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

[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.