MERLIN

I mentioned in a post (that was, admittedly, quite a while ago) that I'd started watching BBC's Merlin. Well, I am proud to announce that after a whirlwind couple months spent huddled in front of watchseries and trying to avoid seeing too many spoilers on my tumblr dash I have finally finished Merlin! It was announced shortly after I started watching that the current series airing (series 5) would be the last. This almost made me stop watching because I knew that when/if I ever caught up the show would be over completely. I'm slightly heartbroken, but I'm glad I continued watching til the end regardless.

Excuse me for a moment.

Okay. I'm ready.

There will be NO SPOILERS in this blog post. At least not anything from the last season, but I consider the others fair game, though I'm going try and be very general about it all because it aired so recently and I know people may only now be starting to watch.

Merlin is a show about a young warlock--you guessed it--Merlin. Merlin is the same Merlin you're thinking of, though much younger, sassier, and ganglier than you probably had in mind. He leaves his mother and small village life to go to Camelot and apprentice for his mother's friend, Gaius, the court physician, despite magic being outlawed there by King Uther Pendragon. Almost immediately upon arriving, Merlin saves Gaius' life but reveals his magic in the process. Lucky for him, Gaius used to dabble in magic as well and promises not only not to hand him over for execution, but to guide him magically.

Merlin then accidentally gets on Prince Arthur's badside (the handsome prat) and then even more accidentally becomes his manservant, which is both the best and worst thing that ever happens to him. You might ask why he doesn't just leave, but a great dragon living under the castle told him it was his destiny to be by Arthur's side to protect him and help Arthur bring about the glorious days of Albion united. Seriously, I can't make this stuff up.

From there on out Merlin and Arthur gradually develop from mutual hatred to tolerance to friendship to full out bromance--which could be seen as less BRO and more just ROMANCE if you look closely (and by that I mean if you look at all). Seriously, browse the merthur tag on tumblr and you'll have gay feels comin out the wazoo.

Anyway. The show covers five series in which we follow Arthur on his journey to kinghood and Merlin on his journey of saving Arthur from every magical beast, spell, and ailment known to mankind. We meet several characters that you might recognize from the original legends including Morgana, Morderd, Guinevere, Lancelot, and Gwaine, though they are all adaptations. 

My favorite is Gwaine.

I don't remember why. Maybe it has something to do with how he's such a good friend to Merlin, or how he doesn't fit into the nobility stereotype, or how he is very brave and courageous--no, no, that's not it. I'm sure it'll come to me later.

In all seriousness, I've really enjoyed watching Merlin. It is in turns hilarious, touching, and soul-wrenching. My absolute favorite aspect of the show is just watching the friendship between Arthur and Merlin, and watching them grow up. The show covers a good deal of time with them, and we see them struggle each in their own turns. Merlin struggles with the obvious problem of needing to hide his magic, but also with the guilt he feels lying to his friends and the conflict over whether he should reveal himself to them or not--whether he'll ever be able to. Arthur too struggles to redefine what it means to be a king through his friendship with Merlin, marriage to Guinevere, relationship with the commoners (especially in regards to the knights), and his stance on magic. Laughs and Guinevere's heaving breasts are all well and good, but as a reader I can't love anything more than seeing characters develop, and Merlin provided me with that.

If you needed any more encouragement to watch the show, there's always this:

If that doesn't convince you, nothing will.

In other news:

• I'm back in America. More specifically, I'm back in Clemson, SC getting ready to start school on the 9th. I've moved into my house, which is fantastic because I have my own bedroom and bathroom. yessssss
• I told y'all that I was doing Nanowrimo this year, but I neglected to mention that I WON! I completed 50,000 words on my WIP novel The Island. The book is nowhere near done yet (I would say I'm about 1/3 of the way through) and I haven't touched it since then, but my new year's resolution is to finish it, so there should be more to come. 
• I'm currently reading Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Practchett, which is delightfully naughty. My other new year's resolution is to complete a challenge my mother has been doing for several years now to read one book for each letter of the alphabet. Of course I'll read more than that, naturally, but I wouldn't normally seek out books that start with the letter X, so it should be a nice challenge.
• Tumblr convinced me to watch Teen Wolf, so I'm in the second season of that now. I can't say I'm too thrilled (I want to shave Allison's hair off and make Scott eat it) but there's only two seasons so nbd
• ONCE UPON A TIME COMES BACK ON TONIGHT AND I'LL GET TO SEE MORE OF HOOK MY BABYYY!!! He and Emma totes belong together. OTP don't bash it.

The Graveyard Book

Let me start off by saying that Neil Gaiman is awesome! He does pretty much everything, he's written novels for children and for adults, graphic novels, and I want to say an episode of Dr. Who. He has such a unique mind and is able to create all these surreal worlds and people while still making them absolutely believable. So far I have only read The Graveyard Book and Neverwhere, but they were both beautifully dark books and I would completely recommend them. 

The Graveyard Book is the story of Nobody 'Bod' Owens, a real-life boy who grows up in an old graveyard, raised by ghosts. A mysterious man, Jack, murdered Bod's family when he was just a-year-and-a-half old. Luckily, the friendly ghosts from the graveyard up the hill protect Bod and take him in as one of their own. Growing up in a graveyard is, as you can imagine, quite different then growing up in the real world. Bod meets deceased people from times long ago, learns the ghostly arts of Fading and Dreamwalking from his tutor, has an encounter with the unknowable Sleer, and is almost killed by ghouls. The Graveyard Book follows Bod on all these adventures, watching him grow up and (as cliche as it sounds) find himself.

A bit of a disclaimer, the book is dark. It starts out--literally--with a knife, with murder. As adult readers, we often expect children's books to be happy and light, but that is underestimating a child's ability to understand the darker aspects of life. Neil Gaiman doesn't baby the children, I guess you could say, which I really like. Madeleine L'Engle spoke of children's great ability to grasp concepts that we don't give them enough credit for when she said, "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children." The Graveyard Book is a book that is written well, and written for children.

**SPOILERS**

Sorry for the spoilers, but I don't think there's a way to talk about this book effectively without giving something away. I found this book incredibly sad--in a good way, definitely, but sad all the same. Bod, like his guardian, Silas, is an in-between person. He is neither fully living or fully dead. It is a coming of age story (bildungsroman) so by definition the protagonist is in-between, but the isolation of being in between the living and the dead is much different then being between childhood and adulthood. Even Bod's name, Nobody Owens. Nobody owns him, nobody can claim him as their own, he has no kin. And then at the end of the book, as Bod is becoming more and more invested in the corporeal world he is no longer able to see his ghostly friends and family. It is incredibly poignantly sad that he is being thrust out into the world with no connections and friends, leaving behind everything and everyone he knows. But there is hope. There is the hope of real life and all the experiences Bod is aching for and there is also the hope that when his time comes, Death will return Bod to his home in the graveyard. It's just...it's so good.

Just on a side note, I found Neil Gaiman's descriptions of the inverted cemetery wall in the ghouls world and the way the ghouls moved to be amazing.

**END SPOILERS**

A book club I'm in here at Clemson just did The Graveyard Book, and there is honestly just so much to talk about that I don't quite know where to stop. I feel like everything could be its own post, but I'm not really into doing a series so I think we'll just leave it as it is. But if you want, you could think about how the protagonists of children's books are so often orphans, or what really makes a person 'Alive', or why growing up stopped Bod from being able to see the ghosts or some other question that you think might be relevant. I don't know, just go with it.

All in all, I wholeheartedly recommend The Graveyard Book and Neil Gaiman as a whole. I need to get my hands on some more Gaiman! If you want to find him, go here. He writes a lovely little blog that I follow as well.

I am listening to Washed by the Water by Needtobreathe