STOP STOP EVERYRHING
i do not know if this has been said but i am going to say it bc fuck it almost knocked me off my feet when i thought of it
merlin waiting patiently for arthur for YEARS. mourning him for longer than he knew him. watching everyone he knew in camelot die and himself not age a day. watching the stone of the castle begin to crack, the wood begin to rot, the streets begin to empty. camelot has fallen. he ventures out but not far in case arthur returns. he experiences decades pass by him in a flash, still nothing. humanity advances and advances, yet they are also their undoing. they build themselves up just to tear themselves down a moment later. years and years and years and years and years pass, still nothing. the great dragons words echo in his head and he holds them close in hope, arthur will rise again. a day in spring, merlin catches a whiff of something he can’t place but he’s hit with a wave of nostalgia. it’s not until he’s lying in bed later that day that he remembers it’s what arthur used to smell like. not long after that, he tries to recall arthur’s laugh, but the memory is mute. and fuzzy. why is it fuzzy? stop focusing on the laugh and focus on his face…what did he look like again? oh god. no focus on something small. his eye color. what color were his eyes? blue…right? or were they green?
merlin forgetting the pieces of the puzzle that make up arthur, he can’t remember what he smelled like, what he looked like, what his laugh sounded like, he can’t even recall the way he screamed his name everyday when he needed something. merlin’s loosing arthur again. how long has it been? too long, too long and arthur still isn’t back. the dragon said he’d be back. he remembers that. he’s been repeating the words in his head since they were spoken to him long ago. every morning when he woke, every night before he slept, whenever the world around him seemed out to get him. he’s coming back. arthur’s coming back. why isn’t he back? what had that damn dragon said? he always talked in riddles but merlin had thought his words were clear for the first time since he’d known him. what had he said?
when albion’s need is greatest, arthur will rise again.
he’ll rise again. arthur will be back. and they’ll fight a great evil like they used to, side by side, two sides of the same coin, arthur and merlin together at last. he just has to wait for such a great evil. a great evil that would constitute arthur’s return. merlin’s lived many, many years. he’s seen much evil. arthur never returned then. something bigger and badder then. something worse that anything he could imagine…would it be immoral to instigate the evil to come to pass? (merlin’s tries to recall arthur’s secret smile when merlin made a face at him across the room or whispered something in his ear when visiting noble and royals were acting like fools and comes up empty.) to hell with morals. to hell with the damn dragon. to hell with it all. merlin’s been alive for centuries. arthur’s been asleep for centuries. they’ve been waiting for each other for centuries. merlin’s sick of it. to hell with it all. arthur needs a great evil? he’ll give him a great evil.
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Going to pull a Kim Dokja here and tell everyone that they should definitely go read The World After The Fall (novel version) all the way to the end because it is SO AMAZING and very very similarly mind-fucky about universes and reality and imagination and legitimate scientific theories you can go research about but the majority of the story itself feels mostly like a silly and bizarre action plot, when really it hits you with so many deep and philosophical quandaries and feels that you really don’t realise til the end and then you bawl your eyes out, kinda like what happens with ORV. I don’t want to spoil it by giving specifics, but like… it’s truly SO WEIRD that you will undoubtedly question how an author actually decided to go with those options, but obviously they had every reason to choose those metaphors and bizarre choices, yet you’re still left a bit like “What the actual fuck?” even after knowing how weird it is.
DEFINITELY BE CAREFUL if you experience delusions as part of your mental health though! They hit so many of my own at the end, I was so so glad that ORV had already given me actual psychosis beforehand so I knew how to take it in stride and not let it make me spiral. On the plus side, if you DO have the same type of mental illness as me, the story is even MORE relatable than ORV (or maybe like, relatable for different reasons to it, since ORV is still really cool too!) This only really applies to the latter third of the book though.
Anyways, READ THE WORLD AFTER THE FALL! Sing-Shong are geniuses with their stories and you don’t always realise til the end when they hit you with all the extra realisations! It truly is so impressive and also a little aggravating because GUYS BE NICE TO ME! But they’re already nice since they shared it with us, it just feels mean because then we get pulled into all their stories’ meta bullshit as a result.
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something that i think is really interesting about billy's view of flint in s3 is that he thinks flint's death (if it's in a self-sacrificial way) will not absolve him of his sins in life but that it will make up for the hurt he's caused. or at least that billy wants it to. he pushes flint to take the maroon queen hostage so that flint will die, but flint will die for the crew. billy says in s3e6 "with all the shit that he's done, the things he's gotten away with, [flint dying to free them from the maroons] would have been fair. that would have been right" and that he wants to see "the moment the world finally catches up to [flint]" if/when he dies dueling teach. billy has a very simple idea of justice - he wants flint to die for the death and destruction he has caused, no matter how. that will make the world right, that the narrative will be balanced again.
but what billy doesn't know, and what makes me INSANE about this show is that the full quote from billy is is "I think part of the reason I've been able to stand by his [flint's] side is that I wanted to make sure I've got a good view of the moment the world finally catches up to him... and this story starts to make sense again." but to flint, what he has done is in service of his own justice. justice for the deaths of thomas and miranda and james mcgraw, for the theft of his home in london and again his home in nassau. but to billy, HIS narrative identifies flint as the villain. as the monster. for billy to get justice, flint must die. but it's SUCH a good line, because it also prompts the viewer to think - in OUR narrative, which follows flint and silver mostly, flint must succeed. we want him to beat teach and take the fleet back and overthrow the british empire. flint is shown to be a murderer but he is also shown to be deeply deeply human and we are set up to sympathize him. but it makes you consider what other voices we aren't hearing. who else has been hurt by flint's actions? what narratives have flint as the villain ? none of the characters in black sails are the heroes in every story - but to who are they the villains?
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