#shitty arthurian myth show

[chronotopes]

whats your merlin thesis bestie

HIIIII okay i was gonna answer this first thing in the morning but then i drank coffee and had a "cleaning the house" fever come over me so now here i am

there's major ways to fix merlin, but both of them depend on the same basic premise, which is a) merlin is a bitchass liberal, b) uther and gaius are terrible father figures shaping arthur and merlin respectively into versions of themselves, c) fuck the dragon all my homies hate the dragon, d) morgana did nothing wrong*

*morgana probably did things wrong but as a product of very real things that shaped her, including gaius and merlin willingly keeping her in the dark as to her own magic, and an ongoing double standard within the show where merlin is allowed to murder every single magic user that makes an attempt on arthur and uther's life, but the moment anyone is like "so what if we just offed uther, you know, the guy who committed genocide" merlin does a whole BUT KILLING PEOPLE IS WRONG!!! kind of thing and then goes on to do his fifteenth murder of the season

so the 'averting tragedy' way to fix merlin is to make these institutions (sons becoming their fathers, morgana devolving into Scary Woman Villainy, the enforced status quo of 'you have to not tell arthur about your magic, ever') not NONEXISTENT but CHALLENGEABLE, make it a show about young adults who are manipulated by adults more powerful than themselves, who are raised to believe in Tradition and Decorum and Waiting For Destiny but who are ultimately able to care for each other and (in merlin and morgana's case) the oppressed group they are literally a part of more than they care for this upbringing, and choose to fight for that rather than the demands of uther, gaius, and that motherfucking dragon. that's a show i'd sincerely enjoy watching!

the 'entrenching tragedy' way to fix merlin, on the other hand, is to keep all of these elements – the tragedy of every goddamn stupid choice merlin makes on that show – and make it intentional. i don't want to really air out my "everything i like is the same" disease, but make merlin a fullblown terezi pyrope archetype, someone who is practically a child who, by means of necessity and of what he's rewarded for doing, grows to embrace the warped justice of upholding an institution that hurts him and everyone he loves. empathize with morgana on a writing-level the way katie mcgrath was clearly very capable of doing - don't make her Less Violent, but make her violence a Comprehensible Choice, not just a “she’s evil and sexy now!!!” message to the audience. basically, consciously and at every point of the story, write merlin as a fullblown irrational protagonist, and when arthur gets merked and the golden age doesn't happen, make it a show about the failures of fantasy-metaphor-liberalism and about sons becoming their fathers in horrible ways, and about the fucking tragedy of merlin killing morgana when they should have been allies from the start. that's a show i'd enjoy watching too, one that leaves you as hollow and angry as merlin-the-show had, but in a way that comes from skilled writing rather than largely-not-very-good writing that sometimes does something heartbreakingly meaningful long enough for you to keep watching.

[handern]

Hello! It's weird Arthur anon again. Here to say I appreciated the links again, and have been slowly working through while practicing my French! Also wanted to say I recently learned Celtic pagans live alongside Norse pagans in the "voted most likely to be a Nazi" pageant, and so- not a Nazi! Just trying to access a historical paragon of masculinity whose meaning has shifted through the ages, to apply to my transition and it's own new retold story. We can't have nice things I swear.

(this post is a rambling based on my knowledge as a nerd and an ex archaeologist, I encourage ppl reading this to make their own researches and not take everything I say as facts. I tend to go off and simplify things apparently)

Oh dw anon, I figured you're not one of these fucking bastard white supremacists/n*zis

I'm into metal, I love Celtic history and the fake aes people attribute to the Celts (most "Celtic" designs are inspired by Bible illustrations from the early middle ages lmao), AND I love the Norse mythology and stories

So yeah, I'm very aware of what's linked to these interests, but what I know is that people who are ACTUALLY interested in these do their researches as in, they're trying to understand a past culture that they don't claim as their own

Masculinity and feminity through the Arthurian, Norse and Celtic stories are fascinating to study! These were societies with rules and laws and values so different from our own, it's so interesting to see how the ways human beings perceived themselves shifted through time!

N*zis out there trying to appropriate these people's history and shove their own ideology into them without a single care about what it's all about

Thor crossdressed at some point (my favorite story to tell and analyze)! Odin uses magic, which is a women's thing and it IS pointed out by other gods, so it's not speculation! Heimdall had no dad and 9 moms (I know it’s a metaphor but listen)! Not to mention Loki as a general concept

Cuchulain's teacher was a woman! I can never spell his name, even less hers, I'm sorry! (Scathatch?... Oh no.... I'm sorry......)

Gawain made out with the Green Knight! (ok not exactly but-) Women had magic and were feared and respected for it in the early versions!

And these scumbags also love to go SPQR or whatever bc the Romans and Greeks were trash but guess what! During antiquity Ethiopian mercenaries were very valued so there were definitely black people in Europe JUST from that fact alone!

Not to say that these ancient people were perfect and everything was rainbows and flowers, they were just human. But half of these stories and most of the actual history of these people is full of what the dickheads who proclaim themselves their descendants would call "sjw propaganda", since they read and studied them just as much as the regular white biggot performing what they think is "christianity" studied and read the Bible w the intent of understanding it's message

If anything, the values these bastards want to "go back to" are whatever was going on in the XIXth and XXth century but it's less shiny and mystic and doesn't make them feel like they're big dicked descendants of a line of warriors going back millennia or whatever they're trying to achieve

Tldr : I'm very pissed at people trying to shove their values on long dead people to give themselves some kind of respectable image they don't deserve, but yeah!

I know you're good! History and legends are fascinating! :D so much so that the way history has always been used for propaganda purposes is part of my future thesis researches and I'm a nerd, I'm so sorry for hijacking your ask

[verecunda]

That post that’s like “King Arthur was 10000% WELSH you guys, I know because I drive past one of the approx. 500 lakes in Wales that are said to be the one where Excalibur is” is starting to do my head in every time it shows up on my dash. Especially now that it’s full of additions going “the English appropriated a shitty sanitised version because they had no mythology of their own!!!” before proceeding to list a lot of French additions to the mythos.

I absolutely endorse the emphasis on the mythology’s Celtic roots, but please, some nuance and precision would be a godsend here. What do you even mean by “Welsh”? Our earliest sources for Arthur come from a time when there was no such country as “Wales”, and they place him in various locations up and down the length of Britain, not exclusively in Wales. The earliest Welsh-language references to his court actually put him in Cornwall, not Caerleon. The earliest known written reference to the man himself is from a poem (Y Gododdin) surviving in medieval Welsh, but about a people who inhabited what’s now southern Scotland/northern England, whose author (Aneirin) is generally believed to be from the same area. He’s part of the myth of the Cymry - but during that early medieval period that term encompasses something much bigger than just what we now call Wales. Plus, y’know, being a myth, it’s nigh impossible to pin down one definitive origin story for him. That is kind of what gives his particular story such an enduring fascination.

And look, I love Welsh-as-we-would-describe-it Arthur. My heart belongs to Rosemary Sutcliff’s Artos who was born and raised at Dinas Ffaraon and rides into battle against the Saxon with the war cry of “Yr Widdfa!” on his lips. I’ve written fic myself where I’ve placed his court at Caerleon, as being the perfect juncture between the old Romano-British order and the newly emerging medieval Celtic kingdoms. There’s a logic to that particular version of the story. But geez that post gives me a headache. Lord knows how actual Arthurian experts must feel having it cross their dash.

[kob131]

The Lostbelts: Explicitly a story arc with grey and grey morality. Chaldea: Decides to commit global scale genocide with no hesitation and never even considers trying to find another option. Galahad: well if Chaldea represents that timeline's version of humanity I see no raeson why I should be helping them over any of the other timelines. Fate fandom: REEEEEEEEEE!!!

A. The other timelines explictedly fuck over their residents. As in, LB1 is all about survival of the fittest which fucks over it’s residents. LB2 forces humanity (specifically young women) to be sacrificed to man eating giants. LB3 people are forced into being ignorant. LB4 routinely purges those that the King views as “evil” in a hellish cycle of reincarnation. LB5 has humanity become mindless slaves to uncaring gods. And LB6? We haven’t been there yet and we already know it’s even worse than LB5, with humanity being on the verge of extinction and implied that the king there is fucking VORTIGERN.

All six we know about are worse than the original.

Literally the only thing that is even remotely grey is that destroying the Lostbelts will erase the inhabitants.

B. Speaking of-CHALDEA DOES HESITATE. In fact, if you played or even looked up LB1, you’d know that Ritsuka almost commits suicide by cop only to be saved by a resident of the Lostbelt all but explictedly telling him that the Lostbelt doesn’t deserve to stand if it means his world is gone.

And C. Galahad knows fuck all of the Lostbelts. He fucks off before they even SEE one. He fucks off because ‘It’s Ritsuka’s fault that the Alien God destroyed everything by killing Goetia because at least there would be something left BTW I’mma gonna take back the powers I gave the girl who MADE GOETIA’S DEFEAT POSSIBLE so she can’t fight properly and, say, FIX THIS SITUATION THAT BY MY LOGIC I CAUSED.’

Galahad isn’t supporting anyone, he’s being a child and blaming everyone else for a situation that no one is at fault for or, by his logic, HE’S at fault for.

No shit Galahad’s getting shat on. Look at the other Round Table members. Arturia may have been foolish but she never stopped trying to protect humanity even at her own expense. Lancelot may have stuck his dick in the queen but he defected in Camelot and helped protect humanity. Gawain maybe overly emotional and blindly loyal but he still acts for the sake of humanity. Agravain maybe cruel but he still tries his best for his king and his kingdom. Fucking MORDRED, The Knight or Treachery, the killer of King Arthur, the destroyer of Camelot has worked in the better interest of humanity TWICE now (Apocrypha and Grand Order).

In fact, the second and last examples really shows how little of an excuse Galahad has. Galahad has had everything Mordred didn’t, up to and including a childhood with loving parents (as shown by Lancelot) and not say a missing dad and what is implied to be a MASSIVELY abusive mother, a favorable upbringing as Lancelot’s recognized kid unlike Mordred being seen as a bastard (despite the fact that in Arthurian Myth he’s a rape baby too), seen as the best knight while Mordred is seen as a monster and yet she’s still being a better knight than him.

And Lancelot? The man who he decries to the point that literally the only thing Mash knew was ‘Lancelot was totes a bad dad’? He’s lived his life trying to right his wrongs (and his wrongs in hindsight aren’t even that bad) to the point he’s driven mad by it. The man he pins all the blame on and bashes is by far one of the better knights of the Round Table even with the ‘fucking Guinievere’ thing while the best thing Galahad has to his name is...what exactly? Saving Mash that one time? Which he is currently trying to undo?

Galahad is not only a shitty knight, he’s THE shittiest knight of Fate’s Round Table. And again, that includes a torturer (Agravain) and a killer (Mordred). All while pretending he’s somehow better than one of the better ones.

[checanty]

Hey there!Not to be too corny or over the top, but you are like my favorite contemporary artist and your work is so very inspiring to me! You probably get this question a lot, but are there any tips or things you would tell someone who is currently early in their artistic career(and facing graduating art school soon)? Anything you wish you had heard or been told? Additionally~what's your favorite ghost story? Have you stumbled across any interesting myths or fairytales lately? Thanks! Peace out~

Oh my, you’re being too kind!! You know, the thing with artists just starting out is that there’s no real blanket advice to give as everybody’s in a different situation with different ambitions, personalities and so on. Like there’s some advice good for one person which might devastate another. So my first piece of advice is to take all advice with a grain of salt. Do you feel it applies to you? If it does, great! If it doesn’t, well it’s for somebody else. Don’t fret about people claiming you have to do/be one thing or another to be successful as an artist. (Apart from ‘Don’t be a dick’ which is always helpful.)The second piece of advice is to find your community! Find the places on the internet (or locally if there are any) where the people who are in your situation or are doing the job you want to do hang out. Find the places designed to help you out. (You already know @dearartdirector, right?)Nowadays that’s mostly Facebook groups, some of them secret, so maybe you’ll have to ask somebody if they know a place. There’s a bunch of stuff for children’s book illustrators (also on Twitter!), but there’s e.g. a group especially for female (and non-binary & transgender) illustrators working in the fantasy genre. It’s an amazingly helpful even to read what everybody else deals with, pros and beginners alike and a safe place to ask questions and find support. I’m also in a group for German illustrators which is good for keeping up with changes in laws or the postal system (I KNOW, boring but important and confusing!). Third piece of advice: Be prepared for the paperwork. Seriously, there’s going to be way too much paperwork. I’m sorry. One of my art school teachers told me the hard thing is to find the clients and you can always figure out the paperwork later and I don’t agree. Figure out the paperwork. Get help to figure out the paperwork. But maybe I’m just very easily stressed out about this stuff.Fourth piece of advice: Try everything once and feel free to fail, quit and dislike. I don’t need to tell you that being and artist/illustrator isn’t a particular secure or straight forward path. You can only find yours if you figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. Don’t limit yourself to an idea of what you want to be doing. Chances are you don’t even quite know everything out there. Chances are you might not even like the realities of your dream job. E.g. I’ve come to the realization that I’m a good commercial artist but would make a shitty fine artist. I love freelance illustration but dislike the whole ‘artist as an entrepreneur’ thing. I don’t like Patreon. Streaming is bad for me and my process. Exhibiting in galleries is a waste of time for me. But I had to try that stuff out first, didn’t I? There are artists doing work in a similar vein as me who are successful doing just those things, but they are different people with different paths. Number five: Don’t write e-mails or make decisions when you feel super emotional.

Number six: Get all the sleep you need and take care of yourself. I don’t have to say that ‘making it’ (whatever that means) as an artist requires much hard work and discipline and so on. But. Your hard work is much better spent when your brain is actually capable of functioning. Spending less hours doing good work is better than grinding for days feeling listless and distracted, no? Think long term.  I know there’s somewhat of an expectation to have everything now and be young and successful and so on. But. No use being young and successful if you’re burnt out and unhappy. Your job isn’t you, art isn’t everything and the important part is that you’re okay. Take time to change and grow as a person. You know, all that stuff. I’m sure I’ll remember some seventh piece of advise which is of utmost important as soon as I post this.I mean there are also the classics: Make good work and show it to the right people. (It’s true! It’s this easy! Seriously, though. It’s good advice. I like it because sometimes the mind gets messy and you see other folks do great things and do shiny projects and such and then it’s nice to remember this and just keep your head down and do the work.)The whole ‘Finished, not perfect’ thing. It is also true. Don’t be effing precious with your work. You’re going to make a lot of it. Some will suck, some will be great. Some will just do the job and that’s fine. I mean, you should try for great, but realize it probably won’t happen. Most people won’t be as critical with your work as you are.Now I’m done, I think.Oh yes, ghost story. I don’t really read many of those. You’ll find I’m actually consuming very little horror related media. I have a favourite ghost story movie though, which is ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ (good old GDT!).I have no interesting folklore for you either! I recently went through an Arthurian Legends phase, mostly because it’s so fascinating how the whole thing is basically fanfiction of fanfiction and there might actually never have been canon. (At least non that is reliably preserved) So everything is kind of valid. (And it’s interesting to see when different characters and aspects started to pop up and how they changed and so on!)I hope that helps!

[snarktheater]

Ready Player One — Level Two (Chapters 26-27)

“I figured it out later that night, a few hours after Shoto left my stronghold.”

See, when I said that Wade making a mistake in the search for the Jade Key didn’t prove the book understands character flaw, I didn’t think the book would literally have Wade go back to having a random, convenient epiphany for the next step in the Easter Egg hunt. This book is the gift that keeps on giving, in that I rarely have to go very far to elaborate on my arguments: usually, all I need to do is turn the page.

The epiphany, by the way, happened because Wade was randomly folding the wrapper the Jade Key came in, and suddenly remember there’s a scene with a unicorn origami in Blade Runner.

The moment I said the word “unicorn” aloud, the wrapper began to fold on its own, there in the palm of my hand.

…Okay, sure. That’s nice, I guess.

From this, Wade decides that the “test” mentioned on the Jade Key must be the Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner. The book also exposits to us what that is, and what Blade Runner is. And while the book does mention the movie’s based on a Phillip K. Dick novel, I’m not getting the impression that Wade has read it. I mean, it doesn’t even mention at any point (in this chapter or anywhere in the book) the phrase “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”

Anyway. There’s a convenient re-creation of the Tyrell Building from Blade Runner as part of the OASIS standard planet-building kit, meaning that building (and the Voight-Kampff test located in it) can be found on any number of planet. Do I really still need to call attention to the fact that the planet-building tool apparently contains hundreds of other assets similarly taken from existing properties, or have I made my point clear enough about the death of originality in this book yet?

So, Wade goes to the closest planet that features one such replica, Axrenox. It doesn’t matter what that planet is. Actually, not much of anything matters. I mean, the book spends a whole paragraph telling us about how Wade hopes nobody will steal his ship while it’s parked on Axrenox, but—spoiler alert—nobody will. I’m calling attention to it because it’s the second time Wade has expressed worry that someone would steal his transportation method, and the second time nothing comes of it. At some point you have to ask if someone’s not projecting a little too much. And I don’t mean the fictional character here.

Speaking of things that don’t matter: writing a good action scene as Wade goes through the replicants that guard the place. Because, yes, the planet-building kit includes guards in the building too.

The next ten minutes played out like the climax of a John Woo movie. One of the ones starring Chow Yun Fat, like Hard Boiled or The Killer.

Shitty writing aside, I want to point out that the book really shows how much it understands Blade Runner’s theme and central message by…treating the replicants as disposable mooks in a John Woo movie. Like, sure, they’re constructs in a video game, but still. Good job.

Speaking of not understanding the point, remember how the clue was like “take the test”? Yeah, if you know what the Voight-Kampff test is, you might have gotten a little enthusiastic there, since that test is meant to ascertain the ability to empathize with others. Which would be hilarious to see Wade Watts take. Sadly, no, the test only acts as a gateway to a 3D recreation of a video game that Wade has already mastered.

I honestly feel like it’d be insulting to you if I were to recap what happens next in detail. It’s a game. Halliday dropped a hint at it in his will video, which is mentioned to justify Wade being a master at the game. There’s another case of the book using romaji to transcribe the title of the game in Japanese, even though, again, that name is just English words written with Japanese characters and phonotactics. There’s still no tension; I mean, we literally go from Wade explaining the rules of the simulation and how he can’t leave to…

I managed to clear all eight levels of the game in just under three hours.

Oh, sure, after that he tells us how he got close to dying at one point. Like…thanks for telling me I should have been worried in the time you skipped.

At the end of the trial, he gets to choose a giant robot from fiction from a list (some of which already crossed out due to being picked by the Sixers).

I stopped cold when I saw Leopardon, the giant transforming robot used by Supaidaman, the incarnation of Spider-Man who appeared on Japanese TV in the late 1970s. I’d discovered Supaidaman during the course of my research and had become somewhat obsessed with the show. So I didn’t care if Leopardon was the most powerful robot available. I had to have him, regardless.

Okay, so, I just rambled about the romaji, so I won’t do it again here, though you should know it still annoys me. But I will say I’m pleasantly surprised that Wade actually made a decision derived from passion for something. I was starting to wonder if that would ever happen.

Anyway. Wade gets a toy replica of the Leopardon, and with that, he’s now cleared the Second Gate, and receives a hint to the Crystal Key’s location, in the form of a logo of a star inside a circle. This sounds like a pretty generic symbol, but Wade recognizes it. Probably because, if you look it up, it is actually distinct enough:

It just so happens the book describes it really poorly:

Then a symbol slowly appeared in the center of the screen: a glowing red circle with a five-pointed star inside it. The points of the star extended just beyond the outer edge of the circle.

The book skips over Wade leaving the Tyrell building, by the way. I guess the guards only prevent you from entering? I don’t know, because the book won’t tell me. Once he’s back on his ship…wait, I’ve gotta point this out:

And thanks be to Crom, the Vonnegut was still parked right where I’d left it, its cloaking device still engaged.

I already mentioned the ship would not in fact get stolen, but…“thanks be to Crom”? This isn’t even something he’s done until now. It’s just a random reference out of the blue.

Back to the plot. The red star and the image I just showed you are from a music album, 2112 by the band Rush. I don’t know anything about them, but the album is apparently about…

a time when creativity and self-expression have been outlawed.

So…like this book’s world, then?

Wade somehow knows exactly which lyrics on the album are relevant to finding the Crystal Key: a passage about the “Priests of the Temple of Syrinx”, because there’s a planet Syrinx somewhere in the OASIS with a temple in it. And by “a temple” I mean 1024 copies of the city described in the album’s supplemental material. Because copy-paste is an excellent substitute for good ideas. You know, between this, the planet with hundreds of copies of Halliday’s hometown, the planet with hundreds of copies of that text adventure game, and oh, the fact that the game’s planet-building tool contains hundreds of licensed assets. I mean, you can make the technology to run a lifelike VR simulation, but procedural generation and original art assets are both out of reach?

No, I will never stop being angry about this. It’s lazy writing and lazy in-universe, and it heavily undermines the idea that the OASIS somehow dominated the market. I mean, think about it: right now, the videogame market’s latest trend is Battle Royale games. The first game that managed to put the genre where it is is Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, but because it lacked any original assets—and was frankly shoddily made because it was rushed into early release in order to be the first out—it was easily outdone by Fortnite, a game with a more competent team and actually creative people working on it, specifically because the concept alone isn’t going to make a game win on the market (and it also makes for very weak ground to sue people for copyright infringement once they beat you, Bluehole).

A concept can be replicated—don’t ever believe the myth of the indispensable lone genius, i.e. Halliday in this case, there’s always someone else, or a group of people, who can replicate your idea and probably improve on it while they’re at it. So I cannot for even a minute believe that there isn’t someone who couldn’t make the OASIS, except, you know, better. Hell, that’s what IOI should do, instead of investing loads of money into a contest to take over the OASIS with a very low chance of success.

Ahem. I’m getting off-topic, aren’t I? Well, that’s okay, because the actual action is as stilted as usual. Wade lands on the planet, and I guess IOI didn’t attempt to leave people to guard it or anything so he’s all alone. He finds the temple mentioned in the song, and figures he has to make an offering at the altar. Luckily, he instantly knows what other lyrics of the album are relevant, and they lead him to a secret cave behind a waterfall. If you think I’m rushing through the scene…barely. It takes him a paragraph to search the cave, for instance. The book’s as uninterested in this as I am. Which…you know, it shouldn’t be.

What does he find in the secret room in the secret cave, you ask? An electric guitar. It’s another reference to the album, but also, it’s stuck in a stone.

I grinned at the absurd Arthurian image of the guitar in the stone. Like every gunter, I’d seen John Boorman’s film Excalibur many times, so it seemed obvious what I should do next.

Yes, really. Apparently Arthurian legends are no longer widely known and the only reference Wade has is a specific movie adaptation of the mythos. Because that makes sense.

So Wade gets the special guitar, and it turns out he knows how to play it (in the OASIS, that is), and he’s randomly inspired to play the song 2112, even though there isn’t really anything prompting him to do. But it’s lucky, because it makes another clue show up:

The first was ringed in red metal The second, in green stone The third is clearest crystal and cannot be unlocked alone

Had the Sixers played the song and discovered this message? I seriously doubted it. They would have pulled the guitar from the stone and immediately returned it to the temple.

Yeah, so, because Wade played the guitar for no clear reason, Wade now has an advantage over the Sixers. Thanks, author puppetmaster! It’s not like giving characters a clear motivation to do what they do is difficult or useful to reinforce the book’s verisimilitude!

I mean, for real. Would it really be so hard to say Wade just…felt like playing the special guitar before he offered it at the altar in the table? It’s really not that hard.

Also, what the fuck is up with that hint? No, really. Now Halliday wants to encourage cooperation in his contest? Don’t you think it’s a little too late? Also, why do that at the last stage? Does that mean multiple people will get the egg at the same time…by design? That’s not gonna backfire at all.

Anyway, Wade returns the guitar to the temple, and when he puts it on the altar, it turns into the Crystal Key as planned.

my score on the Scoreboard increased by 25,000 points. When added to the 200,000 I’d received for clearing the Second Gate, that brought my total score up to 353,000 points, one thousand points more than Sorrento. I was back in first place.

As a hint for the location of the Third Gate, Wade only gets a stylized A. It’s actually the symbol of Halliday’s avatar Anorak—and of his castle. Because of course he has a castle in the OASIS.

the castle was impregnable and always had been. No avatar but Anorak himself had ever been able to pass through its entrance. But now I knew there must be a way to enter Castle Anorak. Because the Third Gate was hidden somewhere inside.

You know, Halliday making his own impregnable location inside of his own game explains a lot about why the OASIS is so permissive towards griefers. It was made by one.

Speaking of griefers, now that someone else has found the Crystal Key, guess who made an impenetrable dome around Castle Anorak? Yep, it’s the Sixers! And yes, there’s an artefact that lets you create a literally impenetrable barrier around a location in the OASIS. Again, who designs this?

The news of this soon reaches the gunter and clans, who all converge on the planet Chthonia, even though, you know, they don’t have the Crystal Key yet. But in spite of being in a really bad spot, Wade decides not to give up this time. I mean, it’s not like the Sixers having the exact same advantage (exclusive access to the Third Gate) didn’t make him fantasize about committing suicide three chapters ago or anything. That’s character consistency right there.

Yes, I’m still bitter that the book went there.

I began to formulate a plan. A bold, outrageous plan that would require epic amounts of luck to pull off.

Well considering how the rest of the book has gone, I’m not exactly on the edge of my seat here.

So Wade emails Artemis, Aech and Shoto the location of the Second Gate and the Crystal Key, and prepares to put the rest of his plan in motion, while the book attempts to end “Level Two” on a cliffhanger.

Once I was sure all three of them had received my message, I initiated the next phase of my plan. This was the part that terrified me, because I knew there was a good chance it was going to end up getting me killed. But at this point, I no longer cared. I was going to reach the Third Gate, or die trying.

I did say “attempts to”. I mean, this is the first time Wade actually has a plan, and the “reach it or die trying” has sort of been his MO so far. But hey. Nice attempt.

[chronotopes]

anyway i actually AM watching a merlin episode but i don’t know if i’m going to make it through, because i was like “i’ll watch the moment of truth, for laffs” and instead i’m a) giggling constantly @ the fact that the character sid is playing is really not that different wrt acting choices from mirror julian bashir, and b) unable to get over the fact that DOCTOR JULIAN BASHIR IS RAIDING MERLIN’S VILLAGE

update. anderson from sherlock is also in this episode. this is fucking unbelievable

[chronotopes]

hi could you explain why merlin is Bad?

hi , i could! srry for not replying to this message earlier, i only realized i’d gotten it in school today. 

so on the off chance that this was an “is merlin problematic? what did he do?” kind of message, i’d advise you to google it bc that’s not unnecessary - and merlin certainly can be criticized thru that lens - but it’s just… not a very interesting way to criticize media. 

anyway, these are the main three reasons that i think merlin is bad

an inability to challenge its own status quo

subsequently, an inability to let its characters’ struggles pay off in any kind of meaningful way

ultimately, a fundamentally skewed morality at the heart of its conflict. 

ok so what i mean is 

point 1) the status quo thing is pretty clear, the most obvious example of this is the secret that is merlin having magic, but a secondary one is how, for FOUR SEASONS!! , uther just Won’t Fucking Die. but i’m going to use the former as an example; by the time the third and fourth seasons roll around, merlin’s complete inability to spill the beans about magic a) stretch all possible suspension of disbelief w/r/t arthur’s intelligence, and b) block the way for any kind of interesting/meaningful character development. 

point 2) which in turn results in merlin getting mired down in a kind of tragic spiral that ultimately logically results in how the show actually ends. which is TREMENDOUSLY SAD, and not in the good way that, like, hamlet or something is sad. i’m not saying.. shows can’t end sadly… but it’s very much a senseless, unfair kind of ending. season 5 of merlin isn’t just a fantasy show, it’s a greek tragedy, and it’s miserable. part of this is that merlin WON’T TELL ANYONE ABOUT HIS MAGIC, but another part is that he listens far far too much to kilgarrah and gaius and ~destiny~ 

and the show seems to frame this as if he’s doing a reasonable thing when like.. he’s not. and i feel like . i don’t want to be that guy who’s like “if i rewrote this show so that everyone’s nicer, everything will automatically be better”, but in the alternate universe where merlin is a good show, he ultimately comes to the conclusion that the salvation of arthur does not lie in the death of mordred but in the restoration of magic to camelot, which is, you know, his actual job. and everyone lives. 

but. 

point 3) in the alternate universe where merlin’s a REALLY good show, morgana’s.. not the villain. or at least she’s not as unequivocally “evil” as the show seems to want its audience to believe she is. because morgana’s right. “but she kills people”, one might say, and , oh dear, so does merlin! all the time! yes it’s a requirement of his job, but he spends the 50% of his job that isn’t saving arthur’s ass and making up flimsy stories about how arthur saved himself PROTECTING A GENOCIDAL DICTATOR. 

so like…. in the alternate universe where merlin is a really really good show, it starts off more or less the way it does but creates merlin and morgana as foils to one another on opposite sides of a genuinely complicated and challenging moral divide. (that or it plays out like it did in the show until the point where merlin isn’t a TOTAL DICK and TELLS MORGANA ABOUT HIS MAGIC, and then they like. team up or something idk.) and in this show where morgana’s the hero, she and gwen are gay and end up ruling together idk. the main point i want to make is like….. the show seems to want you to root for merlin, right up until the end, and it’s not like i’m opposed to morally gray heroes - if this show didn’t interest me, i wouldn’t be talking about it right now - 

but like… it is so senseless to have half your main characters die with what they were supposed to be working for completely unrealized. season five episode five the disir genuinely feels like it’s something out of a gritty au “darkest timeline” fanfic but instead it’s just the show. the show is its own darkest timeline. that makes me sad more than anything. 

however it did produce some pretty sick fanfiction so who am i to say anything

[chronotopes]

merlin: morgana, violence isn't the answer! we have to sit around and wait for arthur to bring about the golden age!

morgana: Shut Up Liberal

[chronotopes]

gwen: uther is evil and i hope he dies

merlin: so does that mean, you, would, uh, kill him if you had the chance? asking for a friend. [he is. the friend is morgana]

gwen: oh no! no no no. killing people? Is bad! always.

merlin: [has already exploded two people and killed a third with a flying axe]

merlin: you're right gwen thanks. :) i'd better actively save uther's life EVERY SINGLE EPISODE

[chronotopes]

this old charade

someone: brings up bbc merlin just casually

me: spends 24 hours in a furious spiral about the sheer #levels at which this show let everyone down

me: maybe i should watch an episode of merlin . you know, one of the good ones. before it all went wrong.

me: scrolls through netflix tag, reminded of all the ways in which It Went Wrong

me: or maybe i should just, uhh, read a fanfiction

[chronotopes]

oh my god

not to start #discourse abt a show i only got through because katie mcgrath is hot, but gaius is a fucking terrible person and at the heart of it the show is about two terrible father figures shaping their sons into better people than themselves, but people who are ultimately - and tragically - too similar to uther and gaius respectively to enact real change and save themselves/their county, but particularly this is true for gaius because his policy of secrecy, of non-involvement, of /trusting no-one/, result directly in merlin’s choices in s5 and, hell! in-universe, it’s basically his fault that morgana turned to the areas she did for a support network. basically he’s the worst and i hate that i just saw a gifset on my dashboard claiming he's cool