The cast of Merlin are filming a scene deep in a cave, working up to their upcoming scene where Merlin reveals his magic to Arthur. Unexpectedly, the lights go out, and Colin and Bradley find themselves alone together in the dark. When Bradley uses the magic he secretly has to light a candle, they discover that all the filming equipment and such is gone, and upon exiting the cave, it soon becomes apparent that they have been transported to the world of Merlin–and everyone there believes them to actually be Merlin and Arthur! Meanwhile, the real Merlin and Arthur find themselves in the baffling modern world where everyone thinks they are famous actors, not that they really know what that entails. Now they’re all going to have to play their parts until they can figure out a way to get home. At least Merlin and Bradley can finally reveal their magic to their best friends, right?

The Big Reveal was my first experience reading RPF (real-person fic), and I have to admit I’m still a bit conflicted as to how I feel about that. Because reading fictional stories about actual present-day people feels a bit . . . intrusive, to be honest. But, for this particular story, I felt like the discussion of these individuals was handled appropriately and with respect. A lot of the concepts and characterization used were pulled from publicly available sources like interviews and the YouTube videos they’ve posted. Of course, some bits are pure fiction as well, like Bradley’s having magic . . . but that did make a nice parallel to Merlin and his reveal, so it worked really well in this story. Merlin and Arthur’s characters were handled well, too–just in general, the characterizations were quite well done. The story was well written as well, again with some great parallels, solid plot development, and a good sense of balance between humor and poignancy. The final result is similar, in some respects, to something like “The French Mistake” in Supernatural, and it works surprisingly well. It makes me kind of sad that this was released anonymously, because I would read more by this author. ( )