Merlin vid: Red Football

[sophinisba]

Title: Red Football
Music: "Red Football" by Sinéad O'Connor
Fandom/source: Merlin
Starring: Gwen, Morgana + ensemble
Length: 2:48
Contains: n/a
Summary: I'm not no red football to be kicked around the garden.
Notes: omg here is my first Merlin vid! I had this idea almost three years ago, and this past month I was finally able to make it. Season 5, you hurt me real bad, but you also gave me some marvelous footage.
As you may know, I have a lot of feelings about the ladies of Merlin. Some of those feelings are ANGER!
Spoilers up to 5x08, not the series finale.
Thanks to thingswithwings for technical help and to flammablehat for responding to the million drafts I sent her and making sure I didn't give up.

Links
Tumblr | YouTube
Download vid at MediaFire, .avi, 53.8 MB
Download subtitles at MediaFire, .srt, 1.8 KB

(If you want to see subtitles, download both these files and save them with the same file name in the same folder, and your player will combine them with magic!)

Red Football by Sinéad O'Connor

I'm not no red football
To be kicked around the garden
No, no
I'm a red Christmas-tree ball
And I'm fragile

I'm not no animal
Though I am to you
I'm not no crocodile
Like the one in Dublin Zoo

Who lived in a cage the length and breadth of his body
With a window which people would look through
And throw coins on his back to taunt him
Though he couldn't move
Even if he wanted to

I'm not no animal in the zoo
I'm not no whipping boy for you
You may not treat me like you do
I'm not no animal in the zoo

My skin is not a football for you
My head is not a football for you
My body's not a football for you
My womb is not a football for you
My heart is not a football for you

I'm not no animal in the zoo
This animal will jump up and eat you
I'm not no animal in the zoo
And I've every intention
Of leaping up and getting you

Comments

[thingswithwings]

Oh, wow, this is gorgeous, and angry-making, and sad. I love the way you recut the show to prioritize these narrative, and the AU world you put together here, especially at the end - how I wish that were the way the show ended! Really well done. I love the shot of the dragon at the end.

[sophinisba]

Thank you! For myself I wanted the show to end with EVERYBODY hugging, but since that wasn't in the cards I was glad that at least all the evil ladies looked so good while being evil.

Also this is the second fanwork I've made this year (the other was my big remix fic) where I made Aithusa (bb dragon) part of the ladies' team just because I wanted to. :D

[chaila]

I've not seen this show, except for a few eps a long time ago, but I loved this anyway. Your cuts and choices created such a perfect emotional progression, from the angry and sad at the beginning, which made me sigh, to the fighting back at the end, which made me cheer. I especially love how the lady becomes an actual animal, like they're using all the things that dudes feared to be like, yes, all of that is true, and we are more dangerous than you even thought? I would totally watch the show you put together here! Which also of course serves as satisfying meta rage.

[sophinisba]

Yeah, one of the things that's made me super sad as I've become more aware of this stuff in recent years is to see the same patterns repeating in so many of the shows and movies I watch. So it's not like you need to have seen a lot of Merlin to recognize, oh yeah, it's a show that treats women like objects and like problems, not like people. Freya, the girl who turns into the cat monster, has always been one of my favorites. Her story was handled horribly in the episode itself but people have been able to do great things with her in fanworks, with all her kindness and rage. Thank you so much for checking this out and for your thoughtful comment. <3

[baranduin]

Oh wow, this is really good. I liked especially the shift in scene content when the song moved to the lalala part!

ETA: loved the dragon!

[sophinisba]

Thanks! I used to hate the "la la la" part of the song and dreaded fitting images to that part of it, but I ended up having all kinds of extra footage because this show loves its evil women so much. :D

[caisin]

I was thinking earlier this year that this would be a PERFECT song for Gwen. So so happy that someone else had the same thought!

[sophinisba]

Aw that's awesome! Yeah, flammablehat and I were talking last night about how no one can communicate "You may not treat me like you do" like Gwen with her amazing faaaace.

[netgirl_y2k]

THIS IS HORRID. WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?

By which I mean that this is wonderful, and has just given me a massive feelings attack. I'd never heard this song before, and, gosh, what a perfect song for the Merlin ladies. NOT OVER IT. NEVER GETTING OVER IT. And the clips that you've matched to the lyrics just... GUH.

Really, properly excellent and clever and meta-ish and angry making in the good way.

[sophinisba]

WE ARE NEVER GOING TO GET OVER THIS BUDDY. Thank you for this and the rec. <3 <3

[isis]

I've never seen the show, but you tell a compelling story - and YAY the women get back at them in the end! (At least in your vid...)

[sophinisba]

Thank you! The women do a lot of revenge in the show too, though you're not supposed to side with them and I left out the parts where they murder civilians and such. La la la.

[shopfront]

This is awesome, I love the end and also wish the actual show had gone this way!

[sophinisba]

Thank you!!

[mfirefly10]

This is FABULOUS! And also rage-inducing but you fixed it with the ending so it's all good :)

Ugh, this show and it's incredibly horrid way of treating the women :(

[sophinisba]

Thanks! It has been a hard ride for us fans of the ladies but I still love my show more than anything. I don't know what I will do without it.

[wordsplurge]

Great video, although it should have included the other wronged women in the series. This show is just so bad, right up to the end,it was a woman of course who was the spy and all. I hope they have a spin off about the women.

[sophinisba]

Aw yeah, I had so many other clips and had been planning to work lots of other angry ladies into the last minute of the song but in the end I just had to stick with Gwen and Morgana because THEIR FACES. <3 <3

[settiai]

Oh, wow. This was absolutely amazing.

[sophinisba]

Thank you! I worked hard on it and somewhat neglected my girlfriend over the holidays in order to finish by the end of the year. :O

[swatkat]

Oh, this is lovely! <3 Great song choice - I've never heard it before, but it's so perfect. And LOVED your use of Aithusa in the narrative.

[sophinisba]

Thank you! You know, I'd been sitting around with this idea of a vid about the Merlin ladies being treated as objects to a song that talks about a crocodile in a cage for years and then suddenly I had footage of Morgana and Aithusa in a pit. And I was angry angry and sad but also like, whoa okay time to get to work.

[themadlurker]

Omg you posted! And it is so good (and sad and angry-making, and all the feelings at the same time). Going to watch again, and again.

[sophinisba]

Thank you for cheering me on back in the day and when I started up with the project again last month! <3 <3

[promethia_tenk]

Only just watched Merlin this year and almost certainly wouldn't have made it through if I'd tried to watch it as it aired. Still very much needed this vid, though. Thank you <3

[sophinisba]

I love my show a lot, but I did always find the times when it was actually airing to be very stressful. Easier to rewatch and be creative during the hiatus, which gives me some hope for the fandom continuing now that it's over. Thank you for watching my vid!

[such_heights]

This is really fantastic. I'm so glad you made this. OH, MY DARLING GIRLS.

[sophinisba]

I LOVE THEM AMY.

[happydork]

Oh, how gorgeous! This, yes, so much this!

[sophinisba]

Yay, thank you!

[secondsilk]

This is great. And I am so glad that you managed to get an upbeat ending out of it! well done on that.

[sophinisba]

Thanks! I never cared for Morgana's season-3 smirk so much until I was trying to be cheerful about her attacking Camelot. /o\

[cantarina]

This is hitting all of my Do Want buttons. Thank you reframing the narrative so deftly!

[sophinisba]

Thank you!!

[calvinahobbes]

This was so satisfying! By which I mean that the ending completely took me by surprise -- I was watching and feeling sad and going, "Yeah, they're really shafting those ladies :( " and then the lalala's start up and ladies started fighting back and it was glorious! \o/

[sophinisba]

Yeah, it is a show where the ladies get shafted a lot, more and more so as the seasons go on. Mostly I want everyone to hug but there is more footage of fighting so I went with that. :P

[trouble]

I'm really glad I watched this. :)

[sophinisba]

Thank you!

[jelazakazone]

I could have watched that all day long. Well done!

[sophinisba]

Thanks!

[fleete]

I...wow. I'm sitting kind of quivering and speechless, and really on the dirty verge of tears, because holy shit, this vid is about all my feelings about women in Merlin, and I just felt so sad and angry all the way through, because YES, EXACTLY YES, THIS, my skin is not a football for you, ugh. And then that la la la started up, and you went to the images of Morgana and Gwen being aggressive and violent and angry and proud, and I was just swept up in a wave of vindictive pleasure and sort of stuck between the desire to laugh and the desire to cry, and I have never in my all my time in this fandom felt such perfect empathy for Morgana and the terrible, rage-filled path she took.

Jesus Christ. I need to chill out now.

Bravo, and thanks for making it. I'm gonna go rec this to high heaven now.

ETA: Oh, and Hi!! I've admired your work for a while now, so I'm gonna go follow you over on LJ so that I keep up with your stuffs better. And, er, comment more often. HI. *waves*

[sophinisba]

Hello there! We follow each other on Tumblr but I find it so hard to know people there, you are one of the people who posts things I like but they do so blur together. Still, I have this suspicion that you wrote my amazing merlin_holidays gift. It will be exciting to see if I'm right when they do the reveal in a couple days. Anyway, yay let's be LJ friends!

And thank you for this lovely comment on my vid. It's been a difficult ride, loving Gwen and Morgana this much, but feels good to share with other people who care for them.

[kaizoku]

Love it. Amazing. The first time I watched it I got shivers, and the second time I teared up.

Also so awesome that you included Ygraine. And Vivian!

(Though... it kind of makes me really sad that you had to go back to the first season for the happy ending clips? Waaah I don't know if I can stand to watch S5. Except MORGANA AND AITHUSA OTP!)

[sophinisba]

Thanks! I knew exactly where Ygraine was going to come in from the time I started thinking about making this, but I'm glad I got to use Vivian too. I'm guessing that section doesn't make a ton of sense to folks who are coming with this without having seen the canon but it is my favorite part.

themadlurker was saying that too about having to go back so far for the happy parts. What made me super sad was skimming through whole episodes and not seeing any women. /o\ IDK there are Gwen/Morgana hugs in season 5 and there's even one that's happy and not obviously coerced, but it's dark and sort of hard to see so I didn't use it. But I think of the ending as like, "See how we're on the same team in season 5? See how we're fighting (and touching each other)? We also did that before. We have always been friends." So I liked going back to season 2 and then all the way back to season 1, you know? And anyway how could I make a Gwen and Morgana vid without the 1x10 hug? :D

[yue_ix]

This was awesome. Congratulations for seeing it through!
I'm a bit gutted even after watching is a couple of times over a couple of days, so this won't be as eloquent as wanted. Poor Gwen, always thrown around by men, and ending being a symbol as much as a decoration as Queen/christmas tree. And turning Morgana's hair petting after a nightmare with "I'm no animal" then her handling... ouch, that was strong. It also starts the animal symbolism that, slkajffsakh, damn it writers.

Leading me to cheering so hard when Ygraine-Morgana's-revenche grabbed Uther and the "lalala" started.

[sophinisba]

Thank you, Yue! I did sometimes feel like the ladies got to be more like decorations and less like characters as the years went on. I mean, the mens get shoved around a lot too! It's something that happens to characters whose stories matter, idk. I apologize for not answering your comment before! <3

[emei]

Oh, oh, gorgeously done! Rage-inducing and satisfying and I love the way you craft their ending fighting back.

I think I gave up somewhere in season 4 and haven't seen any of 5 expect for gifs and reaction and the like, but really all I want at this point is Gwen's face being queenly, so. And this satisfies perfectly.

[sophinisba]

Thank you, Emei! A lot of season 5 features Gwen being gorgeous in awesome dresses, so there is that! But the plots were mostly pretty awful.

[tieleen]

I love this show! The one on the BBC, not so much, but the one you show here? Oh yeah. Awesome rage vid.

[sophinisba]

Thank you <3 <3