(no subject)

[srin]

Dear Arthur: *wibble* You pretty much already own my whole heart, dude, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do when you go around being all noble and moving and owning your past mistakes and making real positive changes. ♥

Dear Merlin: What the hell. It's been how many years now, and you still don't know that occasionally Arthur's a bit delicate and needs you to be nice to him instead of laying on the mockery with a trowel? Really?

...Yeah. Seriously don't know what was up with Merlin; I realize insults=love is kind of their modus operandi, but he was really just coming off as a dick most of the time. Like, making fun of Arthur for falling asleep on the table was fine the first time, (though even that seemed a bit iffy given what just happened in the last episode,) but then sending him out to training with soup in his hair, bringing the table thing up in front of the knights and again the next night, and then whining about being unappreciated because Arthur told him to fuck off? Really Merlin? I spent most of last year being really unhappy with how Arthur was treating Merlin; this year, Arthur's lovely, but I'm getting increasingly unhappy with Merlin. I remember seeing spoilers about that everyone-beats-up-Merlin scene, and expecting to hate it, but in the context of the episode I ended up feeling like Merlin pretty much brought it on himself.

Also, dear Merlin, maybe Arthur wouldn't have gotten pissed at you for disappearing all night if you had, oh, I don't know, told him the truth. Not about breaking Elyan out obviously, but why exactly couldn't he say he was trying to figure out what was up with the shrine? He could even have said he ran into Elyan, and been honest about Elyan knocking him out. Sigh.

Overall, I could've done without about 80% of this episode, (Merlin's a jerk, someone's enchanted to kill Arthur again, Agravaine wants to execute everyone again, Gaius and Merlin never tell Arthur anything, blah blah,) but I did enjoy seeing a bit more of the knights just being themselves, and that scene with Arthur and possessed!Elyan at the end was definitely worth the price of admission. (Though I wish they'd just left it at that instead of having Merlin mock Arthur for his feelings. Again, really Merlin? Really? You should be encouraging this sort of thing, not poking him until he puts all those walls right back up. Sigh.)