TM #133: If...
If you think you know what happened, you're wrong. Even I don't know anymore, and I was there.
You think of a series of cinematic moments: burning looks, a flare of torchlight, hectic and well-choreographed fights. You think it comes down to the light against the dark, the old against the new, the idealists and the cynics. You cast him as the visionary or the conqueror, me as the psychotic or the victim, as suits your taste. If you're feeling particularly daring, you dredge up the bones of poor old Oedipus, as if that explains everything.
You want it to make sense, like a nice well-behaved story. No contradictions, no loose ends, no unrequited wrongs.
You want to slot us neatly into the files of history, documented, cut and dried. And when you can't do that, you decide it's all fiction anyway, and why not throw in a few talking unicorns and divine prophecies while you're at it?
The one thing you can't believe is that it was all just a damned mess, and we were in it. The dragons were garden pests, the maidens were not above a dirty joke or two, and even the heroic deaths were ugly.
Mordred
Arthurian legend
200 words
You think of a series of cinematic moments: burning looks, a flare of torchlight, hectic and well-choreographed fights. You think it comes down to the light against the dark, the old against the new, the idealists and the cynics. You cast him as the visionary or the conqueror, me as the psychotic or the victim, as suits your taste. If you're feeling particularly daring, you dredge up the bones of poor old Oedipus, as if that explains everything.
You want it to make sense, like a nice well-behaved story. No contradictions, no loose ends, no unrequited wrongs.
You want to slot us neatly into the files of history, documented, cut and dried. And when you can't do that, you decide it's all fiction anyway, and why not throw in a few talking unicorns and divine prophecies while you're at it?
The one thing you can't believe is that it was all just a damned mess, and we were in it. The dragons were garden pests, the maidens were not above a dirty joke or two, and even the heroic deaths were ugly.
Mordred
Arthurian legend
200 words