life without a plot

Oh, Arthur. *tinysob* And I've been starting to think I'd never like you again. Oh, Gwen.


( Merlin 2.04 Lancelot and Guinevere (& 2.03 The Nightmare Begins) )




And every time I think I'm bored & done with Dollhouse they come up with an episode that at least fascinates me enough to keep watching. 2.03 wasn't perfect, but intriguing enough, although to be perfectly honest, like with Annie's story in Being Human at this point I could do without all the ( rampart misogyny even if it's used to make a point about misogyny... )

( +2 )

Is it a sign that you're getting old & boring (really boring, since I very much doubt that I ever was anything else) when you're doing the hiking tours you hated when your parents dragged you on them on Sundays when you were a child and you'd much rather have stayed at home and read a book or in any case done something less athletic and pedagogic? It was nice though, sunny, warm afternoon, Vöslauerhütte and Hoher Lindkogel/Eisernes Tor, and the ruins of an old castle on my way back; and I really need to do this kind of thing more often because I'm really in embarrassingly bad shape. Also, note to self - maps. They tend to be kind of useful, even if it's only the Wienerwald and not the Alps. Would have saved me three quarters of an hour of following the wrong path (twice, even) and having to go back again (uphill).

Home again, tired & with aching feet, had dinner & a piece of Saturday's birthday cake, and then watched the new Merlin episode which I feel a bit meh about. Not that it isn't still awfully cute, but on the whole it seemed a bit repetitive; many scenes felt like I've seen them before. But - I guess - new season, first episode, possibly new viewers, needs to re-establish the premises & basic character traits; (hopefully) moving on now.

( a couple of brief comments )

I'm in hibernation mode, I think, I'm so sleepy all the time. All that cold can't be good for the soul. Where's global warming when you need it? And will push-up bras ever go away again? Picked up fingerless gloves (for work, *sigh*; early 18th century building, high ceiling, impossible to heat) at H&M, though.

And I feel so very blah about writing at the moment. My mind is like... something sticky and very, very slow moving? I'm even running out of metaphors. I'll type a couple of sentences, a paragraph, and then start wondering if whatever I've written is 1) even English, and 2) worth writing about, at which point it either gets deleted, or joins the other 'unfinished'-tagged entries.


Oh, and Merlin. As long as I was watching shows on (German or Austrian) TV, I always was anything from a year to... a lot longer than that behind everyone else; spoilers? *sarcastic laughter*. In fact S2 Torchwood, S4 DW and Merlin were the first shows where I followed fandom and fanish debates, squeeing and wanking in real time. So it's still kind of weird to see the adorable slashy little show that only a handful of people were watching, but that kind of got under your skin despite yourself and then suddenly turned out out to be surprisingly good and you found yourself writing meta even when you thought you never ever would, suddenly on the way to become the Next Big Thing, and watching or not watching suddenly becoming a question of ethics and whatnot...

On that note, I think I also just realised why I'm completely unsuited for fandom. With very few exceptions canon is canon is canon in my mind, and that's what mainly interests me about a show. There is no independent version of Jack or Ianto or... say, Harry Potter, in my head that's better or deeper or more complex or more whatever-it-is-that-people-are-(allegedly)-looking-for. And if it's complexity that they want, why do they so often disregard whatever complexity is already present in the source material? Why does (e.g.) so much of the Torchwood fanfic - oh, all right, admittedly this is a bit of a wild generalisation since I have given up looking for good fanfic a while ago, so everyone please feel free to prove me wrong and point out what I've been missing - fall back on clichès and simplify rather than complexify or explore? On the whole, the more I like a show, the less I'm interested in the fanfic, and vice versa, to the point that the fandoms where I read the most fic are those where I've only seen a few episodes, or am not familiar with the source material at all.


And I simply refuse to panic or even worry about the future of livejournal at this point. Granted, economic crises and all that, but I've simply seen this whole The End Is Near! thing one time too often.


Eh. Russian homework to do, which I'm not allowed to feel blah about.

I used to have this, now I have an 'unfinished' tag and an increasing number of half-finished private entries cluttering up my livejournal. *sigh* *deepersigh*


So here are a couple of thoughts about Uther in 1.12, while I'm waiting for a torret for 1.13 to turn up...

The truth is somewhere in between what Morgana, Merlin, Gaius, even the dragon say; they're all prejudiced in their own way and influenced by their own experiences, Morgana by her father's death as seen by a ten year old girl, Merlin by the constant threat hanging over his own head and burdening his relationship with Arthur, Gaius by... friendship, or complicity, or habit, which makes him even defend Uther's readiness to execute everyone even remotely connected to Tauren, which is taking loyalty a bit far, because even Arthur questions that, even if he doesn't like Merlin to do it aloud where everyone can hear; but Gaius has to believe that Uther is right and doing the best for the kingdom to still be able to look into the mirror after having watched Uther execute wizards and witches for two decades [*]... and Uther himself, who is not the most trustworthy witness for his own cause either.

Uther is aware of his faults, at least to an extent, and at least in hindsight, although once again, 'temper' is one hell of an understatement when it regularly ends with people being executed, and all regret in the world cannot bring them back to life.

Is what Uther says about Morgana in the scene at her father's grave true? I doubt it. Is what he said about her father true? Probably more so, but still doubtful, at least the part about him questioning Uther's judgement and Uther recognising the importance of that, unless he's changed a lot over the past decade, and was once able to accept a friend as a true equal, because the Uther we've seen on the series, who also called Gaius, who is anything but an equal, a friend, is no longer capable of that. [**]

But what's important is that in one of those rare moments of emotional clarity [***], kneeling there with Morgana, he wants it to be true, and does recognise what would make him a better king. There and then at least this is heartfelt, and that's enough for Morgana's conscience to finally kick in. Does she believe his claims are completely true? Probably not, but she does recognise the sincerity of his grief and regret, and maybe suddenly stopped seeing the world through a child's eyes, and it was enough to save him.


Gwen is very sure in her judgement as well as her morality; Arthur questions and tries to correct, and he's learning, because he knows it'll be he who'll have to make these decisions and weigh all kinds of interests against each other.



[*] At the same time Gaius, when he hears what he can hardly interpret as anything but a possible conspiracy to kill Uther that Merlin knows of or might even be involved in, does, once again, nothing. Trust is nice and all, but Gaius has become zen/fatalistic to the point of complete apathy. Somehow I think Gaius, like the dragon, like Uther, will reveal himself to be more complex than he seems now.

[**] Then again, Uther's brutal insistence that Arthur must learn that people will die for him in 1.04 makes more sense if that was a painful lesson for him as well.

[***] Although it takes something huge, like the prospect of Arthur's death in 1.09, to finally make him at least for a moment discard the armour of kingship, reason and strategy and allow himself some human emotion. Uther doesn't strike me as a man who'd usually approve of his son forming bonds of any kind with a servant, least of all with one who regularly ends up in the stocks, in fact in he actively discouraged that very thing in 1.04, but faced with the near certainty of his own death he is genuinely glad that Arthur will have a friend who cares for him, and maybe escape the terrible loneliness that Uther himself probably knows only too well.

How do you even write about this show? What's canon, what's (intentional? unintentional?) subtext, where does complete fanish overinterpretation start? Freud would have had a field day with this episode, I'm just saying.

*buries head in hands* Can I have Torchwood back? Oh, wait, not before next summer, apparently.

( Merlin 1.11; crack!meta, at least partly, and is that even a word? )

Oh, that episode really had me on the edge of my seat & biting my nails. The Beginning of the End, right. Loved Morgana. Loved Arthur and Morgana. Really hard moral choices all around. 'And the other, it's... unthinkable.' If it weren't for the tragic & morally iffy circumstances, ::squee:: Arthur slowly becoming Arthur and Merlin being the one prepared to watch the boy die. Ouch. Mordred, of course. Destiny looming. After ep. 1, who'd thought the show would shape up like that?