here again. smarter people than me have said this (including that one guy who wrote an academic article on merlin porn manips) but magic in most of history/popular culture and in merlin specifically is heavily associated with women. most of the important and powerful magic users in the show are women (morgana, morguase, nimuah, freya) and the old religion has an implied matriarchy with high priestesses.
merlin is the protagonist of the show but also the subject of very early 2000s jokes about his gender and sexuality, mostly by arthur. from the very beginning of the show, merlin is emasculated by arthur by being physically beaten and then! made his servant!!! a role heavily associated with women because they were assigned domestic duties throughout time. like although technically, historically, it would be common and accurate for a lord or prince to have a manservant, the modern connotations of merlin bringing him food and helping him get dressed etc are... like yes its gay to service another man but one of the reasons why is bc of the emasculating nature of it. merlin's magic also contributes to the effeminate qualities that arthur mocks -- his inability to fight (he can just use magic) and unwillingness to hunt. plus non magic related qualities like being emotional, a mama's boy, sensitive, etc. his magic gets him in situations where hes "caught" with a dress or jewelry--his Big Secret has, like everyone has pointed out, very queer undertones. because this is an early 2000s show, queerness = femininity. merlin experiences crazy homophobia at the hands of his own show.
also, inherently the positioning of "two sides of the same coin" means there needs to be a split of feminine/masculine, magic/strength, dark/light between them. and on a surface level it feels pretty obvious who is who? But. merlin is our protagonist and having magic powers is Cool. so the magic simultaneously allows him to cement his masculinity over the Evil Sorceress characters. merlin being the Most Powerful Magic User Ever is mostly used against characters like nimueh, morgana, and morguase, all shown to be extremely powerful but falling under the might of his magic. merlin is called the "light to morgana's darkness", which positions them similarly to him and arthur, but in this situation merlin is the "masculine loving light" to morgana's "hateful feminine darkness" like in the traditional yin-yang symbolism.
but hold on ✋ a second if merlin is the masculine light to morgana's darkness, what exactly does that make him and arthur 🤨. the beginning of the show has everyone believing arthur is a "rough-tough save the world kind of guy" who gets all the girls while merlin is in the background doing everything. but arthurs propensity for getting knocked out and needing to be saved + ignorance and situational idiocy puts him in the damsel in distress position that needs to be saved almost every episode. hes constantly enchanted and thus emasculated by female sorcerers. so with the secret of his magic merlin is also kind of hiding another Secret, of arthur's, which is that he fails at performing masculinity. its an intensely embarrassing thing to know about someone: arthur DIDN'T slay a dragon, arthur DIDN'T complete this quest alone, he needs merlins help. arthur's agressive attempts at appealing to the patriarchal figure of his father and expectations of him leads to this almost childish bully of a character: his performance and privilege means he has no idea how to really talk to women or form meaningful relationships or do anything for himself. im not saying its womancoded to be incompetent but for an early 2000s show w baffling politics his inability to do stuff other than kill things is emasculating. hes trying so hard to preserving his frsgile masculinity it loops back around to being kind of gay (derogatory 2000s tone). his position as crown prince and eventually a king means that arthur's more effeminate qualities are ignored while merlin is the subject of much bullying by the knights. i do also think that the power imbalance in merlin-and-arthur's relationship and arthur not having to worry about merlin being a threat to his masculinity is one of the reasons he can be more vulnerable and intimate with merlin in a way arthur can't be with his knights.
meanwhile merlin is the most powerful sorcerer to walk the earth, a dragonlord, etc. merlin calls himself the "brighter side" of the merlin-and-arthur coin which is the masculine side by yim-yang rules and also the rules of the show in regards to him and morgana. it was a throwaway comedic line and the show does prop arthur up as the Golden Boy with plenty of admireable "masculine" qualities (courage/strengtg/leadership), but i do believe the show genuinely meant for him to be the 'light side" especially in the pilot where we've seen zero positive traits of arthur's. is this to say arthur is womancoded... well no hes a white man in a position of patriarchal power. But i do think the show is saying that merlin's sensitive masculinity and arthur's traditional masculinity needs to be combined to make one perfect man. which is probably obvious and could be said in less words but that's kinda... gay...
on rewatch it’s even clearer that robby is a great mentor to everyone, but he is a much better mentor to his male trainees. he argues with them less; he is more accepting of their diagnoses around difficult cases; he is more comfortable taking them under his wing. they rarely challenge him. it takes just that much more effort from the women of the pitt — mckay, collins, and mohan especially — to argue their point of view on patient care, especially around women’s issues. and that effort weighs on them! it’s exhausting for mohan to constantly defend herself on her care choices. it’s unfair to put blame on mckay for making an extremely understandable decision about david out of concern for his female classmates. his relationship with collins is inappropriate — at minimum it likely gets in the way of her professional development (note that langdon was the one recommended for that fellowship, without even asking robby for it).
i appreciate this writing choice a lot. robby is extremely likable and a compelling center of the story. he makes the right decision for his female patients many times, including giving a teenage girl a chance at reproductive freedom at personal risk. he’s supportive of the women in his department and wants them to do well.
but still. it’s there. and he doesn’t even know it.
A neat thing about The Goblin Emperor is that while it's a classic trope of the lost heir plunged into a morass of courtly intrigue where he has no idea whom he can trust, the very first thing it does is emphasize how much he has to choose to trust anyway. Maia has to trust the head of his household to appoint his body servants, and he has to trust those servants. He has to trust the adremaza to appoint his nohecharei, and he has to trust his nohecharei. Any one of these people could kill him. Any one of them could carry gossip to his enemies, or make him look bad in public and thus weaken him in the eyes of the court. But if he so much as implies a discomfort with these choices, he'll offend powerful people without cause – and anyway, how could he possibly pick better? He has no idea what he's doing. He's forced to rely on people. He's forced to trust. The only person he actually personally chooses is Csevet, and what he chooses to do is essentially hand Csevet the keys to the empire. He got so fucking lucky there, that could have gone so incredibly badly.
But it didn't. Because, as the book emphasizes, trust is the right choice. Even when it does go badly, even when he is betrayed, that doesn't mean the trust was wrong. Because when one person betrays him, every single other person around him shows how truly loyal they are, not only by rushing to his aid, but by caring so deeply and obviously about him.
That's why this book feels so odd for its genre: there's a bunch of complex courtly intrigue going on, but Maia never plays the game. He never schemes, he's never playing 5D chess with his enemies. He has to navigate the factions of the court and try to win them to his side, but he does so by being kind and forthright. He's completely blindsided by the coup attempts, and frankly so are we, because he's just been focusing on other stuff! And he survives them, not through his own cunning, but through the love of those he placed his trust in.
"Go to hell" is basic and overused. "I hope your beloved childhood series becomes a never-ending hellscape of cash grab content wherein every new addition ruins the power and significance of the original story. I hope the main character loses what was the perfect ending to his story in favor of repeating the same spiral over and over wherein he's constantly on the edge of losing himself to his anger and fear but no resolution will ever happen." is way scarier. It is definitely possible. And it is happening to me right now.
Blue noting that she feels left out of the camaraderie of the masculine use of surnames among friends and then once Ronan warms up to her he’s the only one calling her Sargent because he likes and respects her now so he’s bringing her into the fold
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