Good Arms

bloom how you must, wild until we are free

Story by @letstheriveranswer, art by @schweet-arts. Please do not repost.

Summary: Uther banned magic in Camelot for a period of 25 years. Now that time is up, and Arthur, as the new king, must go live with the druids for a week and decide if he wants to renew the magic ban.

Created for @aftercamlann 2020.

S5 Merlin, trying to work out how many people he can kill and still get home in time to pass out on the floor:

not only that but it’s active?!?

Fanfiction and Fanart is still actively being made, and it’s not just one-off “hey remember this show?” peices either. It’s entire comics and series. There are people who still make Merlin art REGULARLY.

It also is one of the LEAST dramatic fan bases that I have ever been in. Sure there’s a bad egg here or there, but there isn’t much “Merlin discourse” and when there is, it is often treated more like a fun and intelligent debate rather than a silly war.

There recently was also a Merlin convention @coinelot . Not a Merlin meetup, not a panel, an entire convention just to discuss and share the enjoyment of this show. Hard work went into hosting that convention, and it was entirely fan-run. People are putting hard work, effort, and passion into this fandom and it’s unlike any other fan community that I’ve ever seen.

And it’s far more impressive than Star Wars and Harry Potter and things like that because, though the original content was release YEARS ago, they’re still getting new content in the form of spinoffs and sequels. Merlin doesn’t have that. There is NO MORE official content to consume and yet here we are.

Obviously some of the credit also goes to the show itself. The cast, for example was largely made up of actors who hadn’t worked on HUGE projects before, so Merlin was their first BIG jig and they grew and learned along with their characters over the years that the show ran. So it makes sense that they may hold a soft spot for it. The cast and crew seek to regularly interact with one another and occasionally interact with fans as well. Because this show means as much to us as it does to them.

Then there’s the show itself. As much as everyone “hates” the ending, I personally think that it was one of the BEST tv show endings that have ever been written. It may not have made you feel HAPPY, but it made you FEEL a whole lot more than most television shows do. It reflects real life in the way that the story was never finished. Not a single one of the characters was their best self by the end of the show. And there’s obviously still more story to be told after the credits roll, but it hasn’t been written. It lingers in the back of your mind as you wonder what adventures await King Arthur and Merlin when their destiny comes knocking at their door again.

In a way the fans feel like Merlin. We were told from the very beginning that there was this great destiny to fulfill and that great things were meant to happen. But they never came to pass, not in the way that had been envisioned. So, like Merlin, everything feels incomplete and unsatisfying. All in all the good guys won in the end, but the cost was so great and the pay off so bittersweet that it feels like they lost.

It’s a tragedy with a happy ending. And an ending that isn’t over.

The Merlin fandom is still here because everyone who’s ever so much as TOUCHED this show has brought immense passion into the story, a story that we’re all still reading and re-reading and rewriting and just expanding upon until we run out of things to say. The show goes so far beyond what was on screen for us. And younger kids are still getting into the show since it was thankfully immortalized by Netflix. It’s a growing family that’s desperate to spread the passion. And we’re succeeding because we actually care about this story and these character SO, SO MUCH.