write like you need it to survive

In the course of writing which, I realized Arthur is my favorite, and I have no idea why I wasn't fully aware of it sooner. Ahem.

Many thanks to astolat for beta, and to iuliamentis and emilyray.


Merlin/Arthur. 4,274 words.
"I know what this is, Merlin."


( Millions of Peaches )

1) In the continuing adventures of "Dira is a bit slow sometimes," I just discovered/realized that Colin Morgan played Jethro-the-sulky-teenager in the Doctor Who episode "Midnight." ♥


2) Yet another odd moment of Merlin fannishness: I glanced over at my shelf of textbooks from college and found myself thinking that I should really reread Religion and the Decline of Magic. Because I'm sure Uther's brutal oppression of practitioners of actual magic was exactly like the decline of English folk beliefs in the wake of the Protestant Reformation.

On the other hand I maybe really should reread The Druids or Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe...

Anybody who feels like doing Medieval verisimilitude research for Merlin fic (despite them living in Middle Ages which include both dragons and tomatoes), you ought to know: the Society for Creative Anachronism has already done all the research you could possibly want and more.

For instance, the Knighthood, Chivalry & Tournaments Resource Library.

I just watched the fifth episode of Merlin, and.

( Uh, spoilers? I guess? The episode is called Lancelot so I'm guessing the subject matter is already out there. )

(Also, in college, before I really got into slash though long after I knew what it was, I wrote a long paper comparing the Lancelot-and-Elaine story in Malory and in Tennyson, demonstrating that Malory's version (pretty much in line with the time in which Malory lived) valued most highly the bonds of love between knights, which was the source of all good in that story, and cautioned against romantic/passionate love between men and women, which was the cause of all harm, while Tennyson downplayed or twisted the bonds between knights and played up the power of romantic love.

Um. That's not really relevant to anything except I guess that inasmuch as I have an attachment to anything in the vast landscape of Arthuriana, it's probably the part of Lancelot's story that completely excludes Arthur.

Also I saw First Knight at an impressionable age. Ahem.)


And I guess I am going to need an icon. Or two.

So now I'm watching Merlin, like you do. Two observations, two episodes in:

1) My inner medievalist screamed through the first twenty minutes of the first episode, stroked out, and died, which has made the show easier to watch thereafter. I assume that what now appear to be occasional moans of agony are in fact merely noises produced as rigor mortis sets in.

2) It's probably really useful right now not to have much knowledge of or attachment to the actual Arthurian legend(s).

2a) greensilver really needs to get on with that kidfic-writing. So that I won't have to. Or at least won't have to go first.