Elven Academy

(I’ve returned to work on Elven Academy, and released new patch notes and a short state of the game, including a bit of new content. The patch notes are in the post below this one. And TLDR – The Magicians sucks, and I couldn’t really get much use from this murky clown fiesta.)

When I initially started working on Elven Academy, (then called ‘Owl River’, whence to return if anyone steals the name Elven Academy from me), I imagined a more adult, darker version of Harry Potter.

It turns out my writing skills are not as good as J.K. Rowling. Nonetheless, this general idea has been tried, of course, many times by other writers. So naturally I want to check out those writers to see what they are up to.

One such attempt is ‘The Magicians’, a SyFy series based on a novel trilogy by the American author Lev Grossman, first published in 2009. In recent weeks I’ve forced myself to watch the first season of The Magicians on Netflix. I find the show to be rather bad. ‘Forced myself to watch’ is not an exaggeration.

In fact, I’m on episode 2 or 3 of season 2, and can’t seem to force myself any further. This is frankly terrible, even though season 2 was supposed to be better. It’s a writing mess imho.

So I wanted to write out the relevance of this show to my own project, a relevant review let’s say, in case my adventure with this show is at an end, but while it is still fresh.

Could I read the novel? Yes. Do I have time for that? Maybe. Am I going to pay $12.99 for a fucking Kindle novel? Hell no. Game over Mr. Grossman.

Adult Content And Sex

An explosive consternation of mine has been any insertion of adult content in a game that is largely educational in intent (on equal footing to pure amusement, depending on the user), yet also set in a very dark fantasy setting, darker than The Magicians certainly.

I’m worried this can be taken the wrong way, even though I’ve made it clear that the academy is a college setting with people of all ages traveling from Earth to study there.

The Magicians has a 16+ audience Rating in the U.S. (TV-14 official in the U.S. and Mexico), and is described as a “Darker, more adult magical quest for the Harry Potter set.” There is an uncensored version showing on Syfy.com apparently, which shows nipples.

So what does the 14 – 16+ mean in reality in this case? Well, it means no nipples. Netflix has the censored version. I found the ratings 14 and 16 stated on other websites. Here are my notes from show season one.

Examples of “TV-14 or 16+” from The Magicians

Bad guy rips the eyeballs out of the headmaster and tosses the bloody eyeballs on a desk.

Someone overloads a spell and burns to death, becomes a hungry ghost that tries to strangle his own sister. (Goofy, pointless scene that led nowhere.)

Graphic scene of woman’s head exploding with blood from a curse. (No character rationale for committing wanton bloody murder with insanely powerful magic btw, or any ill effects from casting such curses.)

Scene of bad guy possessing a young man, using the guy to choke to death a beloved female character, then squeeze her head until it explodes with blood all over his face.

Beloved children’s author turns out to be a pedo. Graphic scene of coaxing, grooming, and photographing a young boy.

Meanwhile author’s sister cruelly punishes, and eventually drugs and murders the children to prevent them from escaping or revealing the pedo secrets, buries their bodies in the cellar. Heroes dig up one of the kids’ bodies to get a magic button.

Curse that causes a plant to grow under your skin and strangle your heart.

Light lesbian scene, groping breasts with female character dressed as a slave (Leia.)

Drinking. Drug usage (pills). Cocaine and crack use by main characters, with discussion of overdoses.

Various drugs, psychadelics, the air around Fillory is .02% opium (for no apparent reason.)

Mild Roman orgy with togas, upskirt. Side boob and bare back with towel. (Badly shot scene, gratuitous, followed by same in a bathtub scene.)

Bestiality with a talking horse mentioned. Eating goat penis for virility mentioned.

Cup of satyr semen is drunk.

Torturing someone to death mentioned.

Sex magic with simultaneous orgasm required, leading to a bedroom scene with bare girl’s back, riding cowgirl, bad moaning.

Graphic suicide by shotgun in mouth with blood spraying out the back of the head. (Getting rid of the other really good, likeable side character and actor btw.)

Scenes of mass murder with bloody bodies.

Graphic forced rape (with clothes on), with blood all over and gooey overabundance of semen.

Language Examples

Dick buckets. Shitty. Fuck. Cameltoe. Mind slut. All kinds of drug references.

Conclusion On Adult Content

The Magicians first season seems to load every episode with as much sex and drugs as possible, even involving the main characters, filling the show with cheap thrills and juvenile decadence that gloss over the weaknesses in writing.

The Magicians has random occasional use of Latin and complicated hand gestures (mudras) to make magic look like serious business. Harry Potter style wands are not a thing here. I like the wands. The hand gestures are used sometimes, but not others. Overall I’m not a fan.

After watching this show, 16+ is clearly a lot nastier ‘these days’ than I’ve always imagined. I am old.

So apparently I can push things a lot further without too much worry, including fountains and lakes of dead bodies and blood, and horrible graphic curse effects, as long as I don’t show any nipples or butts.

This is ridiculous?

It really just makes me want to do an 18+ game. Another option is to sell an 18+ ‘Romance Pack’. This allows me to offer the free download to all audiences, and better control who gets the 18+ somehow. But that has really sleazy optics. It would probably look worse than just making the game 18+, yes?

But maybe that’s the way. It doesn’t need to be sleazy, I mean look at all the adult games on Steam. I’ve never felt more like a boomer, but that’s where I’m at.

Game Design Take-aways From The Magicians

I feel I could do a bit more drugs, sex, and partial nudity.

In season one, the best parts were the humor and comedy, but that idea just falls on its face in season 2. I can’t stand any scene with Julia really.

More semen drinking? Lots more blood? Blood doesn’t have any effect on me for horror, so I never use it, and I should probably use it more.

The Wikipedia entry discusses character development and arcs, but those were lost on me in the show. I thought Quentin Coldwater was supposed to represent Everyman, and help the audience identify with him. The point is raised about the hero not really being ‘the hero’, which is a twist that approaches higher literary levels, but Quentin is no Bilbo or Frodo?

I definitely need to improve those personal story arcs in my characters, but let’s be honest, the character motivations in the Magicians are very frustrating to get a handle on, honestly. The main character’s primary motivation throughout seems to be that he loves Fillory. That’s it.

Why? Well it turns out his books don’t depict an accurate Fillory. Does the show really get into this character inner conflict, his dashed expectations? His revised goals in life? No, not nearly enough. What are his goals? What happened to Julia’s goals? Think dumpster and fire.

What does any character even want? Eliot doesn’t even care about being king. Julia wants revenge, but every scene with Julia I want to skip. The show would be better if she didn’t exist. (Hands raised in confusion, at a loss.)

I could use more curses. They aren’t used as well as they could be in the Magicians because they never seem personal. In Harry Potter, curses are very personal. You get up in someone’s face and wave a wand and say ‘Cruciatis,’ and they know what’s up.

Now that I think of it, the conflicts in the Magicians are also a dumpster fire. In season one and the early innings of season 2, who is conflicting with the main hero, Quentin Coldwater, like the Dark Lord conflicted with Harry throughout the HP books? No one. The ‘dark lord’ just keeps sparing Quentin for no particular reason.

The magical traveling modes, the magical libraries, the quirky librarians, the different dimensions of existence are all well done.

The time travel is interesting, but the show establishes at first that time passes much faster on earth (when Penny first visits Fillory, he is gone 2 weeks instead of 2 hours), but the show then seems to throw that time problem right out when it becomes inconvenient to the plot. The characters would be gone for months from school. Do they even take classes? What are the professors even doing? Etc..

That’s it, please leave any comments below, and thanks for reading.