Gwaine! Oh my god, Gwaine as a Frenchman! GWAINE AS A FRENCHMAN, OF COURSE HE IS. I have a weird love/why-are-you-interrupting-my-otp? thing for Gwaine depending upon the fic and I had nothing but mad, mad love for him here. ARE YOU NOTICING A THEME, KATE? I feel like you get right at the heart of the quintessential Gwaine character - he's brave and noble and selfless, but he's also untethered, flighty, spontaneous. He's even a touch self-indulgent, which is so great - the Merlinverse is so heavily populated with people treating themselves strictly that it's nice to see the rare character who will help himself to all the alcohols and the womens and the mens and just have a party because why not? All this just to say I love how you balance Gwaine's levity and gravity, since I think Gwaine is all-too-often just written away as the roguish, silly comedic relief (something I know I am horribly guilty of, haha!).
And, on that note, you just had so many brilliant, distinct cameos - even the brief amount of time we got to spend with Lancelot, Gwen and Percival was so vibrant. I love that Arthur felt so comfortable with Lance that he just went off and gave his advice re: Gwen, and that Lance responded to him, in some way, and not just some random dude the RAF had only just picked up off the air strip. Oh, and while I'm thinking on it? That moment with Arthur and the Merlin engines? Got me so teary-eyed, omg. Your Arthur owns my soul - let me just put it to you like that.
This is probably a great place for me to transition to your backstory with Gwen and Merlin and Lancelot and Arthur. Because ohhhh my god. I have been aching, aching I tell you, for something like what you did with their backstory the entire time I've been in Merlin fandom. To me, you wrote the perfect fix-it scenario with this story, and it was SO SATISFYING TO READ I WANT TO KISS YOU FOR IT. I like all sorts of fix-its, don't get me wrong, but what I've really wanted all this time was something that reconciled the difficulties both sets of canon give us - the show as well as the legends. I wanted something that would tackle the idea of the A/G/L triangle in a different way, without waving it aside, making certain relationships or betrayals not happen at all, or turning any one or combination of the characters into some irredeemable baddie or one-note emoters. Again, those stories have their place too - it's just that this is the story between them all that I have been dying to see.
Part 2!
Gwaine! Oh my god, Gwaine as a Frenchman! GWAINE AS A FRENCHMAN, OF COURSE HE IS. I have a weird love/why-are-you-interrupting-my-otp? thing for Gwaine depending upon the fic and I had nothing but mad, mad love for him here. ARE YOU NOTICING A THEME, KATE? I feel like you get right at the heart of the quintessential Gwaine character - he's brave and noble and selfless, but he's also untethered, flighty, spontaneous. He's even a touch self-indulgent, which is so great - the Merlinverse is so heavily populated with people treating themselves strictly that it's nice to see the rare character who will help himself to all the alcohols and the womens and the mens and just have a party because why not? All this just to say I love how you balance Gwaine's levity and gravity, since I think Gwaine is all-too-often just written away as the roguish, silly comedic relief (something I know I am horribly guilty of, haha!).
And, on that note, you just had so many brilliant, distinct cameos - even the brief amount of time we got to spend with Lancelot, Gwen and Percival was so vibrant. I love that Arthur felt so comfortable with Lance that he just went off and gave his advice re: Gwen, and that Lance responded to him, in some way, and not just some random dude the RAF had only just picked up off the air strip. Oh, and while I'm thinking on it? That moment with Arthur and the Merlin engines? Got me so teary-eyed, omg. Your Arthur owns my soul - let me just put it to you like that.
This is probably a great place for me to transition to your backstory with Gwen and Merlin and Lancelot and Arthur. Because ohhhh my god. I have been aching, aching I tell you, for something like what you did with their backstory the entire time I've been in Merlin fandom. To me, you wrote the perfect fix-it scenario with this story, and it was SO SATISFYING TO READ I WANT TO KISS YOU FOR IT. I like all sorts of fix-its, don't get me wrong, but what I've really wanted all this time was something that reconciled the difficulties both sets of canon give us - the show as well as the legends. I wanted something that would tackle the idea of the A/G/L triangle in a different way, without waving it aside, making certain relationships or betrayals not happen at all, or turning any one or combination of the characters into some irredeemable baddie or one-note emoters. Again, those stories have their place too - it's just that this is the story between them all that I have been dying to see.