[ID: Photo of a book excerpt reading “‘Everything,’ he said, is “beshit.’” /end ID]

Thank u 1830s whaler for the new phrase to work into my lexicon.

Broke: Merlin and Arthur's fates were predetermined and there was nothing either could do to prevent it. Love is a powerless force compared to the hands of destiny.

Woke: Love directly prevents both Merlin and Arthur from fulfilling their destiny. Merlin's blind love for Arthur skews his moral compass and causes him to lose sight of his true destiny. He prioritises Arthur and their relationship over his own happiness and the wellbeing of all sorcerers. Arthur is blindly trusting and desperate to please the people he loves. This allows him to be easily manipulated by Uther, Morgana, Agravaine and often, Merlin, which prevents him from becoming the king he was destined to be. He hesitates when he sees Mordred at Camlaan because he doesn't want to believe that he has been betrayed, which directly leads to his death. Both Merlin and Arthur (and the audience) wants to believe that love will redeem them, but it becomes their doom.

Bespoke: Love is a benevolent force, the tragedy arises from shame preventing it from being expressed. We are told from the start that "a half cannot truly hate that which makes it whole" and that their destiny is entirely dependent on Merlin changing Arthur for the better, overcoming hate with love. But the power of love will only go as far as you let it. Merlin is repeatedly told by people that he trusts (Gaius, Kilgarrah, Hunith) that Arthur can never know about his magic*, so he hides the true depths of his loyalty in order to avoid making Arthur uncomfortable. Merlin is so afraid that Arthur would hate him if he knew the truth, that he self-sabotages any opportunity that would challenge Arthur's views, eventually becoming complicit in his own oppression. In actuality, Arthur is just as fiercely devoted to Merlin and would have legalised magic for him if he was ever given the chance to grow. However, the confines of class divides, toxic masculinity and the expectations placed upon him prevents him from ever communicating his feelings to Merlin. If either Merlin or Arthur had felt comfortable expressing their love for each other and had allowed their relationship to develop, they would indeed have fulfilled their destiny, but they are held back by external factors. "They tell me it was fate. No, darling, it was not the stars which crossed us. It was people."

*Although this post is more of a general commentary on themes, also... magic is a metaphor for sexuality, the true evil is homophobia

You know what baffles me? Why did we never get a time-loop episode of Merlin? Like someone curses Camelot to be trapped in the same day and Merlin is the only one to retain memories between resets. It would be hilarious to see Merlin just go feral and use magic with wild abandon in the open cause no one will remember anyway. I wanna see him do the bit where he needs to convince Gauis that they are in a time-loop by telling him all the weird and improbable thing that will happen as they are happening. Like it would also be the perfect way to get in multiple "magic reveals" ™. Arthur could sometimes take it well or sometimes even react poorly with the promise of deciding Merlin's fate the next morning but that morning never comes so we never get a for sure answer about how he feels which is why Merlin still doesn't do a reveal post time-loop escape. Like the comedy and drama potential we missed out on man...

I keep seeing a post that's like "it's so sweet that Crowley cleaned up the bookshop while Aziraphale was in Edinburgh" and I'm like listen, I get what you mean but that is not what's happening here, Aziraphale keeps his shop a mess on purpose to ward off customers and Crowley tries to alphabetize his CD collection to take his mind off the impending apocalypse but is thwarted by them already being alphabetized. That was stress cleaning and it was for Crowley's benefit.

some dipshit uploaded my book to an AI site, so suffice to say, I will fucking kill them

emailed my agent cuz our contract states she has to protect me from shit like this, so we'll see what she says

but I will still kill these ppl

LMFAO THE SITE IS BEING TAKEN DOWN

hey so, just so there's no ambiguity about what just happened-- this was about Prosecraft, a website that would help you compare your writing to your favorite author by analyzing the "vividness" of the words used, passive voice vs active voice and the number of adverbs used in a given section.

unfortunately, the service is dogshit for various reasons but that's not the issue here.

the issue is that the website had trained an AI on 25,000 books, one of which included mine. and i definitely did not give anyone permission to use my work to train an AI. it's literally stated in my contract.

and if i didn't give permission--i can imagine quite a number of authors didn't give permission either. (oops, i don't have to imagine--because hundreds of authors came forward and said they didn't give permission either!)

so i emailed my agent about this. my agent directed me to my publisher which has a legal department that looks into piracy on this scale. all of those authors did the same, emailing their legal team, getting The Authors Guild involved.

EVERY AUTHOR pretty much roasting this guy named Benji Smith on Twitter for claiming to "support authors" yet clearly using pirated work to train an AI.

of course, he decided to take the website down. authors are now talking about getting AI protection clauses in their contracts going forward. i already have one with my agent, but I imagine I will have to get it instated into every publishing contract moving forward.

source: it happened to me lol (but if you don't believe me, here's a link)

his ass is too sharp for bed ‼️

found the artist's name in the notes and went looking because this slaps (it's called A Place Where I'll Dance) and its not even their best song. check this shit out:

Baby Horse Shoe

Pequeño pero matón

They should put these on all the civil war miniatures. Spice things up a little