#gadarene

Gadarene by Unpossible

“You’re the Prince?” Merlin says, eyeing him. He hesitates, then adds, defiant, “The Mad Prince of Camelot.” Arthur doesn’t move. There’s quiet for a long time, then he says it. “I am.” “You don’t seem mad,” he says. The smile wells up from somewhere deep, and very sad. “Well, Merlin,” he says, “give me time.”

This one isn’t for the faint of heart, but it is a fantastically written dark epic. This is one of my favorite fics in the Merlin fandom because of the palpable tension between Merlin and Arthur from minute one. The story is relatively long but the pacing makes the story fly by. Despite being much heavier than canon, the story still feels like Merlin in terms of characterization and action. It just leans into the darker aspects that the family friendly tv show glossed over without just being whump for whump’s sake. The romance between them is delicately crafted too, and romantic even in the context of a slavery/hostage situation. 

This one goes in my top 10.

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Keep Your Secrets

‘Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit!’

The hand-colored engraving, made by Johannes Wierix around 1585, portrays an episode in the Gospels when Jesus exorcises demons out of a possessed man and into a huge herd of pigs, causing all 2,000 of the animals to plunge into the Sea of Galilee and drown. (That part of the story was interpreted by Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas to mean that Christians have no duties to animals.)

‘There met him two possessed with devils’

The watercolor by James Tissot illustrates the story of the Garasene demoniacs, as told in the gospel of Matthew. (In Mark and Luke, there is only one man possessed by the demons, who name themselves Legion “for we are many.”)

They beg Jesus not to banish them but rather to let them enter a herd of pigs feeding on the hillside. “And he said to them, ‘Go!’ So they came out and entered the swine; and suddenly, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the water.”

Gadarene [GAD-ə-reen] Part of speech: adjective Origin: Greek, mid-16th century 1. Involving or engaged in a headlong or potentially disastrous rush to do something. Examples of gadarene in a sentence “In one Gadarene week, Arthur sold his car, dropped out of college, and joined the French Foreign Legion.” “Though it seemed like a Gadarene choice when the vice president of the company quit her…

May God bless us and grant us eternal peace. In His Name we write. Amen.

The Gadarene Elders

Florida, USA