#the show doesn't want us to pick our faves and toss out everybody who doesn't measure up

[panharmonium]

why are you being like this?

people i’ve met - they’re not like you.  they don’t care.  i don’t matter.

don’t ever think that.  we all matter.

just some meandering thoughts on where the thematic center of merlin bbc lies for me, and how it weaves itself in and out of my fandom experience.

under a cut because this is a) sort of long and b) not really directed anywhere but my own brain, as i keep thinking about and creating for this show.

[as always, before i get rolling, a reminder: when i write about how i engage with this show, it’s just me talking about what gives me, personally, the most satisfaction or enjoyment, not the way i think everybody should do things.  if this isn’t your particular read, please feel free to scroll past.  i am not ever going to bother anybody for engaging with this show in their own way, so please don’t worry about it if we are not on the same page.]

that post about kilgharrah really got me feeling things.  

i struggle a lot with the sort of...non-nuanced ‘fuck kilgharrah/fuck gaius/fuck arthur/fuck whoever’ mode of engagement that i sometimes run across in fandom.  (and i’m not saying there’s anything intrinsically wrong with it; if you have the most fun engaging with the show in that way, please continue to have fun.  i’m just writing, on my own blog and in my own space, about what i personally do or don’t find compelling.)

i struggle with this mode for the same reason that i struggle with the whole ‘fuck yoda!’ narrative that pops up sometimes in tumblr’s star wars fandom.  because it’s not the narrative that the story is actually trying to create, and though this fact doesn’t mean you can’t twist things that way if it gives you more enjoyment, for me, there’s nothing about it that feels good.

writing fictional characters off like this, when the narrative is clearly not asking us to do so, feels...frustratingly false, and externally-imposed, as if characters are being evaluated based on the exacting standards of a universe in which they never lived, in a context where they were never intended to exist.  doing so requires you to willfully ignore what the story is actually trying to say, and it’s fine to go ahead and do that if you want, but for me it strips away so much of what makes the story meaningful.

bbc merlin’s core plotline is about believing in someone’s better nature.  the central storyline is that merlin commits himself to someone who doesn’t always give merlin reason to believe that this commitment is worth it, and yet still there’s always this hope and faith and belief that one day arthur will make it right.  

and this is presented as a worthy choice.  are there problems with it?  of course.  the show knows that, and it gives us places to think about that.  but even with this being the case, the ultimate message of the show is still never that this commitment was useless, worthless, or foolish.  the message of the show is that under the right conditions, people grow.  this show says that when we are given deep love, care, and companionship, we can change for the better.  it says that people, under the right conditions, can learn how to be better than they were before, and that everyone deserves the opportunity to grow into the person they were meant to be.

bbc merlin is not asking us to cancel any of its characters, ever.  that is never the show’s intention.  i won’t try to stop anybody from doing that, if that’s how they have more fun watching the show, but i am still going to contemplate, in my own space, how small that makes the story feel for me.

sometimes i see things like ...‘morgana/gwen/whoever is the only valid character in merlin bbc,’ and i just...first of all, neither of them are perfect, okay, and second of all, it doesn’t MATTER, because that has never been the point of the story.  this story is not asking us to rank characters on a scale of how righteous/unproblematic we think they are.  it’s asking us to CARE about the characters - ALL of the characters - and to root for them (yes, ALL of them), in the fullness of their imperfection.

when i explore the wider fandom, i typically bump up against one of two mindsets.  there’s the shipping mindset, where everybody loves arthur and he’s helplessly in love with merlin.  but i don’t want that mindset (because i don’t ship that pairing), so i look elsewhere.  but the other mindset is an attitude that dislikes arthur, full stop.  and i don’t want that either!

this ‘either/or’ divide is the opposite of what bbc merlin is asking us to do with its characters.  i criticize arthur all the time, but i still don’t think the story is asking me to reject him.  and i don’t WANT to reject him, either - why would i even watch this show, if i didn’t think it was important to see him become who he was meant to be, if i weren’t invested in his growth, if i didn’t ultimately believe in his possibility?  if i didn’t think the show was asking me to root for him - not uncritically, of course; the show is never asking me to do that - but with the core understanding that arthur is somebody worth caring about?

the same goes for morgana.  the show never asks us to write her off.  up until the very end, the show wants us to care about her.  the show wants us to root for her.  the show never asks us to forget that she and the other characters used to love each other; it never tells us to stop wanting morgana to get what she needs.  

gaius, too - the show never wants us to kick him to the curb.  it knows he’s not perfect.  he knows he’s not perfect.  he tells merlin, when talking about his own life, “there has, for the most part, been very little purpose to it.”  but the show doesn’t want us to fixate solely on his failures, or to dump him for his more cowardly moments.  the show wants us to know that he still has value.  it wants us to know that he is doing more good in the world now than he did before, which is all we can ask of a person, in the end.  it wants us to know that he cares, and that he is trying.

and kilgharrah - the show is never asking us to hate him, either!  yes, i get that it’s funny to joke about how “unhelpful” he is; i think that stuff is funny, too - but i also think it matters to understand that in canon, in the show, we are not meant to read kilgharrah as a malevolent figure.  we are not supposed to read him as a villain.  we are supposed to care about him.  we are supposed to understand that he, too, is working, ultimately, for the triumph of Good.  even though his version of this may feel convoluted to us, because kilgharrah isn’t human and can’t possibly be evaluated by human standards, we are supposed to understand that he, too, is trying.  we are supposed to be moved when merlin asks him, “what will i do without you?”

we are supposed to care about all of them.  we are supposed to find all of them worthy.  we are not supposed to evaluate them (and then discard them) according to inflexible, merciless, decontextualized standards imported from a non-merlin-bbc world.

and this doesn’t mean people aren’t still allowed to do that, if it’s fun for them, but for me, analyzing this show outside of its context doesn’t bring me any satisfaction.  we can go ahead and say things like ‘arthur should get his head chopped off’ and like, okay, that’s funny as a joke.  but as an actual analysis of the show - as a sincere interpretation of the story - it fails.  it’s devoid of all context.  we aren’t supposed to be evaluating this story from the perspective of ‘let’s overthrow the monarchy, kings should die, etc etc.’  the context of merlin bbc is that albion is waiting for a righteous monarch, and that this is a desirable, acceptable, correct thing, in the context of that world.  we are supposed to understand that arthur IS the once and future king, and that this IS a good thing, in this universe, and that the journey we are on here is one where he becomes worthy of his seat on the throne and then ushers in a time of peace and justice for all of albion’s people.

(and as i’ve said before - this is why the merlin bbc finale is so stunningly bad.  it’s not that the show subverts our expectations, it’s that it annihilates its own story, which it has been consistently telling for sixty-three episodes.)

that aside, though - this same overlooking of contextual nuance is the reason why i don’t connect to takes that consider ‘oh no, merlin kills people!’ to be evidence that he’s “changed,” “gone dark,” or “lost his soul.”  merlin does go through a dramatic (and tragic) change by the time we hit season 5, but what happens to him has nothing to do with the fact that he’s killed people.  the context of this show isn’t one where killing is a universal evil.  killing in battle or for the purpose of self-defense is not a morally problematic choice, in this world.  merlin, like everyone else in this show’s context, understands this, and killing a group of enemy soldiers to protect his own life is not something the show intends for us to interpret as an erosion of his humanity. 

what IS framed as an evil act, in the context of merlin bbc, is when someone chooses to kill despite the fact that mercy is an option.  if arthur had killed odin when he could have instead made peace with him, if arthur had executed annis’s champion or vivian’s father when he had already defeated them in single combat, if merlin had killed kilgharrah whilst having absolute power over him - those are morally bankrupt choices, in merlin bbc’s context.

we’re not supposed to see things like merlin killing agravaine as evil decisions.  in the context of the show’s world, killing agravaine is a necessary, morally uncomplicated act.  it isn’t something merlin wants to do, certainly, and he tries to avoid it, and he doesn’t strike back until agravaine tries to kill him first, but ultimately this moment is not supposed to be illustrative of merlin turning down a dark path.  it’s grim, sure, but in the context of the show - in the context of the era - it’s nothing more than the justified wages of aggression.  agravaine brings this fate down upon his own head.  merlin is not a pacifist, and neither he nor anyone else would expect himself to just stand there and let a group of enemy soldiers murder him when he could instead kill the soldiers and get away.  that’s nonsensical and utterly decontextualized.  it’s not an expectation that anyone in-story would have, nor a standard that merlin (or anyone else) would hold himself to.

all that aside, though -

the issue, for me, in summary, is just that i think sometimes we...evaluate this show in ways that it really isn’t meant to be interpreted, without considering the story’s context or thinking about what the story’s actual intent is.  and i think that these decontextualized interpretations are often less generous than what the show is actually trying to say to us, and that sometimes we write characters off when the show absolutely is not asking us to do that.  

and of course, nobody has to listen to what the show is trying to say if they don’t want to.  if it brings someone more enjoyment to pick one character to stan and say ‘the rest of these characters are Bad People and i’m not interested in them,’ then that’s fine!  whatever floats your boat.  

it just doesn’t float mine.

the point of this show, for me, is that everybody deserves a chance.  the point of this show is exactly what merlin says to daegal in the woods, even as daegal is leading merlin into a trap: we all matter.  the theme at the heart of this story is that it is possible to love someone who doesn’t deserve it, and that this can be a worthy choice, a transformative choice, a powerful choice - not necessarily a perfect choice, or even the right choice, maybe, for the person making it, but still a choice that holds value, a choice that creates something good in this world, even at cost.

listen to me, clotpole.  i don't care if you die, there are plenty of other princes.  you're not the only pompous, supercilious, condescending, royal imbecile i could work for; the world is full of them.  but I'm going to give you one more chance.

should merlin have done that?

we can debate that forever.  i am critical enough of arthur pendragon myself, when it comes to merlin’s well-being, and i could easily argue that no, merlin shouldn’t have given arthur as many chances as he did; he shouldn’t have stuck around; he shouldn’t have offered so much of his life to someone who continued to make arthur’s kind of mistakes.

but i think it matters to remember that in canon, thematically, the story’s answer to this question is yes.  mercy, in this story, is the most noble gift a person can bestow on someone else, and i think we are asked to bestow this same kind of mercy on the show’s characters, heroes and villains alike.  we aren’t ever told, in this show, that some of these characters “weren’t good enough” to deserve their chances.  we are told that in this world, compassion is always worthwhile.  love is never wasteful.  it is never foolish to care for people, even and especially when they aren’t yet their best selves.  giving someone a chance does matter.  choosing to care does make a difference, in the end.  

people don’t have to import these themes into their own personal analysis, by any means.  but i am still committed to remembering, in my own work, in my own space, that when we raise the question “was it worth it” in reference to whether these characters truly deserved to be loved, or trusted, or given a chance to grow - the story’s answer is unequivocally yes.