#bbc kara

[limbel]

❀❀❀ bbc merlin ladies + flowers ❀❀❀ for @morgwenmicrofic

[frogdivorce]

─@morgwenmicrofic prompt: "i am not afraid"

St. Joan of Arc, quoted from trial transcripts by Anatole France, tr. Winifred Stevens, The Life of Joan of Arc // BBC Merlin S5E11, The Drawing of the Dark // John Everett Millais, Joan of Arc // St. Joan of Arc, quoted from trial transcripts by Frank Boott Goodrich, World Famous Women: Types of Female Heroism, Beauty, and Influence from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time // Bertolt Brecht, tr. Ralph Manheim, Saint Joan of the Stockyards // Joseph Fink // Florence + The Machine, Only If for a Night // Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII // Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Joan of Arc: Heretic, Mystic, Shaman // Maxwell Anderson, Joan of Lorraine // _a.d.poetry_., Bad Dog // Carl Theodor Dreyer, The Passion of Joan of Arc (La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc) (1928) // Flannery O'Conner, A Temple of the Holy Ghost // Victor Fleming, Joan of Arc (1948) // Mika Ninagawa, Helter Skelter (2012) // Jessica Curry, The Light We Cast // personsonable // Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Joan of Arc

[tiredandoptimistic]

The thing about Kara's execution is that nobody else treats her like an insurgent fighting for her right to exist. Arthur sees her as a terrorist who is too dangerous to walk free, and while Mordred tries to defend her he does it by basically arguing "she's just a girl, if you let her go she won't bother you anymore" (to which Kara obviously responds "like fuck I'll stop defending my rights"). While it's true that Kara never tries to peacefully resolve anything with the Camelot monarchy, she is the person being oppressed and she's got no reason to try for diplomacy with a kingdom that has been committing genocide against her people for decades. Arthur is the one who's under obligation to make amends and try for peace, and he never does it because nobody really asks him to. Even Mordred and Merlin, who are supposed to be on team magic, constantly just go along with Arthur when he repeats Uther's mistakes and try to convince themselves that he'll improve on his own someday. When Kara came to Camelot it was a perfect opportunity for Mordred to persuade Arthur to listen to her political opinions and to take magic users seriously as a class of people who deserve to exist, but instead he just kept claiming that Kara is a poor misguided child who would step in line if given the opportunity. Arthur believes Mordred, so when he approaches Kara as a naive girl and instead finds a warrior he ends up thinking that Uther was right and all magic users would rather kill him (a poor innocent king) than accept peace (by running away and living someplace else where they can't bother anyone). Kara is perfectly justified in wanting Arthur dead; Arthur is the one who needed to develop into somebody who could choose peace over violence. Somebody other than Kara could have helped gently guide Arthur towards character development, but Mordred and Merlin don't take the opportunity to genuinely challenge his harmful beliefs. Mordred just reinforces the image of druids as peaceful and innocent people, which fails to create any change because it means that their freedom hinges on their ability to live up to an impossible ideal of kindness in the face of genocide. When Kara doesn't even try to fit that image, she is seen as a villain and a killer when she should have been recognized as a freedom fighter who has every right to feel betrayed by her government. Arthur kills her because she refuses to make herself into some symbol of naive girlish innocence, and he doesn't know how to handle a tense political situation with genuine nuance and compassion.

[kissme-withyour-cherrylipstick]

Mordred and Kara

Merlin 5x11 The Drawing of the Dark

11 hours

[solstiis]

the last dance of the wolf and the hare

[dukeysquid]

I need more fanfics that are this vibe:

Like I need her to be trying her best but also unbelievably tired of dealing with her honorary son sucking face with his girlfriend all the time. Like she’s happy for him but also she’s trying to take over the kingdom and she needs his tongue out of Kara’s mouth for more than 5 seconds for that

[rainsweptflower136]

I think an aspect to Kara, and the Drawing of the Dark as a whole, that is being missed here is that Kara exists as a clumsy solution to a writing problem with season 5 (low-key the rest of the show, but I digress).

By the end of the season, the writers had failed to establish any significant conflict between Arthur and Mordred. They don't have any serious interpersonal conflict and they're seemingly aligned in their beliefs and goals. But because the show is doing King Arthur mythos, Mordred needs to kill Arthur in like, an episode, and because they weren't willing to commit to either a) characterizing Mordred as sinister, insincere, or antagonistic, or b) having Arthur do something that THEY, The Writers, consider completely unjustifiable, there's a problem.

Kara's character is shunted into the narrative to solve that problem. She is introduced for the first time, established as being a 'first love' of Mordred's, tries to assassinate the king, and is promptly fridged to incite the needed conflict. It prevents the writers from having to abandon their desire to portray Mordred as sympathetic (Arthur killed his girlfriend) and their desire to avoid Arthur being unambiguously in the wrong (she tried to kill him and said she would do it again.)

Kara's character, her motivations and actions aren't fleshed out, bc the writers are not interested in her as a standalone character. They serve the same story purpose, which is to be the excuse to turn Mordred against Arthur. It's definitely a classic misogynistic trope/roll for a female character to be placed, and ultimately says more about the writers and the writing than the three characters involved. Which, frankly, can be said for a lot of the show.

[justaneedle]

That awkward moment when you like a character who has literally been in a single episode for five seasons, and you don't know how to get rid of unwanted content without just blocking everyone…

“It is not a crime to fight for your freedom. It is not a crime to fight for the right to be who you are. You deserve everything that is coming to you, Arthur Pendragon.”