Hen's teeth
So... I'm making a rec? I think I even remember how to do this.

I'll start with this: Even if you're not in this fandom, this is a very very good story.

The story is Warlock, by aftertherain. It is nominally slash, Merlin/Arthur, although not explicitly so (the only touching at all takes place in shared dreams OH HEY THERE ARE SHARED DREAMS IN THIS FIC) and the focus is very much not on the romance so much as the relationship, which is... complicated.

The tl;dr version of why you should read this: Arthur discovers that Merlin is a sorcerer, has him imprisoned, uses him for a weapon, and sets him free. It is the story of how Arthur learns to become king and so much more than that.



Although this is meant to be set in the BBC's Merlin verse, one of the commenters complained that this is not the characterisation shown on the BBC's show. And I think she's right... and I don't think that's necessarily a valid complaint about fanfic, especially something set explicitly in canon's future, even more so for Merlin fic.

Because none of the fic for this show (which, btw, is really very enjoyable and also kind of fanfic itself--in this version, Merlin and Arthur are the same age, Uther has outlawed magic (oh, and, raised Arthur himself), Morgana is nobody's sister, Gwen--Guinevere--is Morgana's maid and the blacksmith's daughter (OH HEY WE HAVE A BLACKSMITH TOO), Lancelot is--basically Lancelot is D'Artagnan, Y HELO THAR Dove's favorite characters, let's all come in and have a party--basically this is an AU of Arthurian legend, which is at best a loose collection of myths and legends centering around a central tenet: Once upon a time, there was a man named Arthur, and one day, he became king of a great land, and there were many people he loved, and who loved him, and there was betrayal and loyalty and magic and everything was very, very Epic.)

RIGHT WHERE WAS I?

Fic: None of the fic for this show is only based on BBC!Merlin. Even if it's written that way, even if it deviates from canon not at all, it is basically impossible to read it without the larger context of Arthurian legend coloring the experience.

So yes, the Merlin and Arthur portrayed in this story are not 100% the BBC's Merlin and Arthur. That's a good thing! I want them to go off and do interesting things that they don't (and never will) do in canon! That's the whole fucking point of fanfic!

Why do I love this fic? Okay, so here we have to go back to this entry: in which I blather about inevitable unhappy endings and why I hate them. (N.B.: Not this Inevitable Unhappy Ending, which I LOVE and is also, OMG, heartclench, AUGH, not available at the moment d/t some kind of shitty site corruption DID I MENTION AUGH.)

But yes: I hated Titanic, Smallville caused me physical pain--so, I often tell people that I stopped watching Smallville because I couldn't take any more of Lex begging Clark not to lie to him or betray him and telling him how he was the only person Lex could trust and how much he loved Clark and Clark was like a brother to him and AUGH knowing how it ended made me batshit insane and I couldn't watch any more, LONG before we got to the point where it actually went pear-shaped. But what I don't tell them is the extent of HOW MUCH I needed to be watching Smallville at that time--that was the summer I was living in the crack den. I'd just gone from having a roommate and a KID in a beautiful house and a happy, social, fannishly domestic life, to living in an actual crack house with no a/c and no screens on the windows, no friends closer than two states away, and no internet access at home. Distraction was something I was actively pursuing. And Smallville was IT--and yet, I could not take it. I watched four and a half seasons of SGA and then I stopped--I watched all of season four but could not finish the series because I knew it ended badly. I have a very, very strong aversion to inevitable pain.

And yet: Merlin and Arthur's story is MADE OF inevitable tragedy. Starting with the fact that Merlin is immortal (usually) and Arthur is not, and moving on through their Epic Destiny and great kings always being surrounded by tragedy and Arthur's need to marry a woman and all the stuff with Gwen and Lancelot and Morgana's betrayal and--made. of. tragedy.

But this story--we're talking about a story here, remember, this started as a fic rec--is the kind of thing that makes it okay for me, is what makes it possible for me to love this fandom, to love Merlin & Arthur's story. Because it takes all the pain and the cruelty of Arthur's betrayal (yes, it's Merlin who's lied and broken the law and hidden things from Arthur, but it is very clearly Arthur's betrayal) and Merlin's suffering (both from his imprisonment and his freedom) and their separation, and it doesn't at any point erase any of that, or say "This has made all of that okay!" or even really "redeem" anybody. All it does is take all of that tragedy and frame it in terms of the whole story--the eternal story that is Arthur and Merlin--and it's not that the pain and the cruelty and the whatnot don't matter anymore, it's just that... they just are, it's just a part of life, and so is everything else.



...it seems like making recs used to be a lot shorter and less involved. Maybe I have forgotten how to do it.