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toujours_nigel) wrote2019-04-19 10:04 am
toujours_nigel) wrote2019-04-19 10:04 am
Entry tags:
still angry about The Magicians
so angry and this whole post is gonna be under a cut because I'm furious. Also because talking about death and phobia and narrative choices in that regard.
So the way we get introduced to Eliot and Margo is one of those fabulously co-dependent one soul two bodies friendships that happen in college and grad school, when you're living away from family for the first time and there's this person who knows nothing about your context and you just. love each other. you're their Person, and nothing and nobody is likely to match up to that. And the usual narrative of these friendships, especially when depicted post that first exhilaration of having Found your Person! Who Gets You! is that, well, either it turns romantic or it doesn't last because something else turns romantic, because amatonormativity is a fucking...
Anyway. So Eliot and Margo are fabulous bitches who have been friends for at least a year but I'm gonna guess they were friends in college, but who knows I have friends I met in grad school and by second semester they were in my blood so. They hang around, they fuck other people, they maybe fuck each other -- I mean, they absolutely fuck each other but that's not so much of a thing -- and they are marked by an inability? refusal? to catch feelings. Even with Q, who is an obvious quick-entrant into their tight little contra mundum clinch, he's never more important in the first couple seasons than they are to each other. And that's fine, that's whatever, Q has his own bff and also the very tentative thing with Alice, so El & Margo are Fascinating Seniors who change your world but aren't your world.
And then the narrative takes its toll, and El & Margo have their separate lives and quests and --how did that happen -- romances, but they still come back to each other, and Q is already part of their circle so it's not so much of a departure *and* El/Q are never a thing in a timeline with Margo in it, so. Now neither is Margo/Josh a thing while El is El, and I think it's like the one tolerable thing in this last episode that they didn't manage to get the Monster out of El without Margo, that it was Margo who did it, because of course it was Margo, it had to be Margo. Still side-eyeing the whole Staying Behind With Josh thing but okay.
And now Quentin is dead because what else do you do with a depressed bisexual man except have him suicide and justify it as a noble act narrativally. I mean, you can't possibly LEAVE HIM ALIVE AND PROCESSING HIS YEARS OF TRAUMA ON TOP OF HIS YEARS OF SUICIDAL DEPRESSION EVEN THOUGH YOU ALREADY SHOWED HIM FACING DOWN THE SUICIDAL DEPRESSION MONSTER OH NO THAT WOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE. So now what? El sings his song and throws a peach into the fire and briefly holds hands with Alice and. Okay, now what? I notice Josh and Fen were in Fillory and time passed there so probably we get no more of Josh, and maybe that becomes a shared grief -- losing romantic partners -- and El & Margo get to step back into each other's lives completely again.
But Eliot spent fifty years with the love of his life, and then a year locked away in his own mind while a monster wearing his body tortured his family, and particularly his... well, his husband really however estranged or otherwise, and he promised himself that if he got out of it he was going to be with Quentin in a real way, and instead he came bleeding back under Margo's hands and never got to see Q at all. And now Q's dead, apparently permanently dead, and possibly Fen and Josh and Fillory are all also gone, and.
Look. I adore Margo, she's my nuclear-blooded queen, and I'm hoping this whole season of awful snaps Margo & El back into their soulmates place, but. We saw how Eliot coped with Mike. I'm terrified of how he's going to fail to cope with Quentin being dead. That's a lot of words I just spent on saying that, but I'm scared. I don't know if the show is going to get Josh back and let him and Margo be a thing but I've gotta tell you I'm hoping not, because that's.
That's the narrative, right? Your college and grad-school friendships don't last in their initial intensity, because you fall in love with someone and you mellow out. Or, and usually if you're queer, your friends find love and move on, and you're left with the memory of what almost happened.
So the way we get introduced to Eliot and Margo is one of those fabulously co-dependent one soul two bodies friendships that happen in college and grad school, when you're living away from family for the first time and there's this person who knows nothing about your context and you just. love each other. you're their Person, and nothing and nobody is likely to match up to that. And the usual narrative of these friendships, especially when depicted post that first exhilaration of having Found your Person! Who Gets You! is that, well, either it turns romantic or it doesn't last because something else turns romantic, because amatonormativity is a fucking...
Anyway. So Eliot and Margo are fabulous bitches who have been friends for at least a year but I'm gonna guess they were friends in college, but who knows I have friends I met in grad school and by second semester they were in my blood so. They hang around, they fuck other people, they maybe fuck each other -- I mean, they absolutely fuck each other but that's not so much of a thing -- and they are marked by an inability? refusal? to catch feelings. Even with Q, who is an obvious quick-entrant into their tight little contra mundum clinch, he's never more important in the first couple seasons than they are to each other. And that's fine, that's whatever, Q has his own bff and also the very tentative thing with Alice, so El & Margo are Fascinating Seniors who change your world but aren't your world.
And then the narrative takes its toll, and El & Margo have their separate lives and quests and --how did that happen -- romances, but they still come back to each other, and Q is already part of their circle so it's not so much of a departure *and* El/Q are never a thing in a timeline with Margo in it, so. Now neither is Margo/Josh a thing while El is El, and I think it's like the one tolerable thing in this last episode that they didn't manage to get the Monster out of El without Margo, that it was Margo who did it, because of course it was Margo, it had to be Margo. Still side-eyeing the whole Staying Behind With Josh thing but okay.
And now Quentin is dead because what else do you do with a depressed bisexual man except have him suicide and justify it as a noble act narrativally. I mean, you can't possibly LEAVE HIM ALIVE AND PROCESSING HIS YEARS OF TRAUMA ON TOP OF HIS YEARS OF SUICIDAL DEPRESSION EVEN THOUGH YOU ALREADY SHOWED HIM FACING DOWN THE SUICIDAL DEPRESSION MONSTER OH NO THAT WOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE. So now what? El sings his song and throws a peach into the fire and briefly holds hands with Alice and. Okay, now what? I notice Josh and Fen were in Fillory and time passed there so probably we get no more of Josh, and maybe that becomes a shared grief -- losing romantic partners -- and El & Margo get to step back into each other's lives completely again.
But Eliot spent fifty years with the love of his life, and then a year locked away in his own mind while a monster wearing his body tortured his family, and particularly his... well, his husband really however estranged or otherwise, and he promised himself that if he got out of it he was going to be with Quentin in a real way, and instead he came bleeding back under Margo's hands and never got to see Q at all. And now Q's dead, apparently permanently dead, and possibly Fen and Josh and Fillory are all also gone, and.
Look. I adore Margo, she's my nuclear-blooded queen, and I'm hoping this whole season of awful snaps Margo & El back into their soulmates place, but. We saw how Eliot coped with Mike. I'm terrified of how he's going to fail to cope with Quentin being dead. That's a lot of words I just spent on saying that, but I'm scared. I don't know if the show is going to get Josh back and let him and Margo be a thing but I've gotta tell you I'm hoping not, because that's.
That's the narrative, right? Your college and grad-school friendships don't last in their initial intensity, because you fall in love with someone and you mellow out. Or, and usually if you're queer, your friends find love and move on, and you're left with the memory of what almost happened.