psych style adaptation of king arthur where everyone thinks merlin has magic because he keeps solving camelot’s problems but he actually has no magical ability at all and it’s just that everyone else is incompetent. he keeps up the magic thing though by making up weird prophecies and cryptic comments because he kind of needs a job
sir kay is the lassiter figure like so pissed off all the time that merlin is obviously lying and won’t stop interfering with his job, but arthur just kind of keeps merlin around because like yeah the magic thing is ridiculous…but somehow he still is solving everything and doing better than the actual people i hired (kay). so fine by me!
people keep saying this is just connecticut yankee NO. connecticut yankee kills the whimsy and the magic and says look isn’t it funny now? isn’t it funny to strip away the whimsy? no. we are keeping the whimsy. in this plot line magic is still very much real and a very useful skill to have in a royal advisor, one that’s highly sought after. it’s just that merlin doesn’t have it
real magician shows up to court and merlin is like im so fucked. desperately trying to take notes on what real magicians do the whole time. toward the end of the episode merlin realizes this guy is faking too and reveals him as a fraud to the whole court, of course in a way that confirms everyone’s belief that merlin does in fact have magical abilities. arthur is very pleased, patting merlin on the back. “wow I can’t believe he almost got away with that. it’s crazy how easy magic is to fake.” merlin smiles, sweating buckets. sir kay is staring daggers
john winchester you need to understand that your boys are old enough to understand the neglect you're putting them through. don't be surprised if one day they walk out of your life and never look back. - bobby
remind me again where your children are, mr. parent of the year? maybe with the wife you murdered?
john winchester you need to understand that your boys are old enough to understand the neglect you're putting them through. don't be surprised if one day they walk out of your life and never look back. - bobby
remind me again where your children are, mr. parent of the year? maybe with the wife you murdered?
Hi , not a request (kinda) but do you have a masterlist for the arcana recipies you have tried Or happen to know of?
I do not, so I'm going to link all the ones I've made so far here and then pin it with my masterlists XD
Thanks anon!
Selasi the Baker's Pumpkin Bread
Asra's French Toast
Mazelinka's Soup
Asra's Cardamom Rice Pudding
All the recipes I've found so far (besides the bread, which is on the official YouTube channel) were on the official Arcana tiktok account. Just scroll past the Dorian posts and you'll see them at the bottom. I'll be sure to add more recipes as I try them! ^.^
I know I usually keep an even mix of he/him and they/them pronouns for Asra, but since I'll also be discussing a gender neutral MC here I'm going to stick to just he/him like the game does for clarity's sake ^.^
Separate essay here: Pre-Prologue Asra and MC, for notes on the whole resurrection/past history thing, so I can focus on just his route here lol
How Asra loves:
"Impossible to love. Impossible to hate." The tension of that line being spoken while Asra's magic mark is revealed to an audience that had no idea it was there is (in my opinion) one of the clearest moments where his full nature is on display. Asra does whatever makes him happy, he goes where he wants to go, he takes excellent care of himself, and he feels no obligation to explain himself or make drastic changes to his lifestyle to suit the people he cares about. His whole approach to how other people perceive and connect with him is very "take it or leave it", and it can make him seem surprisingly careless and detached. His mysterious, unpredictable, ever-evolving nature is the complex and colorful foliage that hides a root too powerful and personal to be frequently revealed. To put it in simpler terms, his capacity to love another person is so intense and so core to who he is that the rest of him has to be built to counterbalance it.
We know from the writers that Asra has difficulty making and maintaining connections with other people, but there's an important difference between difficulty connecting and difficulty loving. We see clear examples of that with Selasi, Nadia, and Muriel. Selasi never knows when Asra's going to swing by, but he heals his oven burns so frequently it's routine and he goes out of his way to secure new spices and ingredients he expresses interest in. Nadia never knew much at all of Asra's childhood and family, but he knows her favorite tea and stocks medicine for her migraines. Muriel is understandably hurt by Asra's long stretches of silence, but he has no doubts around whether or not he'd come running if he needed help. The connection Asra's friends experience with him is unpredictable, and therefore seems unreliable, but the love and loyalty hidden underneath it is unfailing.
How Asra loves the MC:
The MC is Asra's big point of reckoning. Unlike most of the other characters in the game, there is no Asra without the MC. The MC's presence in Vesuvia, the shop that they trained in and inherited, their friendship with Asra through the years, and Asra's total love for them lie at the core of his identity. It's such an intense and undeniable love that he himself spent years terrified of it and trying to run away from it, in an effort to control it if he couldn't rid himself of it completely. Throughout the events of the game and every one of the 12 endings, half of his heart beats in the MC's chest and he is fully accepting of that fact.
It's a kind of (or perhaps, depth of) love that can be easily mistaken for obsession by anyone who's never seen or experienced it for themselves, which is why it can be hard to make sense of his story. It's not something that unfolds over the course of the masquerade's events, it's a force of existence that's slowly and inexorably etched itself into his soul for almost a decade. The relationship we pick up the story with is already established and the love Asra carries with it exists regardless of what role MC has in his life. His strong commitment to boundaries and empowered decisions means that he doesn't entertain a closer relationship until he knows the MC is healed and independent enough to chose for themself. Even so, the question Asra faces throughout his route isn't "can we get together", it's "can we be together in a way that allows both parties to maintain their individuality when a love that powerful is free to be fully expressed".
The Asra/MC dynamic:
When it comes to the relationship that develops in his upright ending, there's aspects of it that can seem almost lackluster compared to the character arcs present in other routes. Asra still travels, still wears his big hat, and still hasn't committed to any drastic changes in how he lives or engages with other people. Rather than seeing him transformed, we see him fulfilled. He's not happy and full of hope because who he is has changed in any way, he's happy and full of hope because being free to fully love MC means being free to be fully be himself.
He's reached a point of integration where he can comfortably live out who he is (his love for MC) without losing the rest of himself to it (curious, wandering, ever-evolving). In fact, the key to fully expressing that love in a way that protects both his and MC's autonomy is to embrace the highly independent nature of his personality and repurpose the relational distance from the amnesia years as personal space. If he changed his life and habits to be at the shop helping all day, every day, he and the MC would spiral into enmeshment and quickly grow to resent each other for not having individual lives anymore. The emphasized distinction between "Asra's life" and "MC's life" on the day-to-day surface allows the deeper love to flow uninhibited, inundating the relationship without threatening to overflow and drown their autonomy.
The kinds of players that tends to draw:
REPEAT DISCLAIMER THAT THIS IS A GROSS GENERALIZATION OF ASRA LOVERS AND IS JUST A TREND THAT I HAVE OBSERVED/THAT MAKES SENSE TO ME (PLEASE DON'T KILL ME)
Asra being both a complicated and intense character makes it really easy to fixate on just one aspect and lose the rest. His unconventional, restless, super independent nature can make him seem flaky and careless to some, while his past involvement and wholehearted devotion can make him seem entitled and obsessive to others. I notice that often the people who are drawn to him are people who can understand and relate to loving another person that deeply and unconditionally. There's no possibility of who you are driving him away, nor of feeling unmet when he can't reciprocate the depth of your own feelings.
He doesn't say "I love you" casually, but you don't need him to because you can feel the constant presence of it in your own chest. There's no pressure on either of you to change who you are, because that's what you adore about each other. You meet each other at an emotional depth that nothing and nobody else can touch, and the security of it allows you to fill your life with all the other parts of you that you want to without worrying about it crowding him out. You'll never have to worry about being able to connect on a date night - just how much flexibility you might need if it requires scheduling.
I know I usually keep an even mix of he/him and they/them pronouns for Asra, but since I'll also be discussing a gender neutral MC here I'm going to stick to just he/him like the game does for clarity's sake ^.^
Separate essay here: Pre-Prologue Asra and MC, for notes on the whole resurrection/past history thing, so I can focus on just his route here lol
How Asra loves:
"Impossible to love. Impossible to hate." The tension of that line being spoken while Asra's magic mark is revealed to an audience that had no idea it was there is (in my opinion) one of the clearest moments where his full nature is on display. Asra does whatever makes him happy, he goes where he wants to go, he takes excellent care of himself, and he feels no obligation to explain himself or make drastic changes to his lifestyle to suit the people he cares about. His whole approach to how other people perceive and connect with him is very "take it or leave it", and it can make him seem surprisingly careless and detached. His mysterious, unpredictable, ever-evolving nature is the complex and colorful foliage that hides a root too powerful and personal to be frequently revealed. To put it in simpler terms, his capacity to love another person is so intense and so core to who he is that the rest of him has to be built to counterbalance it.
We know from the writers that Asra has difficulty making and maintaining connections with other people, but there's an important difference between difficulty connecting and difficulty loving. We see clear examples of that with Selasi, Nadia, and Muriel. Selasi never knows when Asra's going to swing by, but he heals his oven burns so frequently it's routine and he goes out of his way to secure new spices and ingredients he expresses interest in. Nadia never knew much at all of Asra's childhood and family, but he knows her favorite tea and stocks medicine for her migraines. Muriel is understandably hurt by Asra's long stretches of silence, but he has no doubts around whether or not he'd come running if he needed help. The connection Asra's friends experience with him is unpredictable, and therefore seems unreliable, but the love and loyalty hidden underneath it is unfailing.
How Asra loves the MC:
The MC is Asra's big point of reckoning. Unlike most of the other characters in the game, there is no Asra without the MC. The MC's presence in Vesuvia, the shop that they trained in and inherited, their friendship with Asra through the years, and Asra's total love for them lie at the core of his identity. It's such an intense and undeniable love that he himself spent years terrified of it and trying to run away from it, in an effort to control it if he couldn't rid himself of it completely. Throughout the events of the game and every one of the 12 endings, half of his heart beats in the MC's chest and he is fully accepting of that fact.
It's a kind of (or perhaps, depth of) love that can be easily mistaken for obsession by anyone who's never seen or experienced it for themselves, which is why it can be hard to make sense of his story. It's not something that unfolds over the course of the masquerade's events, it's a force of existence that's slowly and inexorably etched itself into his soul for almost a decade. The relationship we pick up the story with is already established and the love Asra carries with it exists regardless of what role MC has in his life. His strong commitment to boundaries and empowered decisions means that he doesn't entertain a closer relationship until he knows the MC is healed and independent enough to chose for themself. Even so, the question Asra faces throughout his route isn't "can we get together", it's "can we be together in a way that allows both parties to maintain their individuality when a love that powerful is free to be fully expressed".
The Asra/MC dynamic:
When it comes to the relationship that develops in his upright ending, there's aspects of it that can seem almost lackluster compared to the character arcs present in other routes. Asra still travels, still wears his big hat, and still hasn't committed to any drastic changes in how he lives or engages with other people. Rather than seeing him transformed, we see him fulfilled. He's not happy and full of hope because who he is has changed in any way, he's happy and full of hope because being free to fully love MC means being free to be fully be himself.
He's reached a point of integration where he can comfortably live out who he is (his love for MC) without losing the rest of himself to it (curious, wandering, ever-evolving). In fact, the key to fully expressing that love in a way that protects both his and MC's autonomy is to embrace the highly independent nature of his personality and repurpose the relational distance from the amnesia years as personal space. If he changed his life and habits to be at the shop helping all day, every day, he and the MC would spiral into enmeshment and quickly grow to resent each other for not having individual lives anymore. The emphasized distinction between "Asra's life" and "MC's life" on the day-to-day surface allows the deeper love to flow uninhibited, inundating the relationship without threatening to overflow and drown their autonomy.
The kinds of players that tends to draw:
REPEAT DISCLAIMER THAT THIS IS A GROSS GENERALIZATION OF ASRA LOVERS AND IS JUST A TREND THAT I HAVE OBSERVED/THAT MAKES SENSE TO ME (PLEASE DON'T KILL ME)
Asra being both a complicated and intense character makes it really easy to fixate on just one aspect and lose the rest. His unconventional, restless, super independent nature can make him seem flaky and careless to some, while his past involvement and wholehearted devotion can make him seem entitled and obsessive to others. I notice that often the people who are drawn to him are people who can understand and relate to loving another person that deeply and unconditionally. There's no possibility of who you are driving him away, nor of feeling unmet when he can't reciprocate the depth of your own feelings.
He doesn't say "I love you" casually, but you don't need him to because you can feel the constant presence of it in your own chest. There's no pressure on either of you to change who you are, because that's what you adore about each other. You meet each other at an emotional depth that nothing and nobody else can touch, and the security of it allows you to fill your life with all the other parts of you that you want to without worrying about it crowding him out. You'll never have to worry about being able to connect on a date night - just how much flexibility you might need if it requires scheduling.
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