#honestly fuck fillory for being so fucking disappointing

[lesbianalicent]

why did the magicians make you crazy well you see. the show opens with quentin coldwater being discharged from the psych ward. like the very first scene. and then four seasons later he kills himself.

[skittlestrash]

an otp vibe~

[lunaraindrop]

Headcanon: 4×13 and beyond were Quentin's fever dream. Poor Q! They end up getting Eliot back, and they all live happily ever after.

[campchitaquamemories]

And another, because I have only just begun to process the incredibly trash fire that our fandom is living through right now.

https://twitter.com/coldwaughtersq/status/1118974733469519873?s=21

[darkshrimpemotions]

sir, that's my emotional support quentin

[eidetictelekinetic]

Update: nope, still can't listen to Take On Me without going back into Quiet Fury mode (it has to be quiet, I'm always at work)

[mendokayalways]

there is cathartic well-written tragedy and there’s tragedy for tragedy’s sake and for fuck’s sake I really need current tv showrunners and movie writers to really REALLY understand the difference.....

[ffillory]

forgot to post these but at one of my favorite restaurants we get to write stuff on the walls, but my sharpie started dyin a bit in the second and last pictures. i took these pictures about an entire month after the finale.

[jockpoetry]

genuinely do think about

you know the worst part of getting exactly what you want? when it’s not good enough. then what do you do? if this can’t make me happy then what would? fillory was supposed to mean something. i was supposed to mean something here. but it’s all - it’s just – it’s random - it’s so random. that the only way to save my friends is to yell at a fucking plant! honestly, fuck fillory for being so disappointing. you know what maybe i was better off just believing that it was fiction. the idea of fillory is what saved my life. this promise…that���people like me…. people like me…can somehow…find an escape. there has gotta be some power in that. shouldn’t loving the idea of fillory be enough?

and like...lose it.

[livinonthehedge]

Honestly, fuck Fillory for being so disappointing. You know what, maybe I was better off just believing that it was fiction. The idea of Fillory is what saved my life! This promise that people like me can somehow find an escape. There has gotta be some power in that.

Quentin Coldwater

[fillorian-pocketwatch]

The Makings and Fate of Quentin Coldwater: What Were the Writers Thinking?

Trigger warnings: Quentin Coldwater, seasons 4 and (briefly) 5, mentions of suicide/suicidal ideation, outdated ideas about the purity of women.

General warnings: Spoilers for the show and the books.

Buckle up, darlings, and my apologies in advance: this is a rough ride, and I don’t recommend reading it if you aren’t in the right headspace for it right now.

I hope that those who do read it might drop some LGBTQIA+ positive book/tv recommendations in the comments as a pick-me-up for others. I will add some myself if I can think of some good ones.

So as it turns out, I ran into something entirely by accident: the inspiration behind the character of Quentin Coldwater.

I knew that Eliot and his "will-they-or-won't-they" dynamic with Quentin in the Magicians books were both borrowed from Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (Grossman has said so himself)--

but I didn't realize there was an actual preexisting character Grossman borrowed from for Q:

Quentin Compson, from The Sound and the Fury.

This explains so much for me. So much.

I ran across information about the character the other day while doing something completely unrelated (looking up some other book if I recall correctly), and when I saw the similarity of the two names and then learned about the first Quentin’s fate, I thought, could this be LG’s inspiration?

Further research revealed that yes, Lev has said as much in articles. And even if he hadn’t, the fact that he has written extensively *about* TSatF online makes it a relatively easy conclusion to draw.

While the two Quentins aren't actually much alike (at least on the surface; I haven't read TSatF yet, just in-depth summaries/analyses of it)--other than the fact that they are both mentally ill over-achiever college students, are preoccupied with the idea of another world (the world as they each wish it was), and constantly associated with symbolic clocks and watches--Quentin Compson's fate explains everything for me in terms of how to understand Quentin Coldwater's series-four fate.

Quentin Compson ultimately kills himself in the famous classic novel; he does so by drowning after jumping off the Anderson Memorial Bridge in Boston, Massachusetts. Today there is a plaque there to commemorate the character:

In the Faulkner novel, Quentin associates the smell of honeysuckle with his obsessions over his sister’s purity--an ideal he comes to feel let down by after she loses her virginity and then seems to lose herself further in the company of men he feels are unsuitable.

I can’t help but make a parallel with the “drowned garden” of season 4, episode 12.

Quentin makes the following speech in the drowned garden, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s the closest thing we get to a suicide note:

You know the worst part of getting exactly what you want? When it's not good enough. Then what do you do? If this can't make me happy, then what would? Fillory was supposed to mean something. I was supposed to mean something here. But it's all... it's just... it's random. It's so random that the only way to save my friends is to yell at a fucking plant! Honestly, fuck Fillory for being so disappointing. You know what, maybe I was better off just believing that it was fiction. The idea of Fillory is what saved my life! [laughs.] This promise... that... people like me... [weeping] People like me... Can somehow... Find an escape. There has gotta be some power in that. Shouldn't loving the idea of Fillory be enough?

But the idea of Fillory is not enough, in the end, because the idea of happiness is also not enough. And by the end of his time on the show, that’s all Quentin has: the trappings of happiness (or at least the ones available to him, the ones he thinks might get him there), without the actual emotion.

Maybe he realizes, in the drowned garden, that he is at the end of his rope. Maybe that is where he decides to give up.

That, in my opinion, is why he begins to seem so shut down: it isn’t uncommon for people to distance themselves emotionally as a precursor to suicide (hence Jason being accused of “refusing to act” toward the end of S4).

I think it’s also why he doesn’t stop to wait and see how Eliot is after Margo strikes the Monster with the axes: he has given up on the idea that the things he thinks will make him happy actually will, or that happiness is actually attainable for him in the first place.

Quentin Coldwater drowns not in the fading of honeysuckle; for him it’s peaches and plums. In any case, he is definitely in over his head, and the water that spills out of the mirrors after his death feels like an homage to that literal drowning of his predecessor.

The TM writers found ways, as the show progressed, to tie the books back in to the show; the way they did it, however, was often roundabout to say the least. Their takes on how different plot points should occur, or be interpreted from book to screen, were usually close to abstract. They did do it, in many ways, but theirs was far from a faithful adaptation.

It fits, therefore, that they would tie The Sound and the Fury into S4 the way that it appears they did.

It also tells me something about how blame for their decision can be distributed, because either the showrunners:

a.) really did their research re: Compson and put together that this was the character that inspired Lev

or, as is much more likely, they:

b.) discussed it all with Lev himself--or LG was the one to broach the subject to see what sort of take they could spin.

Whatever the lead-in to the decision, I think three things combined to give them the idea for Q’s fate:

1. Quentin Compson;

2. Alice’s description, in the third book, of watching an old god kill herself to make way for a new world (which was when Umber and Ember emerged);

3. The following lines from The Magician’s Land: “The truly sad thing was that Ember actually wanted to do it. Quentin saw that too: He had come here intending to drown Himself, the way the god before Him had, but He couldn’t quite manage it. He was brave enough to want to, but not brave enough to do it. He was trying to find the courage, longing for the courage to come to Him, but it wouldn’t, and while He waited for it, ashamed and alone and terrified, the whole cosmos was coming crashing down around Him.

Quentin wondered if he would have been brave enough. He would never know. But if Ember couldn’t sacrifice himself, Quentin would have to do it for Him.”

So, it appears, the group of writers (LG included, however actively) apparently decided to take Quentin’s thought from book three and put him in exactly that position: make the choice, or fail to make the choice.

But the need for him to make that choice was never horribly convincing. They were very mistaken if they thought it was. And no matter what, it was ultimately a horrible, damaging idea. It hurt the audience, and it killed the show. The only sacrifice that was made was made in the name of ego and “clever writing” that the writers thought was edgy and risky in some desirable way.

[Quote from vulture.com]

It's not so deep.

What they did, ultimately, was borrow from more than one outdated work, and use those as excuses to do the wrong things re: mental illness and LGBTQIA+ representation:

Evelyn Waugh’s characters fail, once again, to live their lives and desires freely and openly (What a waste to rehash the long-denied dynamic from Brideshead Revisited only to deny it again);

Quentin Compson’s legacy of suicide and hopelessness lives on (and this is made all the more offensive when you learn that Compson’s suicide was based largely on ideas of spoiled purity which were solely the burden of women to uphold).

They took what could have been made right and beautiful and instead used their story to perpetuate the same sad old traditions of queerbaiting and Burying the Gays.

Tragedy is not more profound than happiness (just ask Quentin Coldwater). I'd argue that to make something really beautiful, you need to mend what's broken.

The world is a broken place. It's easy to break things here.

The worst thing they did to Q, by far, was to use the beautiful concept of minor mending against him like it was the fuse on a stick of dynamite: the thing he’d spent his whole life seeking--his specific field, his special skill in the actual real world of magic--was what he used to kill himself. He killed himself by *fixing something.* We need no further evidence that Q had given up hope.

What a terrible message, and what a slap in the face to viewers who put their trust in this atrocious writing.

And they did nothing to redeem themselves after the fact, either. If anything, they made it even worse, somehow:

Eliot, by the end of the show, has even less than he started with.

Eliot, apparently, is us: left without Q, stripped of the comfort of a world we thought we knew. Utterly let down by the writers who had the power to make things different.

I hate to end this on such a terrible note. So let me just say that if you were let down by the show, and you miss Q, you’re far from alone! I see you, and I hear you, and I share your pain.

TM got it all wrong. But I have faith that others will get it right.

And no matter what, in the last book, Quentin lives, and has nothing but a whole world of possibility open up before him.

[smuchshypush]

“You know the worst part of getting exactly what you want? When it's not good enough. Then what do you do? If this can't make me happy then what would?

Fillory was supposed to mean something. I was supposed to mean something here. But it's all... it's just, it's random. It's so random that the only way to save my friends is to yell at a fucking plant! Honestly, fuck Fillory for being so disappointing.

You know what, maybe I was better off just believing that it was fiction. The idea of Fillory is what saved my life. This promise that people like me... people like me can somehow find an escape. There's gotta be some power in that. Shouldn't loving the idea of Fillory be enough?”

[skittlestrash]

✦ this is the kind of love that doesn't break your heart

[quentin-mp-coldwater]

Honestly, fuck Fillory for being so disappointing.

Quentin yells at a plant (part 1)

(part 2)

[campchitaquamemories]

So uh AJ @messier51 and I were talking about this and I would say sorry except I’m not fucking sorry. At all. I’m enraged. (x)

[darkshrimpemotions]

All of these empty messages from the writers have referenced people who were “supportive” or “positive” or anything but fucking incensed and like...where?!

All I’ve seen anywhere is tweets, tumblr messages, facebook messages, and fucking articles written about how bad a fucking decision it was to kill Q. This episode is one of the lowest-rated in the show’s history on IMDB. It’s as close as I’ve ever seen a fandom come to universal agreement about something.

So like...where is this positivity, support, and catharsis they’re talking about? Because if these clowns are talking about our messages to the cast assuring them we don’t blame them for this fuckery and love them, the writers can fuck right off. Those aren’t for them.