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andsomemaniacgotridofthewheel · 6 months

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Our Flag Means Death vs. The Magicians

I was not sure whether I should even write something, but the closer the season 2 finale and, hopefully, a 3rd season of OFMD comes, the more nervous I get. So it's gotta come out.

Thing is, I trust David Jenkins. Or, more accurately, I want to trust David Jenkins.

But 4 years and *checks watch* 6 months ago I also trusted the showrunners of "The Magicians".

Because they, too, responded thoughtful and kindly on Twitter to their fandom's worries. They assured us they were aware of how important queer representation was, and that they would handle their show's queer pairing of two main (!) characters with the utmost respect and sensitivity. They said they knew how badly queer people were treated on the media and they did not want to do that in their show. They had done their research, they carefully listened to their fans, and they were different.

A lot of fans were NOT convinced by that and maintained that it would still turn out to be queerbaiting. We others, we trusted. They obviously knew what they were doing!

For those of you who were not around here back then or simply not in the fandom, and who have no idea what I am talking about, let me try to summarise the shitshow what happened.

"The Magicians" was a very original, weird, entertaining and, for 3 seasons and 12 episodes, good urban fantasy show about a group of young, well, magicians. It was based on a book series of the same name by Lev Grossmann.

The main character, Quentin, was canonically struggling with clinical depression. At the beginning of the show he had admitted himself to a mental health clinic, and he was on medication, and his illness was treated as a part of his character throughout the show. And they received a lot of praise for their sensitive, realistic representation of people with depression and their continuing struggle.

Around Quentin there was an ensemble of other main characters. His (male) best friend (Eliot) was gay and played by a gay actor.

Season 1 ended with a drunken decision from Quentin, Eliot and Eliot's (female) best friend (Margot) to have a threesome; which basically ended Quentin's het-relationship (with Alice) that had developed during the season. This was the first indication that the depressed main character Quentin might also be bisexual.

In season 3 there came a mind-blowing episode where Quentin & Eliot spend the entire rest of their lives living together in a cabin in the woods and raising a son, in what turned out to be an alternative timeline. Basically, in order to solve a plot-arc relevant puzzle, they move to the cabin where the puzzle was set, not knowing how long it would take. After a few months together Quentin initiates an affair with Eliot. A little bit later a woman, with whom Quentin then has a child, moves in; a couple of years later she dies, Quentin & Eliot raise the kid together, and when Eliot, the older one, finally dies of old age, leaving Quentin alone behind, the puzzle named "The Beauty of all Life" is finally solved, the timeline reset, and young Quentin & Eliot in the past receive the solution of the puzzle together with the memories of their life together in the other timeline.

It was a beautiful, beautiful episode. Heartbreaking and life-affirming and queer and just wonderful. It also established beyond a doubt that the depressed main character Quentin was definitely bisexual (and polyamorous).

Then, for the whole 4th season, Eliot was separated from the rest of the group and in great danger, while Quentin and the others tried to find and save him. And when Eliot had to do some soul searching, he remembered something the audience never saw from that one season 3 episode, they added a brand new scene: after they both had been stunned into silence by having the memories of a whole other life dropped onto them, just where the original episode had ended, Quentin had actually asked Eliot if they should "just try it", because "who gets proof of concept like that"? And Eliot, scared of the gravity of it and full of abandonment issues, had shot him down. Present Eliot decides then, if he ever sees Quentin again, to stop being scared and just go for a relationship with him.

(On the other side of the plot, Quentin gets more and more desperate and frantic, trying to find Eliot and save his life. He is clearly masking a steadily worsening spiral into a severe mental health crisis.)

It's queerbaiting, said the nay-sayers and skeptics. It will never happen. At the end of season 4, Quentin will get back together with his ex-girlfriend Alice, they're End Game, and Eliot will end up dead alone at the sidelines, undergoing character development through loss, as a gay character should. /s

They thought we were naive, but we thought they weren't paying attention. Two (2!) episodes in two (2!) seasons with the sole purpose to set Queliot up as a couple, in canon. This wasn't subtext, it wasn't queer-coding; it was text, it was spoken aloud, it was named, it was shown. Why would they do that if nothing else would come of it? Also, they had promised us. The gay actor who played Eliot repeatedly stated how proud he was to be on a show where this was happening, he was just as excited as us, he was one of us.

Then the season 4 finale came, and it wasn't exactly queerbait.

It was much, much worse.

I was on Tumblr right after the finale aired, and it was eerie. No episode reactions, no gif-sets, no comments or shitposts or anything. Even the nay-sayers and skeptics couldn't bring themselves to utter the well-deserved "told you so"s to break the stunned silence. All that was missing from the scene were actual tumbleweeds blowing across our dashboards.

Even from the actors of the show who were on twitter, usually very active and involved, came only radio silence. The last tweet for a while came the day before the finale aired. It was a tweet from the POC actor of an unrelated character, who had spend the last season supporting queer fans and assuaging our fears that something bad might happen to Queliot. And this tweet from him simply stated that he had just found out he had filmed a fake finale scene, one that was never intended to be aired, and that it had served its purpose: he had no idea how the season would actually end.*

And here is how it did end: with the clinically depressed and queer main character blowing himself up in order to permanently ban that season's big bad. He had saved Eliot before that, but he didn't get a chance to talk to him, instead he did get a final scene straight out of the suicidal ideation fantasy handbook: after he killed himself, he witnessed his friends, unseen by them, grieving for him and acknowledging how his sacrifice had made all of their lives better in various ways. And no, I'm not making this up.

And it wasn't even the end of the showrunners stupidity, because in an utter display of tone-deafness, they were taking to Twitter celebrating themselves for the progressive (!!!) decision to kill off their White Male Main Character™, to focus more on the POC characters in the show. And, of course, the recently introduced cis-het male white dudebro character, who had started as a guest but somehow kept getting more and more screentime lately.

They had pulled a Bury Your Gays, but With A Vengeance. In only 10 minutes of screentime they had completely destroyed everything that had made their show critically acclaimed, retroactively un-deserving all the praise and recognition they had gotten for good representation of mental illness and the courage to introduce a canon queer relationship between their established main characters.

And they didn't even get it. They honestly expected praise for their "woke" decision to kill of their White Male Main Character™ (they kept repeating it like a mantra), and they reacted like children when they were instead confronted with an epic shitstorm from upset and angry queer and mentally ill fans.**

In hindsight we realised that what had fooled us was them just parroting the right words and phrases back at us. They had no idea what queerbaiting was. They had even less of an idea what a Bury Your Gays was. They didn't know what we meant when we said that queer representation was so important, and that we were worried if they would do it right; and they didn't understand that they themselves were lying when they answered that they would handle the queer representation in their show with care and respect, because they didn't understand what care and respect in relation to queer representation even was. They didn't even realise that his depression alone, and even more so combined with his absolute lack of toxic masculinity, separated Quentin from the usual White Male Main Character Trope they somehow so desperately wanted to fight - and for some reason they didn't even seem to have realised that they (accidentally?) written him as bisexual? (I am still not too clear on how that even could happen.)

And that's where my worry for "Our Flag Means Death" and David Jenkins comes in. Yes, he was publicly flabbergasted when he learned about queerbaiting and how deeply it had traumatized queer fans and destroyed our trust. He publicly noticed, he publicly cared.

But does he really understand?

Even if he knows and understands queerbaiting (now), does he also know what a Bury Your Gays is? Does he understand?

The historical Edward "Blackbeard" Teach died November 1718. The historical Stede "Gentlemen Pirate" Bonnet died a month later, December 1718. That's at the very most less than a year from when our favourite gay pirate couple is now. And yes, David Jenkins makes it a point to screw with history, he does what he wants no matter what. But their death dates are pretty huge. A fixed point in time, if you will.

I want to believe that all the faking of deaths talk is indeed foreshadowing, that they will be officially dead to history, but actually have run off together to open Jeff's Inn by the Sea, with a Bar & Grill and Other Delicacies & Delights, Snake Snackery, Gift Shop and Fishing Gear in the back. That we will get our Happy Ending. That they will get their Happy Ending. No Bury Your Gays. Everyone lives, just this once, everyone lives.

But what if it is a red herring instead of foreshadowing? What if it is supposed to make their eventual deaths even more heartbreaking and tragic? WHAT IF DAVID JENKINS DOESN'T ACTUALLY KNOW ABOUT BURY YOUR GAYS? What if he says he does, what if he believes he does, but what if he doesn't actually understand?

What if he just says what he believes we want to hear, without really understanding the reason?

For me personally, that's not even the worst of it.

When "The Magicians" season 4 aired, I had just gone through the worst depressive episode of my life. It was actually the reason I hyper-fixated so strongly on the show and why I had repeatedly binge-watched the first three seasons in a span of only 3 weeks. It was the reason I obsessed over Quentin, the character who was in a place that I was in just months before, I place I had lost and felt I would never reach again, a place that gradually and painfully I did reach again by the end of those weeks. When I had caught up with season 4 and the finale aired, I was actually a lot better. But even then, Quentin's death and the way he died hurt me, confused me, triggered me, set me back. Talking to other fans with the same problems helped. Removing myself from the fandom and not looking at anything Magician's-related for near-on two years helped also.

And I was in luck. Only one month later "Good Omens" was released. I had liked the book, I had looked forward to its adaption, but I was completely unprepared for what Neil Gaiman had done with it. It healed me, it fully filled the void "The Magicians" and Queliot had left inside me, and it made everything better.

In "Our Flag Means Death", Stede is clearly on the autism spectrum. I was bullied at school, just like him, not for being queer, but for "being a fucking weirdo". Because I have ADHD, like Ed. Unlike Ed I don't have the hyperactive kind, but the inattentive kind. I can never tell if someone is sarcastic or sincere. I also have difficulty with and anxiety in social situations, and I have almost never felt accepted by my peers or my family. I am permanently masking. I relate deeply to Stede's belief that he has to change in order to be worthy of love. I also related deeply to Ed's mental health spiral and suicidal ideation in the beginning of season 2. I obsessed for days over the moment when Ed decided to finally let go, only to be saved in the very last moment by love. It felt way too real, way too familiar, and it was so important for me and my state of mind that it ended in hope. They managed to take the trauma and make it cathartic. So even if my genderfluid ass didn't relate better to mlm relationships than to any cishet relationship, relating a whole lot to Stede and only a little less to Ed because of their neurodivergent traits will be enough for their deaths to destroy me. Just like Quentin's death almost had. And I don't even know if there will be a "Good Omens 3" to stop my fall only a month later.

*= with the exception of the actor leaving the show, none of the actors on "The Magicians" knew. They had all been given fake scenes to film. They didn't even know their colleague was leaving them until the day the finale aired.

**= when I had finally distanced myself enough from the show emotionally and wondered if I should maybe watch season 5, it was included in my Prime subscription anyway, I was told not to, because a) apparently the showrunners had written it as a giant FUCK YOU to everyone who was upset by the season 4 finale, and b) because they had done all the characters dirty, but especially fan-favourite (and mine) Eliot, apparently he fared even worse in season 5 than in season 4. But I am glad to be able to at least inform you that season 5 pretty much tanked both critically as well as in viewership, I have never seen a show go from successful and popular to irrelevant and hated so quickly and so completely.

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mlobsters · 2 years

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the magicians s1e4, the world within the walls

Dean Fogg: Oh, and Quentin... I'm glad that you're still here with us.

Quentin: Me too, actually.

#the magicians #quentin coldwater #dean fogg #jason ralph #rick worthy #quentin coldwater deserved better #depression

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vooruitmariek · 10 months

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had enough of heartbreak and pain

#mariek-artblog #the magicians #the magicians fanart #quentin coldwater #quentin coldwater deserved better #hello sunshine by bruce springsteen #jpeg version because tho i do like making gifs out of litterally anything for no real reason #i guess they might be annoying for most people :')

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sadlittlenerdking · 1 year

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It will forever gut me that Quentin’s last year was haunted by the mirage of what could have been and the knowledge (belief) that he’d found happiness and would never achieve it again.

#the magicians #I just think about how he went from thinking he’d die young to wanting to be a father #he went from knowing he’d die young to having a reason to grow old #and his last year alive was fighting for that possibility #of getting Eliot back and convincing him that he was what he’d choose and getting that life again #and knowing the memories of their time in the mosaic weren’t very strong #it’s like he had to constantly fight a mirage of happiness while everything he wanted fall apart around him #Quentin Coldwater deserved better

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heymalibae · 1 year

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still screaming over the fact that the magicians thought it was okay to kill off quentin to make him a hero just because ‘oh, the white male main character can’t always be safe,’ okay yes that’s true but you’ve totally forgotten all of the context you’ve woven into q’s characterisation, because the concept of him dying is something he’s struggled with his whole life, that he spends his whole life wanting not to be alive anymore and then even when he has magic it doesn’t change that, and then even worse he thinks the only worthy sacrifice he can make is to give his life to be a hero, like he doesn’t have anything else to give,,, NO, actually, the whole thing that you’ve spent four seasons learning is that q can love and be loved, you can’t just destroy that to make some surface level message.

and they make q say it himself, ‘did i make a sacrifice to save my friends or did i finally find a way to kill myself,’ because he could have chosen differently! that wasn’t the only option! if alice and penny had time to run, to travel out of there, then SO DID Q, but he chooses to hesitate, and it’s the culmination of all the months of shit he’s been through with the monster, and the exhaustion of it, and i GET it, i do, but if he’s killing himself they don’t get to write it off like it’s a noble and unavoidable sacrifice, and also he shouldn’t HAVE TO kill himself to make the point anyway!!! it would have been far, far more radical a statement to say - look. look at this. here is someone who is depressed but lives anyway, and lives anyway, in spite of all the shit life has thrown at them, because they’re worth that, they’re worth the effort it takes to keep them alive, and they deserve better

god i’m so furious that they couldn’t give us that, they couldn’t give us a depressed character who lives a good, fulfilling life. like okay sure they gave us the mosaic but the subtext there is always that it’s outside of reality, it’s not a world in which they study or work or live like we all live on earth. like. is that too much to ask for, that you could show us that even though q is sad he is still loved and that is ENOUGH, that’s worth him staying alive for, that depression doesn’t have to take everything from someone, that there is another choice, because THAT’S what we wanted to see

#the magicians #quentin coldwater #tw suicide #depression #it’s been years but i’m still not over it #quentin coldwater deserved better #i got a couple episodes into season 5 but just couldn’t stick it without q

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thequeenofsastiel · 1 year

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Just finished ep 8, and I can hardly begin to express how disappointed in You I am. They took an extremely complex character who doesn't fit neatly into any kind of psychological box, and gave him the Hollywood DID treatment. I thought perhaps we'd finally realized that demonizing people with DID and acting like their other selves are vicious killers increases stigmatization of those with that disorder and that it's not okay. It's lazy, harmful writing. People with DID deserve better.

#though I don't know what I expected from the woman who thought that killing off a mentally ill #and queer character #was somehow groundbreaking because he also happened to be a white man #and then made the appalling choice of having him watch his own funeral #something people with suicidal ideation fantasize about a lot #it was despicable #Quentin coldwater deserved better #forever bitter #you #you Netflix #you spoilers #tw mental illness #for anyone who doesn't know #did stands for #dissociative identity disorder #aka #multiple personality disorder

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lunaraindrop · 1 year

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cactus & jasmine for the ask game! 🌵

Woo-hoo! Thank you so much for asking! 😊

Cactus: Something I am currently learning (about): Ever since I was a little girl, I have wanted to and have tried to learn sign language, particularly ASL. I thought it was cool, and I wanted to learn to talk to HoH/Deaf people. There was never any classes or opportunities inside school for me to learn (which still pisses me off), so I would check out library books every once in a while and try to learn that way. When I was older, I would look signs up on YouTube and mirror what I saw. This helped me more, to see signs in action.

When I first started to learn about education, I found out that teaching sign language in early childhood was such an amazing tool to give infants, toddlers, and nonverbal children.

In an ironic twist of fate, my mother gets more HoH every year. Her bosses at work have offered to pay for her to have hearing aids...but she is too vain. Because of this, I find myself talking with my hands and facial expressions more around her, and explaining to wait staff and retail workers that she has trouble hearing (you know, when she goes off on them because she thinks they said something they did not, or she is rude because she doesn't think they answered her questions, but that is another story). I feel like my mother would have had an easier time losing her hearing if learning sign language was seen as fundamental as learning English.

Because of these things, I have added ASL in little bite sized bits to my preschool curriculum. Things like learning the ABC's and a word or two a week like "turkey" and "pumpkin" around Halloween and Thanksgiving. The principal of the school *really* loved the idea. I even contacted the local university's Communications Disorders department for collaboration and advice.

TL;DR I'm learning ASL.

Jasmine: Oh dear. When I read this, a book or movie did not come to mind. My mind jumped automatically to the end of Season 4 and all of Season 5 of The Magicians. Because fuck you Sara Gamble, I don't need that shit. But, well, if you folks know me as well as I think you do, you could probably have guess that answers by how much I still scream that, ahem, *clears throat*

QUENTIN COLDWATER DESERVES BETTER

and

I REJECT YOUR CANON, Q IS NOT DEAD

So, instead, I will reach deeper and tell you about yet another show I stopped watching.

Grey's Anatomy.

Once upon a time, I used to watch that show. I found it clever and funny at times. I like clever and funny medical dramas. It is one of the reasons I like House MD. (Another is my undying love of anything Robert Sean Leonard, but I digress). My favorite character on GA was George O'Malley. Spoiler Alert, they killed off George. I stopped watching after that. I would hear from friends how the later seasons were so *gooood* because they would make them cry so much, and I was like, no. I'm depressed enough. I don't need a show to make cry. I need books/movies/tv to make me feel *hope* and *joy* and *wonder*. Sure, sadness will come, but I can't handle that being the focus.

(I know you are thinking of Eddie Munson right now, but I don't think he's dead either, so hah. He and Q are safe with me, thank you very much)

So...yeah. That was a lot. I hope I didn't scare you away! Feel free to ask me things!

#luna says #wtf luna #sign language #asl #the magicians #peaches and plums motherfucker #i am quentin coldwater #quentin coldwater #eddie munson #stranger things #quentin coldwater deserved better #preschool teacher #lunaraindrop #please ask me things #deaf and hoh #house md #robert sean leonard

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wolfnprey · 6 months

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How much do I have to steal donate for Jason Ralph and Hale Appleman to reunite and give the proper Queliot ending that the show, characters, and fans deserved?

#I am late to this fandom #but I have been broken by it regardless #Quentin and Eliot deserved better #the magicians #quentin coldwater #eliot waugh #I grieve #and will not forgive or forget #jason ralph #hale appleman #Queliot

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asteralien · 6 months

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rip quentin coldwater you would have loved "shake it off (taylor's version)"

#this is a joke bc he isn't dead he's alive and well and disgustingly domestic these days :)#i just started thinking about quentin coldwater again today and then found out 1989 tv was today too #feels fated tbh #i just miss that depressed little bisexual. he deserved so much better #quentin coldwater #mythtakes

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ii-magician · 1 year

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I rewatched 3x05 A Day in The Life and then 4x05 Escape from the Happy Place back to back and I am unwell

#the magicians #Quentin coldwater #elliot waugh #quelliot #they deserved so much better #I will never forgive Sarah gamble for that shit #anyways now I’m watching 4x10 All That Hard Glossy Armor #is it comforting? no not resllg but it is fun and I do love all the songs #tbh this is my favorite musical episode I just love Don’t get me wrong Elliot version #I will forever mourn quelliot

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fortunatelythevoid · 1 year

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It’s been years but I’m still angry at the 4th season of the Magicians

#the magicians #quentin coldwater #Elliot deserved better

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andsomemaniacgotridofthewheel · 6 months

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Yeah the "I really really hope David Jenkins isn't just pulling the same crap than the showrunners of The Magicians did back then"-post I wrote yesterday made me go through my the magicians tag just now.

It doesn't hurt that bad anymore. But it still makes me sad. And, surprisingly, still angry!

David Jenkins, I hope you are different. I choose to believe in you, like I chose to believe in them five years ago. Please don't make me the same idiot who has just been fooled twice. Please don't let us down!

#the magicians #quentin coldwater deserved better #david jenkins #our flag means death #ofmd #queliot #gentlebeard #nikku #nikku.txt

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mlobsters · 1 year

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The Magicians season 4 finale in 2019 had the main character Quentin Coldwater (played by Jason Ralph) "sacrifice" himself when he canonically struggled with depression and suicidal ideation, using harmful imagery and messaging around the "sacrifice", all to deal with an actor leaving. The showrunners John McNamara and Sera Gamble lied about why they had killed off the character and later said it was definitely not suicide when McNamara literally said in interviews they left it "ambiguous".

John McNamara speaking at the 2019 SDCC panel, after season 4 has aired (around 19min in the below video):

This is not a morbid thought, I promise you. It'll sound morbid, but it's not. We all have one thing in common in this room, right now, all of us. Every single one of us. At the end of this hour, we are all going to be one hour closer to death.

youtube

Every step of the way was wildly thoughtless, irresponsible and hurtful. So many people connected with Quentin because of his history with depression and suicidal ideation. This is why I can't let it go. I hope JM got someone else to talk to about this instead of working it out via characters on a tv show.

I posted these snippets on twitter back in 2019.

#the magicians #tw suicide #tw suicidal ideation #quentin coldwater #john mcnamara #sera gamble #quentin coldwater deserved better #mental health #depression #Youtube

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prettyboysdontlookatexplosions · 25 days

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because this has been on my mind wrapping up the epilogue, here is a little story about how writing fanfiction for very silly sometimes awesome sometimes genuinely terrible SYFY show the magicians changed my life for real.

i started writing help, i’m alive in may 2020. as i have stated many times on this blog, the overarching goal from which this story sprung was my passionate desire to give quentin coldwater each and every last thing he deserved: i wanted to follow him all the way through a downward spiral, and then i wanted to figure out what it would take for him to climb out of the darkness and make it to somewhere he actually wanted to be. the first part of that, the part that became damage control, was some of the easiest writing i’ve ever done, even accounting for the hours spent google mapping the most depressing road trip of all time. the second part was harder, and not just because it wound up being more than four times as long (lmao). it was thornier; there were more threads to weave through; and, frankly, quentin was so fucked up that it took a lot of effort even to outline what it was he needed in order to change. i had written one story already in which the pivot happened entirely internally, an act of self-forgiveness that proved transformational, and i knew that this time i needed to give him more: actual wants, actual actions, an actual life, with actual ties not just to the people already in his circle but to the world beyond. once i had that outline, the first four chapters flowed pretty easily, anchored by the goal of hitting the story’s first big win, which is when quentin finds a way to fix something for the first time since his magic broke; chapter five was where i got stuck.

by that point, it was fall. i had quit my teaching job mid-pandemic with some modest savings, no back-up plan, and a growing realization that after five years in the classroom, teaching was no longer something i could see myself returning to; working obsessively on this story was, among other things, a great way to quiet the constant humming freak-out of what the fuck i was going to do with my life. in october doing some jump squats after sitting in bed all day i threw my back out so badly i couldn’t walk to the bathroom unassisted and paid a hundred dollars to talk to a telehealth doctor for fifteen minutes for some muscle relaxants. the pain sucked, but so did not knowing whether i was going to be better by election day — i’d signed up to be a poll worker, and i really could have used the money.

i’d started dipping my toe in some local volunteer stuff when i quit, but it was during this time that i signed up for the first time for a particular project i was really excited about joining. i did the zoom training with my camera off because my back still hurt too much to sit up; the follow-up involved scanning and emailing some personal documents and signed agreements. i didn’t do it the next day because, whatever, my back fucking hurt; i didn’t do it the day after that because…? and then, well — then i started feeling like i had missed my chance, and it was too late now.

now, here’s the thing: i say feeling like because by this point i had learned enough about the world that i knew — like, knew — that, objectively, taking a few days to send an email (during a pandemic, while i was having previously established health issues) is not considered by most people to be an unforgivable crime. i knew that i should still send the email. and i also had learned enough about myself that i could actually recognize the thing happening in my brain as an example of the kind of overly self-protective mechanisms in which i have many years of practice; i knew by then that i was an absolute expert at finding reasons to not do things that felt like they were based in truth but were really just cleverly disguised manifestations of fear, because if you do things then bad things might happen, but if you don’t do things then nothing bad happens, except that you ruin your own life. i knew all of this!! i could diagnose and analyze exactly how i was once again perpetuating the same anxiety-driven patterns that had governed so much of my life. i was conscious of the workings of my own unconscious. but i still couldn’t bring myself to send the fucking email. instead i was spending 16 hours a day alternately lying in bed and gingerly pacing in my apartment to regain mobility, feeling like shit about the fact that i wasn’t sending the email and also trying fruitlessly to unpack whatever was going on in chapter five.

the election came five days into this mess, and i did feel well enough to go work the polls. this was a great way to experience election 2020, by the way; i had to leave my apartment at like 3:30 in the morning and by the time the returns started coming in i was too delirious to have any emotions about them whatsoever. it was also, not to be a shill for electoral politics, genuinely kind of inspiring: all these people lining up to Do Democracy, the deployment of translators to assist across languages, the columbia undergrad from the neighborhood we were in i was paired with at the info desk who told me he wanted to go into politics and said very seriously, upon hearing i had a friend in the grad school there, “you should tell them to join the union.” plus, you know, the high of doing something, surrounded by other human beings, at a time when that sort of thing had been in short order for the work-from-home crowd for months, and i personally had recently been confined to my bed for several days.

leaving the site that night, entering my twentieth consecutive hour awake, i felt this weird mix of spiritually rejuvenated and psychologically worse. i had just lived through this physical proof of how doing things is both not that scary and kind of awesome, i had spent a day living in alignment with the kind of person i wanted to be, i felt a fresh rush of love for my city and its people — and i still couldn’t imagine sending the fucking email! it was like i was looking at the thing i wanted most through a pane of glass, and the glass was actually really easy to break, so the only thing stopping me was that i was too much of a baby to do it.

and the thought that i had then, i fucking swear, was: i would be such a fucking hypocrite if i wrote quentin coldwater into a happy ending i’m too cowardly to give myself.

which is, first of all: SOOOOOOOO corny, like omg. unbelievably cringe. embarrassing as hell. but it was also my truth at that moment in time. i had no faith in my own ability to change, but i had spent five months and counting thinking about almost nothing else except the story i was writing in which quentin also has no faith in his ability to change but is brave enough to do it anyway, and i really felt like — i could not live with myself putting these ideas out into the world and refusing to integrate them into my own life. i could not write this promise that something better was possible for quentin if i wasn’t even going to try to make it possible for me. i could, apparently, live forever with my constant self-sabotage, but i couldn’t live with myself making this story a lie (this story being, again, fanfiction for a TV show that was, at its best, so great, and also, at its worst, so, SO stupid).

and like… that worked. i emailed the documents the next day; i attended my first monthly zoom meeting that weekend, during which the election was officially called, which felt like a good omen. i summoned the idea that had presented itself to me that night — don’t be a hypocrite! do what you would want quentin to do! — again a while later when my email got lost in the shuffle and i had to send a check-in following up, and again every other time something came up where my fear had to war it out with my desire. (or, well, most other times — it's a work in progress, and yes, i do still find myself calling upon this logic to this day.)

my life now looks more like the happy ending i wrote quentin into than it did almost four years ago, when i started this story, or even three years ago, when i finished it. it looks more like that future than i ever imagined my life could look when i was writing it, and not just because, as i have mentioned before, a few weeks after my election night revelation, i did do as quentin did and befriend a community-minded extrovert who invited me to join a book club. even the fact that the final part of the epilogue has taken me so much longer than expected is a funny case of life imitating art, because while i have had work and illness and travel and general life stress, i have also had many days in the past few months where i was not very productive because i was simply too busy doing something fun — the kind of never-quite-solved balancing act quentin was set to deal with in the epilogue back when i first started kicking it around, well over two years ago at this point, but which was not really applicable to my own life until basically now. and it sounds even to my own ears so, so, so insane to say this, but it’s true: i can trace every aspect of that shift to the fact that i wrote this story, and that writing it fundamentally changed something inside me for the better. (shout-out to the people in the comments who noted that the story was, in a meta sense, my own version of quentin’s coffee maker; i knew you were right, but i don’t think i knew how right until this recent bout of reflection.)

i don't really know that there's a take-away here, because "quit your job and write four hundred thousand words about a weird TV show with a niche audience" is not exactly universally applicable advice. but if i were to try to find one, i think it would be something like: i felt really crazy and kind of embarrassed the entire time i was writing this story, not because i was writing fanfiction, or because it was incredibly horny and wildly self-indulgent, but because it mattered to me so, so deeply. it was one thing to have a fun goofy hobby, even a fun goofy hobby i took semi-seriously and poured a lot of time and effort into, but it was another to actually, like, care, and to care a lot, which i did. but if i hadn't accepted that this story mattered to me, i don't think it could have been as personally transformational as it wound up becoming. the heart wants what it wants, and you're only going to find out what that is if you're willing to listen to whatever rhythm it beats.

i solved chapter five on the way home from the poll site, by the way. i knew there needed to be some problem with quentin’s first semi-successful attempt to mend the coffee maker, but i couldn’t figure out how it tied in thematically with where he was in his life. on the bus it hit me: quentin and the coffee maker were both trying to remain unbreakable. an appealing idea if you’ve been broken, but one more conducive to stagnancy than to growth; you can stay there for a while, but eventually you need to let yourself want more.

#writing tag #the magicians #isabel 2k24

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