Conversation

Aug 13, 2020

finished rereading The Magicians. tentatively, i’m not sure the ending of this book really works thematically. there’s this clear theme about how magic won’t solve nihilism and ennui and when they decide to go back at the end it undermines that theme

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QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

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@QiaochuYuan

· Aug 12, 2020

rereading The Magicians and hyperfocusing this time on any scene involving anyone’s parents

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QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

)

@QiaochuYuan

Aug 13, 2020

a lot of stuff happens very quickly and in particular the big reveal that everything was set up by jane using a time machine changes the meaning of everything that happened previously and i can’t tell what if anything it has to do with the nihilism / ennui theme

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

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@QiaochuYuan

Aug 13, 2020

martin chatwin is an amazing villain though, a million times creepier and more interesting than voldemort but overall i feel like i have no objections until they hit fillory and then i really wonder how the entire last third could be made thematically tighter

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

)

@QiaochuYuan

Aug 13, 2020

if you take the first two-thirds of the book at face value, totally seriously, and run them forward, then i think what you get is that everyone dies in fillory because they suck and brakebills sucked. eaten alive by their own narcissism and self-hatred

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

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@QiaochuYuan

we’ll see how i feel about thematic cohesion after finishing the rest of the series i guess

10:49 AM · Aug 13, 2020Twitter for iPad

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Elizabeth Van Nostrand

@acesounderglass

Aug 13, 2020

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@QiaochuYuan

On 1st read I thought the 2nd book's point completely undermined the first. On 2nd read I realized I was committing exactly the fallacy the two books were pointing at together.