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legendaryasses2013-06-25 02:04 am
pratentious) wrote in legendaryasses2013-06-25 02:04 am
Entry tags:
[ june: state of the rp; ]
state of the RP
Because there are way too many of you and this has been a hectic month for us all! Please leave a top-level comment below with a general summary of the current state of a) your muse and their development within the game, b) any current plots that may be going on involving your muse, c) how you as the mun feel in regards to your muse and their position within the game and most importantly, d) a timeline of events for your muse. A lot of us have been on hiatus or what have you and it's been extremely difficult to keep track of everything that's going on, so please let us know where your character has been and if they've gone grey or travelled out of the city or anything like that, please give us dates of when they left / returned / will return / etc. We want to know everything else that's been developing with your characters as well, but this is the most pertinent information atm. After that, you guys can go around to other people's comments to give feedback as well as plot new things for the course of this month into the next. All fun stuff! Thanks, guys! |
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• When last we state of the rp'd about our intrepid hero, he was overall doing pretty well! On the possibly annoyingly chipper side and prone to playing guard dog around the homestead, Gwaine was 1000% distrustful in regards to the Lady Morgana and socializing the hell out of himself. His self-entrusted missions were to restore colour and life through cheerfulness, and also to cheer up the people of New Camelot because jaysus, they sure needed it. Now in June, not too many things have changed, but changes there have been! idk what I'm doing anymore let's be real
• ok to start with nightmare event stuff GWAINE IS CARRYING +10 RESPECT FOR SOME PEOPLE. Lancelot Arthur and Buffy probably in particular those are the facts. Arthur kicked dream-Arthur's ass now he's almost reached senpai level. That event and the fallout around New Camelot took some more overcoming effort than other events. People left the house WHAT'S A PET TO DO??? But it's smoothed out and he's sort of getting used to working around it.
• fun fact the level of devotion he tends to have for the various ladies in his CR circle sometimes awes and intimidates me t b q h pretty sure he wants to marry half of them 5ever.
• toned down to a mere 850% distrust of Morgana things, too! Like he's had a couple of conversations with her and she's in New Camelot and stuff. They're not bfris but he kind of. It's not lady CR devotion or particularly caring to like her but he can tell she's not exactly the craycray lady who took his shirt and had him fight to the death so. It's a start. He's still kinda wary housecat around her, but it's a compromise he can roll with.
• still trying to play the guard dog hideously
• idk i can't think of anything else
current plots!
N...one that I can remember? Like between other gameplot type things happening and me having a bit of an off time of tagging lately, there hasn't been space for that sort of stuff idk. He's got his little flea-catching sidequest that isn't going to go anywhere because lmfao Gwaine srsly. And uhh the usual handwaved stuff in teaching hand-to-hand/sparring with people/trying to start house parties with Jo. AND TAKING MITHIAN TO A TAVERN AT SOME POINT AFTER I DE-HIATUS. Maybe a bunch of people can go along or something. TL;DR: ultimately, I have nothing big or particularly serious planned out for him at this point.
mun feelings!
I still love Gwaine and playing with all of you guys, and I still love Asgard! He is at the very top of the list of people I want to keep around. I've had trouble with RP drive and speed lately, but I think that I'll be back on form after my hiatus is over with. Annnd idk I don't really have much to say on this front because I've been really awful lately I guess. I'm pretty happy with Gwaine and how easy it is to get him talking to new people, and the gameplot events have made for threads for him that were more dramatic/had a direction, so it's been nice having the mix alongside good times and casual shenanigans! I like the CR he has, I like thinking of stuff for him, I like that he's just sort of amassing a crowd of folks he enjoys talking to. GOOD FEELINGS ALL AROUND I GUESS. I can't really think of anything.
I am considering giving him a tiny "no you guys don't die at the end of s4 hooray" canon bump while he's colorless. lmf i bet he would like that :'|
timeline! okay uhh I think I know what we want with this
• nightmare event progressed, continued regular homelife routine to the best of his ability
• pined after Merlin like a professional when he relocated
• probably had a couple of weeks flip-flopping between being really tryhard with the joking around and being quieter than is normal, which evened out eventually
• met Jamie McCrimmon and egg-hunted, began his and Percy's evolution into the best-worst uncles of all time who also plan to operate vehicles eventually
• then basically the usual meeting folks and wandering around doing his thing/partying with jo/Citadel stuff etc up to the Utgard trip iirc. OH, and I don't remember when exactly the event was with a person being drawn to a security blanket alfdskj but. Totes handwaved him being attached to Inara from Firefly. So he might have mentioned her here or there at the time? tbh I'm just leaving that up to individual discretion.
• UTGARD!!! Where he wandered around like a man possessed eating food and buying things and having a shenanigan with a person or two. Percy caught the spy, he called Gwaine in to help babysit, everybody debated and turned him over, people came back home.
• Merlin goes off on some trip and Gwaine silently wonders to himself if Merlin at least took a good knife with him.
• FREYR RETRIEVAL this is when I began failing spectacularly activity-wise this month and thought to call a hiatus aldmsf. HE WENT ALONG. And had a shooting competition with Arthur and generally battled and was probably ridiculously energetic about it all. Also he totally got all energy lender on some asses, feel free to assume it was your character's. I like to think he left a generally vague and unhelpful note somewhere in New Camelot just in case Gwen/Lance/Merlin/etc. got back before everyone else, even though they could just ask on the network or something. "Won't be completely sure what this is all about until I get there, but we're probably headed out on some sort of quest. love and peace xx"
• return from freyr retrieval complete with battle thing at the gate! More of the same.
• Annnnnd bracelet lost because hiatus the day after that. So you know, later enough that people can be sure he lived through the fight. I'll be back from hiatus on about July 2nd and will probably toss a network post up for him then!
Up for stuff, and gosh I feel like I forgot something really important in all this. If I think of anything else I'll put in an addendum comment or something. U Tried Dani
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and hopefully befriending themand just finding a way to ignore her love life because she doesn't want to think about it.However, that all changed when Lancelot disappeared on them. Her feelings come to the forefront, and she finds she can't ignore them. Though she's really unsure about what she wants because pursuing love in this place feels a bit greedy to her. There's so many other things to worry about, and love feels selfish. So even though she has feelings for Lancelot, they're not ones she ready to act on. Maybe admit, but nothing more.
Things didn't work out that way because now I'm on hiatus. Gwen disappeared into the grey on June 6th and she won't be returning until July 6th, so that will be a full month gone.
As for her return, I have nothing really planned for it. I know she'll want to stick with Morgana. She'll want to talk to Lancelot. But other than that...?? Whatever happens, happens. All I know is that she wants to stick by everyone like glue, and there's nothing you can do to stop her. She will love you, and you will like it!
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Lancelot sustained three (3) significant changes since we did this last...one is to his level of frustration with himself, the Gods, and Asgard. It's gone from high (why you people keep taking away everyone I love and bring them back more broken or not at all), to super high (why am I grey when there's a freaking battle! missing the joust is one thing but COME ON why do you make those stupid bracelets so easy to lose!!!!)
The second is in regards to Guinevere. For one his talk with Arthur made him realize that he's not a heinous human being for having feelings - he's allowed to have them and he doesn't need to be removed from the world for them. And the messages she left on his bracelet while he was gone made him realize that maybe there actually could be something between them, maybe he could have something good in his life. If. She weren't....GREY
The third isn't entirely new but the fact that Merlin keeps away from him, the fact that he learned this hideous secret and learned that Merlin isn't this perfect person he imagined him to be...he's still trying to work through that. All his heroes are being brought down to earth, to actual human size, and he's not sure how to deal with that - whose example does he follow? He's starting to understand that he can't just follow others he has to create his own path, make his own mistakes, and look to his heart when in doubt.
That doesn't stop him from missing Merlin so much it physically hurts.
Timeline - um. gosh. everything sucked, then everything sucked some more, then he was grey? There was the nightmare event that shook him but he put it aside because frankly, no dream can hurt nearly as much as missing his best friend in reality. During Gwen's nightmare he actually confessed his love to her and felt like a horrible excuse for a human being since...he tried to push everything away and function normally, devoting himself to helping as many people as humanly
and inhumanlypossible...had ice cream with Arthur which was awesome and also made him feel less like a horrible human being though still not entirely there....And grey. From...May 29th to June 24th.
And now he's just feeling incredibly guilty and frustrated.
My feelings are...I need to get back in the game seriously and then get back to you. After so long without touching Lancelot's tags I am just hella shaky. But oh look IT'S ALMOST BEEN A FULL YEAR \o/
Can I has cookie now.
ｍｏｒｇａｎａ
development
To try and explain the development of Morgana is sort of trying to explain how a person slowly goes made which is rather important since the process was not shown in canon and it's important to stress that while yes, Morgana is craycray she's not mad in the same manner that she was in canon.
Everyone knows Morgana history with dreams, I don't need to explain nightmares and visions. But the fact that both of her canon updates (once to mid 2x12, the second to 4x03) were made in dreams is crucial to understand what's going on with her.
Twice Morgana went to sleep one person and awoke another, twice she got new memories and twice these new memories were of a woman who was rather different than herself. To those of you who don't know, her original canon point was 1x13 and she knew very little of her magic. So Morgana's original sense of self belongs to late season 1. However, the first set of dreams created a second persona in her, this one was more rebellious, more hateful of Uther and connected to her magic. She tried of putting the two together and made a fragile success and then came the memories of up until 4x03 and it crumbled.
The persona of the Usurper Queen is a strong persona, very strong in Morgana's mind; putting her aside and slipping into what came before is hard especially since even before she was broken in 2, now she's broken in 3 pieces, possibly 4, as she's trying to put all three together now.
So it's like having 3 different women in the same mind and behind them all there's Morgana who is broken and scared and has no idea what to do, Morgana who has no sense of self and so when told to forgive herself, isn't sure which self she is supposed to forgive. The different women in her mind all scream different thing from 'a blade to their heart' to 'love them truly' and it's hard, it's near impossible.
Having lost her sense of self, Morgana treats the personas as masks, she wears one as she wears a gown and she plays her part and mostly she thinks she has people fooled. When provoked, angered or scared and especially now when she's losing grip of her control, she can slip from one persona and quickly to another. Be ruthless and cruel one moment and scared and sympathetic in another. She's unexpected, able to snap and most of all, lost.
Her physical state is not that much better; as I said, both of the sets of memories came to her in dreams. Mix that with the nightmares from canon and get a woman who is terrified to close her eyes, terrified of what she'll see next. Morgana loses sleep, a lot of sleep and when she does, she always, always have nightmares of what she did and what has been done to her. This is important to the NC group, you should know that she's either A.not sleeping or b waking up screaming mid night. There is no middle ground here.
current/future plots
Morgana has been in Asgard the whole time, played defense in the city of Frost, took an injury that she still won't let anyone fully heal making her walk while cringing and her side to hurt. I plan to have her give in and let someone heal her next week or this week idk.
For next month, she'll...probably snap and when I say 'snap' she'll probably tell someone what's going on behind the scenes of her mind. She is literally on edge with Gwen being gone and it's only a matter of time. She's full of regrets and anger and misery and love and hate and mistrust and longing so it's a bomb to go off and I sort of need a climax so she can start truly healing so that's my plans for July. Peachy, right?
mundane:
I love her to bits and pieces I love that she is sorta like in canon but not at all at the same time and it's been a lot of fun however!!! if I'm doing something wrong or if you see me slipping, lemme know! she has her hmd in her journal.
timeline:
not much here, she's been in Asgard, you guys know she lived in Hel, she went back to NC, stayed there, went to city of Frost, got a nasty wound from a Frost Giant and is now resting since Arthur basically tricked her into it since he won't rest if she won't. best bro!
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That is to say, Arthur has kind of been forced into growing up really quickly. Which is not entirely misplaced, considering he's twenty-five. Lmao. But he's nowhere near as playful and obnoxious ( pratentious, you might even say! ) as he was when he started. The last time we did one of these, Arthur was withdrawing from people and just being really quiet in his interactions. The same can be said now, but in a more moderated way. He doesn't boast the way he used to, he doesn't pick on people or be overtly conversational. He's more patient and reserved, he gives due respect and tries to be mindful of everything he says and does. He's more outgoing than he was at his worst, but it's in an entirely different manner than before.
This doesn't quite apply to castmates, because he still dicks around with Gwaine and pokes fun with Morgana and Mithian, but Arthur is absolutely more mature in a general sense. He has given himself over to his chivalrous ideals and stopped being the vibrant boy he once was. It's kind of been his only way to steel himself against everything that happens and cope with it in the most calm and rational way that stays true to his hopes and beliefs. His brand new armour, fleshed out in proud golds and reds.
As far as his views RE: people in specific, Arthur's bromance with Gwaine is more solidified after the tourney and the nightmare event, since they are each what each other could've been had their lives gone a different direction, but they still share their values and know each other's worth. His feelings for Gwen have been carefully folded away after it became blatantly obvious that the distance between them was just too vast, and this was solidified after his conversation with Lancelot that has sort of opened his eyes to the fact that Lance is not as good a man as you might think. Blacks and whites are not Arthur's style, and it's taught him to remember that the grey areas are important to maintaining reason. I'm considering canon updating to Uther's Death Song so that he can finally find closure over his father's death and the differences in their ideals and start repairing their relationship. Taking care of Mordred is a Task, something we haven't tinkered in too much in the past month or so because we've kind of been on hiatus at opposite times lmfao but Arthur adores him and wants to teach him as much as he learns from him. Not!son is his favourite. Percival is Arthur's saving grace because he is every ideal the King wants in his Knights, from the fact that his upbringing means nothing in comparison to the goodness in his heart to the way he carries himself with grace, unlike someone else that wears Arthur's red. Ahem. Mithian is a pillar of support to him and keeps him grounded when he feels overwhelmed, a good reminder of home and the things he fights for because she is just wonderful to him all the time every time.
Uh, he's glad Morgana has returned and he's trying very hard to give her every ounce of his patience because if she doesn't know who she is, he sure as Hell isn't going to presume to know, and will wait for her to decide for herself so he can welcome that woman in with naively open arms. Her screams keep him from sleeping most nights and he does dream of her killing him/dying at his blade frequently, which is driving him mad because he loves her way too much. His views of Merlin are completely skewed off the charts because he's still mad at him but it's also been a month since they last truly spoke to each other, and it's kind of made him realise just how much he relies on him and needs him in his life. There is some measure of pining but it's bitter and jaded, because there's a lot of unresolved shit there that we're kind of working on atm.
So! Now that the war has reached a bit of a lull, Arthur wants to use this time to reorganise ( almost everyone from the original incarnation has since dropped sob ) and actually train together, coordinate tactics and a function guard system. He's been speaking with Samantha Grey and Leonardo da Vinci about weaponry and mentioning his work vaguely to close friends that he trusts, so it'd be really easy to say that any of you lot would know about it already. I have to OOCly update the pages and start advertising, but Arthur should make an IC post in July. He would've done it in June but it seemed like a farce to preach unity and camaraderie when he's not speaking to his right hand man. :T
So hopefully July! Other than that, not much is happening. Shenanigans with Gwaine, always overworking himself at the Citadel, looking after Mordred as best he can; business as usual. I am open to all the things.
What this means, exactly, is that I'm going to try and take a step back from the darker things at least too close to Arthur. Game-wide stuff is unavoidable unless I want to drop him, which I absolutely don't. This is why I'm trying to ease into lighter plots, with silly shit like Arthur and his ice cream social and giving him the Guard to focus on instead of all the misery around him. He's kind of steeling himself against everything like I said in the development part, but if that ever seems pushed to an OOC extent, please don't hesitate to tell me. I will always strive to play him to the best of my ability, no matter the circumstance.
- apr. 14: Arthur and Merlin left NC following their fallout over poisongate, which Arthur only learned about from the dream event. There was shouting, possibly things being thrown, doors being slammed shut as Arthur flounced back to Heimdall. It was not pretty.
- apr. 26: Arthur returned to New Camelot! Without a word. Just walked back in, went to his room to drop off his dirty clothes, and then went about his business like normal. Nothing wrong here, even if his room is suddenly only his room. :T
- may 25: Woke up, decided to stop being miserable, and ate an unhealthy amount of ice cream with all of his friends and a few strangers too. Morgana officially returned with him and he decided forced cheerfulness is the Way To Go. He also had his Big Talk with Lancelot and got him sorted, in a manner, which left him 100% assured that whatever may have been between him and Guinevere is dead in the water. It was not a pleasant assurance, but a necessary one.
From there, he's just been doing what he's doing, as far as war efforts and the Thrymheim mission goes. I put him on autopilot for my hiatus last week, so no grey business to be concerned with here. I think that's everything of important for the time being!no subject
hey faith.
they still need to go to the beach faith x( I am saying this since it is likely morgana will start nagging him about it and I know how much he adores the nagging.
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Though I will tell you guys rn that July is going to be the last relatively slow month until I think October, so we'll either have to jump on that soon or miss out on one of the plots, which would be interesting. Up to you guys!
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there are still far too many vacuums alive in Asgard today. we must form a united front against them.
gwaine are you feeling him up in that icon i mean rly
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• Sir Percival: making Ice Kings everywhere jealous with his unintentionally epic collection of princesses. Sadly some of them have left Asgard already. But he's certain to pick up more along the way. Feel free to notice this odd trend.
• He accidentally activated his powers for the first time when he was helping Mithian fix Mordred lunch in the kitchen. That jar he was so handily supposed to be opening... Kind of might have exploded everywhere creating a big mess, pretty severely flustering him. And then he kind of might have also have torn the door off the hinges immediately after in his flustered state. But it was fixed easily enough and he's now perfectly in control of his super strength!
• Speaking of super strength. He won the hand-to-hand combat section of the tournament that was put on awhile back! So gifted from Odin himself, Percival is in possession of a sword made out of fine dwarven material. And some pretty sweet bragging rights to boot.
• A Tale of Two Biceps. AKA Percy has a sad. As the nightmare plot expanded more on his canon history, Percival tragically lost his family (mother, grandmother, quite a few siblings) during a raid on his village conducted by none other than the dastardly Cenred. Who was apparently in leagues with Morgana at the time, which apparently makes Morgana at least partially responsible for Percy being made an orphan according to canon. So this is very much at the root of his anti-Morgana/anti-witch/no-longer-quite-anti-magic sentiment. There was an alternate dream option to watch Percy watching Gwaine die but nobody took it.
• But, he's getting better. I think he'd still rather stick a sword in Morgana at the end of the day but despite his traumatic re-victimization, the influence of the others (Mordred in particular) combined with the fact that Morgana here hasn't really done anything too bad has really done a lot to put those uglier feelings at bay. So many of his friends he loved and lost back at home are here in the flesh and he'd much rather spend his time enjoying their company while he can than waste it.
• Percival might have acquired Mordred a pokemon for a pet? I don't know where this plot went, it kind of stalled for various reasons and some inattention on my part. But the groundwork is there to go back and make it so if desired.
• Percival got stuck being Rose's safety blanket. Which he didn't really mind much apart from the somewhat awkwardness of the situation. But they both survived it together and Percival was quite the dapper, dashing, and chivalrous fellow.
• With all these pretty ladies practically throwing themselves at our errant mountain man, is there one in particular that has caught his eye?!?! Why yes, in fact there might just be. Although he'd never admit it he's a bit smitten with Mithian. Maybe he's just generally a sucker for a damsel in distress but he tends to drop everything else and rush to Mithian's aid when she needs it.
• I Spy With My Little Eye: On the caravan back from Utgard, Percival caught/confronted the spy and made a network post about it in which everyone's asses became majorly inflamed and there was much arguing about what to do with the spy. Until of course the gods showed up and demanded that Percival hand him over to their care. But not before several people came and interrogated him first.
• The battle. I went on hiatus here... My intention was that Percy was on autopilot for a large majority of the battle. But then near the end when the dust was beginning to settle he lost his bracelet and went grey. Because of his disappearance right after a major battle, it might have been assumed that he died during it.
Current Plots
• None, really. There's the possibility of creating more from the aftermath of the battle as seen above.
• And I'm always willing to go back and "retcon" more castmates as having seen either of Percy's dreams from the nightmare event. I kind of wrote a big epic thing and then burnt out on it myself so apologies to those that I still owe tags to from this.
• But really, I have nothing else going on with him at the moment in particular. So feel free to hit me up if you'd like to get something going.
Mun Stuff
• I pretty much feel like a fail castmate on the daily. I know I've dropped the ball a few times on stuff and not even being busy can always excuse it. I've thought about dropping Percy a few times just because I don't want to be squatting on his character or creating a burden for you guys with my spurts of inactivity. So please feel free to approach me about this, I won't be offended and I would rather drop than continue to be a nuisance.
• That being said, don't mistake my flakiness for lack of enthusiasm. I love each and every one of you guys and the characters that you play. Playing Percival is such a joy mostly in part due to having such fantastic castmates.
• I don't really tend to disclose this even on plurk anymore but I have chronic joint pain which likes to unpredictably flare up anywhere between every few weeks to every few months and makes it difficult for me to be on the computer every day like usual. So when you combine that with an already limited timetable (I'm a full-time masters student, with a job and an unpaid internship where I deal with really heavy subject matter) it can just severely compound my inactivity periods. Furthermore, I also occasionally experience some pretty heavy depressive feelings which inhibit my desire to do things that I previously enjoy. I understand that health always comes before RP so I try not to feel too guilty about things outside of my control.
• That being said, I'm going to try and stay on top of things a little better and not just make excuses for myself. Especially during the next two months when I have more free time, I'm going to try to not squander it away. While health trumps RP and I know I'm allowed to feel down and not obligated to RP every day, I want to really work on not letting my feelings get the best of me and shoving all my obligations aside to wallow.
• So if you're waiting on a tag from me or you want to get something started but you've noticed I've been lurking around without doing much rping. Just give me a nudge. I promise you that you won't be bothering me or pressuring me or whatever. I'm always willing to plot and work on things. Just sometimes it's hard to initiate it on my own.
Timeline
• I don't really know what to put here. I kind of already did this in the development section oops. Everything is listed fairly linear there except for his general feelings on things. But regarding my hiatus, I'll be gone for the full month I believe so when I start back up with him again it'll be in early July.
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Mordred's more recent development has been his incident in the tree when he decided he was tired of being lonely in the house (looking at you Arthur, Merlin, and Morgana
except not morgana because everyone knows the Lady Morgana is flawlesstotally bigyoung man of 12 years. Also after speaking to Tardis naked he is very well informed about females of many species....or not.Current Plots
I have nothing specific for Mordred at the moment but I am probably going to want to start having Mordred looking into GROWN MAN things. This is on all fronts. Fending for himself, learning, pursuing his chivalry (ladies, but obviously always in the most innocent way. Like flowers)....and of course becoming curious about weaponry. So if anyone is interested in becoming involved with any of that, let me know.
Feelings regarding the babbu
Mordred remains my favorite muse to play. I love the enigmatic child/not-child character, but I put him aside a tiny bit this past month both for RL and because I wanted Hugo to do a bit more talking and I tend to show Mordred favoritism. But now I am aiming at equaling out the activity for all my muses.
.......I don't actually have a timeline /ded
Take Two
A. Development
Up until fairly recently, Merlin had been growing more and more confident in his abilities, both magical and not. He was one of the first Travelers the gods pulled into the city, and being here for nearly ten months has given him a stability that he really needed. Once he and (season one) Morgana had their talk, her convincing him that she would rather die than harm Arthur, Merlin began seeing the city as a place for second chances--a place where he could start over and fix all his mistakes. Starting with Morgana. When Arthur arrived and the three of them were able to strike up a camaraderie even closer than the one they had before, Merlin was truly able to relax. The closeness, of course, didn't come easily. Asgard, so different from Camelot, gave Merlin the courage to come clean about the secrets he'd been keeping in Camelot. He told Arthur and Morgana about his magic, told Arthur about Ygraine's death, apologised to Morgana for poisoning her, and several other things. While it took some effort to get past these things, Morgana and Arthur accepted him despite them. That acceptance, along with their extended time together in the city, has forged a bond between the three of them that makes them stronger.
The rest of his castmates have also had a hand in Merlin's development--especially Uther and Mordred. Things did not go well when Uther first got to Asgard, but it gave Merlin the boost he needed to finally get over his fear and challenge the king's stance on magic. Arthur stepping in to defend him against his father only gave Merlin even more strength and confidence. Once those initial blow-ups finally settled down, Merlin and Uther have finally been able to strike an uneasy truce for Arthur and Morgana's sake. Now that Merlin can see Uther is struggling to understand magic instead of condemn it immediately, he hasn't been as harsh on him. Mordred was another major hurtle that Merlin overcame. It was difficult for him to let go of his suspicion, but once Merlin decided to judge Mordred by his actions and not by what he could be later, he and Mordred have gotten on much better. The druid boy's presence has also made Merlin question what he knows about magic, resulting in a vow that he'd try harder to understand the druids and their customs.
Merlin has done a lot of growing with help from new friends, as well. Conan, Nakama, and Castiel being some of the key players in this growth. These three in particular convinced Merlin that his ideas were worth sharing with the city, and without their help or encouragement, he never would have gotten the Teacher's Council started. The relative success of the teaching group, along with finding a weapon he can use decently (the long bow), has given Merlin such a boost in confidence that he actually feels like he's useful without his original powers, and that he's worthy of standing at Arthur's side, as well as worth more to the rest of his friends.
With the recent fall out (Arthur finding out that Merlin poisoned Morgana), much of this development has come to a halt. In fact, Merlin's taken several huge steps back because of it. He'd come to believe that Arthur accepted him as he was, but that got shattered when Arthur rejected him for something that had happened years ago. Lancelot, too, expressed disappointment in Merlin when he learned what happened between him and Morgana. Around that time, Morgana had also gone through a canon update to season 4, and in her unstable state, lashed out when she found out Merlin was the Emrys she was looking for. Three of his closest friends rejecting some part of him was enough to push Merlin back into his old defense mechanism--distancing himself from people and situations so he can ignore any emotional turmoil and carry on working. Because of this, he has been avoiding his friends, especially Arthur and Morgana, and keeping to himself a lot more. Currently, his confidence has taken a huge blow, but he also doesn't see a way of handing his projects off to someone "better" without being irresponsible about it. Essentially he's pushing himself to keeping his friends and the city safe, without regard to what he has to do; it doesn't matter if he has to sully his hands, he isn't a good person anyway, and it doesn't matter as long as everyone is safe.
B. Current Plots
Aside from drawing the conflict between him, Morgana, and Arthur to a conclusion, Merlin's been involved in the Teacher's Council (as always). He's also been getting more and more involved with the Teen Wolf cast, mostly because he's trying to help Erica get her epilepsy under control with his healing magic. There's also Lydia appointing herself as his personal stylist of sorts. He'll eventually be getting more involved with Samantha's kill-a-god/giant plot, and also one of those in charge of containing evil!Samantha now that Conan's been sent home.
C. Me, My Muse, and I
Like Faithy mentioned, all of the ic drama has been making him difficult to play at times, but I know that it's all very necessary considering the game's events. While tiring, I feel that this long, drawn-own conflict is also worthwhile because of the effect it will have on Merlin. That said, I'm really happy with the way he's grown in the game so far--stronger, and more confident, but still recognisably Merlin (at least I hope so).
If anyone does have questions/concerns regarding how some things were handled, my HMD for Merlin is right here.
D. Timeline
↳ April 14: Arthur and Merlin both leave New Camelot after their fall out over the poisoning.
↳ April 19: Kate finds Merlin sleeping in the hospital at night and makes him stay with her for a while
↳ May 12: Kate leaves Asgard; Castiel and Daphne find Merlin trying to find another place to stay and offer theirs
↳ May 25: Decides to tough things out on his own; rejects Arthur's ice cream-flavoured olive branch
↳ May 27: Merlin moves into a small apartment of his own in the Loki district
↳ June 04: Merlin goes to Svartalfaheim with Samantha to get better armour/weapons for his friends
↳ June 10: Attacked on the way back from Svartalfaheim; find Arthur and the others missing (on the mission to Thrymheim)
↳ June 10-21: Panic panic panic panic
↳ June 23: Confrontation between Merlin, Arthur, & Morgana