#I like the thought of their antagonism having like. Frenemy undertones because

[cak31ssuperi04]

uve prolly gotten this before but y ship the blondie and oreoy,,,, curious

Is this about Izuchi and Sagara??

For what little we see of it I like their potential dynamic. They're so particularly annoyed by each other. I like that most of Izuchi's presence in the story shows him as a hyper-smart prodigy who thinks he's better than everyone, only for him to get lame and pathetic in Sagara's 3rd event because the competent bonafide genius is weak to the Weird Anime Kid. She's able to bring him to her level and cracking through his ego, which is maybe more fragile than he lets on. He's stubborn and likes challenges, and she wants her unhinged mad scientist antagonist-figure to clash with. He acts like he's above the petty rivalry but folds after one childish insult. If that's all it took, and if Nanashi had to get between them this time, I 100% think this happens regularly and has escalated before. They're silly.

They're both jaded teens who have an inflated sense of self-confidence. They do what they want without regard for what people think(though I will draw the distinction between how she's just kind of annoying and he's actually harmful) and end up detached from them without much of a drive to change that, but they take it in different directions, with Izuchi being pragmatic and serious and Sagara being a chuuni who's easygoing and kind of making it up as she goes along a lot of the time. He's arrogant and will wrong others to further his research but can be capable of and willing to help others(re. Meru's event). She ultimately means well and is a nice person but will casually threaten strangers and target people because she thinks they're weird(her dialogue regarding him as an organization member indicates that she doesn't seem to actually know about any of the legitimately shady shit he does and just messes with him because the genius schtick is bizarre. Again, Kind Of A Bully Maybe is really not on the level of Human Experimentation but then the game doesn't treat that very seriously either. And also Sagara's still capable of knocking him on his ass)

It definitely would take some sort of development for them to come to like each other or for romance to come into question, but I think it could be fun. They'd challenge eachother. She'd keep his ego in check and make him see the value in things that aren't strictly logical and he'd act as a voice of reason(to an extent…) and help strike some balance between reality/fantasy, but they still wouldn't really care about what people think. Menaces always.

[butterflydm]

The Magicians Revisited: 1x04 The World in the Walls

Significant moments: As part of Marina’s plan to steal from Brakebills, she’s done a cooperative spell with Julia to mess with Quentin’s mind in order to trick Dean Fogg into lowering the protective wards around the school. I’m assuming she picked Quentin because it’s a powerful cooperative spell so she needs a strong witch like Julia, and Julia’s mad enough at Quentin to be able to use him as a target. Julia might not be willing to trap just any random student into a hell-dream, but she’s pissed enough at Quentin to do it to him. The dream itself is a mishmash of the hospitals he’s spent time in with elements of Brakebills, and it preys on his own thoughts and twists them.

So, potentially, twisted reflections of what’s in Q’s mind — Dean Fogg becomes another authority figure, a doctor. Both Eliot and Alice are very sexually aggressive towards Quentin, and Q turns Penny into a janitor with a heavy accent (which real!Penny calls out as racist of Q’s subconscious).

Julia, otoh, is the actual Julia. Which… man, oh there is so much ugliness to unpack there. Actual, real Julia takes malicious joy at Quentin’s pain in her first scene, and only starts to be worried/concerned in her second, when Q has gone past being freaked out and is so mentally burnt out that he’s non-responsive.

As Julia is leaving from her second visit with Quentin, real!Penny walks into the dream/spell. He sees fake!Penny and is instantly offended which, you know, fair. Anyway, Q asks Penny to find him in the real world and wake him up, and that, at 23-24 minutes into the episode, is the first time we leave Quentin’s head.

On a more acting-based level, I feel like this kind of episode only works when the actor has a rock-solid understanding of who their character is and how their character sees themselves and isn’t afraid to embrace the uglier sides of their character, and I’m pretty impressed at how strong a grip Jason Ralph has on Quentin only four episodes into the show.

In the scene with Julia and Marina, Julia expresses concern over what the spell is doing to Q, and we see that Kady has been watching, too, and Marina is definitely aware of Kady’s relationship with Penny at this time. Kady is also concerned at the idea that the spell could potentially trap Q in his own mind forever. When the later attempt by the Dean and Penny to break Q out of the spell fails, Kady goes to Julia to tell her to reverse the spell because Q might never wake up otherwise. Julia goes to the Dean & Co. and confesses that she cast the spell.

One big thing that this episode does is soften the antagonism between Q and Penny — ironically, being a little inside Q’s head pissed Penny off, but when he was more deeply inside and exposed to more of the trauma Q was going through, he became angry at Julia on Q’s behalf for putting him through that. It did this to a certain extent with Kady and Q, too.

With Jane’s help, Quentin is able to pull himself out of the Web even when the Dean seems pretty certain he’s fucked. Jane looks damn proud of him for it, too. Eliot, the Dean, and Penny are all visibly relieved that he’s awake again. Julia is guilt-stricken as, you know, she should be. Looking forward, I’m relatively sure this is the ugliest thing that actual, shade-having Julia ever does to anyone. Anyway, not only has she set fire (for now) to her relationship with Quentin, she also gets kicked out of Marina’s hedge witch group for betraying Marina.

In Q’s last scene in his head, we get him quoting from the books, “Jane saw only one way out for him: stop playing, start living”, which ties into the “live your life here” throughline that’s been thrown at Q a few times over the course of the series. That’s also tied into the ‘stop overthinking’ theme that Q gets a lot, too. Q runs into issues when he lives inside his head instead of living his actual life in the real world, and this nightmare that Julia and Marina trapped him in is just an extreme manifestation of that tendency of his.

That’s actually also related to that flaw of his that I mentioned in the 1x03 post — where he holds other people accountable for his emotions. That’s him living like he’s in a Scarlatti Web all the time, where other people are just projections of his fears and desires rather than being, well, other people. And that’s the epiphany that he has during the endgame of the Beast arc when he gives the… god’s come… to Alice instead of drinking it himself (what is this show that I had to write out that sentence). That he is not the sole protagonist, that he is not the only person who has emotional importance. And that life is actually better when he embraces that truth, because it means that he can actually see other people for who they are and not as echoes of his own thoughts. It was really great character growth, until- well.

Magic: 1. Quentin "wakes up" trapped in a mental world created by a cooperative spell cast by Julia and Marina called a Scarlatti Web. 2. Quentin is able to cast a fireworks spell while in the Web. 3. Jane is able to penetrate the spell enough to send a vision of her younger self to Q to try to get him to work on breaking the spell by giving him hints about where to look. 4. There was a magician in Fillory named Ellesworth Downs, who was cursed by a witch to only be able to cast game magic. 5. Kady tries to cast healing magic on Q; it fails. 6. Marina uses a spell to light her cigarette. 7. The wards are lowered to allow the bug-spirit in to save Quentin. 8. Marina uses magic to get into the room where the stolen memories are kept. 9. Jane is able to get to Q again after the first part of the spell is broken, and she tries to let him know how to get out of the spell. 10. Marina pulls Julia to her side. 11. Marina crosses out Julia’s hedge witch stars and kicks her out of the bodega.

Relationships: Quentin & Julia: estranged friends Quentin & Eliot: friends, confidantes, romantic undertones Quentin & Penny: frenemies? I think they qualify as frenemies now Quentin & Alice: estranged friendship?, crush Penny & Kady: romantic & sexual relationship Kady->Penny: manipulative relationship Marina & Julia: burned bridges Marina -> Kady: blackmail/extortion Quentin->Kady: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Kady->Quentin: friendly enough to be concerned about him & pissed at Julia for being willing to turn on him Jane&Fogg->Quentin&co: manipulative mentorship Eliot->Julia: contempt Kady->Julia: contempt/anger

Physical contact: Fake!Eliot searches through Q’s pockets for pills, grabs Q’s hand and presses it against his chest and pushes it down his body. He puts a finger on Q’s mouth and smacks him on the ass as he leaves. Fake!Alice grabs Q’s face and kisses him. Julia reaches out to touch Q’s hand during her visit to him. She brushes his hair out of his face. Fake!Penny grabs Q’s hand to show that Q was palming pills instead of swallowing them. Q grabs pages out of his fake roommate’s hands to keep him from destroying the books. Q touches several of the residents of his mind during his musical number. Q shares a hug with his fake father. Fake!Eliot and Fake!Alice do some very close sitting with Quentin during the montage after he’s been told that he tried to kill his father. Julia touches Q’s knee in her second visit with him. Penny shoves Quentin against the wall. Q shoves him back, Penny shoves him back harder (as requested). Marina smacks Kady’s ass. Q pickpockets one of the fake nurses for a key into the office to finally get some tape to fix the pages of the book. Penny shoulder-checks Eliot a bit (not too hard) as they’re looking for Q’s body. Penny slaps Q’s face to try to wake him up. Fake!Penny and another fake employee of the hospital haul Quentin off to get the lobotomy. Dean Fogg touches Q’s forehead after the attempt at breaking Q out of the spell. Eliot pets Q on the head after he’s woken up from the spell.

Character Notes: Quentin: he last saw his dad (Ted) a few months ago; they had dinner. Actual Alice, in real life, does not appear in this episode. Only the fake Alice in Q’s head. Margo does not appear in this episode.

Students: Marina used to attend Brakebills; she was kicked out three months before graduation.

Timeline Notes: Quentin fell asleep at a party on Tuesday and then went under the spell. Penny arrives in the dream on a Wednesday.