In these days of fandoms and fanatical obsession, every teenager has been waiting for their chance to live their fictional dreams. Harry Potter fans have been waiting patiently for their letters to Hogwarts for years; Doctor Who fans look to the sky in anticipation of the TARDIS crashing down in front of their house; Every comic book fan secretly hopes their mutant powers are lying dormant, waiting to fantastically emerge. We all spend our childhoods hoping and wishing for these things to happen, but eventually we must all grow up and leave these notions behind. Quentin Coldwater is a wish fulfillment character for anyone who has ever had to grow up and leave those ideals behind.
Quentin is the avatar for every teenager who has ever wished to go to a fantastical land of enchantment. He unhappily lives his stressful life of overachievement, holding on to the one story from his childhood to keep him sane. Unlike every other teenage dreamer, however, forced to move on from their dream world and into a cold, harsh reality, Quentin doesn’t have to let go of his fantasies; He learns that his dream world is real, he does indeed have magical powers, and he has a chance to be the hero of a story. Suddenly, all those years of reading and rereading his favorite stories, wishing and fantasizing about better things, were not such a waste of time. Quentin is a genre-savvy hero; He knows that the opportunity to live his dream is a once in a lifetime event and that a single bad decisions or even the slightest hesitation can destroy everything he has waited for his entire life, forcing him back into the pitiful, unhappy existence he faces before. Quentin may have been lucky enough to live his fantasies, but the story itself also serves as a shot of reality to the fantasy-loving reader. Things are never as perfect as they seem in these fantasy lands, and one must be careful what you wish for.
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