The Magicians Big Bang

Welcome to The Magicians Big Bang, a collaborative fic and art challenge for SyFy’s The Magicians! (Banner/icon credit: @dressrosaa

[magiciansbigbang]

We, the mods, are so tremendously proud of every single participant in this event. It’s been our honor and privilege to give you all a platform and help bring your beautiful works of art to life. 

For posterity, we’ve collected all of the works in this challenge on a blog page, so the related tumblr posts can be found and shared in the future.

✨ MAGICIANS BIG BANG 2021 RECAP ✨ 

Thank you again to everyone involved, even if you weren’t able to complete the challenge this time around. (Perhaps you’ll get another chance...)

xoxo, Hailey, Sylph, Cee, Rebecca, and River

[magiciansbigbang]

MAGICIANS BIG BANG WEEK 4: RECAP

Plum and Ted’s Excellent Adventure by @cha-cha-charlton, @fishfingersandscarves (Art: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

Time travel has made Quentin Coldwater’s life harder in a million different ways. Maybe in the hands of someone who cares, it can finally save him.

Anchor Escapement by @hmgfanfic, @canonicallyhugedick (Art: 1, 2, 3 | on AO3)

Quentin is, of course, still curled in a ball when Eliot glides down beside him. He moves slowly, so as not to spook the poor thing, and it takes three gentle coughs from his throat before Quentin finally lifts his head from his hands, blinking at Eliot with a blank expression.

Eliot gives him a small, hopefully genial smile. “Mind if I join you?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” Quentin rolls his eyes back and slams his head into the wall.

Eliot Waugh has been captivated by Quentin Coldwater since the moment their eyes first met. Unfortunately, their eyes first met while Eliot was hooking up with Quentin’s boyfriend.

It’s not exactly Casablanca.

a way in the wilderness by @stormscoming, @dressrosaa (Art)

Holy fucking hell. It really is him. “Eliot,” he repeats, mouth hanging open as he registers the radiant white robes, a shimmering pattern of gold vines twisting and cracking across the diaphanous fabric like lightning. What the fuck is he wearing? He looks like—like a—

“You—you’re a—” Quentin’s eyes snap shut, as though reality might reshape itself into something that actually makes any fucking sense when he opens them. Nope. No such luck. “You’re a priest.”

Silence stretches a chasm between them until, finally: “I’m not a priest.”

(After surviving the monster, Quentin and Eliot drifted apart. Five years later, Quentin ventures into the Fillorian wilderness to find his old friend.)

time won’t fly by @prettyboysdontlookatexplosions, @yourtinseltinkerbell (Art: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)

Between slipping grades and an explosive break-up, Quentin's first year at Brakebills was coming to a miserable close—and that was before the Beast attacked. Now everyone's cancelling their summer plans to join in the fight against an existential threat, Fillory is both real and much deadlier than in the books, and it turns out Quentin sucks as much at battle magic as he does at everything else. As the war drags on, dying in battle starts to seem like the best possible outcome, the answer to all his problems: one shining moment of glory, and then he's finally free. It's a foolproof plan—until he wakes up and has to do it all over again.

(Or: An action movie about wanting to die, with time loops.)

[yourtinseltinkerbell]

Quentin feels a smile spreading on his face like dawn breaking, love filling his body like magic. The way his heart swells to fit it, to fill the ache of the past and the terror of the future and the joy, the sweet radiant joy of this moment here, now: the solid heat of Eliot’s body, the sweetness of his touch. The sureness in Quentin’s own arms around him, holding on to a moment that’s real. A moment that matters; a moment that’s theirs. A moment they’ll carry with them, through all the days to come.

—TIME WON’T FLY by theheartischill & yourtinseltinkerbell | read on AO3

[yourtinseltinkerbell]

    —the sword sinks deeper into the ground as Quentin’s heart sings it, cries it, shouts it into the sky—     —more—     The world goes white.

—TIME WON’T FLY by theheartischill & yourtinseltinkerbell | read on AO3

[yourtinseltinkerbell]

Right. No other ending; no other future. There never had been. He’d been a fool to think otherwise.

—TIME WON’T FLY by theheartischill & yourtinseltinkerbell | read on AO3

[yourtinseltinkerbell]

    “I really don’t think that’s it, Penny,” Julia said. “I mean, I’ve gotten super wasted around him, and I’ve never spilled on mine before.”     Quentin was losing patience. “Fine, then. Give me something I couldn’t look up, and we’ll try it again.”     Penny glared at him, like Quentin was doing this just to fuck with his head, then shrugged. “Alright, fine. My third grade teacher was named Ms. Thewlis. Bring that back to future-me, and he’ll think you might be onto something.”

—TIME WON’T FLY by theheartischill & yourtinseltinkerbell | read on AO3

[yourtinseltinkerbell]

    “Okay,” he said finally. “Okay. But — can I just have this, first? Can we just — fall asleep here, and I can have that memory — and then from now on we’ll solve it and I’ll win the war.”     Eliot smiled at him. “Of course.”     Quentin nestled his face back against Eliot’s chest, feeling sick and sorry and somehow beneath it all still taking in the peaceful warmth of their bodies wrapped together.

—TIME WON’T FLY by theheartischill & yourtinseltinkerbell | read on AO3

[yourtinseltinkerbell]

The night was cool. Above them a rare bird crossed the clearing, an owl on nearly silent wings. The flames licked tamely into the sky, their range circumscribed by Eliot’s spell. Quentin hugged his knees to his chest.

—TIME WON’T FLY by theheartischill & yourtinseltinkerbell | read on AO3

[yourtinseltinkerbell]

Quentin opened his mouth to tell him he knew where the visions had been leading. Instead he said, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

—TIME WON’T FLY by theheartischill & yourtinseltinkerbell | read on AO3

[yourtinseltinkerbell]

Wanting—Quentin realized only as it was already happening—wanting a future where he could do this again, and Eliot would remember.

—TIME WON’T FLY by theheartischill & yourtinseltinkerbell | read on AO3

[yourtinseltinkerbell]

    “What did you see?” asked Eliot.     Quentin closed his eyes, trying to pin down what he could. In the vision he’d stepped forward into the clearing, marveling at signs of life: a little sparrow darting across the sky, the smell of growing things blooming. Fillory as he’d imagined it before he’d come, unreal and fantastic in its bucolic sweetness. For a second his whole body had felt at peace. “There was a house. A—hut, almost. With a—yard, maybe?” That didn’t seem quite right, but he couldn’t zoom in on the image to make out what he had actually seen. “And these bursts of color, all across the ground.”

—TIME WON’T FLY by theheartischill & yourtinseltinkerbell | read on AO3

[yourtinseltinkerbell]

He could feel almost palpably the way Eliot must have been looking at him. And Eliot wouldn’t remember, which meant Quentin didn’t need to remember this part, either. The part when someone looked at him in that way neither of them would ever be able to take back. He didn’t need to carry that with him, the look that in a few hours would never have crossed Eliot’s face, but—but he looked anyway. It would be letting himself off too easy not to.

—TIME WON’T FLY by theheartischill & yourtinseltinkerbell | read on AO3

[yourtinseltinkerbell]

“Steady—keep steady, Q—Q? Are you okay? Your nose is bleeding—Q—”

—TIME WON’T FLY by theheartischill & yourtinseltinkerbell | read on AO3

[yourtinseltinkerbell]

   Quentin didn’t know what to say to that. He picked up and bit into a peach, soft and thick with sweet juice. “Why did you?”    Eliot smiled wryly. “You mean other than my heroic bearing and famous taste for sober-minded do-gooding?”

—TIME WON’T FLY by theheartischill & yourtinseltinkerbell | read on AO3

[yourtinseltinkerbell]

Quentin woke up to the sun slicing through the gap in the curtains with three black dots on the inside of his wrist and thought: Okay. Here we go again.

—TIME WON’T FLY by theheartischill & yourtinseltinkerbell | read on AO3

[yourtinseltinkerbell]

    Next to him Julia was crying. Julia never cried; in his present state the sight made him sick with dread and with a horrible nauseous gratification. “You’re my best friend,” she said, voice thick, “you know that right? You have to know that, tell me you know that.”     Quentin nodded, unable to speak.     Julia face crumpled as she cried harder. “So then why can’t I help you? Why haven’t I ever been able to help you? What the fuck is wrong with me that I can’t—”     “It’s because I’m broken, Julia,” he said, “I’m—I’m unfixable, and one day you’re going to see—”

—TIME WON’T FLY by theheartischill & yourtinseltinkerbell | read on AO3

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

Time Won’t Fly

fic by theheartischill // art by @yourtinseltinkerbell

Quentin/Eliot; explicit; ~112k. Most warnings that apply to season one of the show apply here; particular warnings for violence and suicide. Feel free to message me with questions if you’d like more specifics.

Art: chapter 1 | chapter 2 | chapter 3 | chapter 4A | chapter 4B | chapter 5 | chapter 6A | chapter 6B | chapter 7A | chapter 7B | chapter 8 | chapter 9 | chapter 10A | chapter 10B

Between slipping grades and an explosive break-up, Quentin’s first year at Brakebills was coming to a miserable close—and that was before the Beast attacked. Now everyone’s cancelling their summer plans to join in the fight against an existential threat, Fillory is both real and much deadlier than in the books, and it turns out Quentin sucks as much at battle magic as he does at everything else. As the war drags on, dying in battle starts to seem like the best possible outcome, the answer to all his problems: one shining moment of glory, and then he’s finally free. It’s a foolproof plan—until he wakes up and has to do it all over again.

(Or: An action movie about wanting to die, with time loops.)

Read on AO3.