Merlin!!! In The Forest Doing Illegal Sketchy Stuff

The Lost

"Merlin, if I die -"

"If I need a servant in the next life-"

"Don't ask me"

"No man is worth your tears"

"You're certainly not"

"I'm happy to be your servant, until the day I

die."

"Just.... Take it."

It startles me sometimes, how often they'd talked about death. How sure they were that the other would someday die.

And it's poetic that Merlin denied Arthur's mortality so often, while Arthur was always afraid to lose Merlin.

And then Arthur dies,

And Merlin cries

And Merlin's death is nowhere near in reach.

There is no next life.

But by the gods, he wished there was.

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

I am in awe at the perfection of this, just captures the scene so well. Thank you so much @ollyrewind 😭❤️!! https://archiveofourown.org/works/49812313/chapters/125741818

The stars tell us of a great king. They rise, the pole star will ascend the heavens with the constellations of the king's namesake upon the higher cycles of the Earth, foretelling his rise and the golden age that he will bring. His age will go on and on and reach its peak in the far future when the pole star comes to occupy the truest central position in the heavens.

Like Every Tree Stands on Its Own by wonderful @mightybog

Thanks @liviapeleia for the tag! I got Garden of Earthly Delights, which is correct. Compatible painting Water Lillies (look at us with our compatibility, Livia) and the Music Lesson.

My zero presh tags are @breadkween @bubblo @curveswithasideofhips @poetryqueer and @1665-meters-per-second!

Your perfect painting quiz.

[ Take the quiz and tag five people. ]

Tagging the artsy squad: @anglefish3008, @chiikaiser, @goldencranberries, @soleilonthesun, @yolkochan + anyone who wants to join.

4x06 || 5x05

I also love how audio fiction has always been a highly experimental medium, and likely always will be.

Financially, it has a low barrier for entry, a low point of diminishing returns, and a relatively small potential market. It's basically impervious to being taken over by giant studios - even the "big" networks like RQ would be considered indie in the film or game dev industries. With the exception of the BBC, they tend to dip their toes into audio fiction, figure out quickly that, although it's beloved by its fans, there isn't that kind of money in it, and proceed to leave us alone forever.

Then there's the fact that it propagates largely by word of mouth. Audio dramas owe everything to obsessive nerds forcing nearly everyone they know to listen to that podcast they just discovered.

So it's more about the thing being actually good, plus a decent amount of luck and persistence.

There's no optimally marketable success formula being relentlessly enforced by gatekeeping jellybean-counters because they don't exist here. So people make whatever they want. So it draws people to it who are looking for something different. And the cycle feeds itself, and the medium gets weirder (in a good way).

It may very well ALWAYS remain the wild west of storytelling.

So listeners tell your friends about that podcast!

And creators, make the weird thing! There are no rules! It can be an hour long or Breaker Whiskey short, or Re:Dracula all over the place length. It can be another tape recorder framing or another voicemail framing or basically just an audiobook. It can be any genre or blend of genres. This creative space gives us the opportunity to be our own target audience in a way rarely found elsewhere.

If you enjoy the thing you're making, odds are somone else out there will enjoy it too. I've already found this to be true, and my time as an audio fiction creator is still just beginning.

Peace and love on every planet, y'all!

Thanks @liviapeleia for tagging me, your wip excerpts made me very curious to know what's next :D!

Rules: you will be given a word. Then you share one sentence/excerpt from your wip(s) that starts with each letter of your word!

Tagging @breadkween, @achillesuwu and @futurepastme if you're interested! Your word should you choose to accept it is FISH!

Livia you gave me 'myth.'

M

“Merlin is a-” 

But he knew, he had known for a long time. 

Across from him his servant looked like a startled hare, wide-eyed, gaunt in the dim light. The thing they had not been saying had almost been said. Did Merlin think that just because it was said aloud that suddenly Arthur would change his mind, have him executed? 

Instead he made a show of sagging in relief and Merlin hesitated and then sagged with him. 

Y

“You’re lying. You have something you must do, something that might help me. Maybe it'll turn the tide of this battle.” 

“Arthur-”

“Whatever you're about to say, let it be the truth for once. I need to hear it, finally hear it. How many years has it been? We never spoke about your magic, not once, not really, not like we should have.” 

“My-?” 

“It’s said now, I don't care, not anymore. I can't go into this battle without you, not unless I know it’s for a good cause and not unless I know that you’ll be safe.” 

T

“The spitting, what's that then?”

“To ward off curses! Anyone can do it!”

“The asphodel?” 

“The dead need appeasing!” Merlin threw his hands in the air and then towards Arthur. “You’ve seen the ghost of your father, you've fought the undead!” 

Arthur was throwing his hands too now. “The cabbage leaves? Prophetic dreams have to be sorcerery?!” 

“Yes but not the kind you get from cabbage leaves!” 

H

He is the custodian of our stories, the golden age we brought about together and he’ll be the custodian of the stories after I’m gone, learn them from him, help him to hold them and share them, I think some days he might find them too heavy to carry.

He’s the most powerful and the most precious thing to ever walk this Earth, it would be a tragedy too immense to imagine or bear thinking about if he lost what made him human. But more than that, I ask you to do this, to pass on this message to those who come after you because I love him and I cannot do all of these things myself. 

Amazing art for one of my microfics, thank you so much @merthurotica 🥺!

Golden Age King Arthur accidentally gets sent back in time to the beginning of his reign. While making his way to Camelot hoping to find Merlin and figure out how to get back to his own time he runs into Agravaine making his own way to Camelot for the first time. Knowing he was a traitor working for Morgana in his own timeline, Arthur kills him and decides to take his place. No one had seen Agravaine since Ygraine's death, there were no portraits of him in the castle, and Arthur's premature greying hair has to be good for something other than Merlin calling him a silver fox. He can pass as his own uncle and be the caring advisor that young him deserved damn it!