#i finally get perelyan

[repmet]

MERLIN WEEK 2022 | day three: favourite dynamic(s) - the round table

[donttouchtheneednoggle]

perelyan or perelyaine?

and

merlin or sense8?

💕

.....

ok i can do this

here's the thing. perelyan is perfect. perelyan is sublime, you literally cannot get better than perelyan. they're adorable, openly affectionate, have zero problems, and have just enough gentle ribbing to still be very entertaining.

perelyaine is a clown show.

somehow the addition of one person manages to shift the entire dynamic into clown on clown on clown violence.

elyan and gwaine (lovingly) bully percival for being tall and also dumb. gwaine and percival bully elyan for being short and also smart. elyan and percival bully gwaine for being... well, gwaine.

it's like comparing apples and oranges they are so different, but they are both equally canon :') (perelyan got together after 4x10, perelyaine after s4. I'm currently writing tbe story of how they got together, it's kind of hilariously sad for how fucking stupid they are 🤣)

...probably perelyan by like. a smidge

NOW

which show is better? Sense8.

which show do i prefer watching? Sense8.

which show would i recommend to a friend (and have :D)? Sense8.

which show has better representation, ACTUAL CANON POLY RELATIONSHIPS, a finale that is actually fun in addition to being an emotional rollercoaster, and is enjoyable despite it not always having amazing writing instead of ruined by it? Sense8.

which show would i pick?

...merlin

looOOK it's just. sense8 is already near perfection, and probablywould have been if it didn't get cancelled prematurely.. merlin is a trainwreck with a bunch of beloved characters and stupendous relationships with barely any canon content. it's the PERFECT material for fic and Yelling. I love the bastard version of it that is ingrained in my brain and refuses to leave :')

ty lit :D

[lit-in-thy-heart]

mortality clings to butterfly wings

Rating: Mature

Archive Warnings: Major Character Death

Categories: Multi

Relationships: Gwen & Merlin, Gwaine/Merlin, Gwen/Leon, Merlin & Mithian, Gwaine & Percival, Gwaine & Gwen & Merlin, Leon & Merlin

Characters: Merlin, Gwen, Gwaine, Leon, Aithusa, Percival, Mithian, Gaius, Lot, Drea

Additional Tags: Grief, Mourning, Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Queen Gwen, QPR, Gwaine Lives, Oh Aithusa Also Lives Because Who Tf Knows Where She Went, I've Spent Over 85k Trying to Fix Gwen and Merlin’s Friendship You're Welcome, Referenced Mercelot, Referenced Merthian, Post-Canon, Fear Not There Are Still Shenanigans, Magic Gwen, Magic Gwaine, Magic Mithian, Angst, Fluff, It Starts Pretty Heavy But I Promise You it Gets Better, This Was Initially Meant to be 10 5k Chapters But Here We Are With 8 Chapters Ranging from 6k to 15k, Merlin Calling Gwaine Flower, Aithusa Has a Hoard Now, Knife Merlin, Knife Gwaine, Knife Gwen, Immortal Leon, Immortal Merlin, Thank The Sheer Amount of Merwaine Angst on My Dash For This, I Love Writing a Fic Out of Spite, Percival’s Personality is His Lack of Sleeves and I'm Not Going to Apologise For That, They're All Idiots Your Honour, They're All Just Absolute Messes As Well, Court Sorcerer Merlin, They/Them Merlin, Leon No Longer Wears Chainmail and Merlin Hates It, I Think There Is a Dick Joke in Here Somewhere, Referenced Perelyan, Hey They All Actually Get to Talk About Their Trauma What a Novelty, Aroace Leon, Long Haired Merlin, I Know Narratively It Makes Sense That Merlin Was Never a Knight But That 4x05 Scene Still Fucks Me Over, So This is Me Honouring That, Listen Right Their Whole Dynamic is Queer Friendship Group and Percival, Percival is Also Queer But He's Not Tangled Up With Any of The Others, Bandit Gwaine, Because That's a Thing I Do Now Apparently, Hi Yeah Can You Tell I Miss Hugging My Friends?, Wound Stitching, Needles, Stitches, Swearing

Words: 88,100

Chapters: 8/8

Summary:

Sometimes, Merlin spoke the names of those they'd lost quietly into the dawn, allowing them to be caught in the soft net of the clouds and carried away on the wings of immortality with the breeze.  

After abandoning Camelot for half a decade, Merlin finally returns at the request of an old friend and is met with a markedly different kingdom to the one they left behind. In the years spent away from the place they had once called home, Merlin has tried to move on from the failures in their past and sever all ties with their old life in the attempt to start afresh. Upon their return, though, they discover that some foundations cannot be so easily destroyed and find themself tethered to familiar forms by both the shadows of the dead and the promise of the future. With old Camelot on the brink of collapse, Merlin realises that perhaps they have been running from everything for a little too long and, this time, they are determined to not make the same mistakes again. After all, mortality is fragile and easily broken and sometimes it takes a death to fertilise the ground for new life.

Opening:

Camelot’s castle stirred beautifully in the light of afternoon, its towers shedding golden leaves that dripped down to form a pool around the lower town. Merlin stood still at the hill’s summit for a moment, drinking in the scenery they’d abandoned for five years, and closed their eyes as the tentative sun warmed their body. They shouted a name up at the clouds bleeding with sunlight and opened their eyes as Aithusa, answering, landed beside them. She’d scared away the birds that should have been lining the trees as Merlin walked past, but they knew that they would sing again soon enough.

Fic and art can be found here

a massive thank you to my friends and beta readers @constellation-falchion and @ls-granger for all of your help and support as i've been writing this (and i promise you will never have to hear about it again <3)

also to @sourdough-morbread for your simply stunning piece and for offering to do one when i was on the brink of a spiral back in may, i'm still staring at it 😍

and thank you as well to @donttouchtheneednoggle and @sirwilliamofdeira for being so wonderfully encouraging (even though you didn't know what it was i was working on) and being incredible beans 💕

[fishoutofcamelot]

Hi there! I hope you’re well. I just wanted to send a message to thank you for the elyan content 😍 he is my favourite knight but for some reason I never see much of him on tumblr! So it’s awesome to see him on your blog. I hope I didn’t bother you with this ask 🙈

I AM doing well, actually! And you didn’t bother me, asks will probably never bother me <3

I could go on for a million years about why no one makes content about Elyan - and sometimes forget he exists altogether - but I don’t wanna start drama so we’ll just. Not touch that topic with a 10-foot pole

BUT! Elyan IS a fantastic knight, and the fact that he is your favourite knight too is very iconic and sexy of you. Elyan fans/stans are the sexiest members of this fandom. That’s not even opinion, that’s just science

So! Here’s a list of Elyan headcanons, because he’s worth it:

Elyan is ace. Them’s the facts

He’s also gay but in that stage where he’s questioning if he might be bi. Unfortunately, he died before reaching an answer

I hate to talk about Hogwarts Houses in 2020, but he is one hell of a Hufflepuff. Elyan is his name and protecting his loved ones with life and limb is his game. It is very easy to earn his loyalty, and once you have he will ride straight through Hell for you

Elyan likes hoods. He wears hoods whenever he can (i mean c’mon, that outfit in season 3 was serving some killer looks)

He’s just a protective older brother to literally everyone in Camelot. Yes, even Gaius

Gwen, Elyan, Leon, and Merlin have family game night once every month. They all gather in their old house in the lower town to get drunk, play some dice games, and spend the whole night goofing off

Only a few people know about game night. Even fewer people have seen it with their own eyes. Arthur and Gwaine frequently try to sneak in to see game night for themselves, but somehow never succeed

Elyan loves swimming. They don’t get many chances for it, but whenever they do, Elyan is the best swimmer out of all the knights

He’s also like. Really good at sneaking up on people. Consistently rolls high on stealth checks

Out of everyone in the Round Table, Elyan is the most easily spooked. He hates it when they gather around the fire to tell ghost stories, bc he will NOT be able to sleep the rest of the night after that

Why do people think there’s no dynamic or chemistry between Elyan and Gwaine??? Those two had a SOLID friendship and I will not stand for this disrespect (also, Perelyan is good but Elyaine is godtier imo)

Elyan is bad at blacksmithing. Like really bad. No one even understands how that works, considering he spent his whole childhood training under his father. All the blacksmithing talent apparently went to Gwen somehow

He likes bugs. When he was a kid he would go out in the woods and collect beetles and stuff to stick in little terrarium jars. He’d even give them names and backstories and personalities. Sometimes he would sit under a tree and tell Gwen stories about all these adventures his bugs would go on when no one was looking

Leon HATED bugs, and got creeped out by them, which meant Elyan was legally obligated to harass him about it

Elyan doesn’t get much chance to catch bugs anymore, but he’s also the only member of the Round Table who can put up with spiders

Spider in the armory? Everyone is freaking out while Elyan just calmly picks it up and lets it outside - but not without lots of snark and eye-rolling, of course

The reason Elyan ran away from home was because his mother had died and he saw it as a personal failing. He felt that it was his fault she was dead, because he couldn’t protect her, and left Camelot because he couldn’t bear the shame of guilt

In the last few years of his time away from Camelot, Elyan fell in love and lived out an mlm cottagecore fantasy where he and his lover raised wyverns together. But when Morgause came to capture him, she killed his lover and burnt their wyvern farm to the ground

Elyan tries not to let his grief be known, though. Not just because he doesn’t want to burden Gwen with his pain, but also because his lover had magic and he could get arrested for having fallen in love with a sorcerer

Morgause had Elyan captive for a while before Gwen showed up. She even used the nathair on him in small increments; not long enough to kill him or damage him irreparably, but enough to make him suffer. It’s for this reason that Elyan was able to bounce back from being tortured by Morgana whereas Gwaine didn’t survive it, because Morgause had already microdosed him with that kind of pain two years ealier

Still traumatizing, though. Like. This boy is EXTREMELY traumatized, can someone please get him some therapy???

Moving back to Camelot with Gwen was simultaneously healing and harming. Healing, because  he visited his dad’s grave, rebuilt his relationship with Gwen, and his companionship with her, Merlin, and Leon helped him move on from the pain of his loss. But harming because of all the anti-magic prejudice that surrounded him, and every time someone said magic was evil it was like another dagger in his heart. That was his dead lover they were talking about and calling a monster. Someone who was kind and compassionate and funny, who didn’t have a lick of evil in them, who would have burned at the stake by Camelot’s laws

Elyan didn’t think about what it meant to be a knight of Camelot when he agreed to be knighted. But he was just so determined to fight and kill Morgause, the woman who had killed his lover and his wyverns and abducted him from his home, that he didn’t even think about it. He just wanted Morgause dead. It wasn’t until a few days later when he realized that being a knight of Camelot meant enforcing Camelot’s anti-magic laws, and this realization naturally caused him distress

Instead of abandoning his knighthood, Elyan found a compromise. He would support Arthur in everything, until magic got involved. If Arthur ever captured druids or put sorcerers to death, Elyan decided he would smuggle them out of the city. He would never actively kill or capture those with magic, and would sometimes even try to sabotage efforts in capturing harmless magic-users

Elyan knew full well what Dragoon was doing. He knew that Gwen and Arthur’s love was true and required no enchantment, meaning Dragoon had simply framed himself to get Gwen out of a jam. He appreciates Dragoon, and even though he supposedly killed Uther, Elyan can’t even fault him for that. Elyan wanted to kill Uther too

Merlin is the little brother Elyan always wanted, and Elyan is the older brother Merlin never had. They act so much like siblings it’s not even funny, and some people question if they were actually raised together 

He and Merlin like to team up and tease Gwen. They’ll walk behind her and chant stuff like “Gwen and Arthur sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G”. They’re like children, and it’s both very funny and very annoying

Gwen gets her revenge, of course. She always gets her revenge

They also team up to be like. Super protective of Gwen. The vetting process Arthur had to go through - between Elyan, Leon, AND Merlin - in order to date Gwen was ridiculous

Arthur: Merlin I’m literally your boss. Your friend. You've been my personal manservant for like six years now

Merlin: Yeah, which means I know exactly how much of a dick you are

After being possessed by the druid ghost, Elyan is a lot more in tune with the supernatural

Am I suggesting that Elyan can now see, talk to, and interact with ghosts, and even starts a little agency where he goes around helping them complete their unfinished business? Why yes, yes I am

When Gwen was banished, Elyan wanted to go with her. But she asked him to stay behind and keep an eye on Agravaine, as she suspected him of treachery, and to stop him from taking over Camelot should Agravaine make a move. And, well, Elyan has never been able to say no to his sister

Elyan and Merlin decided to try and find a way to prove Gwen’s innocence. There’s no way she was acting of her own accord, after all. There was some kind of enchantment at play, there had to be. Merlin doesn’t tell him about Shade!Lancelot directly, but does propose it as a theory regarding how Lancelot had come back from the dead. Elyan supports the theory 100%

About two months after the wedding, Merlin and Elyan locate the enchanted bracelet, and Gwen and Lancelot’s names are finally cleared

In Avalon, Elyan, Freya, and Lancelot spend the whole time watching/narrating the events of season 5 like sports commentators. They are all mutually exasperated at Merlin’s antics

When Arthur shows up in Avalon, the only reason Elyan doesn’t punch him in the face is because he’s too busy restraining Lance from doing the same

He does, however, give him a strong talking-to about how “all your magic and you still can’t save my life” is a horrible thing to say actually

Lancelot, however, is more upset about the “I guess I was wrong” speech

Gwaine shows up in Avalon like. SUPER traumatized. He died while being tortured by a nathair, died in a way that he perceived to be failure, and he’s kinda messed up because of that. Elyan, who has already had a few years to cope with nathair torture, is the one who helps Gwaine heal from his trauma

In the 21st century, Elyan gets reincarnated along with everyone else. His childhood is plagued with weird dreams, dreams that terrify him. Snakes and pain, wyverns and fire, all of it. He meets an old man who calls himself Merlin, who helps Elyan through the pain of remembering his past life. For once, Elyan gets to be taken care of instead of the other way around. For once, he is allowed to be vulnerable and weak and struggling. He doesn’t hide his tears. He gets the help he needs and works through his trauma

And one day, many years later, he is walking down the street when he sees someone who looks oddly familiar. The face of an old lover, perhaps

Thanks for the ask! <3

[lit-in-thy-heart]

💖 What do you like most about your own writing?🖊 Post a snippet from a current WIP.📥 What is your fave fic to receive comments/messages on?🏅 What is something you recently felt proud of in regard to your writing (finished a fic, actually planned for once, etc).✨ Choose three adjectives to complement your own writing.🍰 Name one of your fave comfort fics (doesn’t have to be your all time fave).

So i copied and pasted the questions without somehow realising this isn't hoe you do it but it saves you doing it ig 🤣💕

it does save me having to find it, i very much appreciate it, and thank you for the ask hon 💕

💖 What do you like most about your own writing?

i quite like how sometimes i make myself laugh with dialogue? also some of my metaphors/similes.

🖊 Post a snippet from a current WIP.

this is from a perelyan one i started at the end of october and, surprise surprise, temporarily abandoned, but it was only meant to be short so theoretically i should be able to finish it one day 🤣

They were supposed to be preparing for the feast celebrating Samhain. Elyan was supposed to be helping Percival don sleeves for the evening, not fumbling with the buckles on the front of his chainmail and making him wear decidedly fewer clothes. But there were still hours before the feast and nobody would find them, tucked away in their own pool of golden light on the edge of the castle, on old battlements that had been built around and were fast crumbling. Perhaps it hadn’t been a good idea to bring Percival, of all people, to the site, but Elyan had never been one for thinking things through when it came to his heart.

It was the final hour of daylight, when everything was delicately layered in gilt, and Elyan drew back to admire the panels of stained glass dappling Percival’s body. No crown, no sword, nothing that glittered, even came close to Percival’s beauty. And when he leaned into Elyan, his body was moulded by Elyan’s hands just as easily as molten metal. On himself, Elyan preferred the subtler and more shy hues of silvery moonlight, but Percival burned beautifully in gold.

📥 What is your fave fic to receive comments/messages on?

i mean, a notification for any fic will make me overjoyed, but i do get very warm whenever someone leaves a comment on mortality, just because that is still my metaphorical offspring

🏅 What is something you recently felt proud of in regard to your writing (finished a fic, actually planned for once, etc).

writing and finishing and i'll cling to you (like a raft in the ocean) just because it was the longest thing i'd managed to finish for over a month and helped pull me out of my block (we'll ignore the fact that said block might have returned)

✨ Choose three adjectives to complement your own writing.

vivid, emotive, detailed? idk.

🍰 Name one of your fave comfort fics (doesn’t have to be your all time fave).

i think it's all coming out aces by @botanicallyinclinednerd is one of them, just because of how well the ace spectrum is explored and although it nearly made me cry i do love it so

and, for a similar reason but with gender, your fic gender friends <3

[donttouchtheneednoggle]

having just seen your perelyan lighting gif ask i was today years old when i twigged that percival's armour is uneven and it's making me very frustrated for no reason at all

he has part of a sleeve.

he has part of a sleeve.

is this in every scene and i just haven't noticed? did elyan not get round to clipping it or was too tired, went fuck it and fell asleep on percy and forgot to go back to it?

is it because he sometimes has that shoulder pad thing?

percy, my good bitch, what is the point?

is what i imagine arthur has asked at one point

honestly sleeveless percival is coming dangerously close to taking up as much brain capacity as merwaincelot

oh my GOD you're right

he rlly has 0.3 of the sleeves he should have huh

a cursory screencap sample reveals that yes it does seem to be every scene up to s5 including in the armour he arrived in which is different from his knight armour

also these screencaps make me howl

at which point he gains his leather short sleeve or whatever tf it is

but good news! elyan finally finished the job only three years late (and if that ain't an adhd mood idk what is)

is his right shoulder his achilles heel or smth?