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In other TV things: The Magicians
Orion and I are watching the Magicians TV series and are up to late season two. I've seen random eps here and there, and I still honestly prefer the books overall (sorry, TV fans), but it's entertaining and the cast is deeply charming.
I also find it hilarious that Eliot is like a foot taller than anyone else on the show, but when we looked up the actor's height, he's not actually that tall, for an actor. Just a little over 6 feet! It's just that the entire rest of the cast are tiny. The effect is to make Eliot look like a giant, but it's really more that everyone else is extremely short, including Quentin. I mean, I guess one way to make your protagonist look normal-sized when he's actually short for a guy is to cast him opposite a bunch of miniature people. (Quentin's actor is actually shorter than Burn Gorman, who is usually the shortest male character in anything he's in, and everyone else is scaled appropriately. It became hilarious once I was aware of that. Most of the women on the show are in the general vicinity of my height - I'm 5'1".)
My favorite character in the show, though? PENNY!!! A character who is an absolute zero in the books. Book!Penny is just kind of there.
Show Penny though! He's such an absolute darling! Prickly on the outside, soft on the inside, and it's getting to the point where I melt a little bit whenever he does those little smiles or that soft thing with his eyes. And he really has the best power set, cool and amazing and terrible as it is.
Magicians fandom is definitely sleeping on Quentin/Penny as a pairing. I wasn't expecting the show to lean into them this hard. And it's also really interesting that as much as they do genuinely drive each other crazy, for all the talk of hating each other and the times they've ignored it when the other one is hurt or upset or having a mental breakdown, when it really comes down to it and the other one is about to die, they'll hurl themselves into danger for them without even thinking about it, I think most notably lately when Reynard is about to kill Quentin in the last episode we watched (2x09 or so), and Penny (after pretty much ignoring Quentin being locked in a cage for the last couple of episodes) literally THROWS HIMSELF THROUGH THE WARDS AT REYNARD even though he is almost certainly going to die! I mean!!!
The main thing I don't like about the show is that it feels like misery porn to me a lot of the time - which is actually what made me bounce off it before. There's a kind of underlying bitter cynicism that I recoil from. You know how some shows seem to genuinely like their characters and want them to be happy, even when terrible things are happening to them? This show is basically the opposite of that. It seems to like leaning into the cruelty, and the characters being cruel to each other, in a way that I push back from.
And yet, it's not always like that; sometimes it'll turn it around and go for the soft/protective/loyal aspect instead.
Anyway, the other thing Magicians seems to be doing is kick-starting the urban-fantasy creative part of my brain hard, which is GREAT since that's mostly what I'm writing in origfic lately and I think the show is directly fueling my creativity engine. It's working that way in part because the show isn't entirely what I want, so it engages the fixit part of my brain too, the part that wants to take the shiny bits and make my own magpie nest out of them. What especially seems to be doing that is the grungy, grimy magic underworld of the hedge witches. I love the aesthetic and just generally the feeling of it, magic in abandoned warehouses and stolen spells in binders. It was also one of my favorite things in the books, but didn't quite have this effect of making me want to throw myself into it and write my own seedy magic underworld, but now my brain keeps pushing random bits of worldbuilding at me.
EDIT: Edited (the DW version) to add new Penny icon made by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
killabeez!
I also find it hilarious that Eliot is like a foot taller than anyone else on the show, but when we looked up the actor's height, he's not actually that tall, for an actor. Just a little over 6 feet! It's just that the entire rest of the cast are tiny. The effect is to make Eliot look like a giant, but it's really more that everyone else is extremely short, including Quentin. I mean, I guess one way to make your protagonist look normal-sized when he's actually short for a guy is to cast him opposite a bunch of miniature people. (Quentin's actor is actually shorter than Burn Gorman, who is usually the shortest male character in anything he's in, and everyone else is scaled appropriately. It became hilarious once I was aware of that. Most of the women on the show are in the general vicinity of my height - I'm 5'1".)
My favorite character in the show, though? PENNY!!! A character who is an absolute zero in the books. Book!Penny is just kind of there.
Show Penny though! He's such an absolute darling! Prickly on the outside, soft on the inside, and it's getting to the point where I melt a little bit whenever he does those little smiles or that soft thing with his eyes. And he really has the best power set, cool and amazing and terrible as it is.
Magicians fandom is definitely sleeping on Quentin/Penny as a pairing. I wasn't expecting the show to lean into them this hard. And it's also really interesting that as much as they do genuinely drive each other crazy, for all the talk of hating each other and the times they've ignored it when the other one is hurt or upset or having a mental breakdown, when it really comes down to it and the other one is about to die, they'll hurl themselves into danger for them without even thinking about it, I think most notably lately when Reynard is about to kill Quentin in the last episode we watched (2x09 or so), and Penny (after pretty much ignoring Quentin being locked in a cage for the last couple of episodes) literally THROWS HIMSELF THROUGH THE WARDS AT REYNARD even though he is almost certainly going to die! I mean!!!
The main thing I don't like about the show is that it feels like misery porn to me a lot of the time - which is actually what made me bounce off it before. There's a kind of underlying bitter cynicism that I recoil from. You know how some shows seem to genuinely like their characters and want them to be happy, even when terrible things are happening to them? This show is basically the opposite of that. It seems to like leaning into the cruelty, and the characters being cruel to each other, in a way that I push back from.
And yet, it's not always like that; sometimes it'll turn it around and go for the soft/protective/loyal aspect instead.
Anyway, the other thing Magicians seems to be doing is kick-starting the urban-fantasy creative part of my brain hard, which is GREAT since that's mostly what I'm writing in origfic lately and I think the show is directly fueling my creativity engine. It's working that way in part because the show isn't entirely what I want, so it engages the fixit part of my brain too, the part that wants to take the shiny bits and make my own magpie nest out of them. What especially seems to be doing that is the grungy, grimy magic underworld of the hedge witches. I love the aesthetic and just generally the feeling of it, magic in abandoned warehouses and stolen spells in binders. It was also one of my favorite things in the books, but didn't quite have this effect of making me want to throw myself into it and write my own seedy magic underworld, but now my brain keeps pushing random bits of worldbuilding at me.
EDIT: Edited (the DW version) to add new Penny icon made by
killabeez!
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I think that a lot of people bounced off the first book. I didn't, so YMMV, but I liked both the subsequent books much better.
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I disliked the first book enough I didn't feel inclined to read more, and that's probably not going to change.
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Yes, this. I bounce very hard from this. I actually like grim dark stuff a lot but it has to have hopeful, loving notes interwoven as well.
And it's interesting that it's so creatively fueling because I do remember when I was reading the books having that exact feeling. Just reading a few chapters could send me to write piles and piles of my own words, regardless of how I felt about what was happening in the books. They're somehow aesthetically inspiring for writing!
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RIGHT. It's frustrating because the show sometimes does hit those notes, but I can never be sure if it's going to be that, or the characters being cheerfully busy with their own thing and completely ignoring someone in their group who is miserable, broken-hearted, or LITERALLY DYING.
... actually I just realized what it reminds me of that way: Community. A show I did genuinely like, but also could never quite be sure if it was going to hit a nice found-family note, or just have the characters be dicks to each other; any given episode could go either way.
And it's interesting that it's so creatively fueling because I do remember when I was reading the books having that exact feeling. Just reading a few chapters could send me to write piles and piles of my own words, regardless of how I felt about what was happening in the books. They're somehow aesthetically inspiring for writing!
Oh, that's really interesting! Yeah, for some reason the books didn't hit me as strongly this way as the show did - it's like the show's general visual/emotional aesthetic has tapped a line feeding directly into the creative part of my brain somehow.
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What is it? (I have neither read the books nor seen the series.)
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I approve.
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Yeah, I didn't realize that when watching and thought they just preferred a LOT of angst before the happy endings, every time when I thought it got too dark there was just enough optimism to make me keep watching (up to a certain point.)
Penny is great :) The different version of Penny was one of my biggest disappointments when reading the books since I loved show!Penny much more.
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Yeah, I didn't realize that when watching and thought they just preferred a LOT of angst before the happy endings, every time when I thought it got too dark there was just enough optimism to make me keep watching (up to a certain point.)
Yeah, I think this is totally accurate, watching it; if I had been watching this completely unspoiled, I would've though the show was aiming for happiness at the end of darkness, because it does have just enough moments of genuine connection, self-sacrifice, and other soft human emotions to look like it's going that way. People aren't wrong to have been blindsided by it.
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