#I will never ever be sorry for that. This was THEEEE episode.

[the-cooler-king]

Oh yeah..... midnight gospel be hitting.... sitting in my bed fuckin. Crying. Get a grip girl

[thegeminisage]

22 for how Arthur got his groove back, then! ;-*

ANON I LOVE YOOOOU i was so sad i didnt get many asks for this one you’re a rock star <3 my answer is gonna be so long im so happy i love getting to talk about my shit

22: Have you used any symbolism in [insert fic]? What does it represent?

MULTIPLE!!! instances of symbolism in how arthur got his groove back thankyou. side note i fully believe this is a better fic than broken road ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ SPOILERS for the fic below this if u haven’t read it go read it if that’s a thing u wanna do

okay so the first & most obvious bit of symbolism is with fire, specifically arthur and uther’s fire, representing magic/the secret of arthur’s mother dying because he was born of magic. at the beginning of the fic when everybody gets cursed to have magic they both repress it and try to pretend it isn’t happening, which is the exact same thing they do with the secret of how arthur was born. IN theeee best episode 2.08 the sins of the father arthur confronts his father about it and uther doesnt say that arthur wasnt born of magic, he says that he would never have hurt his wife. and since arthur brings it up again in season 4 (“magic killed my mother”) i think what happens is an unspoken understanding on his part that yeah uther did it but he didn’t mean for it to wind up like that, and uther sort of made himself believe that arthur bought it, that he didn’t blame uther for it

which is obviously an ENTIRE crock of shit, and the fic deals specifically with how that secret eats at arthur, because then he doesn’t know if the single memory he has of her is even real, he doesn’t know, existentially, what it means for him if her life really had to be sacrificed to make sure he was born. and he goes through a lot internally about how this secret isolates him, much like merlin’s magic does, but also how he tries to bury it, and deny it, and he just CAN’T, anymore than he can bury the fire. the fire HAS to come out. the SECRET has to come out, because it’s fucking killing him, living with that kind of knowledge all alone is a terrible sort of burden (again, a rough parallel to merlin’s magic, as well). and so the first scene i imagined for this fic was in chapter 4, where he creates this huge firestorm that he can’t stop and can’t control and it will LITERALLY kill him if he can’t come to terms with it, and then like merlin helps him do that because merlin is the only one who isn’t afraid of magic

going further, the fight scene in chapter 6 which sorry not to heap praise on my own fic or anything but the fight scene which i FUCKING LOVE i love fight scenes so much!!! the one where arthur like, gets pushed to this breaking point by uther and accepts the magic and uses it to aid him and save his life in the duel, and in so doing he sort of comes to accept that his mother died the way she did, and he also comes to understand that the ygraine he saw in 2.08 was real, and he finds his peace with it, and from then on the fire obeys him

uther on the other hand never ever comes to terms with it, and he never will, he isn’t capable of it.  this i alluded to directly in the text but there’s a section from when he first gets the magic where he’s pacing around his room snuffing out the candles that his magic keeps lighting up and he can’t. he can’t snuff magic out. he committed genocide and he tried and tried and tried but as soon as he stamps it out in one place it pops up in another. and the REASON he committed genocide was that he could not and never will be able to accept ygraine’s death. and so he remained at odds with the magic until the curse was broken

which leads into the final bit of symbolism, which is the sparrow in chapter 9 (one of my favorite chapters along with 4 and 6). this one’s a big spoiler so if you ignored the first warning definitely tear your eyes away now. basically when they go out to the lake to get excalibur, arthur begins to like, feel the magic in living things, the way the show has sort of alluded to it - because he was finally at a place where he could accept and perceive it. and he feels the presence of the sparrow sort of get curious and follow them away from the lake. that’s supposed to represent natural magic, good magic, like the druids and merlin, not the curse that was inflicted on camelot or the dark magic used to make arthur. and so arthur is like wait this is good actually! this has moved me to tears! but when the sparrow gets too close it dies - because arthur is dangerous to that kind of magic, because of who he is (uther’s son) and what he’s done (been complicit in his father’s genocide). so he doesn’t get to take total joy in that without being reminded that uther used him like a blunt little instrument sword, that he has to make amends because he’s not safe. that two sparrows appear at the end of the fic instead of one, that they’re hatchings, is a symbol of a new birth for magic, a multiplying of it, because arthur is changing the world to make that possible. they aren’t grown yet, so all it is is a POSSIBILITY because you can’t ever really finish atoning for the death of kids, but he’s made the start, and that’s where i chose to end the fic - with just a little more left to go, more left to imagine, even though this part of the story is over. i did however fully write up what happens after the end if anybody wants to see that though lol

anyway thank you for asking!!!!! wow i love explaining things in a longwinded manner <3

[fic ask game]