I know I'm not the only one who felt uncomfortable with Merlin's powers to compel dragons against their will, particularly with the show centred on Merlin trying to achieve safety and freedom for magic users.
But what if that power goes both ways? Dragonlords may be able to command dragons, but dragons can steer the course of destiny and absolutely wreck the ship.
What if dragons can cause a person monumental levels of predestined pain and suffering, absolutely crush them with the narrative and make not just their hero's journey, but the realisation of their destiny pure unadulterated hell?
Dragonlords who abused their power technically end up achieving their goals, but it's at so great a personal cost that the dragonlords of old were like "yeah, no, we're not gonna fuck with that. How about we just be friends and respect each other?"
Of course, no one was around to warn our poor boy Merlin. My new HC is that his and Arthur's destiny looked so different to the one he expected, and that he suffered so much loss on the way, because he messed with Kilgharrah.
“how did you get into writing” girl nobody gets into writing. writing shows up one day at your door and gets into you
Allow me to offer you all merthur fanart… referenced from La belle dame sans merci, 1893 by John William Waterhouse… I love them so much
I need to do more merthur fanart soon 🫶
You are strongly advised not to feed the ducks in this pond.
We were robbed honestly
Imagine if you will a curse gone wrong-
We get the whole castle and town exploding into song, and a refrain and melody developing that echoes through the rest of the songs, maybe asking if things will ever return back to normal
There's an opera style back and forth between Uther and Gaius about the cause of the curse and whether it's dangerous, they don't resolve anything
Uther tasks Arthur with rooting out the cause, and it's a kind of call and answer, with Arthur following Uther's orders
We get Morgana, terrified her magic will be found out. Her song transforms into an "I want" song, maybe she wants fairness, maybe revenge, maybe power
The knights have a barbershop quartet thing going on and we love that for them
Merlin finds the cause, and maybe the curse is ultimately deadly although it seems innocuous enough. Maybe people are already starting to feel the ill effects. He needs help, but he just has to get someone to believe him. Cue his moment to sing, appealing to Arthur and the knights his voice turns out to be so sweet and heartbreaking (see Colin Morgan's work with PJ Harvey) and to his surprise everyone rallies around
We get a song with Merlin, Arthur, the knights and maybe others like Gwen and Gaius working together to fix the problem, the song builds to a crescendo and stops short the moment the spell is seemingly broken
It cuts to the next day and some normal speech indicates that their efforts worked. But Arthur hovers just outside this chambers because Merlin is cleaning inside and is singing as he works, his singing finally resolves the melody. Arthur laughs quietly and enters the room
The End
merlin should have had a musical episode
The Frost Queen by Dudley Hardy
the twrch trwyth in the search for olwen !!
it’s finally december which means it’s green knight season. who wants me to be their third
they deserved affectionate moments without one of the two dying me thinks
She/Her | 31 | Herbal Tea EnthusiastInterested in: hurt/comfort, fairytale retellings and folkloreCurrently down an Arthurian rabbitholeLeMightyWorrier on Ao3
296 posts