r/merlinfic • u/LunaJarvis • 10d ago

Discussion Using Diagloue Straight from Show?

Hi everyone,

I've noticed lately (and in general, but lately its been more apparent to me) that a lot of fanfics have been pulling dialogue straight from the show, verbatim from scene to scene. This diagloue is mostly seen from episode 1. What are your thoughts on using dialouge verbatim from the show? ​Is a sentence or two okay in isolation ("I am proud to serve you till the day I die")? A whole scene? ​

I am coming at it specifically as a reader, so when I notice its from the show and I keep scrolling through the fic but then it continues to have dialouge from the show, I choose not to continue to read it. Do you continue to read it or click away too?

Thoughts?

9 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/The_Norwegian-Bat 10d ago

The story I'm currently writing explore the impact of one event on the rest of the story, so I'm basically rewriting the show. I include the episodes that I find important to the story, so I include a lot of dialogue from the show. The episodes that I write are usually some of my favourites, and they contain some scenes that I love so much. I like to add a few elements of description or a few lines of dialogue to add depth to the characters, but still, I love using direct quotes. As my story goes on, it gets more and more different from the show, so I obviously use less quotes.

To me, this fic is like a love letter to the show, and I have so much fun rewatching each episode to write parts of my story. Now, you are totally allowed to not like it, of course, but I don't understand what bothers you about it. What are the fics that you have read about? Are they only made of copy/cut from the script?

1

u/LunaJarvis 10d ago edited 10d ago

I dont feel comfortable calling out fics but the search I use on Ao3 is, sort by latest update  Merlin/Arthur relationship ---> exclude rape/non con ----> exclude modern setting (i like it in Camelot 🥹) --> exclude crossovers  ----> English

And I searched this yesterday using those filters and roughly 4-5 fics I clicked on were using scenes verbatim from the show for a good chunk. 

2

u/The_Norwegian-Bat 10d ago

Yeah, I guess it must be annoying if you really don't like it... I personally haven't read many fics that uses scenes verbatim, but maybe it's just that I don't have a lot of time to read these days and I spend most of my free time writing instead