Well!! I both didn't really get any time off and also have been sick, so this is extremely overdue—best laid plans, et cetera. That said:
This post is a primer for the SyFy TV adaptation of The Magicians. However, it comes with two very very important footnotes:
- It is a primer with a very specific and narrow purpose—namely, to give a few people who read my DW and wanted to read my MHHE fic, but aren't familiar with the source, enough background that they can follow the story.
- I do not recommend watching SyFy's adaptation of The Magicians.
Re: 1: first—this primer is specifically the SyFy show; the books have a number of differences that don't bear exploring at this juncture. Additionally, in this post I'm skipping or editing a lot of canon content and characterization that's not really relevant to my fic, including—deliberately—sidelining many core-cast canon characters, including several of whom I am extremely fond (and who play larger roles in other stuff I've written), but who are pretty tertiary to this particular fic. I'm also going to mention a few things that are specifically universe-architectural canon-departure decisions, just so it's clear to a casual reader where the story goes (and remains) AU.
Re: 2, This isn't really the place for going into my reasons for withdrawing my earlier (post-S3) recommendation for the show, but in case you weren't here for that trashfire: I feel like I've previouslycovered that stuff, uh. Pretty thoroughly.
I also am going to note that this post is only very lightly illustrated, because this fic was written for a Big Bang challenge and is accompanied by an extraordinary amount of really amazing artwork made by yourtinseltinkerbell, so I'm assuming that once I get you past telling the two white guys apart, you'll be okay navigating the work as it stands on a visual level.
This post (like my story, and the show) merits warnings for disturbing content and consent issues, ( including references to... ) You can also assume this contains spoilers for the show, and some (very small/background-y) spoilers for my story.
Okay, housekeeping out of the way, here we go:
( Canon explainer, in a hundred words or fewer. )
( My AUification premise (plus, an explanation of *why* this was my AUification premise). )
Okay. So at this point in this primer, you probably know enough to follow my MHHE fic just fine, because my story starts in a pretty AU place, with regard to characters and their relationships, and it has to give all readers—whether or not they're familiar with the canon—a lot of background as it goes. However, since I know it can be helpful to know a little bit of background about the main and secondary characters in canon, I'm putting that below; as well as a glossary, which you might want to keep open in a tab for reference as you go. I also decided (after quite a bit of internal back and forth about it) to put my OCs' names in the secondary character reference and just mention that they're OCs, so that you can know when there is and is not off-screen background info about a character that you don't have. That said: the character reference for the primary characters is not something I can very effectively keep short, because a lot of what I'm trying to communicate is, like, tone and feel/emotional impressions about those characters. So I'm going to just reiterate now—you are probably good to read the fic at this point, if you want to skip all the rest of this, or just use it as reference as you go.
Okay! Let's do it:
( Main characters (in some depth). )
( Some additional untangling of canon, meta-canon, and fanon, re: Eliot, Quentin, and Margo. )
( Alphabetical reference for secondary characters. )
Um—okay, that's everyone I could think of on, like, four passes through this list... feel free to let me know in comments, though, if I missed any characters that I should add; this story is huge, so I'm sure I did.
( Glossary )
(The glossary is another one where I'm sure I missed stuff; please feel free to ask in comments or DMs if there's something you'd like me to add.)