#no disrespect to the author but WHY

[hihopelessromantics]

The Learner Learns Nothing

In which the writing of Seven Deadly Sins expects us to believe that Merlin, the glutton for knowledge, is incapable of learning what really matters over the course of her 3,000 year journey. 

I wrote this inspired by @zeldriszezinho‘s comment on how Merlin was able to reactivate Elizabeth’s curse. The implication that Merlin at some point during the 3000 years gained the ability to break the curse and could have done it AT ANY TIME from that point forward absolutely blew my mind. 

If so canon Merlin is DEAD to me I swear that is so WRONG.

I've never seen a master manipulator character written like this before and I'm not even sure if this is a good way to write a trick villain or whatever the hell she was supposed to be. It sure is baffling so nakaba got that right. I was just as shocked and disbelieving as the sins were. Still am. Regardless of how well it fits her “canon” character and personality it is NOT consistent with the found family themes 😭 Plus it would make her RIDICULOUSLY overpowered... how would she have as much power as a god without serious consequences? And literately no one noticed, ever? Britannia started literately falling apart when Meliodas had that much magical power.

You know what I think I will jump on the hating canon Merlin bandwagon with you zeldriszezinho. I am stitching the Merlins from fanfictions together to make a better, healthier one as a present to the sins for all they've gone through together.

Merlin is just - ugh - it’s too sad. Everyone else gets to be, as the people who remember English class would say, a round character, including many of the antagonists! Tons of minor characters get memorable moments of growth, but Merlin, one of the major characters? She stays static for the most part. Trapped as a plot device until the very end. The narrative leaves her alone, torn away from her found family by an insane twist that I don’t quite understand.

 It’s like Merlin never gave a second thought to how the sins are acting. Ten years out of 3,000 isn’t a lot but someone as smart and observant as Merlin should have seen the way the other sins treat her. They knew close to nothing about her, and she constantly isolated herself emotionally and physically from them, but they never made a move to exclude her from the group, or pry too much, or question her origins. They just loved her unconditionally even though she wouldn’t let them in. There was so much raw potential for her character to have a unique and complicated bond with the sins as a group. Maybe it should have been the wakeup call she needed that the unhealed child inside of her could still learn to receive love. That it wasn’t too late to have a life outside her chaos obsession. Canon left us with a pretty unsatisfying answer as to why she acted the way she has. Like hmmm. Really?

Canon Merlin, you had 3,000 years to decide whether to seek help for your childhood trauma and learn how to love in a somewhat healthy manner and you want me to believe you didn't even try that route??? And that on top of that you effectively prolonged the torment of the only two people shown to love you unconditionally? Whom you supposedly loved in return?? Uhhh heyo! I don't believe you. And also I am holding a sword to your throat getting your shit together is no longer optional.

Sure Merlin can be seen as a character study of how obsession can cause someone to forsake all other aspects of life. We saw it in Frankenstein - saw what became of that whole spectacle and how quickly the perpetrator learned that they didn't actually want [insert here], they were just looking for that basic hierarchy of human needs and weren't ready for the responsibility that comes when using the pursuit of scientific advancement as a substitute for, idk, I think in Merlin's case it would be coming to terms with essentially being treated as a weapon due to her abilities. (meliodas and Elizabeth parallel anyone?? We were robbed of three child soldiers learning to love together and be a family smh thanks a lot gods ) anyway back on topic. What Merlin and Frankenstein have in common throughout their story there are a lot of opportunities that they didn't take, and friends that they kept brushing off, never confiding in them until it was crisis time. Frankenstein's story is a tragedy - he keeps abandoning the rational thought and commitment to ethics that make a good scientist. Any second during his story, while he was neglecting correspondence from friends, neglecting to sleep and eat and pay attention to his needs as a person that the obsession had tossed in the trash bin, he was free to say “hey actually I CAN spare a second from my neverending workload to breathe and think about what's important to me. Why I'm doing this? And how I could do it better. Have I learned anything in this latest deep dive into knowledge?” Instead he is ruled by his emotions, which in the end, keep him from properly emphasizing with other people and actually achieving what he wanted to do. I don't even remember if Frankenstein KNEW what he wanted to get out of his experiments. Probably not considering this the way he immediately freaked out when it actually WORKED. And then it was crisis time, so he goes to his friends, but does he confide in them what really happened? What part he had in it and how he feels about the whole thing? Don't think so. So they just think he's depressed as fuck and going a little crazy. They're completely unable to help him in any substantial way. 

We see this with Merlin. She has to have complete control of the situation at all times so she tells no one. If she can get this ONE THING right finally everything will fall into place. That must be what she thought. But what the hell? Knowledge is and has always been collaborative. We know she was never learning just to learn or for the love of it - it was a poor substitute for the love and attention a child needs to grow up with a good understanding of how to pursue fulfillment. So she was always aiming to accomplish something with her knowledge and all around her were people working together to accomplish something. Hell, she worked together with the sins to accomplish her goal. 3,000 years. She stopped her own time. Physically, right? Or was it mental too? The science there doesn't seem to work with the brain literately rewiring itself as it gets new experiences so. We're just meant to assume she spent 3,000 years trapped in the same mindset while traveling all over Britannia and interacting with God knows how many people. Just out of pure necessity to survive and obtain the information and tools she needs she would have to interact with a LOT of people. That's not even mentioning the people she did research on. And we're expected to believe she didn't learn anything that would make Merlin- smart, curious, motivated little Merlin who tricked two GODS on the OFF CHANCE that what they give her will satisfy the hole in her heart - didn't learn enough about human behavior to give abandoning love and true connection a second thought? Or even TRY to engage meaningfully with anyone? It's not like she had never made that connection with anyone before. What about Meliodas? What about 106 Elizabeths? 

This twist that Merlin might have been manipulating the Sins all along, rather than blowing the reader’s mind with the clues and clever foreshadowing that were there all along, blows a hole in the overarching themes in the story. Merlin’s betrayal is a catastrophe of the highest proportions because it calls into question EVERYTHING they learned up until that point. What she did would cause extensive trauma to everyone involved - all this time they believed that hey, maybe fate brought us together, wasn’t it so good that we finally found people that could understand us? And now they are questioning all of it. So yeah, emotionally, the twist does what it is supposed to. It hurts. But... it doesn’t make sense.  Being in the Seven Deadly Sins causes every other member to learn how to reconcile with themselves, their pasts, their feelings, and their relationships. Why is Merlin the exception? This feels like disappointing writing and a huge waste of character potential. 

It's not like abandoning all emotion and other desires was remotely necessary for Merlin to achieve her goal. She's had fun along the way and that's shown to us. Why are we given ‘i used to have a crush on Meliodas’ as a reason why she would give up on connection or whatever? Merlin that was literally 3,000 years ago when you were 12(?). You didn't talk to anyone about THEIR childhood crushes in all that time? And it's not like Meliodas ever stopped loving or caring about her. Even after getting his emotions stolen bit by bit he only abandons her and the rest of the sins out of necessity. Here she's got a good friend to confide in. And he's EXACTLY the kind of friend she needs if she wants to resurrect an old god! Meliodas is trusting, supportive, willing to Go the Distance for anything he believes in, AND desperate enough to consider extreme courses of action in order to break his and Elizabeth's curses.

All Merlin has to do to potentially get Mel on board is say, "Hey, some of my personal research has turned up something I think you might be interested in. The existence of an old god that the Supreme Deity and Demon King locked away because they feared her power and didn't want her to interfere with their goals.  I've been curious about rumors like these since I was a child, and now I have finally found enough solid evidence to confirm that this god exists. It stands to reason that such a god would be able and even willing to help with the curse on you and Sis-sis. Not a timely solution, but a good plan B or C. I'll be looking into it, and I'll let you know if I find anything that could help you."

What's Meliodas going to say to that? Probably, "Thanks, Merlin!"

He was not afraid of potentially starting an "age of Chaos" when his father told him that is what killing him would mean. Chaos is a mysterious entity of both darkness and light, good and evil, creation and destruction. Previously worshipped by goddesses and feared by the demons. Its agenda, if it even has one, is even more mysterious than Merlin's was before the big reveal. As far as I can infer, Chaos (without the influence of fantasy racism) seems just as likely to bring balance as it could bring upheaval. Something that Britannia desperately needs. And since Chaos is the mother of life in this universe, why would it destroy everything it has created?

It makes sense that if he had known, Meliodas would have been wary of this god, and warned Merlin to be careful, but in the end... wouldn't he have as much reason to help his friend as he would to stop her? Why continue on to release Chaos after the curse is already broken? Fair question. But why not?

Meliodas just wants to live in peace with his loved ones. If releasing Chaos means an "age of Chaos" will occur, well, that just means going back to the beginning, before the eternal game between the Supreme Deity and Demon King. So. The same unknowns that he's faced in his life thus far, except the two dictators manipulating everyone into an eternal war are replaced with the creator of life itself? That would actually sound pretty good to Meliodas, right?

Chaos is disappointed with the weakness of humanity but acknowledged it as, hehehe religious parallels my beloved, "the race most like itself, that embodies its values." Now, this could be 4+ years of religion classes talking but Chaos's previous goal before the Holy War seems to have been to create a race "in its own image." And it did. The question is, now what? I doubt this god is capable of being truly evil because why would evil create creatures with moral compasses? Evil cannot create good and vice versa. We the audience know what happened in Four Knights of the Apocolypse thus far regarding Chaos's preference to humans, but Meliodas and the other Sins have no reason to suspect the entity of chaos would ever go full genocide mode on its own creations. A god that creates all life according to a set of intricate rules (physics, etc.) tends to have patterns of behavior that make sense. Creating everything just to kill it all off doesn't really make sense.

Merlin could damn well have told the Sins, or even just Meliodas, that her goal is to resurrect the original god of their universe that was locked away by the Demon King and the Supreme Deity, who play with people's lives for fun and obviously freaking suck - without making herself look like she has a) gone off the deep end or b) working toward an evil goal that they should immediately put a stop to by any means necessary.

Instead, she just tricks Meliodas and the Sins outright in the most painful way possible. Wtf?

She doesn’t have a solid reason to hurt the people who love her like no one ever has. Who, in their own messy way, have treasured her like her own parents and her people never did.

The twist that her true goal all along was to release Chaos would still work, both as a plot mechanic and for shock value. What’s not shocking about your friend actually being serious about releasing an ancient god, and doing it so soon after Britannia was nearly destroyed by a Holy War? The Sins would have been shocked and hurt all the same with how she orchestrated them coming together, trained Arthur for this exact purpose, and prompted Meliodas to confront and kill his father - all things which were ultimately for the best for all of the races, but with Merlin’s questionable choices, involved a lot more trauma for everyone. Hell, if Merlin got a character arc like the others, the Chaos reveal would actually hurt the Sins MORE. Instead of realizing they didn’t really know her, they would be realizing that the sense of warmth and belonging and the bonds they had forged with each other hadn’t reached Merlin’s heart. That whatever effort they had put into bonding with her wasn’t enough, it didn’t help her the way she had - the way they thought she had helped them. That they had been oblivous to their friend’s suffering and emptiness, that she didn’t trust them the way they trusted her, etc, etc. A deeper and more cutting reveal if you asked me. 

As it is, the reveal makes it so that they didn’t lose a friend and member of their found family. They lost a person who was just... there. Forgotten until it was strictly neccessary for her to be there. Who never truly cared (?). While that’s sad, it’s... not what it could be if she had gotten the chance to genuinely be a part of the sins, physically and emotionally. 

It seems to me that in the moment, Meliodas doesn't seem overly concerned about Chaos. He's angry that Merlin would be willing to blindside and manipulate him, making light of a friendship that's spanned over 3,000 years, for the sake of something that might not even exist. He's angry she seems to value that over everything she already has. Is this the only thing she truly cared about? Was he and his loved ones nothing but pawns to her, just as he was a pawn to his father? Same with the other Sins - they don't know what's going on, but they are angry and hurt at the prospect that their friendship with Merlin was a lie.

THIS, Merlin could have avoided entirely! She is an intelligent, powerful woman - a genius according to some of the most powerful demons alive - and she has BETTER OPTIONS! Choices. By all means, she could have had wonderful, meaningful times with the Sins for all of their journey together, and kept them as friends afterward, maybe finding true fulfillment in the process. All without giving up her pursuit of releasing Chaos. 

She could have learned. Why didn’t she? 

[dcbnam-aep]

everyone saying alicent is a bad mother and focusing on the moment she left rather than the moments (plural!!) that she stayed. the maesters tell her they’re getting to the hard part and instead of leaving the room she just steps back because she cannot leave her son alone in his state. she tries to become queen regent so that she can act for him rather than provide aemond the opportunity to do more harm. and then, despite her own sick history, she returns to the same bed where she cared for a dying viserys and sits with her son. we don’t know how long she sat there before she left. it could have been hours. can we not give her the benefit of the doubt unlike the men on the council who stripped her of any and all authority despite her proving herself time and time again!?!?

(this is the same woman who Did Not Hesitate to step in front of a dragon to protect her son even though it has been established from ep 1 that she does not like dragons!!!)

I’m not saying she’s perfect - she’s flawed like Literally Every Other Character in the show - but she does love her children and only wants the best for them.

[daydadahlias]

Today, I saw an Instagram reel complaining about how fanfic authors apologize for late updates in the notes of their stories and that readers “don’t want to hear it,” they just want the fic to be updated and there are a ton of comments like this one in agreement

and frankly, as a fanfic writer, I just have to say this kind of attitude is really consistently disappointing and frequently makes me not want to write for fandom anymore. I don’t know how many times we as creators have to tell readers that you are not entitled to our work before y’all comprehend that. Fanfic is a privilege, not a commodity.  

Readers need to learn how to be aware that there’s a real person with a real life writing and sharing this work. And you complaining that you had to “beg” for an update is not the time-consuming difficulty you think it is in comparison to how long it takes a creator to actually make something. We don’t just shit out content when it fits our fancy. 

Fanfic is something people do for free with their own valuable time. We are not machines just cranking out random half-assed works. We come up with ideas, we plan, and we spend God knows how many hours and days actually creating our content because it’s something that we enjoy doing, and are excited to share with others, not something we feel an obligation to create for you. And the second that readers start acting like they’re entitled to our work is when it stops being fun. 

In short, please just learn how to be respectful and kind to creators and understand that we literally owe you jackshit and if you treat us with this kind of attitude, we will stop making content for you because you simply do not deserve it.   

TL;DR: if you act like fanfic authors don’t have lives outside of fic, you’re a cunt, and we deserve better.

[sevendutchies]

People in this fandom will really look at The Fool, Patience, Lacey, Carson, Sedric, Hest, Davvie, Lecter, Kennit, Ash/Spark, and yes, even Fitz himself, and still have the gall to call it queer bait.

These characters are explicitly queer, their actions impact the narrative, they are well written, and their identities are treated with respect. That is the best possible queer representation you could ask for in any story.

I've seen people on tumblr basing the likelihood of if they read this series on whether or not it's "actually gay" and I'm here to tell you that it is. There are queer characters. There are queer protagonists. And no matter what you see people in the fandom say, Robin Hobb wrote some amazing queer representation in a genre that rarely sees it at all.

TLDR;

Queer bait = disrespectful marketing ploy that exploits queer audiences

Queer bait ≠ "my two favorite characters never have sex"

[youhavethewrong]

do you guys remember when Attack On Titan had a fucking Looney Tunes Babies style spin off where all the characters were in junior high and the titans were just bullies and eren was mad at them because they ate his hamburg steak and it was legitimately better than the original

[britneyshakespeare]

Subbing special ed at the middle school slaps. Every class I've had so far is 2-4 students and when we finish the assignment we play Uno

[mothmanhamlet]

aaaaaaand neil gaiman is taking the lead in the "author starts abruptly talking about shipping causing Hot New Discourse to hit the market" competition. now, he's been rising the ranks for most of his career, but season one of good omens truly putting him on the map. with a second season AND a controversial gay kiss we may be seeing an absolutely HISTORIC-

hold on? im getting word of something going on out on the field. uh huh. yeah. whats this? now entering the ring: RICHARD SIKEN WITH THE STEEL CHAIR 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[sskk-manifesto]

\\

[leifgrandeduchesse]

King George II of the Hellenes and Joyce Brittain-Jones.

“During the latter part of his exile he had developed a strong attachment towards an English woman J—[Joyce Brittain-Jones] whom he had met while on a visit in India as the guest of the Viceroy, Lord Willingdon. King George's sentiments were reciprocated by this extremely attractive and highly intelligent lady, but though the relationship helped to fill the emotional vacuum in his life and was to endure until his death, the need to keep it secret imposed an additional strain. [...] Although King George had fought tenaciously for his constitutional right to return to Greece at the end of the war, his efforts had been a compulsion of duty rather than a labour of love. The thought of being plunged once again into the soul-destroying arena of political strife that he could still remember from before the war, added to the strains and bitter disappointment of the recent years, was a prospect too painful for him to contemplate. [...]”

“There was another consideration: his emotional attachment to J—, the Englishwoman who had been sharing his life for some years now, had become an increasingly important factor in his calculations, and he was no longer prepared passively to contemplate a future in which this relationship could only continue furtively and intermittently as in the past. What he now yearned for was to be able to abandon the turmoil and the responsibilities of high office and be free to lead the quiet and dignified life of an English gentleman to which his character and temperament made him ideally suited. [...]”

King George II died from heart failure brought on by coronary thrombosis on 1 April 1947, aged fifty-six.

“The death of King George was so sudden and unexpected that the news was received with incredulity at first - some people thought it was a sick April Fool's Day joke, others who heard the church bells tolling in the afternoon thought they were for the Oecumenical Patriarch, who had been lying gravely ill in an Athens clinic for some days. [...] After lying in state in the Cathedral for three days King George's body was taken to Tatoi for burial. It is a tradition initiated by King George I when he bought the estate that all members of the Royal family should choose for themselves the precise spot in the grounds where they wish to be laid to rest. It is also a tradition that the reigning monarch shall place a stone each year on the spot he has chosen for himself. King George had followed this custom, selecting a quiet shaded place under the trees not far from the tiny chapel on the hill-top and it was to this spot that his body was brought on 6 April. Only the members of the family were present for the simple burial service, but when the moment came to lower the coffin into the ground [Queen] Frederica looked round, searching for someone. She went over to where J—, who had been brought from London for the funeral by Princess Marina, was standing discreetly in the background; putting her arm around her, Frederica helped the weeping woman to the graveside among the members of the family.”

Source: No Ordinary Crown by Stelio Hourmouzios

[dazais-guardian-angel]

Happy birthday once again, Odasaku ❤️❤️❤️🥃 I'm so happy you were born. I'm so happy you were here, even if only for an unbearably short while. The impact you've had on my life can never be overstated; I'm forever grateful I was able to read your story, in Dark Era, and that I can continue to do so, in Bungou Stray Dogs. After all, it is your story... you will always live on in Dazai, and in the lives of everyone you save, saved just by being alive when you were. In many ways, you've saved me, too. I hope we can see you again in the series, one day... somehow, in some way, even if only briefly.

To the stray dogs~ 💖🥂

[daz4i]

i think it's kinda funny when ppl complain about there not being any gay relationships in bsd and then bring up how atsulucy is very heavily implied to be canon or at least set up to be that. bc like. i think at this point you have to accept that ranpoe is the same. in which case the original argument lost its meaning didn't it

(i generally think it is a bit silly to expect any bsd ship to become canon. hope, enjoy the idea, make content, that's great. but expecting it - and that includes the m/f ones too - is. pointless imo. this isn't a romance story i don't think any relationship will be explicitly stated in the main story, at most it'll be somewhat acknowledged in wan. i think if you build up some expectation that a ship is gonna become canon you're only setting yourself up for disappointment. and that's a bit of a shame. i hope you can enjoy the story and enjoy the fan content as they are)

[transformers-why]

hi yeah yes this blog is dead buts the only one that still has reader insert content on it and I just gotta say like

What the fuck is up the with exclusivity of reader insert shit these days? If it's about a marginally attractive man all of a sudden its f!reader afab!reader (which should NOT BE INDICATIVE OF PRONOUNS????????? YOURE NAMING THEIR SEX, AND LABELING THE PHYSICAL SEX IF IT HAS EXPLICIT CONTENT LIKE THAT IMPLIES ITS GOING TO BE GENDER NEUTRAL AND THEN ITS NOT AND ITS IMMEDIATELY TRIGGERING FOR A LOT OF TRANS PPL LIKE MYSELF??)

Like it was very very common that reader insert content baseline be gender neutral unless requested otherwise that way everyone who finds the character attractive can enjoy it?? SOOOOO fucking fed up with this smh

Fandom space is supposed to be inclusive and ngl like. when you cater specifically and only to one set of pronouns with this kind of stuff its soo deterring to so many queer people

[justanisabelakinnie]

Unpopular fandom opinion but: "If it's not in the movie/book/show itself then it isn't canon, idc what the creator says!" is such a stupid af bullshit take lmfao.

[claudiaeparvier]

"funny how feminization is only an issue when it happens to louis" There are people in this fandom who insist that Samstat is hypermasculine and reading him as anything other than a Stanley Kowalski pastiche is stupidity and projection. The same people who insist that female-coded Louis is the only right interpretation of the character, and they already imply that Assad's Armand is hypermasculine as well. It's the side of the same coin as the problem with a dainty, feminine Louis. They're not about subverting the gender norms, but upholding them in a twisted way

Gonna be honest, I can’t articulate a proper response to this because I just woke up and I’m about to go back to sleep because…no.

[thegeminisage]

that was a ROCK SOLID concept. if it wasn't so incredibly specific i would be rewriting it already out of sheer frustration

[mediawhorefics]

hello marie, hope ur okay! so, there’s this girl on Wattpad who’s claiming that she finally got your permission to translate tts, is that true or… she’s just lying ?!

https://www.wattpad.com/1318890612

why can't these people just leave me alone?