#brinn watches the magicians

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this is sex this is lesbian sex happening here

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constantly thinking about how seasons 1-3 of the magicians said "there is no such thing as fate, there are only choices that your lifetime of choices lead you to. even if you make the same choice every single time, it is still a choice that you made"

and then season 4 was like "actually j/k fate's real and there's no escape"

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god I love the magic system in the magicians SO much magic isn't the solution it's usually the problem it comes from misery and it burns you up to cast it delicious perfect the good angst

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the back half of season four, especially 4x7, hammered SO hard on making quentin into a Straight White Male Protagonist to make it okay to kill him off like 'oh everyone believes quentin is the hero and has been the whole time'

except....quentin *isn't* the hero and never has been. he's the fucking volunteer tomato! jane didn't CHOOSE him he just got involved. like, even leaving aside the fact that quentin is CANONICALLY queer and disabled (yeah mental illness counts actually) which are two pretty fucking big things that set quentin apart from most classic white male protagonists, the entire fucking show up to this point has been about forcing quentin to challenge his own assumptions. he's not the high king. he's not the one to kill the beast. he's not special and it's fucking revisionist history to act like the story has been treating him like he is. like sure he's the protagonist as in the guy the story is about, but a. it's not exactly fucking groundbreaking to kill your protagonist b. especially when he is FUCKING QUEER AND DISABLED

not to MENTION framing the whole season around quentin's sacrifice just fucking centers him in the story again. you really want to be groundbreaking?? center the story on SOMEONE FUCKING ELSE. put quentin in the background. change the camera focus. let literally anyone else save the day!!! like....zelda is RIGHT THERE. they did a good job focusing on margo for a while (til they boned that too because in no universe would she EVER choose ANYONE over eliot); it wouldn't even be difficult to pivot to her more fully. or kady. or hell, even penny!! penny got thrust into this whole new timeline with versions of his people that aren't his people, told BY HIMSELF that he had to stay there with some great destiny and like. for what.

I know we all said this at the time and *I* said it at the time and I'm retreading ground I myself already covered it's just. it was just so good and it had so much potential and it's not even hard to fix. they could have really fucking Done Something, with eliot and quentin yeah, but also with everyone else. and instead they did the same fucking thing that tv always fucking does and reminds me why I typically watch people play dnd instead

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the fact that margo is Like That but she's also a giant fucking nerd who watched battlestar galactica and read all of game of thrones and was so into it she made eliot read them too is such a delightful aspect to her character like margo is just as much of a mask as eliot is god I wish more fics dove into that...maybe I just haven't gotten to them yet but god I want a marqueliot fic that really dives into margo as well because like she's fuckin IMPORTANT she's important to eliot and she's important to me

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all the fic that makes a big deal out of eliot never saying "I love you" to quentin in the mosaic timeline is SUCH revisionist history eliot's not shy about saying he loves people; he says it to quentin even as he's running the fuck away from their relationship like you're telling me that fucking ancient ass fruit who raised a whole ass human child with quentin and stayed by his side and loved him for fifty years never said it??? teddy CLEARLY had good "I love you" modeling cause he says it when he leaves and just because the writers are hacks who tried to play it coy in season three we ALL KNOW he is eliot's son just as much as he is quentin's and there's no way you raise a whole ass human child with someone like quentin coldwater and never once say you love either of them

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the timeline of the first couple of episodes (okay the first season) is hazy at best like it is not at all clear how far into the semester the beast appears but jkgshgjk eliot likes quentin so much so fast "I bond quickly" you liar you told him part of your tragic backstory like any other of eliot's first years boys eliot wouldn't even remember their names but he just LIKES quentin like as a person immediately what a soft touch slow burn of all time and for WHAT

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the really circular nature of time magic in the magicians is fascinating because like, jane only ever had the power to create the loops because of quentin 40 and eliot 40 like if a previous version of them had actually managed to defeat the beast, the right versions wouldn't have been around to get the key to power the loops in the first place. which like obviously none of that was like, intentional because it's several seasons later and the showrunners are hacks who hate me personally, but like, watsonian, it's all a giant ouroborus. like. jane doesn't know who "the beast" is when quentin mentions it so it's like... is that where she got the name? which makes sense, with the whole, witch and fool thing.

and like, it makes sense that that's why eliot and quentin remember their time at the mosaic because it happened. sure it's like, an alternate timeline, but it was them that experienced it and they had to experience it in order for margo to be able to retrieve the keys and stop it. what happens next is necessary for what has already happened.

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margo and eliot's relationship is SO important to me we love a ride or die qpr canonically and on the page

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turns out he's 100% that bitch

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the way jason ralph fULLY embodies quentin's anxiety and depression and yes I'll say it autism is fucking masterful it's in every little movement, the way he makes q small, the way he tenses his jaw, the raggedy breaths the way he curls up into himself and hides behind his hair it's SO good it's so fucking well done the verisimilitude is off the fucking charts this dude acting his heart out and god bless him

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in the good version of season five Margo gets unbanished and back on her throne by marrying fen where's that fic I want to read it

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genuinely I think margo would have been a better pick for loving fillory so much it makes a cure flower bloom. because at this point, quentin's love is nostalgic. it got him through a lot. and even living a whole life there with eliot isn't enough because he's still reckoning with the fact that eliot didn't want that, didn't want to try again.

but margo? margo loves fillory, but not out of nostalgia or childlike innocence. margo loves fillory like a goddamn adult, someone who sees everything fillory is, all its fucked up contradictions, all its faults, everything stupid and wrong and loves it anyway. loves it enough to want to change it, to make it better.

yknow who else could love fillory enough? fucking fen. fillory is her home. like she loves earth and new york, but it's never gonna be her home, where her people are, where her family is buried. of course fen loves fillory in a deeper, much more intrinsic way than quentin ever could.

also unrelated but margo could have left her goddamn eyeball on the kitchen counter to go save her fuckin life partner but what do I know about writing why even introduce the fact that she can pop her damn fairy eye out

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penny 23 sucks and penny 40 is far superior, but marina 23 is an unmitigated delight whom I love and cherish and has never done anything wrong in her life I genuinely like her more than marina 40

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I know the popular fandom interpretation is that arielle died, but the look on her face when she's carrying teddy out of the cottage... she looks visibly unhappy. and like, I like the harmony of them having a triad and that's a much kinder interpretation of arielle but well this is the magicians so like what if she just left like she got tired of quentin and eliot making moony eyes at each other or like...they weren't all three together, and quentin did to arielle what he did to alice and like idk that's even foreshadowed in the text when arielle ditches lunk when he cheats on her.

and like...that's eliot's MO too, to pine from a distance and then slip up when he's fucked up and that's quentin's mo to hyperfocus on someone who gives him the time of day until he accidentally does something he actually wants and like... I don't know, maybe arielle just left and for a while quentin sort of blames eliot in the same way he blamed him and and margo for alice and eliot sort of blames himself and they fight and fight but they have to take care of teddy and idk maybe teddy gets sick or something and they just.... they just fucking stop and take two seconds to figure out what it is they actually want, and it's each other.

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if lance saw how rupert felt about him when he held the truth key then eliot DEFINITELY saw something on quentin when he held it like sure they hadn't had the mosaic yet so it wasn't like capital L Love but like....he must have seen something.