all my keysmash are belong to you

What is this, senioritis? Spring semester blues? I'm well on my way to being overeducated and dehumanized and it makes me feel spiritually bloated, but also empty. But then I'm like, if these are my problems, then I'm doing pretty good. Don't cry, emo Lass! :(

Writing what I know: I haven't been doing it. Which makes me think hey, what about a fanfic writer AU? Y'know, the one where Morgana is a university student, and she and Gwen have debates over lunch about the finer points of LJ comm posting etiquette ("Post it to a few, sure, but I don't need the damn thing popping up on my flist eight times!"), but they also worry about summer internships and absent-minded thesis advisers who never return your emails on time.

But what show would they fic?! What epic bromantic story can serve as an adequate parallel to 'Merlin', that most unparalleled wonder of ahistorical crack? I toyed with 'Harry Potter' because it's such a mainstay, and Achilles and Patroclus (in which they are not cousins), and Plato and Socrates (in which they are the same age). And then, LIGHTBULB: the show is about Karl Marx (played by Colin Morgan, heretofore known for his stagework) and Friedrich Engels (played by Bradley James, heretofore known for his abs), in the springtime days of youth. Before they were revolutionaries, before the Manifesto and Capital and those horrific beards, they were just Karl and Friedrich, engaging in bar brawls with Prussian loyalists and other such rakish things. They are also trying to win the heart of Jenny von Westphalen (played by Angel Coulby), a young woman of bourgeois lineage whose beauty and kindness ignites both their passions. So, Karl and Friedrich have jealous spats disguised as accusations of hypocrisy! Anthony Head stars as Friedrich's father, the textile tycoon who disapproves of all things non-capitalist and from whom Friedrich steals money to support his BFF Karl. Katie Morgan plays the quick-witted barmaid with a thirst for revolution, and Joe Dempsie plays one of Karl's many former BFFs whom he eventually dumped for being ideologically unsound. It is a show about LOVE and FRIENDSHIP and FOLLOWING YOUR DREAMS.

Okay, so that's the show. In the throes of fannish glee, Morgana tells her stepbrother Arthur about it, which doesn't end well because he is an economics student (to please his father) and he just scoffs all over her face. "There are so many things wrong with this, I don't even know where to begin," he says, but Morgana retorts, "You're missing the point!"

"Which is...?"

"Friedrich/Karl, the OTP that ate fandom!" she crows. "Gwen already had to reformat her laptop because she got adware going on sketchy websites trying to find the newest episode. Thank god she backed up her Friedrich/Karl porn fic. We spent ages hashing out the characterization for that one."

"Oh Christ." Arthur holds up a finger. "First of all, I never want to know. Second of all," he holds up a second finger, "why would you worry about characterization in porn?"

"Because--"

"Third of all: see 'first of all'. If you put half as much effort into your studies as you do into historical porn--"

"Stop it, you sound like Uther."

Another time, over drinks, Gwen says to Morgana, "If we were a TV show, who would people ship?" Her favorite game. "I think quite a lot would ship you/me."

Morgana shrugs. "Probably." And tries not to smile like an idiot when, later, on their way back to their apartment, Gwen slips her arm around Morgana's waist to steady herself, giggly and warm and affectionate.

"I can capslock about you until the comments collapse," Gwen declares, and Morgana kisses her cheek, replies likewise.


And I don't even know what these next set of drabbles are. They've been sitting on my hard-drive for an age. Again, I was feeling like I never write what I know, but that I can't write original characters anymore, so I guess these are sort of a stepping stone. I can perhaps call them the 'directionless 20-something living in New England' AU. Perhaps there will be more in this 'verse, who knows.

( Weymouth and Tilton are on the same commuter line to Boston, so Merlin and Will had made all the usual promises to stay in touch. )

What has two thumbs and is off to the dining hall. That's right!

I have a feeling I'll be selecting moods based more on the animation rather than as a true representation of my feelings. Look at those keys go!

Anyway, ineptshieldmaid was asking for ficlets about love (or not love) and FIVE THOUSAND WORD LATER. Man. In conclusion, commentfic will be the death of me. My reaction to slashdragonsays was "Awesome!", quickly followed by "No, Lass, BACK AWAY. YOU KNOW HOW YOU GET."


The Ink Still Drying
Merlin. Merlin/Morgana, Arthur/Merlin, Morgana/Gwen, Arthur/Gwen. Rated R. Thank you to stealingpennies for her beta; all remaining fail are mine.
Futurefic in which Merlin begins to remember the future, Morgana reaches for her destiny, Arthur is kind of dense, and Gwen isn't an idiot.
ETA: The awesomeness that is zempasuchil has done an erasure of this fic, entitled "Then Sing". Click here to read it.
ETA 2: DVD commentary now available.

( The Ink Still Drying )

"They won't tell us to do something we can't do," Arthur insists. "They're knights after all."

"Of a sort," Merlin adds dubiously.

"Look, I think the trunk is starting to give," says Arthur, and gives the tree another mighty smack with the herring.


Only a Model
Merlin, with apologies to Monty Python. Arthur, Uther, Morgana, Hunith, Merlin, Gaius. G. With spam, egg, bacon, and spam to marycontraire for enablementation. Spoilers for episode 10.
Let's not go to Camelot. It's a silly place.

( this probably won't make sense if you haven't watched 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' )

So I won't clog the February free-for-all prompt post with spastic commentficcing, I'm gonna post these here. This is a working post. The rest of the story is here. Unrelated snippets from the AU in which the Pendragons are hunters, starring Dean!Arthur, Sam!Morgana, and John!Uther.

I plan to post more snippets of this to this post should the inspiration continue to strike. So, this post is gonna be edit-prone. If you wanna leave me prompts, go ahead and I'll see what I can do with them. No promises, though.

( ...as if she hasn't spent the last handful of years trying to forget them, as if she never left at all. )

fgsjkjkd lettersandliars wrote me Morgana/Lucy because she's that awesome. omg. El Otro Cielo, Morgana learns magic from Queen Lucy and things go quite wrong. Merlin/Narnia crossovers are gonna take over the world.

In other news, I've always wanted to write swordfighting!Morgana fic, so I finally did. I also squeezed in bits of my beloved ‘Arthur vs. Morgana for Uther's love’, but there’s more of the sword thing because OH EPISODE TEN. Oh Morgana, and your awesome, and how you have a stole for every occasion.


A Taste For Steel
Merlin. Morgana + ensemble. G.
Eight facts about a girl and her sword.

( A Taste For Steel )

I was scribbling parts of this in lab while my TA babbled on about the stepwise regression method and I thought to myself, "Oh yeah! Things that are not angst. I remember those." Man, when was the last time I wrote slash that wasn't angsty? Not since LOTRips, I don't think. (LOLOLZ, REMEMBER LOTRIPS, GUYS? Oh man. Good times.) And I've written, like, one happy Narnia fic, because Narnia is fucked up.

'Merlin', however, is the good crack. I do at some point want to write about the future encroaching and Arthur stumbling towards kinghood, watching in horror as Uther and Morgana are consumed by their own crazy, but for right now I can only offer Arthur being a smug bastard.

LOL @ how the phrase "lie back and think of England" has its own Wikipedia page. Oh, Wikipedia. <3


Just Lie Back and Think of Camelot
Merlin. Arthur/Merlin. Rated... R or M? Spoilers: Episode 4, "The Poisoned Chalice." Tip of the hat to the fabulous Bedlam for beta duty.
Or, "Four Ways Merlin is a Crap Servant and One Way He Isn’t Oh, Who Are We Kidding. Five. Five Ways."

( Just Lie Back and Think of Camelot )

They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said--

1. If you've ever wondered where the drabbles are at for Arthur/Susan, Morgana/Edmund, Uther/Lucy, Susan/Morgana, Lucy/Merlin, and the Dragon/Aslan (and Pevencest is a given), maybe you should look here. Part of my and bedlamsbard's ongoing mission to have the Pevensies sleep with everyone ever.

2. I never posted actual links to the following, and they do go with the overall theme of this post, so what the hell. In terms of Stardust crossovers, this is the one with Last Battle revisionism, and this is the one with Ben Barnes/Ben Barnes Caspian/Dunstan.

3. Here is that meme where you pair up the characters of the adjacent icons on your icons page and write a drabble about it.

( Virgil Malloy (of O11) & Donald Duck, Miraz & the Beatles )