#Hale appleman's expression also gets me

[hmgfanfic]

to catalogue every example of their core drivers/values/beliefs/desires being the same despite their external differences Um I'm just going like 👀👀 (no pressure tho lol)

Ha! Well, I hope someday to share the fruits of my insanity with you all, but it turns out there’s a lot more there than I expected. But yeah, OBVIOUSLY, Quentin and Eliot’s innate compatibility and chemistry is a passion of mine, as is cataloguing reminders that I wasn’t crazy, that they did write/film that shit, it was textual, and the showrunners walked it back because of homophobia, not because it isn’t well-grounded in canon. You know, normal hobbies. ;) While it’ll take me a while until I get this into a comprehensible-to-others form, what I can do is leave you with some cast quotes to underscore this idea in the meantime…

Of course, there’s the famous Jason Ralph SDCC interview(s) where he talked endlessly about the connection between Quentin and Eliot, may he live in eternal glory, but this one is my personal favorite/war cry:

“I think [Quentin and Eliot] are very similar people who chose different ways of expressing themselves. As much as you can believe in soulmates, I think they probably are,” Ralph said. “They never really seem to stop learning from each other, and I think that’s important with any relationship that is long-lasting. They push each other in unexpected ways. It’s a lifetime love, I think.”

But it didn’t only come up post-3x05. During early promo, Hale talked more than once about how similar they are despite seeming like they’re not, especially in one of my favorite interviews with him and Summer. The entire thing is worth reading, especially Summer’s interpretation of Margo and Quentin’s relationship (and Margo/Julia!), but this quote from Hale is the most pertinent:

Eliot sees a lot of himself in Quentin. But that is not something he would readily admit. He sees Quentin exterior in a way mirrors how Eliot feels on the inside. All of those anxieties and all of those fears and how that manifests itself. Eliot shares that with Quentin, but doesn’t want Quentin to know that and it is a bit of a cover that Eliot is taking. Eliot has also been where Quentin is — he is sort of taken into this magical world of the Brakebills graduate school and that bubble. Eliot also escaped from his past — not entering it in the same way or for the same reasons — but they do share that. So I think Eliot can relate to that experience. They are meant to be friends.

And he repeated the same idea here, as well:

“I think, weirdly enough, Eliot sees a lot of himself in Quentin and it seems that if you were to kind of pry Eliot open and look inside, he would look a lot more like Quentin,” Appleman says. “There’s kind of like an anxious, unsettled, vulnerable, broken little boy in Eliot. Eliot might even be more vulnerable than Quentin, weirdly enough. I think that what Eliot sees when Quentin comes through the bushes in that first episode is someone who he understands, weirdly, and someone who he sees a lot of himself in. There is a similarity between them that Eliot would never admit to or want to discuss ever, but it exists and there’s an understanding between these two characters, and so there’s an innate connection there.”

Anyway, it was intentional, it’s woven through the whole show and two masterclass performances, and they’re perfect!

[pirateshelly]

Time for more complaining about the Magicians Bullshit (which I will henceforth be tagging as “magicians bullshit” so anyone who wants to ignore me can). It always made me uncomfortable that the main characters who do the most casual sleeping around (Eliot, Margo, Quentin) also happen to be the only queer main characters (even though with Margo I still maintain that they didn't make it explicit enough for it to actually count). Or even beyond main characters, you've got Alice's parents with their three way relationship with whatever his name was, who are also presented as these vapid, sex obsessed, crazy people who have orgies on a regular basis and emotionally neglect their daughter. There ends up being this weird implication that regular romance=heterosexual love and queerness is inherently sexual and slightly ~deviant. Like being into the same gender is just a symptom of being ~sexually liberated~. It's just one of those little patterns in the show that always bugged me but I was ready to overlook when I though they were actually building up a legit romance with Q/El, but now it just looks gross.

And for the first two seasons every relationship Eliot has either involves him being manipulated and used or is framed as being in some way selfish/irresponsible (like sleeping with other peoples boyfriends). And I really think the angle of El being unable to open himself up to a real, genuine, loving relationship because of his own insecurities and growing up in a homophobic environment is a genuinely interesting and relatable as fuck thing to explore (there’s a reason Escape from the Happy Place was probably my favorite episode), and I was super interested in the idea of that contrasted with Quentin being perfectly chill with his sexuality and the two of them getting to kind of learn from each other/balance each other out. But with the writers downplaying Quentin's bisexuality and then fucking killing him, now it just looks like they just kind of hate El and have no interest in just letting him actually grow and be happy. He’s back to being the token gay who never gets a real chance at happiness.

I saw a quote from Hale Appleman somewhere saying that he really wishes the show would explore Eliot's sexuality unapologetically (also, hey showrunners, maybe, idk, listening to the suggestions of your actual queer actor playing your queer character might be a good idea?), and "apologetic" really does feel like a good way to describe how they often treat Eliot’s sexuality. It's never something that gets to just exist, and be freely expressed without tragedy or endless ridiculous obstacles being thrown in the way. Like he has to pay some kind of price and earn the right to just exist and be gay, but never actually gets anything in return.

And semi related but the fact that Marina is the most prominent explicitly not straight woman, and her relationship with her girlfriend is framed as something kind of manipulative. And all of the season 1 moments where she's clearly hitting on Julia and Kady are, considering the power she has over both of them, definitely also creepy/predatory. It's all just... really not great.

Between that and the Margo/Pirate Lady scene, it feels like 'being into girls' is just an edgy personality quirk they give to their snarky bad girl characters, and not something they have any real interest in exploring in a genuine emotional way. And I hate it because healthy, emotional, healing wlw love would have fit SO perfectly with characters like Julia or Kady or Alice's stories (or ANY of the women, the options are endless, there are SO many interesting women in this show and ALL of them are shoved together with men). 

I know people have pointed out all of this before, but it just. Keeps. Bothering me. I feel like an idiot for wanting to think this show was better. I hate that I was ready to overlook all of this because I thought they were doing one (1) thing right so I told myself that if they were smart enough to actually follow through and give their two male leads an actual beautiful slow burn romance they would also be smart enough to correct their other early season fuck ups. But it turns out they are not, in fact, that smart. At all. And it sucks because this story had so much endless potential, and I think that potential is really what I fell in love with and it’s depressing that the actual people running the show didn’t see any of it.

[queerbloodyangel]

Hi! I haven’t seen the magicians and probably won’t but I’m interested in the drama/what’s going on?

oof sorry this has taken me so long anon, i havent been home much today and am just now getting time to sit down! i hope you don’t mind that i’m writing out a long thing, because quite a few people have asked me about it and tbh i just want to get it all down :)

so, little bit of backstory here: quentin coldwater is the main character of the magicians. the first episode of the show has him being released from a mental facility after he had checked himself in because he was “getting bad again”. after the doctor expressed concern for his well-being and said she wasnt sure he should be checking himself out so soon. he told her the only way she could stop him was if he said he had any plans of hurting others or himself, which, he didnt.

throughout the course of the show, the writers did an amazing job of showing quentin actually dealing with and talking about his depression. we saw him at his highs, and we saw him at his lows, and for a lot of people who have never seen depression depicted in such a real and non-romanticized way onscreen, it was revolutionary. i mean, it still is, some of the discussions he had with his friends about it were so fucking real that they had me in tears because yeah thats it.

anyway, along with that, quentin also was proven to be sexually fluid first in season 1 by having a threesome with two of his best friends margo and eliot. he also dated a woman (alice) for a while, though that relationship went up in spectacular flames lmao

in season 3, quentin and eliot get stuck in an alternate timeline together for 50 years. during that time quentin met a woman and had a child with her, but shortly after she died, and quentin and eliot raised the kid together, and stayed together until eliot died. time got reversed then, but because Magic, they both remembered what happened shortly after, in a quiet scene with just the two of them, because the taste of ‘peaches and plums’ reminded them, because they had lived near a peach and plum orchard in the alternate timeline. nothing more was said about it after that, though quentin and eliot remained extremely affectionate with each other.

at the end of season 3, and going into season 4, eliot gets possessed by a monster thats more powerful than any of the gods on the show, and completely unkillable. the monster also has an incredibly childlike mentality, so at one point quentin asks it if eliot’s still alive, and the monster says no. since up until that point the monster has been truthful to a fault, quentin believes it. 

episode 5 happens, and quentin and his ex, alice, are figuring out a way to kill the monster. during this period of time, quentin makes it very clear to alice that he has absolutely no desire to get back together with her, and with all of the shit going on with the monster/eliot, he doesnt even have the space to even think about them. meanwhile, eliots trapped inside his own mind, going through all of his worst memories trying to figure out a way to get out long enough to tell his friends that he is alive, and needs help. he goes through a ton of bad memories, including ones about his childhood growing up in a homophobic small town in indiana, ones involving betraying his friends, and basically anything else he can come up with. 

he realizes eventually what his worst memory is, and we go back to the scene from season 3 where he and quentin remember the alternate timeline. quentin asks eliot if they can give them a shot, because ‘we work. 50 years, who gets proof of concept like that?’ and memory!eliot turns him down. the real eliot apologizes to memory!quentin, kisses him, and he’s able to take control of his body long enough to tell quentin (eliot: 50 years, who gets proof of concept like that?

quentin: what?

eliot: peaches and plums, motherfucker, i’m alive in here)

quentin then jumps in front of eliot so alice’s attempt to kill his body misses, and the monster comes back. 

from that point on, quentin’s sole focus is getting eliot back. he sleeps once on screen, for a total of 15 minutes. he’s jumpy, on edge, exhausted, and clearly spiraling as it becomes more and more apparent there might not be a way for him to save eliot. up until episode 10, not a scene goes by without quentin reiterating that they have to save eliot, no matter what.

episodes 11 & 12 happen, and (if memory serves me correctly) quentin says eliots name once, maybe twice. he gets back with alice, and suddenly, is no longer spiraling (????) its as if eliot doesnt even exist.

episode 13 happens, they manage to get the monster out of eliot, and quentin doesn’t even spare a glance towards eliot, who’s lying on the ground bleeding out and need to be rushed to the hospital. quentin and alice have found a way to trap the monster in a rip in the universe, and take off to do that. things happen that make 0 sense, and winds up jumping into this rip in the universe along with the monster, and dies.

after his death, he winds up in the underworld, talking to someone, where he asks, “did i do that to save my friends, or did i finally find a way to kill myself?”

the person takes him back to earth, so quentin can watch his friends mourn him. instead of letting his friends actually talk about him, the writers had them sing a song as they threw their mementos of quentin into a fire, and that?? somehow shows quentin that his death was okay.

the writers (sera gamble and john mcnamara) are acting like they deserve an award or something because they killed off the ‘white male lead’, which, apparently is progressive or something. as if tv show writers haven’t been killing off mentally ill, queer characters for decades already. 

the writers didn’t tell the rest of the cast what was happening, until two days before the finale aired. the actor who played quentin (jason ralph) was under a gag order for a year, and they filmed a dummy scene at the end that had the gang realizing there was a way for quentin to be saved.

the actor who played eliot (hale appleman), an openly queer man, spent the last several weeks reassuring fans over and over that quentin and eliot’s story wasn’t over, to have faith, only to find out that he’d unwillingly been a part in this whole fiasco.

they killed off the character that honestly, probably 90% of the fanbase saw themselves in, and had latched onto with their whole hearts because of that. for a lot of us, it felt like watching a bit of ourselves die, and along with it, a love story that deserved to be told, that a lot of us believed would be told. i, personally have watched so many shows where the writers absolutely refused to make the ‘popular gay ship’ canon, and have even been part of fanbases that have been mocked for it. but this just. this shit is on a different level and i dont know what to even call it except for some bizarre take on queerbaiting that’s somehow 10000000x worse than that word can even describe.

again, i’m sorry this is so godawful long but i’m truly devastated over losing quentin coldwater. queer people deserve better, mentally ill people deserve better, and god fucking damn it so do i.

[danisavin]

the darning shears of fate: silas apollo savin

    “It is absurd to divide people into { good and bad }          People are either charming or tedious”

t h e  t w i n ;

          He’s every bit as savage as his twin, but infinitely more refined. The two of them are inseparable souls. Co-dependents. It would be impossible for one to live without the other. And yet, they quarrel. Silas is the “younger,” raised in his sister’s shadow. She was always the favorite. The prodigy. Following in Papa’s footsteps with her little junior explorer kit. Silas only ever had time for mischief. He found his talents through a deck of cards within the city streets. The libraries and the wilds are her domain, after all. God forbid he disrupts her steady beat.   

He takes after their father in his own way. Fashion and flare come as easily to him as breathing. Everything is a performance. A magician, mixologist, and con-man, he makes his living by exploiting the naivety of others. His dashing smile can get him out of practically any sticky situation, which his penchant for pranks more often than naught gets him into in the first place. He is bold and extravagant; however, this gilded personality he puts out is far afield from the sensitive, broken personality that lurks beneath his carefully crafted facade. 

He’s lonely, just like his sister. Different, and ostracized for it. But whereas Dani faced these differences head-on and embraced them, Silas masked and replaced them with false identities to float himself easily through life. He has a hard time admitting this, and thus struggles to express his true nature outside of the family home. 

Can you see through his illusion?       

o o c  n o t e ;

In reality, Silas is one of the various bartenders who caters to Fane’s magnificent parties. For the event, his alternate memories have him as well as the Savins believing he’s the twin brother that Dani never had. Because NPCs make the world that much more colorful :D but also angst.

Silas is featured in Dani’s Retrouvailles thread with Fane, but he may of course pop up in mention among other threads now given the overlapping potential of Plot Drop 3! If you’d like him to make an appearance in our thread otherwise, just let me know and I’ll see what I can do about working him in.

Faceclaim is Hale Appleman, inspired by Eliot Waugh of The Magicians.