What Happened When The World Fell Apart

[iambickilometer]

boxofmagic has gone live! For those of you not in the know, the Box of Magic is the Merlin Big Bang challenge, which means oodles of longfic. There was a pretty big dropout rate - out of 127 starting writers, only 23 pulled through - including me, by the skin of my teeth.

Title: What Happened When The World Fell Apart
Fandom: Merlin
Warning?s: Consent

Comments

[sapphirestar_]

oh my god. oh. just. oh my god, this fic. and. just.

it's. i mean. it's just left me utterly speechless. i don't even know. but. i loved it. i love it. so, so much, in so many ways. and. just, wow. wow.

i love that it was one of those fics you can't step away from, one of those where you start reading and can't stop, because it's all so incredibly intriguing and compelling, and sometimes you feel like stepping away, taking a breath, because it's all so very sudden and harsh and beautiful but you don't, because in the end, you don't want to. and this is exactly like that.

before reading it, i read your notes, which obviously spoiled me of it's not-so-happy-ending. but. nevertheless. it did come as a shock. merlin's descent into madness, arthur, morgana. gwen, even, because i hadn't known what to expect of her death. and i loved that, all of it, because despite their actions, despite what they did, they still remained very much in character. they were so real, still the characters of merlin, only harsher, darker, jaded with their times and lives and the world they lived in. and, given the circumstances, their world, i imagine this is exactly as they would've done, had the canon!characters lived such lives.

also, the gregory monmouth bits? YES. YES YES YES. i loved that, so much. reminded me a bit of final fantasy xii, to be honest, which made me love it even more. it gave the fic more depth, i think, gave it a sense of history, of ancient secrets yet to be discovered.

and i also loved that the ending was so vague. i'm generally a fan of happy endings, and in this one, my shippy fangirl heart wibbled in joy when i read the last bit with perhaps a dragon, or a young boy lacking a father and i literally went all "\o/ :DDDDD" and aahhhhhhhhh yes. but i also love that maybe that wasn't what happened, that maybe merlin did force arthur to shoot himself (that's what might've happened, from my point of view - at first i'd have said he forced arthur to shoot him, merlin, but after the letter and the last monmouth bit i thought otherwise).

also, because this needs to be said: MORGANA. ON A MOTORCYCLE. FUCK YES. I SO SEE THAT HAPPENING. \o/

and yeah, so, all in all. good god. i haven't said nearly as much as i'd want to, but i'm still a bit omgwhut by it, so. this is beyond brilliant, definitely one of the best merlin fics i've ever read and i will LOVE IT FOREVER AND EVER. ♥