For The @merlinmicrofic Prompt "nightfall": Merlin/Lancelot, G, Major Character Death, 100 Words, AO3

Your fifth most recent emoji is what your soulmate thinks about you

learning about plants in ur area is wild. like you also learn about the histories of the plants. Like oh! Thats garlic mustard! That was brought over from europe as a crop! it smells just like garlic and you can cook with it!  And thats yarrow!  Its been used for tons of stuff and pollinators love it! Oh hey! Thats hemlock! They killed Socrates with that! 

Commission for Michael for his wife for Christmas, to match with a commission from earlier this year.

Turned Mary Oliver's poem, Wild Geese, into a picture book!

A personal project for the summer.

Y’all remember when Arthur basically proved how he already had feelings for Merlin as early as S1 EP4 when he traveled to the caves of Mount Argeaus in the forest of Balor to get that morteaus flower to save Merlin’s life?

Yeah, me too

The horror of Eric Carle

Becoming a dad has really been a reminder of all the half-forgotten books that got me interested in horror: the ones that I will definitely share with my kid (The Minpins) and the ones that I probably won't (Not Now, Bernard)

And then there's Eric Carle, and now it's all coming flooding back - the very first time in my life that I experienced terror. Seriously, what the fuck is this?

Carle's most famous book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, is in its own way uneasy and strange (the caterpillar's voracious and growing hunger is presented ambiguously both as an unavoidable and natural process of change and something greedy and grotesque; the caterpillar appears to devour its own place-of-birth and then feels good about it) but it flies under the radar by being very unCarle-like. The caterpillar is largely tiny and cute, we get plenty of colourful close-ups of tasty-looking food, and there are only two pages and a cover which feature Carle's favourite preoccupation: giant animals with irregular, scissor-cut eyes staring unhappily at the reader as they threaten to grow larger than the page itself.

I genuinely remember feeling deeply unnerved by Carle's first major piece of illustration work, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, written with Bill Martin Jr., but only now do I understand why. Holy shit, I have so many questions.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? I see a red bird looking at me.

Why is the rhyme-scheme so frantic and breathless, like it's being chanted out during an escalating ritual somewhere deep in the forests? Why are the animals - textured via collage as if half-carved from wood themselves - staring directly at us, the audience, before then revealing that they're actually looking behind us at something else which is staring back at them in turn? Why do so many of the animals look so fearful and haunted as they acknowledge the vast web of visibility which exists between them?

Why does the 'white dog' page - perhaps the only-genuinely-friendly-looking animal - briefly plunge us into night-time, creating the impression that these creatures are somehow watching each other across spans of time and space, when Carle is fully capable of just drawing an outline around the dog?

Why is the teacher's neck extending like a xenomorph's tongue as she glares with narrowed eyes down at the children (what horrible act have they caught her doing?) Why is the cover of follow-up Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear clearly depicting a Tuunbaq stalking the reader?

What seems remarkable and bizarre is that Carle, a talented artist, deliberately chooses to draw animals for infant readers which are neither cute nor charming but which consistently embody the internet joke about hares - feral wilderness prophets who've glimpsed the truth of the universe and gone mad - and has made a stunningly successful career out of doing so.

Carle's beasts know something terrible that they do not fully understand, and which they are incapable of sharing with us.

I'll avoid the crass temptation to draw serious biographical inferences here (Carle believed he had PTSD from an adolescence spent in Nazi Germany, and his works were inspired by his childhood walks with his father, who returned home psychologically shattered by his own experiences as a Soviet prisoner-of-war) and just say that there is something wonderful, awful and innocent in the fact that perhaps the most popular baby-book artist of all time, when asked to draw a goldfish, would respond with what is clearly a monstrous open-mouthed leviathan rising up from black depths to devour us all.

Look at this horrible fucking thing. It rocks.

You can't blame Merlin for calling Arthur a ‘Lazy-daisy’, if this is how Arthur looks like whenever he sleeps/wakes up:

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.

September '24 Masterlist

Somehow another round is already coming to a close, and I once again want to thank all you lovely participants! I've decided to keep the Masterlist for the time being, although a little trimmed down to hopefully make it a little less time-intensive on my end.

All that said, without further ado! <3

Drabble Challenge Winner! ✨

Believe me, love, it was the nightingale by @mightybog

[Prompt: Nightfall | Arthur/Merlin]

---

"I Promised" by @mightybog

[Prompt: "I Promised" | Arthur/Merlin]

---

jamais vu by @adhd-merlin

[Prompt: "I Promised" | Freya/Merlin]

---

a night's rest by @adhd-merlin

[Prompt: Nightfall | Arthur/Merlin]

---

"Untitled" (Dusk) by @thefollow-spot

[Prompt: Nightfall | Lancelot/Merlin]

---

midnight by @liviapeleia

[Prompt: Nightfall | Lancelot/Merlin]

---

Prompt: Nightfall

Nightfall by @twistedshipper

[Arthur/Morgana]

---

nightfall by @the-king-and-the-druidess

[Gwen/Lancelot]

---

Nightfall (Release Words) by @personaje-fics

[Arthur/Lancelot]

---

Prompt: "I Promised."

Redemption Lies Plainly in Truth by @miyriu

[Arthur & Morgana]

---

Meant to be Broken by @classics-n-comedy

[Arthur & Mordred]

---

fealty by @liviapeleia

[Arthur/Lancelot]

---

I get so jealous of euthanized dogs by @bumblebearr

[Arthur/Gwen, Gwen/Leon]

---

Prompt: Starting Over

A Good Start by @miyriu

[Arthur/Merlin]

---

Therefore stay yet; thou need'st not to be gone by @mightybog

[Arthur/Merlin]

---

in the chillest land by @adhd-merlin

[Aithusa, Merlin]