Every month at work, we post a new question on the wall in the hallway where administration and support services walk every day to get to the bathroom, the elevator, and their offices (other staff also come through between the staff elevator and the meeting rooms). This month’s question was “Who’s your character crush?”
Now a character crush can be lots of things in this case. Maybe someone you really like seeing or reading about in your preferred media. Maybe someone you would definitely marry if they existed in real life. Maybe someone you want to be like, or who you simply admire as a character—how they’re written, or the way they inhabit their world. Someone you can’t stop thinking or talking about in regards to media or pop culture. Or just the first person you think of, a character in a book you like or a movie you’ve seen.
I knew my answer immediately: (Former) High King Margo the Destroyer.
But only as portrayed by the magnificent Summer Bishil on the SyFy series The Magicians.
Way back in the day, when I had a job that required a lot of rote work, I discovered audiobooks. Obviously I’d known what they were, but was certain I wouldn’t like them. I can’t really focus on talk radio or anything like that, and what was the deal with just sitting down and listening to something? But I had gotten tired of listening to the same music all day (especially after my musicals Pandora station played three different versions of “One Day More” in a row!) and had exhausted my knowledge of podcasts. Thus: audiobooks. After only finding a few available books I was interested in from the library, I got me a Scribd subscription, and somehow came across The Magicians, which was being purported as Harry Potter In College. The first book was enjoyable enough, but the second bored me to tears. I don’t even remember what Margo was like in the book. Or maybe she didn’t actually exist; I dunno. I thought nothing of it until I saw the announcement of the SyFy show, which I set my DVR for immediately. The show looked way more interesting, anyway.
Fast forward to now. I never actually watched the show when it was on my DVR, and it fell casualty alongside many other full seasons left on my DVR when we pulled the plug a few years ago. But a few weeks ago, I saw a GIF of Eliot Giving Eyes to Quentin in this amazing thread, and was like: Obviously I missed something. I will start again. And then I got sick, and had to stay home for an extended time, and made it through four seasons in six days.
(Please observe this space, where I use a lot of caps and crying emojis about the actual plot and my ride-or-die doomed ship and then erase it because you don’t need that in your life.)
What does any of this have to do with Margo, I hear you asking? Margo Hanson? She is a hardass with a heart of gold, a softy who will tell you she loves you with an insult, and will go to war for the people she loves. She’s hot, fashionable, and thoughtful. And I am thoroughly in love with her *lolsob*. Over the course of five seasons, she grows from a vaguely shallow, snarky peanut gallery to a highly strategic, powerful magician warrior. She loses an eye, and then gets one back at the height of her eyepatch awesomeness. She gets her own musical episode; she moves smoothly from High Queen to High King to King’s Guard, while also building relationships with sentient flying boats and lycanthropes alike.
Margo, besides being the best friend High King Eliot of Fillory could ever hope to have, is the character I always fall back on when I think about what keeps me going after some serious Shit Gone Down on the show. (And honestly, hers is one of the voices I hear, cursing with great creativity, after some serious shit gone down in my life.) Why keep watching a show when your ship is no more, with no possibility of ever coming to fruition or even true closure?
Fucking Margo the Destroyer, that’s why.
If she dies for good, I might actually quit this whole damn thing.
Who’s your character crush? (Or if you’d rather, your squish?)