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Cast Iron Brick
Apr 24, 2008
This show seems like it was adapted via the world's worst game of telephone.

The energy plot line here is the weirdest thing. The third book explicitly goes into how managing power works. The show decided to swap that out with an explanation of "Emotions! Or something?"

It's just continually confounding that they focus on fringe details and original plotlines that go nowhere while skipping the major thematics of the series.

Also to anyone else who hate watches this and loves the books: any good book recommendations along these lines? I'm half way through Library at Mount Char and enjoying it quite a bit.

Cast Iron Brick fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Feb 18, 2016

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Hedrigall
Mar 27, 2008

by vyelkin

Cast Iron Brick posted:

Also to anyone else who hate watches this and loves the books: any good book recommendations along these lines? I'm half way through Library at Mount Char and enjoying it quite a bit.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt, which along with The Magicians is one of my favourite books of all time.

Keep the New England exclusive college setting, keep the disaffected teens and ennui, keep the alcoholism, replace magic and Fillory with Ancient Greek and murder. It's an amazing, atmospheric novel.

Miss Mowcher
Jul 24, 2007

Ribbit

Botnit posted:

This isn't true though? A level 250 hedgewitch is supposed to be just as knowledgeable as a graduate of Hogwartsbill.

Also I just unironically said level 250 hedgewitch. Kill me now please.

Theres only a few (less than 10 ?) known '250 lvl hedgewitches', around the world (you could probably have more that don't even use the leveling system), but compare with Brakebills that consistently graduates a full class every year. (And you get the other universities around the world).

You can probably learn how to code and be a great programmer on your own but a formal education on a good university will be better for most people.

HedgeCoders hacks everything together and follow their own paradigms to get the desirable output, Brakebills Computer Scientists applies rigorous techniques to standardize code. (or something like that).

(Mid book spoilers) I honestly don't know how they're going to do the Fillory parts with low budget effects

Brass Key
Sep 15, 2007

Attention! Something tremendous has happened!
If you like The Library at Mount Char, I'd recommend giving Robert Jackson Bennett's American Elsewhere a spin. (It doesn't have anything to do with magic school though).

FRINGE
May 23, 2003
title stolen for lf posting
Its fantasy-world not ivy-league-hipsters but The Black Magician Trilogy is another fast-read magic school series:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Magician_%28novel_series%29

She also wrote a trilogy about "learning magic" that had to do with "what are the gods anyways" kind of themes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Five

FRINGE
May 23, 2003
title stolen for lf posting
Is a depressed hipster a depresster?

Na'at
May 5, 2003

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star
Lipstick Apathy
dipster

WarLocke
Jun 6, 2004

You are being watched. :allears:

Oasx posted:

Not quite, but close to it. There is an ongoing thing about Josh's power level varying wildly, and at one point the gang is practising Welters and he accidentally conjurers this dark globe that sucks in all light and it really freaks everyone out.
The tv writers decided to ruin it by giving the scene to Quentin and have it be an actual black hole.

Ah, right, I forgot about that. And then he does a big version later to suck up the fire giant, around the time that the group faced the Beast.

THAT whole sequence would have been nice to see on TV. :negative:

Tiggum
Oct 24, 2007

Your life and your quest end here.


Oasx posted:

It is a difference between self taugh and school trained.. In order to even be considered for Breakbills you have to be best of the best, they teach you magic under relatively safe conditions and you have access to teachers and knowledge.
Hedge witches teach themselves magic they don't have anywhere near the same amount of resources as the students at Breakbills.

How does this manifest though? What can a fully trained magician do that a hedge witch can't? So far I have no idea what practical use magic is to anyone, other than that trick for stealing cash from ATMs, and even less idea of what constitutes powerful or difficult magic to perform. Both Julia and Quentin have now learned that magic can't solve all your problems, but what problems can it solve?

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

Part of my impression has been that hedgewitches simply suffer from having no safety net. Like, Quention should be dead like 5 times over now but the school structure keeps bailing his rear end out. On the flip side Julia was loving around and nearly set her apartment on fire. Given enough time she's either going to kill herself, piss off that mean magician lady and get killed, or just burn out in general. So basic Darwinism probably keeps the hedgewitch population low while Brakesbill gets them through some of those rough patches until they learn how not to kill themselves.

In the end the goal of magic seems to just be money, power, and self satisfaction but I guess being a fully trained magician just gets it all a lot easier than stealing a couple of hundred dollars from an ATM and tricking for tricks.

STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Feb 19, 2016

Botnit
Jun 12, 2015

STAC Goat posted:

Part of my impression has been that hedgewitches simply suffer from having no safety net. Like, Quention should be dead like 5 times over now but the school structure keeps bailing his rear end out. On the flip side Julia was loving around and nearly set her apartment on fire. Given enough time she's either going to kill herself, piss off that mean magician lady and get killed, or just burn out in general. So basic Darwinism probably keeps the hedgewitch population low while Brakesbill gets them through some of those rough patches until they learn how not to kill themselves.

This doesn't really make sense though because Brakebills is constantly having people die. Hell they had an entire drat year of students die.

What it all boils down to is Lev Grossman being an Ivy Leaguer and instead of working it into every conversation he has like normal he decided to make a whole book out of it. Then two more.

FRINGE
May 23, 2003
title stolen for lf posting

Botnit posted:

Lev Grossman being an Ivy Leaguer and instead of working it into every conversation he has like normal he decided to make a whole book out of it. Then two more.
And the Center Of The World is New York.

Tiggum
Oct 24, 2007

Your life and your quest end here.


Botnit posted:

This doesn't really make sense though because Brakebills is constantly having people die. Hell they had an entire drat year of students die.

And is there some reason why there's only one proper magic school? Seems like there are more than enough people who fail to get into Brakebills (or just get overlooked and discover magic on their own) to make it worthwhile having more schools. And I'm assuming there are other magic schools in other places - are they all so exclusive? I don't really get why hedge witches should exist at all. It could be an economic thing, except it isn't, because Brakebills doesn't seem to care about that and it seems like it should be super easy for magicians to get whatever money they need.

If hedge witches were just isolated individuals who discovered magic on their own and had no training because they never caught the attention of any magic school recruiters, that would make sense. But given that they organise their own schools and the real magicians are obviously fully aware of them, it makes no sense.

Mouse Dresser
Sep 4, 2002

This isn't Middle Earth, Quentin. There aren't enough noble quests to go around.

Tiggum posted:

And is there some reason why there's only one proper magic school? Seems like there are more than enough people who fail to get into Brakebills (or just get overlooked and discover magic on their own) to make it worthwhile having more schools. And I'm assuming there are other magic schools in other places - are they all so exclusive? I don't really get why hedge witches should exist at all. It could be an economic thing, except it isn't, because Brakebills doesn't seem to care about that and it seems like it should be super easy for magicians to get whatever money they need.



It's said in the book that there's one school in the UK, a few across the continent of Europe, a few in Asia, 1 in New Zealand, and 1 in Tasmania. I would assume there's a Caribbean school, since there's a Jamaican professor in the books. Same goes for an African school, but it's not mentioned.

I'm on to book 2 on the re-read and MAN are they loving up Julia's journey. I do not like "hay I'm gonna rape you lol psych here's magic drug den" instead of her finding her way there through the intellectual depressed support group. It's so much better when she finds her own way rather than being brought into it. That's the the whole loving point of Hedgewitches.

It's been stated that they aren't going to shy away from THAT SCENE with Julia, so we'll see how stupid and awful it is when they get to it. Which at this pace, ought to be the next episode, or maybe after they invent some more stupid bullshit.

Final complaint: Elliot loving SUCKS so far. There's no wry charm. He's just :gay: Sassy Gay :gay: without any of the deep introspection. And Margot/Janet has no character beyond Bitch. For gently caress's sake, give us a reason to enjoy the show and the characters.

Fast Luck
Feb 2, 1988

Tiggum posted:

If hedge witches were just isolated individuals who discovered magic on their own and had no training because they never caught the attention of any magic school recruiters, that would make sense. But given that they organise their own schools and the real magicians are obviously fully aware of them, it makes no sense.
Basically the thing with the hedge witches is that there just aren't that many spells that've leaked out to the public that these sorts of people get the chance to study or learn. So like in this episode Julia got to go check out that other "safe house" the dude told her about, and she looked at their little scrapbook of spells they'd collected and was like what the gently caress, all you have is this little bit of basic poo poo? They didn't have any magic she hadn't already learned. So in addition to what other people have said about Brakebills being able to teach magic in a systematic way including like stuff about its underpinnings and theory, these hedge witches are just sifting around for whatever scraps they can find. It's not a school system the hedge witches have, just a series of safe houses each with their own little scrap book of stuff they've figured out. You could find several of them without being able to learn anything new, although most of the people that hang out in them are such scrubs that their lovely little collections seem like a lot to the majority of them. 99% of them are basically little noobs that the trained magicians would laugh at, although I do think the trained magicians are also unaware of the extent of their "scene" with their network of safe houses and little star tattoo rankings and so on, they only know that some rare people manage to learn a few inconsequential spells out there in the public.

mastajake
Oct 3, 2005

My blade is unBENDING!

Mouse Dresser posted:

It's been stated that they aren't going to shy away from THAT SCENE with Julia, so we'll see how stupid and awful it is when they get to it. Which at this pace, ought to be the next episode, or maybe after they invent some more stupid bullshit.

Dear lord, really? :gonk:

quote:

Final complaint: Elliot loving SUCKS so far. There's no wry charm. He's just :gay: Sassy Gay :gay: without any of the deep introspection. And Margot/Janet has no character beyond Bitch. For gently caress's sake, give us a reason to enjoy the show and the characters.

I dunno. I've liked him. The actor had pretty big shoes to fill with the character and I think he's done well, even if he's a little different.

Still pissed about no Josh. I'd also be pissed about the emphasis on Penny, but I like the way they're doing his story.

Tiggum
Oct 24, 2007

Your life and your quest end here.


Mouse Dresser posted:

It's said in the book that there's one school in the UK, a few across the continent of Europe, a few in Asia, 1 in New Zealand, and 1 in Tasmania. I would assume there's a Caribbean school, since there's a Jamaican professor in the books. Same goes for an African school, but it's not mentioned.

Brakebills is the only magic school in the entire country/continent? That is the dumbest thing about the setting so far. With the number of hedge witches we've seen just in this one city, there must be significantly more of them in the world than actual magicians. There seem to be about as many young hedge witches in New York as there are students at Brakebills. How many must there be across the rest of the country? And how is magic kept secret from the general populace when so many people know about it?

Fast Luck posted:

Basically the thing with the hedge witches is that there just aren't that many spells that've leaked out to the public that these sorts of people get the chance to study or learn. So like in this episode Julia got to go check out that other "safe house" the dude told her about, and she looked at their little scrapbook of spells they'd collected and was like what the gently caress, all you have is this little bit of basic poo poo? They didn't have any magic she hadn't already learned.
How is there not a massive network of hedge witches though? The internet exists. In fact, you can Google real, working spells. There should be forums and reddit groups dedicated to hedge witches sharing their spells. And are there no real magicians feeding spells to them? Like, no underachieving magician who wants to feel like a superstar meeting up with hedge witches to show off and have them fawn over him?

FRINGE
May 23, 2003
title stolen for lf posting

Tiggum posted:

Brakebills is the only magic school in the entire country/continent? That is the dumbest thing about the setting so far. With the number of hedge witches we've seen just in this one city, there must be significantly more of them in the world than actual magicians. There seem to be about as many young hedge witches in New York as there are students at Brakebills. How many must there be across the rest of the country? And how is magic kept secret from the general populace when so many people know about it?

How is there not a massive network of hedge witches though? The internet exists. In fact, you can Google real, working spells. There should be forums and reddit groups dedicated to hedge witches sharing their spells. And are there no real magicians feeding spells to them? Like, no underachieving magician who wants to feel like a superstar meeting up with hedge witches to show off and have them fawn over him?
Youre messing up someones New York centric ivy league fantasy.

Botnit
Jun 12, 2015

There is no logic behind his decision to make Brakebills "The' place. It holds up to no amount of rational thinking whatsoever.

You're literally looking for reasoning from a hack writer who got busted spamming Amazon with fake names to give his books positive reviews.

For less negativity, I want more Dean on the show. He's the one good actor and they need to start putting him in every scene even if it doesn't make sense.

Botnit fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Feb 19, 2016

Rhyno
Mar 22, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!

Botnit posted:

You're literally looking for reasoning from a hack writer who got busted spamming Amazon with fake names to give his books positive reviews.


Hahaha what? This sounds amazing.

Botnit
Jun 12, 2015

Rhyno posted:

Hahaha what? This sounds amazing.

It was

quote:

in response to his novel Warp receiving largely negative customer reviews, he submitted fake reviews to Amazon using false names. He then recounted these actions in an essay titled "Terrors of the Amazon"[9]

Want something even more damning? He gave glowing reviews to all the Twilight books and called Meyers "the next JK Rowling". I guess that means he plans to copy her too :smugdog:

I'm sure the people ITT who liked Magicians will want to argue about him not being a hack so I'm not going to say anything else about it. The show seems to only be taking very small amounts of the books so it's probably meaningless what I think of the books anyway.

Botnit fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Feb 19, 2016

Mouse Dresser
Sep 4, 2002

This isn't Middle Earth, Quentin. There aren't enough noble quests to go around.

mastajake posted:

Dear lord, really? :gonk:


I dunno. I've liked him. The actor had pretty big shoes to fill with the character and I think he's done well, even if he's a little different.

Still pissed about no Josh. I'd also be pissed about the emphasis on Penny, but I like the way they're doing his story.

The actor is great, it's just that the show hasn't given anything to Elliott besides :gay: OH SASSY.

I'm irritated by Penny Quantum Leaping to Fillory. It makes the whole button thing a moot point. When Penny busts into the apartment with the button after Quentin cheats on Alice, there's such a huge tension and relief at the same time. Now that he can make his Next Leap into Fillory, it's loving idiotic. Also, that means his poo poo regarding staying in the Neitherlands almost impossible.

And regarding Josh: If he's not in the show, then who is going to have the big palace in Venice? I'd like to think they wouldn't abandon Quentin talking to a loving dragon, but if they get rid of the Chatwin's Button, and Josh, then there's no point to having the Venice poo poo at all.

Hedrigall
Mar 27, 2008

by vyelkin
"If we don't have Josh, we never have to show Venice" said SyFy, and crossed another million off the budget. "Now let's talk about if we really need to go to Fillory."

FishionMailed
Feb 2, 2014

by zen death robot
The books weren't the best but I enjoyed reading them. Kiiinda got a little sloggy for me near the end but the first one was really enjoyable.

Tiggum posted:

Brakebills is the only magic school in the entire country/continent? That is the dumbest thing about the setting so far. With the number of hedge witches we've seen just in this one city, there must be significantly more of them in the world than actual magicians. There seem to be about as many young hedge witches in New York as there are students at Brakebills. How many must there be across the rest of the country? And how is magic kept secret from the general populace when so many people know about it?

How is there not a massive network of hedge witches though? The internet exists. In fact, you can Google real, working spells. There should be forums and reddit groups dedicated to hedge witches sharing their spells. And are there no real magicians feeding spells to them? Like, no underachieving magician who wants to feel like a superstar meeting up with hedge witches to show off and have them fawn over him?


Okay but imagine that there are a bunch of E/N rejects living in basement 'safehouses' trying to tell you that magic is REAL just come to this crack house equivalent and learn all about it or if the guardians of magic on the internet were depressed furry weirdos like Schmorky x10. You can google 'real' spells right now too but you don't because you (rightfully) think they are written by wanna be Wiccans or something. Now just imagine that if you took that secret ritual spell a bunch of internet strangers told you about and after practicing it hundreds of times it had some minor spell effect like making some light trails. Is it really so hard to imagine why only a certain few would actually take the time to a) track magic down and b) practice a seemingly psycho and useless thing to the point of obsession?

Idk I think you're getting a little too nitpicky over a book about magic. Most of those complaints apply to HP too but no one cares.

Fwiw in the books Brakebills graduates like what 15-20 people a year and they presumably scour the whole country for candidates? I don't think there's really all that many magic capable people really.

Also the fundamental difference between Brakebills and hedgewitches in the books imo is that the hedgewitches just practice spells handed down to them by the 'real' magicians, but they have no ability to either construct spells of their own or even understand the underpinnings of what they are doing. They're script kiddies basically; able to run commands on programs that other people have coded together but unable to make an .exe of their own or even write code. Yeah a very small few of them can get past that but for 99.9% of them it's just a fun hobby like 'check out this basic spell I can do that makes lights go different colors, cool huh?'

And I don't think a Brakebills grad cares about impressing a bunch of rejects as the books imply you can basically do whatever the hell you want; if you want to be rich and famous you can do that no problem so why bother impressing a bunch of basement dwellers?


e: geez lotta words sorry

FishionMailed fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Feb 19, 2016

Miss Mowcher
Jul 24, 2007

Ribbit
Mages can change your memories too, so they can keep politicians and other people of interest in check. The page Julia found with a real spell was taken out of the internet etc.

While you would have people saying "magic is real!! aliens!! conspiracy!!" all the governments and media could be controllable. (They do make a fact that some magicians like to play games of influence and manipulation in global scale, after all, when you're a full fledge magician you can do almost anything you want)

Tiggum
Oct 24, 2007

Your life and your quest end here.


FishionMailed posted:

Okay but imagine that there are a bunch of E/N rejects living in basement 'safehouses' trying to tell you that magic is REAL just come to this crack house equivalent and learn all about it or if the guardians of magic on the internet were depressed furry weirdos like Schmorky x10. You can google 'real' spells right now too but you don't because you (rightfully) think they are written by wanna be Wiccans or something.
Yes, but I think that because I've never seen anyone do actual magic. If I were, say, Julia, able to do actual magic of my own, I'd be a lot more motivated to sift through the garbage to find more genuine spells.

FishionMailed posted:

Now just imagine that if you took that secret ritual spell a bunch of internet strangers told you about and after practicing it hundreds of times it had some minor spell effect like making some light trails. Is it really so hard to imagine why only a certain few would actually take the time to a) track magic down and b) practice a seemingly psycho and useless thing to the point of obsession?
Sure, there aren't going to be a lot of hedge witches as a percentage of the total population, but in the show we've already seen that there are way more hedge witches than actual magicians. So I don't really know what your point is?

FishionMailed posted:

Idk I think you're getting a little too nitpicky over a book about magic. Most of those complaints apply to HP too but no one cares.
Two things: Harry Potter is a children's book, and in that universe the wizards essentially live in a whole different world to muggles, and basically anyone who can do magic at all goes to wizard school and gets to live in wizard land. There isn't the subculture of people who can do real magic excluded from wizard school and living amongst muggles.

FishionMailed posted:

Fwiw in the books Brakebills graduates like what 15-20 people a year and they presumably scour the whole country for candidates? I don't think there's really all that many magic capable people really.
We've already seen quite a few of them just in New York though. :shrug:

FishionMailed posted:

And I don't think a Brakebills grad cares about impressing a bunch of rejects as the books imply you can basically do whatever the hell you want; if you want to be rich and famous you can do that no problem so why bother impressing a bunch of basement dwellers?
If that's the case, fair enough, but we haven't seen any indication of that in the show so far.

ZZZorcerer posted:

Mages can change your memories too, so they can keep politicians and other people of interest in check.
How effective is that though? I mean, it didn't work on Julia at all. Maybe it works better on non-magical people? They don't seem to be particularly concerned about hedge witches running around potentially blowing the lid off their secret though. With the speed things can spread these days, all it would take is the wrong video to go viral and you've got more people who've seen it than you could ever hope to wipe the memories of and people re-uploading it every time you get it taken down.

Tiggum fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Feb 20, 2016

Miss Mowcher
Jul 24, 2007

Ribbit

Tiggum posted:

How effective is that though? I mean, it didn't work on Julia at all. Maybe it works better on non-magical people? They don't seem to be particularly concerned about hedge witches running around potentially blowing the lid off their secret though. With the speed things can spread these days, all it would take is the wrong video to go viral and you've got more people who've seen it than you could ever hope to wipe the memories of and people re-uploading it every time you get it taken down.

Well, as efective as the plot needs :v: kinda like Men in Black. Julia remembered more because of some inconsistencies in her memory (person who made the new memories didn't know a lot about her) and she's one of the brightest students in the country, competitive, driven etc. she just wouldn't let it go.

And while the book doesn't expand a lot (some setting spoilers from book 2 and 3, probably) there's Dragons that could be secretly hiding magic and doing dragon stuff and that organization from the portal lands have access to some major arcana, probably some mass mind wipe and stuff like that

He doesn't go in a lot of details but if needed you could explain about as believable as any other book with magic, aliens, big secrets and etc. in modern times.

Miss Mowcher fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Feb 20, 2016

gohmak
Feb 12, 2004
cookies need love
As a non book reader this show is very enjoyable and you book readers are more insufferable than ASOIAF.

Cast Iron Brick
Apr 24, 2008

gohmak posted:

As a non book reader this show is very enjoyable and you book readers are more insufferable than ASOIAF.

Naw, those fans are happier. They got three good seasons!

Azhais
Feb 5, 2007
Switchblade Switcharoo

Cast Iron Brick posted:

Naw, those fans are happier. They got three good seasons!

But their happiness is tempered by the fact that that fat bastard is going to die before he finishes the series

muscles like this!
Jan 17, 2005


Aw, I was kind of hoping that the big test was just quiz night.

Edit: lol, they're being Naruto'ed.

muscles like this! fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Feb 23, 2016

Mons Hubris
Aug 29, 2004

fanci flup :)


Well I felt like that episode was better than the others so far. That lady sure was bleeding a lot though.

Josh Lyman
May 24, 2009


Mouse Dresser posted:

It's said in the book that there's one school in the UK, a few across the continent of Europe, a few in Asia, 1 in New Zealand, and 1 in Tasmania. I would assume there's a Caribbean school, since there's a Jamaican professor in the books. Same goes for an African school, but it's not mentioned.
What kind of moron would have a school in both New Zealand and Tasmania but not in Australia?

Johnny Joestar
Oct 21, 2010

Don't shoot him?

...
...



lmao it's kind of amazing that from the sounds of it they're going to keep the bit where julia gets raped by the fox-demon-thing or whatever the gently caress, one of the most lovely, unnecessary edgelord things i've ever read in a book

prak
Jan 3, 2006

---------
Nap Ghost

Cast Iron Brick posted:

Also to anyone else who hate watches this and loves the books: any good book recommendations along these lines? I'm half way through Library at Mount Char and enjoying it quite a bit.
I am hate watching the show but have not read the books so I'm not sure how close the recommendation is going to get beyond "also has magic" but Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. It also had a television adaptation last year. Seemed pretty decent; it went faster than the book but didn't feel like it lost anything very important.
Book is great and if anyone just wants to watch magic on television you might find this a little more satisfying.

About The Magicians books; are they actually any good or do they just do some decent world building with a pretty terrible actual plot? The comments here are giving me the impression it is the latter but I might just be mixing it up with the ones about the show.

Johnny Joestar posted:

one of the most lovely, unnecessary edgelord things i've ever read in a book
Yeah, stuff like this makes me think I should stick to just hate watching and hoping it magically makes Continuum not cancelled.

Johnny Joestar
Oct 21, 2010

Don't shoot him?

...
...



they have some interesting ideas and it's very obvious why people could get really into them, but in general the books had this weird aftertaste to them like i'd just read someone's attempt at trying to make fun of YA fiction that managed to have just as much dumb poo poo of its own design layered in

i never read the third book, but after the first two i didn't really have a desire to.

navyjack
Jul 15, 2006



Watching Ep 1 ... Did they just tell me to get off my meds cause I'm "angry" and "alone?"

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Tiggum posted:

How does this manifest though? What can a fully trained magician do that a hedge witch can't? So far I have no idea what practical use magic is to anyone, other than that trick for stealing cash from ATMs, and even less idea of what constitutes powerful or difficult magic to perform. Both Julia and Quentin have now learned that magic can't solve all your problems, but what problems can it solve?

Nothing, basically. I thought that was always kind of the theme of the books. Magic is the result of a broken universe, which is why only broken people can use it, and broken people don't really solve problems. Usually the use of magic is either inconsequential or makes a bad situation worse somehow. The few people who mature enough to actually try to do something big and interesting just turn completely into monsters in a big ironic explosion (I guess this is supposed to be a form of transcending your hosed up human life and just becoming like a magic blue elf monster person forever)

Johnny Joestar posted:

they have some interesting ideas and it's very obvious why people could get really into them, but in general the books had this weird aftertaste to them like i'd just read someone's attempt at trying to make fun of YA fiction that managed to have just as much dumb poo poo of its own design layered in

i never read the third book, but after the first two i didn't really have a desire to.

The third book is the best one, especially if you disliked the second book. The third book is Quentin realizing that he's not hot poo poo in a champagne glass, he's actually cold diarrhea in a Dixie cup. There's even an older magician who just straight up tells Quentin that he'll never amount to anything important and is basically like "I'm a badass so you can have some of this magic stuff I've made, you sure as gently caress need it you pathetic sack of poo poo"

My favorite part was how his "mysterious" specialty that was built up over two books wound up being something completely lame, like I think it was "fixing small objects". Literally everything in the third book was about tearing down the legendary image that Quentin had built of himself

Oasx
Oct 11, 2006

Freshly Squeezed
I would be curious whether the producers of the show looked at street dance when coming up with the magic hand movements on the show, they remind me quite a lot of tutting.

prak posted:

About The Magicians books; are they actually any good or do they just do some decent world building with a pretty terrible actual plot? The comments here are giving me the impression it is the latter but I might just be mixing it up with the ones about the show.

The first book is very flawed, it has some really interesting ideas and world building, but you pretty much hate all the characters (apart from Josh who is not in the show). It is called the Anti-Harry Potter for many reasons, but mainly because it is pretty depressing. It is a book you either love or hate.
I don't like the other two books anywhere near as much, since they for the most part take place in Fillory, which is a boring place (apart from Julia's story).

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IRQ
Sep 9, 2001

SUCK A DICK, DUMBSHITS!

Well looks like we get furry porn next week.

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