#yippee!!!!!!

Painted my nails for the first time in years :)

i'm sorry in retrospect i think it's impossible to extract merlin's desperation to keep arthur alive from his premise in the pilot of needing so badly for his magic to mean something. i think it will always be inextricable, but there's something about merlin in season 1 at least that feels shy of forced-- not the acting or the writing, but in merlin himself. he really did hate arthur's guts to start, i think disproportionately so compared to the other way around. pilot merlin had something to prove, but he really squared up with a complete stranger after a moments goading. even as he complains to kilgharrah, you can tell he desperately wants to believe him, that he has purpose here, that this thing inside him is worth something. he still has a fairly well-functioning moral compass at this point and he has gotten to know arthur as a decent person himself by the time of the questing beast, they've got life debts between them, but merlin's panic in episode 13 really just comes across as a gut-wrenching cliff of disappointment in himself.