dedicated to a happier year

And there's no "genocide" even in Uther's time, not to mention Arthur's. Political repressions? Persecution? Sadly, yes. But magical users are not a separate nation and there's actually so few of them. All Arthur wanted is for them to calm fucking down. You pretend to care for them more than Merlin himself. He was done with their recklessness, entitlement, cruelty and madness. He chose another way and another kind. Arthur's his people. Gaius. Camelot. Also, your fave Gwaine doesn't give a fuck about sorcerers, he's on Arthur's side. So your ship twists not only Merlin but Gwaine as well.

lol I have no idea what you were trying to say in the first paragraph but there is making mistakes and then there is perpetuating a genocide against Merlin’s kind. Merlin being a good friend to Arthur and not getting love and respect back is actually the exact criticism I have against Merthur as a concept so good job at spotting the issue there bud!

Also I’m unsure if you know this but genocide actually doesn’t have to be against a nation, just a set of people, source:

It doesn’t matter how few people are left in the group (after years of them being prosecuted and killed btw, I wonder why there are so few of them left), it’s the act of trying to exterminate a group for a characteristic that makes it genocide.

If all Arthur wanted was for them to calm down, he would have done better to listen to them and help undo the damage his father did. But he didn’t.

And I’m so tired of this argument that Merlin didn’t care about magic users when he is shown, even at the worst points in his character arc, to go try to aid as many magic users as possible (Gilli, Daegal, Freya, even Morgana in season 2). He cares so deeply about magic users safety he actually loses himself to the idea that he might actually get to free them all, even when he doesn’t think he will ever be free.

Merlin may consider the people he met in Camelot his family, but he did not turn back on the kin he was granted by way of magic.

And on the Gwaine point, I do agree that season 5 in particular shows Gwaine very much being an aggressor against magic users (especially in the Disir episode), and I see it as a problem in both the writing and his character how quickly he absorbed Arthur’s ideals, but still, at the end of the day, Gwaine’s main drive was always Merlin.

There is a reason so much of this fandom thinks Gwaine knew about Merlin’s magic (I don’t personally but I understand why some do). It’s because Gwaine was always there to give him support and care (unlike Arthur who only ever seemed to take). IMO if he did know about Merlin’s magic, he would not even hesitate to switch sides.

Nowhere does OP ever state that Merlin’s love comes at a price. Contrary to your belief, love is not transactional and cannot be earned. It is not a judgment on whether Arthur treats Merlin well enough for Merlin to love him but, rather, the effects of Arthur’s actions on a person who loves him loyally. Since Arthur shows Merlin less than the bare minimum of basic respect, we believe that he has an unhealthy impact on Merlin’s life — not that Merlin doesn’t love him regardless.

And there’s no “genocide” even in Uther’s time, not to mention Arthur’s. Political repressions? Persecution? Sadly, yes. But magic users are not a separate nation and there’s actually so few of them.

It’s not particularly shocking that you lack a proper education on what constitutes a genocide. OP did a fine job covering it, but what I’m stuck on is the question of which victims are deliberately excluded by this narrow notion of the eugenics movement.

There are millions of people within certain nations that undergo acts of genocide every day. It is not a nation that experiences genocide but a people. Non-white immigrants and diaspora in the imperial core (Europe and the US) are targeted based upon the fictitious concept of race; however, living in a European nation or the US does not make one a target of these genocides. For someone to be part of a particular nation is completely unnecessary. For example, Jewish people are not a nation, but Germany is a nation, yet the German government persecuted Jewish people within the nation based on their culture and ethnicity. Furthermore, we understand that ethnostates are a call for genocide. The European/US occupation of Palestine, for example, relies on the notion that Jewish people require a nationalistic identity for recognition and safety. By this definition, the annihilation of any group that is not part of a recognized ethnostate is deemed a “conflict” rather than a genocide.

There is another glaring issue in your dismissal of genocide. You claim that it is not meaningfully a genocide because there are too few victims for it to matter. This has horrific implications for real life. You may have heard of the Man of the Hole, an indigenous individual who was the very last of his group. He watched every member of his community be killed by colonizers who were set on clearing the land for agricultural expansion. Although he was the only remaining member of this group, further attacks targeting him were very much considered acts of genocide. There can be exactly one person who makes up a targeted group, and it is still genocide.

This also ignores the dominant occupier’s legal authority to determine nationhood. In the US, many indigenous groups are denied recognition and independence as a nation, particularly if the land in question is rich in natural resources and thus beneficial to the colonizing government. Therefore, the fact that they are not legally recognized as a nation is, in and of itself, an act of genocide. To claim that they cannot be victims of genocide because they are not given independence is not only a grave error but completely ignorant of the lived reality of genocide victims worldwide. It tells us that you have no interest in learning history beyond what PragerU has to say.

In addition, colonies of Europe and the US (take Puerto Rico for example) are not granted independent nationhood, but are very much victims of colonization. These are places which are exploited both for resources and human labor whilst the residents are denied equal rights, government representation, and critical aid (such as medical and infrastructural aid after natural disasters).

The fact that there are so few magic users is a result of genocide, not a contradiction of it. Obviously, genocide seeks to eradicate a select group of individuals based upon culture, religion, and/or ethnicity (all three in the hypothetical scenario presented by Uther’s reign). Genocide is also now applied to attempts to eradicate certain hereditary disabilities, such as autism. Since the aim of genocide is to decrease the number of individuals with the undesired trait, acts of genocide are those which result in a lower population density among people with this trait. This includes forced sterilization, murder, imprisonment, abduction, and forced assimilation. Uther and Arthur both participate in murder, imprisonment, abduction, and forced assimilation over approximately 30 years altogether, which inevitably decreases the population of the targeted group (magical peoples).

Setting this simple inference aside, there is another major reason that there being “so few” of them does not impact whether or not it is genocide. And that is: the entire human population itself was incredibly low to begin with. For reference, BBCM takes place circa 500 CE. Therefore, the number of magical peoples affected is actually a much higher proportion of the population than what you might think! Especially considering the dozens of people affiliated with the Druids who were gathered and imprisoned to be executed in 2x03.

All Arthur wanted is for them to calm fucking down.

I, for one, think they should fuck as irately and nasty as they please.

All jokes aside, this is a common conservative talking point concerning oppression. “These people give us no choice but to oppress them! They’re just so irrationally angry that we orphan and kill their children! Maybe we’d give them equal rights if they didn’t violently resist our genocidal regime at every turn 🙄.”

Needless to say, it’s no different from any other form of victim-blaming. Self-defense as a concept should not be subject to worse scrutiny than the perpetrators of abuse are. If an axe-murderer is chasing you down, you have every right to kill him in self-defense. What difference should it make if that axe-murderer has a permit from the government to murder you? Uther had an executioner who killed people by axe-murder. It’s pretty normal to not want to be axe-murdered, even when the murder is considered socially acceptable. In fact, when the murder is considered socially acceptable, that’s usually when the society veers into eugenics territory.

You pretend to care for them more than Merlin himself *did. He was done with their recklessness, entitlement, cruelty and madness. He chose another way and another kind. Arthur's his people. Gaius. Camelot.

*added for clarity

Interestingly enough, Merlin does not generalize all of his people the way you do. He insists that magic is not all evil and that all magical peoples should not be judged based on the actions of a few, such as Morgana, whose corruption was due to classism rather than magic. What Merlin rejects here is called stereotyping — or, as I stated earlier, generalization. Merlin pursues his and his people’s freedom and invites them to do the same.

Merlin is not anti-magic. Rather, he believes that magic will be freed through Arthur, since: (1) that is what the prophecies predict according to Kilgharrah, the Druids, the Catha, and select High Priestesses such as Nimueh; and (2) he has faith in Arthur’s potential to be a better man/king than Uther was, and than Arthur shows himself to be during his reign as prince, then king. Thus, Merlin does not choose Arthur and Camelot over magic. He supports Arthur because he believes Arthur is good enough to free Merlin and his people. Whenever Arthur fails to do so, Merlin faults himself and determines to do right by magic to the best of his ability as compensation for the delay in freedom.

As a separate point, magic peoples as a whole do not show recklessness, entitlement, cruelty, nor madness based upon their ethnicity/culture. Some are driven to these extents due to trauma and in desperate acts of defense. Note that Uther did not attempt to eradicate magic until after Ygraine’s death. This means that, prior to her death and the genocide, magic had not proven to be a detriment to society. It was only when Uther needed a convenient target to blame for his wife’s death that he committed to the genocide of magical peoples. This is where a sudden influx of “reckless violence” grew amongst those targeted by the regime. Their resistance to oppression was labeled as innate evil, which was used to further justify their expulsion. Again, this is a propaganda tactic that is used against real life marginalized groups, especially Black and Muslim people right now. It’s disturbingly dangerous to spread these ideas that kill children every day.

Also, your fave Gwaine doesn't give a fuck about sorcerers, he's on Arthur's side. So your ship twists not only Merlin but Gwaine as well.

Although Gwaine’s perception of magic is not explored in depth, we know that his most fundamental moral is that a person’s birth circumstances do not define them. Their actions and beliefs determine the kind of person they are. Therefore, we can safely infer that Gwaine would support Merlin given a complete understanding of Uther and Arthur’s errors, unless we are to assume him a full hypocrite on this matter (though at no point does he give any indication of this).

That said, when Gwaine does speak of magic, it is with some level of distrust! He associates it with power and danger, so we get lines from Gwaine such as, “They were forged using sorcery,” (canon emphasis) where the connotation of the word “sorcery” is meant to convey the danger of it. He also implies that the wyverns in 3x08 are dangerous — not because of their size, teeth, or claws, but because “they’re creatures of magic.” Merlin, of course, is able to infer Gwaine’s bias against magic from these events, which informs his decision to keep his magic hidden from Gwaine.

You made a mistake proposing Gwaine’s much milder bias against magic as a counterargument. You may omit Arthur’s severe bias against magic, but it is impossible to ignore when you are the one to suggest comparing Gwaine to Arthur. There is no pride or right to kingship that rests on Gwaine’s opinion of magic, whereas Arthur has far more to lose if he accepts that he is wrong about magic. Gwaine has more to lose if he betrays his moral code, so it’s not a reach to say that Gwaine would adjust his morals to reflect reality given the truth.

Why would it be irrational to prefer a character with a milder, mutable bias as a subject of potential positive development over a character who heads the movement that directly persecutes an entire culture? Since we are people who believe that the genocide was unjustifiable, it makes perfect sense that we would favor Gwaine over Arthur from a moral standpoint, and favor the influence that Gwaine has in Merlin’s life over the influence Arthur has in his life. Gwaine restores Merlin’s sense of personhood, while Arthur (intentionally or not) reduces it. I’m interested in exploring both the dehumanization and unconditional love Merlin experiences, but I won’t be found excusing or glorifying that dehumanization. Unconditional love is a strong foundation for a long-lasting relationship, and I believe there is evidence of romantic interest between Merlin and Gwaine, so they are a reasonable pairing from this perspective.

We have got to stop framing our oppression in ways that promote the idea that other people cannot relate to our struggles. Not only does it isolate comrades in the struggle, it actively diminishes recognition of other struggles--often including those even more horrific than what we are at risk of. And this happens especially between Gay and Black struggles.

"when have straight people ever had to check what states were safe for them?" Sundown towns are still a thing. Starlight tours. What states have abortion access? What states have open carry? What states have stand your ground? What states have 3-strike rules? Women, people of color, disabled people, immigrants, and more have had to be abundantly cautious where they travel to. Straight trans people have much more travel risk right now than gay cis people.

It's a new iteration of the same tired question: "imagine if straight people weren't allowed to marry" interracial marriage in the US is younger than my parents. We disgrace people of color by forgetting their history and contemporary struggles, and we abandon queer people of color, Black queer people, by segmenting their overlapping fights.

(O7/03/26) Survival is harrowing in Sudan's human rights crisis for everyone, but especially women and queer kinfolk. I have been friends with the camp leader, Abdul, since June of 2025. I am happy to know of his survival but understand and mourn that his people are starving, not living.

At the time of posting, it has been over 24 hours since anyone has eaten. They are at zero funds.

With evidence below, Abdu has informed me that their expenses are nearly 100 USD a day due to scarcity. So, the number he gave was 600 dollars a week. The lowest goal, then, approximately 2400 for one month of food.

Reasonably, I will set their goal at 2800 for the month of July. The nature of these posts, is that as funds are expended, goals are harder to track. But I implore you to donate and share his gfm with some of this info, far and wide if you cannot donate. Please do not ignore when 5 dollars, 10 dollars, 50 dollars can add up to save vulnerable human lives. Black lives still matter. Trans people are real human beings who deserve safety.

please do not ignore the voices of these people, if you can, donate as much as you can.

Santiago Cabrera as Lancelot in Merlin (2008-2011)

33. Firestarter.