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Post by himiko on May 20, 2007 19:57:46 GMT
Well, thought I'd be generous to Merlin (*shakes head in disbelief at own blasphemy*), and make another thread for his character, being as we seem to have worn thin any discussion about his eyes.
So, a variant on the Mordred Love/hate thread- your opinions on Merlin, please- love, loathe, indifferent?
Personally (and this, I'm sure, will come as no surprise to most of you), I'm not really a fan of Merlin at all, as good as Sam Neill is when playing him. Aside from the automatic "You killed Mab, I will eat your soul..." reaction, I find some of his actions to be very hypocritical- "Yes, Mab, the fact that you manipulate people for your own ends is terrible... now excuse me while I just go and change Uther into Gorlois for the night so that he can sleep with a married woman who doesn't know who he really is, and thus produce a child that I want to teach as MY pupil".
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Post by Merlins~Rose on May 20, 2007 21:07:27 GMT
I see where you are coming from, but as you can tell my avatar and signature, I love Merlin. He does seem hypocritical at times, but he is human and what he thought should help the land actually made things worse, and he doesn't like himself for it. He was hoping that by helping Uther, it would make him stop his ranting. And he made Uther promise not to kill Gorlois but Uther did it any way. So Merlin made Uther 'give' Arthur to him so he could make sure that doesn't happen again. And though it does, Arthur had nothing to do with it, and he was all around a good king.
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Post by kamikazijoe on May 20, 2007 21:32:14 GMT
To me he only seems to serve a purpose, nothing he does seems to damage Mab's plans beyond repair until the very end. He's neither the most entertaining character, nor the most useful role
You're right though, he is only human and prone to many mistakes, but to me its more fun to watch him screw up than it is to see him win. Mind you, I am rather in the habit of rooting for the bad-guys, and lets face it, it is very easy to side with Mab
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Post by tosca on May 20, 2007 21:40:40 GMT
Yup, I'm afraid I'm also tilted more than slightly towards the 'loathe' side on this one. True, he is human, but that's also supposed to carry with it the ability to be moral, to follow a just cause and etc... as he does make mistakes, is it so hard for him to recognize that others are merely doing the same thing, and also fighting for what they believe in, rather than resorting to killing his own mother? *grumbles*
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Post by himiko on May 20, 2007 21:48:12 GMT
That's the thing that gets me with Merlin- yes, his actions certainly seem to have mostly good intentions behind them, even if a lot of them are also spurred by revenge, and good does come out of it, but whilst he does this, he blames Mab for doing what is, in a nutshell, the same thing, regardless of the motives behind it.
Joel, yep, it is extraordinarily easy to side with Mab... *drools* *is not at all shallow*
But yes, differing opinions on a character make for more interesting discussion, so yay for that.
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Post by tosca on May 20, 2007 22:00:12 GMT
Indeed.... this is the point where we need another pro-Merlin post in the debate, methinks.
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Post by Merlins~Rose on May 20, 2007 22:30:00 GMT
I don't think it is meant as much for revenge as for avenge. He's trying to avenge the deaths of the only people he knew, the only people who loved him. Mab might have loved him in her own way, but the only way she loved him, I think, is because she needed him.
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Post by tosca on May 20, 2007 22:39:38 GMT
Avenging someone's death is usually rather strongly related to taking revenge on someone though. If he could live with himself after using people as a means to an ends, why could he not forgive Mab? True he had suffered the effects of most of her schemes, but still. Well, Mab needed all her other champions in some way or other, but she didn't necessarily love them in the slightest. Merlin was her son, so I don't think her love could have been completely manipulative.
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Post by Merlins~Rose on May 20, 2007 22:43:25 GMT
Mab, though. strikes as the kind of person who can't 'love' someone. She might love in her own way, but not the human love that Merlin was raised on and needed.
That's just it, he couldn't live with himself for that. He went through psychological problems and downfalls for the things he did. Also, that goes back with the human side of him. It is easier to take anger out on someone who is not yourself. Merlin blamed himself for many things, but it showed more with Mab because she wasn't him.
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Post by tosca on May 20, 2007 22:54:39 GMT
Yes, I agree that she couldn't love in the human sense of the word. But she isn't human, and can't truly understand humans at all, just as humans can't truly understand the Fair Folk. It's something like us trying to interpret the behaviour of a wild animal or something - we can study them, but never actually understand them fully. So whatever they did, Mab and humankind would never be able to fully bridge the gap between their species. Merlin, representing each, perhaps could have, yet he chose to align himself with the way of men rather than Mab's people, or even both.
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Post by Merlins~Rose on May 20, 2007 22:58:49 GMT
I don't think he really had the choice of who to align himself with. He was raised as a human child, so that's all he knows. It's like someone being raised in the Amish community, and then moving to New York. You don't know anything, how to fool with anything, what to do, how to live the way they do, and it's really hard to learn. Merlin didn't want to learn, he wanted to stay with Ambrosia, but when she died, he more than likely felt that in giving in to Mab and learning her ways, he would forget what it was like to be human. He would forfeit all that Ambrosia taught him, and he didn't want to do that to her.
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Post by tosca on May 20, 2007 23:27:59 GMT
Yes, I do think that being raised as a human probably had a great deal to do with it, and alienated him from the other side of heritage somewhat. So I'll meet you on that one. ^^ But I have yet to be convinced that, with a little effort, he couldn't have tried to understand Mab a little better and so not resorted to killing her in the end.
The example you used - if someone is a child of two cultures, very often they will want to explore and be a part of whichever one they were not raised under. True they probably haven't had such negative experiences with that culture as Merlin had early on with Mab, but I still think a little effort, perhaps on both their parts, could have prevented a lot of what went on to happen later.
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Post by Merlins~Rose on May 20, 2007 23:34:22 GMT
I'll meet you on that one, they both could have tried harder. And if Mab had originally took the child, Merlin would have grown up with the knowledge of his other half, and all this could have been avoided. Of course, if that happened, we would not have the movie. LOL
But then, Mab had allowed his birth mother to die, and I would not have been able to forgive any one for that, even if they were in some form my mother as well. So you can't really hold that against him. Then she partially killed Ambrosia, and let her die as well. So Mab, who needs him and wants him to follow her, allows the people he loves to die, and you can't really expect him to say, "Okay, tell me all you want me to do and I'll do it."
Of course, he could have listened to her, find out her position, and make a better judgment on that, not on ignorance. I think what this really is is a miscommunication problem on both their parts.
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Post by kamikazijoe on May 21, 2007 12:33:20 GMT
In the end it's just a game between the two of them, using people as pieces. Merlins problem is that he gets too involved in the game (he is part human after all), so Mab plays him aswell. He's still under her control whether he realises it or not. Everything she does is designed to make him react how she wants. The reason why she loses in the end is because he manages to ignore his anger at her
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Post by tosca on May 21, 2007 12:58:23 GMT
Hm, well she can expect him to, because, imho, she doesn't understand that killing off or maiming Merlin's loved ones is going to make him less willing to join her. I think it says something to that effect in the books, that she genuinely believed that, once Merlin had no more ties to the mortal world, he would return to her. She doesn't think, 'oh, damn, I killed Meriln's mother and foster mother and maimed his girlfriend, so he's gonna be slightly mad at me', it's more 'Great! There's no reason for Merlin to want to stay with the mortals now, so he'll come back to me!'
And about allowing them to die, do you think she really did? Obviously I'm biased as I'm on the pro-Mab side of the argument, but we know that Mab's magic cannot directly kill someone, and also that she is unable to save Mordred when he is injured, despite still being technically much stronger than Merlin at that point. If it's not actually within her powers to give life, I reckon she'd be more likely to bend the truth a little and say she let the person die, rather than admitting that she couldn't actually save them. Partly because she's proud, partly because, to her, they died in a just cause anyway. ^^
Yup, Joel, you're right... it is all a bit of a game, isn't it. But then, such is life. *wanders off singing Mondo Bongo*
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