#because they apparently didn't want their dynamic to be queerbaiting

[starliteonearth]

The more and more I think about it, because it has been bugging me for a minute, I think the reason why Rhaesaria can happen and Rhaenicent can't -and probably never will- is that Rhaenicent is just too big of an ask. It's too much of a canon divergence and an incredibly massive one at that. They've already changed so much from the books to make their relationship what it is in the show but actually putting Rhaenyra and Alicent together in a romantic relationship would literally derail the plot. Like I literally can't think of a way they could put them together and still accurately portray the Dance. I really don't think it's feasible. Rhaesaria however, can happen because it literally affects nothing, in the grand scheme of things. Nothing about and around the two of them changes. With Rhaenicent, you'd have restructure so many things (again) to not only make it possible but believable to the greater audience. Especially given where the story is right now. The bad fanfiction slander that would further arise from making them cannon would practically snuff out the show. And that's why I believe their relationship can only, and always will be, just subtext.

[pitynostars]

"just because they didn't kiss doesn't mean thasmin is queerbaiting" no. But they still weren't communicating (the thing prev brought up as their main tension + what they said wld CHANGE (I want to tell you everything)). They don't get to really be together much thru the EP. Their feelings aren't mentioned. If u watched that EP without EotD/LotSD u wldnt know they were anything other than normal Doc/companio in dynamic. Yaz just leaves at the end as though their feelings don't mean anything, for no apparent reason apart from the doctor wants to die alone.

[mskatesharma]

just rewatched bridgerton yesterday, your idea of lesbian edwina would've been great. it would have allowed them to introduce lgbt characters without changing too much of the central couples (i don't personally want them to keep all the couples straight just what i think might be something they have in mind) and i think would've provided a better solution to the triangle. they really bungled the sisterly relationship between kate and edwina, i think that's what i dislike the most. and while i liked kate a normal amount before this rewatch, I have to say i am absolutely a kate stan now and everyone of the characters did kate so dirty.

(This post.)

I talked about lesbian Edwina before season two was released, and I knew we weren't going to get it, but I could hope, because it makes sense, right? And now that we've all watched the season, IT WOULD HAVE MADE EVERYTHING BETTER. Because you know the best way to flesh out a thin character, and to give them their own motivations away from the main characters, would be to give them a storyline INDEPENDENT of the leads. Instead, they made Edwina THE plot device of the season, because for the first five/five and a half episodes, she's essentially a prop, the main positioning being the reason why Kate and Anthony can't act on their feelings, and why Kate is conflicted and her guilt compounded. It's so frustrating.

And yes! Honestly, Edwina was the perfect character to explore a queer storyline with if they didn't want to do so with a main pairing (which I still argue, they've so obviously queerbaited with Benedict that you can have him explore his bisexuality/queerness and still have him end up with Sophie if they're so pressed about keeping the endgames as they are in the books) (also kinda hoping that Phillip is the one that chokes it and we get Meloise writing letters to each other but that's another pipedream lol).

You could have had Edwina fall for another debutante, or a girl who debuted a few years ago, and Edwina slowly realising that she's in love with this girl because the way Mary talks about how she felt about Mr Sharma, and the things Kate has read to her, describe how Edwina feels about this girl. And she thinks it's mutual. Plus, if you really wanted to have Edwina suffer heartbreak, you could have this debutante end up engaged to some man that her parents arranged, or that she actually doesn't feel the same way, and Edwina is left devasted. It would also serve to add conflict to Kate and Edwina's relationship if they wanted to explore that, because you have Kate not being honest with Edwina about her feelings for Anthony, and what has transpired between them, and you can have Edwina not sharing how she feels about this debutante; both of them know that the other is hiding something from them, and then it all comes to a head when Edwina feels like she has to nurse her heartbreak in private.

THE WAS NO REASON FOR THEIR CONFLICT TO REVOLVE AROUND ANTHONY. And the fact that it did, will never not anger me. (I cannot overstate how fucking annoying it is that they had the conflict between two (apparently "soulmate") brown sisters be about a white man who had no business getting in the middle of them like he did. And then to not apologise to either of them?? Honestly, fuck CVD/the show/Shondaland/Anthony Bridgerton.)

Because they butchered the relationship that we read between Kate and Edwina in the book. I wasn't expecting it to be exactly same, and I didn't expect to see the same scenes, but I thought we would have the same kinda dynamic...and we didn't get any of that. That bit in the book, where they have the conversation about being each other's favourite person, and how if Edwina doesn't find anyone she really likes, then they'll just go back to Somerset and grow old together, that vibe was missing from the whole season. I got that Kate would choose Edwina over everyone else, but I never really got that Edwina would choose Kate over everyone (episode two anybody???), even by the end? And it's one of the reasons that this season fell flat and was ultimately a massive miss for me. Because I've always said that Kate and Edwina's relationship is just as important as Kate and Anthony's, and that if they messed that up, then ultimately, imho, they would have failed to tell Kate and Anthony's story properly. And seeing as *I* think they didn't do justice to Kate and Anthony's relationship and connection from the book either, it was just a bit of a massive failure all round.

Kate will ALWAYS be my number one, and I agree when you say that Kate was done dirty by other characters, and it's irritating that it was NEVER properly acknowledged in the show, and that it's somehow a controversial opinion in the fandom (outside of Kate/some Kathony stans). I will be the first person to say that Kate Sharma isn't perfect, and that she got things wrong, but tbh, I increasingly feel like the only people who should be allowed to criticise Kate Sharma are me and Simone lol.

[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.

[dxringred]

Hey, I'm the anon that asked you how come you couldn't see both Paily and Emison as decent ships... I'm sorry I truly didn't mean it to come of negatively.. An I sure didn't mean to bring up bad memories. For that I'm truly sorry.. I agree to disagree on certain things you said. An I'm truly grateful for your candor with answering.. Its just the girl that fell for her best friend wishes to have that happy ending we never get.. Which for me is the appeal of Emison. I enjoy Paily also.

I think Emison Endgame is the product of MK not writing it in earlier.. Hear me out.. I think they planned on making Emily an Ali a couple at some point.. I think with all the writers the storyline kept getting delayed.. I think it was suppose to be this I tried cause I really do love you just not that way storyline.. They held out season after season.. Than lots of angry shippers later.. They were like oh shit better give them what they want. Hence the Endgame was born.. 

As for the discussion as a whole. One of the reasons I’m turned right off of Em/son as a ship is due to the premise of: “girl that fell for her best-friend and desires happiness.” And that’s mostly because that’s how my abusive relationship started. She was my best-friend and I had the biggest crush in the world on her, and that’s why she found it so easy to manipulate me etc. which is arguably the issue with Em/son because Alison can use Emily’s long-term crush and adoration as a starting point to manipulate her. She knows how she feels, she knows personal stuff about her because of their friendship, and that means she’s well-aware of her weak points and her strengths. That makes it incredibly easy to use people.

I know a lot of people are very into this trope, and the “best friends turned lovers” is one of the more popular, and I’m guilty of loving it myself but only when it’s done right. Not when there are abusive undertones to it, because that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth in general. I prefer Pai/y as a relationship because the ship doesn’t have the same negative undertones, especially not after their initial rocky start. 

The two relationships, for me, have similar but vastly different premises. Both tell the story of a girl who gets/wants the girl of her dreams. Paige gets Emily, Emily gets Alison. But here’s the difference:

one tells a tale of hope where a depressed, bullied girl who hates herself and thinks she’ll be miserable forever gets her happy ending;

the other tells the tale of a mildly popular girl getting with her highschool crush of the “popular bitch” who’s not even a healthy friend let alone a healthy romantic/sexual partner.

The two stories, when looked into beyond the initial trope, are entirely different, and for me personally it’s obvious which one is the ideal representation not just for the community but also in terms of being shown to a young audience of influential girls. Hint: it’s the first one. 

I mean when I first watched PLL, Pai/y struck a cord with me for the exact reason outlined above - its story, being one of hope and love and promise. Because Paige was damaged but it didn’t make her any less of a person. It didn’t make her any less lovable or worthy. It didn’t make her any less deserving of being happy. She was closeted and lonely, depressed, bullied and suicidal. And as someone who, too, has been all of those things simultaneously, I related to her character immensely. She gave me hope. And she still does, despite MK being a giant screw-up in regards to writing the remainder of Paige’s story.

Alison on the other hand. Well, she’s the character you’re not supposed to want to see get a happy ending. Particularly when you see yourself in Paige. (Or Mona or Lucas or any of her other victims.) She’s the bully, the abuser, the manipulator, the individual who drives people to suicide and breaks them for her own amusement. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve always been for the assertion that the show would’ve been better had she stayed dead. (Or been revealed as alive right at the end, only to turn out to have been the villain all along, or for at least during some portion of the story.)

Having her get her victim’s happy ending instead is.. well, you can probably see why it’s problematic and why fans of Paige and Pai/y are more than a little bitter/angry. For similar reasons it’s always irked me that Alison gets so easily accepted by the core four while Mona is still painted negatively by them, but that’s another discussion for another day.

I think “Em/son Endgame” god I hate that phrase lol never made sense from the get-go personally. Of course I can understand why people were into it, and maybe if I’d watched the show when it initially started instead of binging it then maybe I’d have had more time to see the appeal. But I didn’t, and perhaps that’s where the different perception comes into play. For me the manipulation was apparent from the first flashback between the two, with red flags popping up all the time in their friendship.

I always thought the more interesting story was Emily overcoming her crush on Alison and realizing that she deserved more, recognizing that what she had with Alison to whatever extent clearly wasn’t healthy and moving on with someone else who appreciated her more as a person and wasn’t just using her to fulfill their desire to be admired and given attention.

So when she regressed completely and all of that became completely irrelevant… well, it felt like a waste of storytelling if I’m honest. Like all that build-up and development and introduction of new character dynamics had been for naught. And it was. I’m always a sucker for proper planning. It clarifies things, it makes them easier to follow, and I think the issue with several current shows nowadays is that the writers don’t always entirely know how they want to get from Point A to Point B. Despite claims otherwise. You can’t just decide on Point A, Point B, and half of the journey between the two and then decide you’ll think about the other half when you get to it because you don’t have time and that’s something I can definitely attest to as a writer.

There were several times when I thought Emily was finally seeing it, particularly in later seasons. Where I thought she was going to realize that she was being used, but then she constantly kept going back to Alison and that alone isn’t the healthiest thing. And I know that for a fact because it was a staple of my own abusive relationship with someone. 

If Alison had actually grown as a character I’d probably be less against the ship. I still wouldn’t ship it - no amount of in-depth character growth is going to make me like Alison enough, unfortunately - but I’d understand a lot more why other people do and I wouldn’t be disgusted at the thought of Em/son becoming endgame or labeled as good representation. Because it’s not.

Because I agree with you 100% on the last bit.

“Than lots of angry shippers later.. They were like oh shit better give them what they want. Hence the Endgame was born..”

I’ve always argued that that’s why the ship was “born” and suddenly became endgame despite all of the lack of development and character growth. It’s because of fan service, and that is no way to write or develop a show. You tell a certain story because it’s the one that needs to be told, that should be told, not because it’s the one that everyone else wants to be told.

And that’s my issue with PLL as an entire show, and why I stopped watching this last season, because it’s fan service for everyone at this point, including Pai/y shippers. And that’s one of the grossest things and some of the worst queerbaiting I’ve ever seen so don’t even get me started there.

Em/son shippers wanted something and they didn’t back down until they got it, and they went about it in a way that makes me gag even now: belittling the writers and the producers and the actresses. And let’s never forget them flipping insulting poor Lindsey every second of every day, telling her to commit suicide and not leaving room for a single nice comment on anything she posted anywhere. The poor woman probably regrets ever deciding to audition for the role of Paige and I don’t blame her one little bit.

And that’s my problem. You’ve got this abusive ship and mostly abusive fanbase behind it, and that’s why I can’t ever ship Em/son. It’s why I never will. Had it been planned, had it been developed, had it been turned into a 100% healthy ship, had Alison seen the error of her ways and genuinely become a better person, maybe I would. But that’s not what happened. And - with, what, five episodes left? Four? - it’s not what’s going to happen.

If you want to ship it, that’s perfectly fine. I can’t go around telling people what they can and can’t do, I can only explain to them why I don’t feel the same way as honestly as I can. So I know it’s long, and perhaps I missed some stuff, but hopefully this maybe explains my viewpoint a little better. If you managed to get all the way down here then thanks for taking the time to read!