the whole fic in one night?! man that absolutely blows my mind, especially if you were only on chapter 4 at 2am, lol. it's such a long story!!
i like to reply to all the comments i get, and the longer the comment the longer my response >:) it's getting late so i won't be able to reply to all of yours tonight, but they were SUCH a nice surprise to get in my inbox - i don't mean to be immodest, but i think this is one of the better fics i've ever written, and since it was in a fandom that was a decade old when i wrote it (can you believe i only watched merlin in 2019!) i'm always thrilled when it gets attention. i especially love rereaders, because of the sheer number of times you were able to catch the foreshadowing i laid down. there's a lot of little stuff that's easy to miss on an first read so i'm always happy when people come back for a second one!
"one of the most complicated parts on doing a magic reveal to Arthur thing is ridding people of deeply rooted prejudices is complicated, and it's something that is so hard to depict in a way that feels natural. The reason I love how you do it is it's not any one thing--it's a lot of little things, beautifully built and twisted and turned over the course of the story." yeah!!! ah man, thank you. this is exactly what i meant by "reverse magic reveal" - in most fics, the upset happens early on, and the rest of the story has arthur wrestling with his prejudice. i'm way too insecure to write a concept that's been covered so well so many times, so i just had to put my own spin on it.
"You put Arthur in so many impossible situations throughout this fic" just like merlin in canon! uther's genocide puts merlin in so many lose/lose situations. he seems to always make the wrong choice, but in many cases, there's really no GOOD choices. that's part of what it means to have magic in camelot - so in giving arthur magic, he also has to get this same sense of overwhelming futility and helplessness.
"In this fic, I always find myself excited when it's time to read Arthur's pov--I love Merlin, and usually he's my fave, but you give Arthur such a rich inner life." oh man this makes me so happy <3 i love being able to "convert" people if that makes any sense - this fic is an arthur-centric story by an arthur stan, but it makes me happy when people who aren't as obsessed with him can enjoy him too.
"I completely underestimated how much of an impact him knowing he was born of magic would have on his personality. Thematically, of course, it works that he's been forced to keep this secret like Merlin has" it PISSED ME OFF that that didn't rock his world like this in canon, because the show is so hellbent on resetting things to the status quo every week. learning such horrific and life-changing family dirt like that can be absolutely earth-shattering, and in canon arthur just never brought it up again (even though there's a really offhand line in a deleted season 4 scene that confirms he knew his father was lying all along??). to me it seems like he put all the dots together right in that episode, but he couldn't bear what had to be truly overwhelming horror - knowing it meant the only honorable thing to do would be to kill his own father, and that his birth was the reason behind a GENOCIDE, a genocide that he participated in. so his only choice was to repress the hell out of it so it didn't literally drive him out of his mind. in a way, this fic is just 2.08 in reverse and slow motion - i wanted to rewind him to the place he was where he saw everything perfectly clearly, before the pain that revelation caused, that imo maybe literally threatened his sanity a little bit, forced him to try and make it go away. and i wanted to rewind the pain itself too in a way, by giving him a month and 130k to process it a little more...slowly, lol. in a healthier and less traumatizing way. sorry, that is a super long explanation you didn't ask for, but i feel so strongly about the events of 2.08!!! enough to write this huge fic about them.
but yes, i'm SO glad you loved arthur in this, i am an arthur stan who used to hate him and FLIPPED in 2.08, like a complete 180 in the course of 40 minutes. it was an insane experience because up until then all i could see were his flaws (mostly how horrible he was to merlin but also how uncompromising he was in his prejudice) and then that episode completely unzipped me, because in my mind it's proof that he thinks that way because he can't grapple with how awful the truth of it all is (which is not at all fair to people like merlin or morgana, who HAVE to live with knowing about how awful it all is whether they want to or not). so i guess part of why 2.08 influences so much of his personality in this fic is because it influenced my perception of him so much. it's something i think really could make a person snap entirely, which i wish i had been able to lean into more. but it's fun to sort of be able to explain my passions about him in long prose form and have other people enjoy it, lol.
anyway, this response has gotten WAY too long (sorry), but thank you so much for (re)reading and dropping all these huge comments in my inbox!! what an awesome surprise, you rule <3
Comment on How Arthur Got His Groove Back
thegeminisage on Chapter 1 Fri 04 Jun 2021 06:20AM UTC
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