shrugged him off. "If Kevin's dream has always been to be the best on the court, what right do you have to take it away from him. Why would you ask him to settle for less? The foxes are giving him a chance to play whereas you'd relegate him to the sidelines. He has no reason to transfer back."

[my-smial]

It's amazing how easy it is to start a new craft project when you are 80% finished with a previous craft project

[my-smial]

i do think a lot of implausible medieval plot devices make more sense when considering the fact that these people simply did not have glasses

[my-smial]

MARVEL 

link // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHUrAvKNF8s (collab w/ djcprod)

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i think it's important to acknowledge that the reason why mastercard/visa has such a stranglehold on american society is because cash is not the main form of payment in the usa. the predominance of card has effectively privatized currency

in japan, one of the reasons why dlsite and other similar websites are able to just remove visa as a payment option instead of changing any of their merchandise (aside from the fact that visa doesn't have a monopoly here) is because cash payments for online transactions remain an option. even if you don't have a jcb credit card or paypay or whatever, you can still pay for your online purchases using cash by taking your barcode to a convenience store, and you can do this for essentially every online vendor, meaning credit card companies can't just impose their moral judgments on your purchases with much repercussion

[my-smial]

observation: people think fMRI is a meaningful measure of "thought"

observation: people believe ChatGPT is "thinking"

conclusion: we must put the ChatGPT servers inside an fMRI machine. this will work perfectly and have no adverse consequences. trust.

[my-smial]

[my-smial]

Thorin Oakenshield