#I'm taking a class on king arthur right now so this was the perfect thing to read

[libraryleopard]

Historical fantasy novella retelling of Arthurian mythology, specifically the Perceval stories

Reimagines Perceval as a woman who disguises herself as a man to become a knight

Inspired by Welsh and Irish mythology

Lyrical & mythological prose

Lesbian main character

Queer knights, disabled knights, and knights of color in Arthur’s court

[rosietrace]

Davidson Novellion

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“Oh?... You underestimate me?.. Well, now I'm obligated to prove you wrong with a single swing of a blade.”

— Davidson Novellion

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General Information

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Full Name — Davidson Mordred Novellion

↳ Davidson; A name of Hebrew origin, meaning ‘Son of David’.

↳ Mordred; A name taken from the Welsh form ‘Medraut’, and possibly the Latin form ‘Moderatus’, meaning ‘controlled, moderated’. In Arthurian legend, Mordred was the illegitimate son (and in certain versions, nephew) of King Arthur.

↳ Novellion; Taken from the word ‘Novel’, with additional letters.

Japanese ver. — デビッドソン モードレッド ノベリオン

Romaji ver. — Debiddoson Mōdoreddo Noberion

Twisted from: The Black Knight

❐ — Arthurian Legend

V/A(日本語): Yūichi Nakamura(中村悠一)

↳ Voices Gojo Satoru from Jujutsu Kaisen

V/A(英語/EN): Josey Montana McCoy

↳ Voices Kaeya Alberich from Genshin Impact

Age: 19

Birthday: October 19th

Horoscope: Scorpio ♏

Species: Human

Height: 187 cm

Hair color: Ink Black

Eye color: Amber (+ Black scleras when UM is activated)

Gender/Pronouns: Male, He/They

Sexuality: Bisexual, Demisexual

Dominant hand: Left

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Extra Information

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Homeland: The Blackheart Empire

↳ Formerly known as the ‘Lucretian’ Empire

『 Family:

Mordred Lucretius — Father

Antoinette Winchester Lucretius — Mother

Lancelot Winchester Novellion — Younger Brother

Roya Callistis — Cousin 』

Dormitory: TBA

School Year: 3rd Year

Class: 3-A(seat no. 1)

Club: Fencing Club

Best class(es): Fencing, physical education, debate

Worst class(es): Prophecy, ancient curses

Like(s): Himself /j, teasing his brother, dressing up, swordsmanship, sparring, horseback riding/archery, equestrianism in general, makeup, ducks, walks in the garden with his mother, fairytales his Mother used to tell him at night

Dislike(s): His father… Sort of, handling political affairs, being petty, talking shit about Roya /j /j, the idea of abandonment, lack of acknowledgment for his accomplishments, playing second fiddle, Roya Callistis, his brother getting hurt, being called a horse girl /j

Hobbies: Swordsmanship, horseback riding, horseback archery, hand-to-hand combat, unnecessarily complex debate, upside-down chess, blindfolded grenade launching, doing his makeup, feeding ducks

Talent(s): Sweet talk, swordsmanship, sparring, horseback archery, political debate/negotiation, general persuasion, getting what he wants ~~that counts right /j~~

Flaw(s): Prideful, two-faced, manipulative, apathetic towards those he doesn't care about, selfish, vindictive, competitive

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Personality

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Honestly, Prince Davis is quite charismatic, no? Ladies, gentlemen, those from lands far and wide would give anything just to grovel at his feet!

So kind, so hospitable, so…. Competitive, yet compassionate.

Why, some might even say the Prince is just damn near perfect!...

….. That's what they all say, unfortunately. Davis is frighteningly good at keeping up an act for long periods of time. Those with a keener eye know to steer clear of him; most of the time, at least.

His mask feels too real. Putting on a compassionate, hospitable, yet prideful face for the sake of the glory it brings him in return.

Out of all those three traits, Davis is mostly prideful. His pride — in most cases — goes before all else. And he isn't afraid to use some…. Underhanded, yet manipulative, tactics to satisfy it.

Don't expect him to genuinely care about you. If you aren't Lance, or someone he's close to in general, don't expect genuine kindness off of him. At most, you'll get hit with a blank expression.

Never get on his bad side. Davis knows what he wants, and he's willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants. By getting on his bad side, the only thing he wants out of you is begging for mercy.

Davis' pride knows no bounds. He will do anything, anything, to get what he wants.

Desperate as he may come off, at the very least — the man knows what he wants.

And he's good at getting what he wants.

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Unique Magic: Mordred (モードレッド)

♔ Allows user to summon a shadow-like clone of themselves. Said clone wears a full suit of armor, obscuring their physical features.

As for the user themselves, they develop black scleras, as well as their hands having the effect of looking like they were consumed by shadow itself.

By summoning the clone, many of the user's physical stats will rapidly increase. Such as:

♔ Physical strength

♔ Physical speed

♔ Advanced hearing/sight

♔ Faster reaction time/reflexes

The clone can only stay depending on the amount of energy used by the user. In a situation in which their energy has dissipated completely (especially if they push themselves to their limit), the user will collapse and be temporarily paralyzed.

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Thoughts on them

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“He's a perplexing subject of conversation. Prince Davis is a prideful individual, frankly, I find nothing wrong with that. I just find it inconvenient and…. Unsatisfactory.”

— Victoria Shard, Davidson's ‘rival’

“It's hard to understand my brother, honestly. I'm supposed to say he's wonderful, and he is…. When he wants to be.”

— Lancelot Novellion, Davidson's younger brother

“I admire my cousin, his accomplishments certainly are…. Something. I don't understand that look in his eyes when he looks at me, though. Do you happen to know anything about it?”

— Roya Callistis, Davidson's cousin

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Additional Trivia

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✑ Main Theme: Judas by Lady Gaga

✑ Backstory: 『 The Weight of the Sky 』

✑ OC Playlist: TBA

༝ㅤ･ㅤ˚ㅤ。ㅤ.ㅤ⋆ㅤ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ♔

♔ Davis hates losing. He just hates it. The only time he tolerates it is during the Swordsman Solstice, and that's only because he knows Victoria's ambition knows no bounds.

♔ Victoria's one of the few people Davis genuinely respects. Like him, her pride — her ambition — knows no bounds. Nothing can stop the two of them when it comes to satisfying what must be satisfied. And in that sense, they find mutual respect in each other because of that.

♔ Every year, in every Swordsman Solstice, Davis has always played second fiddle to Victoria. As much as he wishes to respect her by honoring the win…. His pride can't handle being a runner-up.

♔ Don't try asking him why he seemingly dislikes Roya. He's not going to elaborate, whatsoever. The same applies to Lance if you ever go to him for answers.

♔ Roya is painfully oblivious to Davis' genuine disdain for him, to the point it's almost painful because of how glaringly obvious it can be 😭

♔ Davis' hobbies are…. Unconventionally entertaining. At least to him. He usually plays the games he plays by himself since no one — not even Lance — wants to play with him.

♔ Davis is the reason behind the numerous scars Lance acquired during his childhood. More specifically, the ones on his face.

♔ Is a horse girl, and named his horse ‘Spirit’ /j /j

Davis' Tags

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Appearance

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#davidson novellion • #『 davis ⚔️ 』

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[thedogsled]

I'm interested in hearing about the Merlin queerbaiting thing because I seem to remember someone saying that this homoerotic subtext was upped after the producers or writers or whoever had been asked whether the queer subtext was intentional or something like that.

tbh the likelihood is you probably heard this from me, but who knows. I think it’s clear to a lot of people in Merlin fandom either way, although maybe not everyone feels that way. I’m going to go riiiight back to the beginning, though, to the very first episode where I was coming off my last fandom (Harry Potter) and had nowhere else to go, and there was this awesome show on TV…

First of all I’m going to drop this here:

So this was my experience, back in 2008, when I got to go to MCM London. The show had been on maybe a few weeks at the time, and not much had been developed back then, but there was no doubt that they were writing the pair of them very well as a strong male/male friendship. Now the subtext was glorious, because as you can hear right here it wasn’t the intention of the writers to put any of it in there, and it came off so naturally as a strong set of bonds forming between two guys. Nobody was aware of it, and then bam there’s all this fanfiction being written. This was the first ever question these guys had been asked on a panel ever. We’re not talking like the pussyfooting into asking those kinds of questions like you see with SPN panels, these guys were fresh and green and had no idea what they were getting into, and the unequivocal downplay from the writer ‘No, this is a story about friendship’, well it should have stopped there. But as you hear the writer go on to say, as they laugh about the idea of people shipping Merthur at all, these sorts of heroes journeys do have a homoerotic subtext. He acknowledges that, but he’s also forthright in saying ‘no, that’s not what this is, end of story’.

So for me, that should have been what it is, i.e. it’s not queerbaiting because there’s absolutely no intention of going there, and they’ve made it clear. Unfortunately that’s not what happened, and the consequence is that it wasn’t made clear to the audience. Sure, that crowd at comic con of a few hundred people, but not the audience (also I’m disappointed there wasn’t more to that clip, because the writers (there was at least one other person, a woman there, backed and forthed briefly on the topic, “is that a thing?” or something like that, but it was ten years ago so I’m afraid I can’t remember exactly. By this time next year people were cosplaying Merlin, it had played in the USA and everything was really taking off, but that first season was in the can at this point, and consequently precious and innocent. The friendship between Arthur and Merlin was as untarnished as you could get, because the writers had no idea what they were doing, and the actors had no idea of what was coming across in those intimate moments, so that was perfect too. Seriously, that first season of Merlin is superb.

But now everyone is self conscious. They know they have this audience and they’ve been exposed to how loud it is, how superbly influential. The feeling of watching Merlin season 2 was therefore entirely different to watching season 1. Bradley and Colin carry themselves differently. The wording choices in the scenes become deliberately nudge nudge wink wink. The scenes themselves are more homoerotic because of this conglomeration of ideas and acting choices. Merlin talks about how he ‘feels’ about Arthur and there’s shitloads more shirtless scenes and long silences and held glances between Merlin and Arthur than Arthur and anyone else. 

I’m saying this as someone who didn’t fall for the queerbaiting, because I knew from that unequivocal “this is a profound friendship” declaration that they were never, ever going there, that Arthur was destined to get with Guinevere (that was the societal wall i.e. class, that he had to jump over) and they weren’t ever going to do anything but straight and hetereosexual on Saturday night on BBC1 (an opinion I changed for Sherlock but very quickly changed back when I saw the same tone and delivery grabbing for and successfully pulling in the audience who so desperately wanted to see what they were being teased at. Merlin and Sherlock really coincided at the sweet spot of queerbaiting (which incidentally is when Cas joins SPN, and coincides with the most queerbaiting seasons of SPN as well.) But I was at ground zero for Merlin, before shipping Merthur was cool, and you can betcha that the writer declaring that there were only straights here put a dead end to that before it could begin. Just imagine a writer saying something like that now. We track all the panels, we record everything. We’d tear them to pieces in a second flat.

The mood in S2 just changes. Here’s a bunch of clips from S2. I’ve stuck it on a late timestamp, but that’s only because that particular scene is a standout example: gay 4 comedy. By the middle of S3 filming, everyone is well briefed on the interest in the ship. The baiting gets really hard and comedic by season 4. I’ve jumped to some of the worst offending moments in this series of clips here. And remember Sherlock’s first season aired just before this, thus my accusations of a queerbaiting heyday. It was all getting into stride about this time, carte blanche to suck in queer viewers with no intention of following through and use ‘they might be gay’ both as an endless mockery, as in these Merlin clips, and as a way to add seriousness to some scenes. My memory of feeling mocked and ridiculed by Merlin is just so strong, and reviewing some of the episodes really nails that down for me. Having known where the writers come from, knowing the sentiment behind their approach to their queer audience…it drives me up the wall even right now.

So season 5 they pull it all together, and - spoilers - Arthur dies in Merlin’s arms, and there’s an unspoken I love you, and Merlin waits for centuries for the return of the Once and Future King. And this, coming back to the strongest part of the story in order to deliver the final emotional punch, the part that carried it through (the relationship which could be misconstrued between the main characters) and offering a flimsy not quite there delivery of yet more subtext (because you have to be in on the queer reading to see it), was a final spit in the eye. It’s why you’ll see a bunch of people in fandoms who are disgusted by the idea of a kiss in the last scene, they die together, or a subtextual drive off into the sunset ending, because it’s such a familiar and heart wrenching and aggravating cop out. It’s not even Thelma and Louise, you know? Because over years and years, you’ve been driven by this show, by what you’re seeing on screen, and your reward is a lacklustre nod in the last few seconds; what you’re there for you never get, and yet at the end of the day you’re supposed to be delighted they gave you even 50% certainty that your ship would end up together. Fuck you.

Merlin could easily have been read as not queerbaiting. That’s the thing. Some people will outright tell you that Sherlock is easily read as not queerbaiting too. Those people will also say ‘why is it that two guys can’t have a relationship without people thinking it’s romantic.’ Well, they can. They can. But I point you to the word ‘bromance’. These shows deliberately either take romantic storylines and apply them to those characters, or play up the gay for laughs. Especially at this sort of 2008-1016 sweet spot, pre The 100 drama, they absolutely did. They didn’t see the harm, and what they got back in return from fandom involvement and viewership and repeat viewing was absolute justification for those choices. Merlin benefits from it’s queer audience, but it also benefits from a storytelling perspective as having been intended as a heterosexual friends only story in the first place, and the first season (and season 3 largely, idk why) play out like that. That’s what lets it off the hook when people are looking for queerbaiting in the show, because it’s absolutely not from the get go. Like with Destiel it establishes naturally, both as a result of the story and because of the vibe the two main actors have with each other. 

Compare to Sherlock, which went for it right out of the gate “Is this a date?” and never backed down, applying the queerbaiting consistently until they were done as though I think to legitimatize the writing choice. “See, it wasn’t queer, that’s just how we wrote it, you’ve all got dirty minds.” That same show will be defended with ‘why can’t guys just be friends’, and implications that any suggestion of physical intimacy doesn’t make it gay and is harmful to guys in general. There may be some truth in that, but there is also truth in the use and manipulation of queer audiences, and there are plenty of touchy feely male/male relationships which aren’t queerbaiting; look at most buddy cop shows (I exclude due South from this), JD and Turk, McGee and DeNozzo, Esposito and Ryan. Well written brotherhood and friendship is out there which does not rely on one character waiting for another to come back from the dead for centuries, or casually delivering that Cas ∴ Cas

I’ve been going on for a while, but I’m going to just make one last swing for it before I conclude. Take in mind that original quote, then. Look at this article. The quotes here are notorious in Merlin fandom, of course, but even from an outsider they leave a bad taste in my mouth. 

“Murphy points to the moment where Arthur finally dies as what the entire series has been building towards. At the “just hold me,” Murphy justifies to a shocked McGrath that, “well, he’s dying, the man he loves is dying, so he’s holding him.””

Maybe it wasn’t queerbaiting to start with, but Merlin knew what it was doing. S1: “Merlin is about a friendship between Merlin and Arthur, and they do care about each other hugely, but um it’s not necessarily, you know, it isn’t a gay love story, no.” vs. S5: “I think you maybe just confirmed what a lot of people thought, and I’m glad that Julian could do it, because he’s probably the only one who could have gotten away with that commentary.”

I don’t know where Merlin fandom stands on this. I know there’s an undercurrent - because I’ve read it - that some people like the ending as it is because they don’t think that all love has to be shown in smooches. But that would be fine if it wasn’t raising a strawman to argue against (I see it a lot in these conversations). Nobody is even talking about kissing. A relationship of any shade which is confirmed and genuine is fine. But queerbaiting specifically is this kind of stringing people along by dancing around the suggestion of something, and then coming back to state that it was there all along, or worse still just go “Maybe~ If that’s the way you see it~”. Nobody is saying they have to bang it out in a clearing in order for it to be legitimized, but that’s a whole other level from ridiculing people who see it that way, playing it as a joke, or stringing those people along right to the very last gasp.

For sure, if you don’t think it was queerbaiting then that’s great, and I’m actually glad for you! I’m sure people disagree with me on a handful of things I’ve said here, but Merlin was a huge disappointment for me as a creative. I wanted to play in that universe, but the seed was planted that every hint of homoerotic subtext was targeting me, or making a mockery of me, and it poisoned that well from the get go. That I’m still harboring those feelings a decade later probably shapes the way I interact with canons now, but it also is an indication of how strongly I feel about Destiel that I can get over it; once burned twice shy usually applies; it harmed my viewing experience of Merlin, Sherlock, and Hannibal, and I won’t deny it affects me when I watch SPN (and some other shows) too. It’s part of why I think this show has such an opportunity to do something different. But there’s still that tugging part of me that insists that because this is a show nurtured in that sweet spot, I have no reason to believe it should do anything outside the norm. Perhaps the situation with The 100 doesn’t affect it, or maybe it will have learned from it? Some things, like the queer hires to the writers room, fill me with hope. But who knows? That’s unfortunately the state of the uneasy relationship I have with it, particularly as a queer person who wants to see those stories on TV. To tell the truth, this uncertainty and unease is the damage that queerbaiting causes in the long term, and we deserve better stories.

This got super duper long, so thanks for sticking with it.