#quentin coldwater deserved better

[vooruitmariek]

had enough of heartbreak and pain

[mlobsters]

The Magicians season 4 finale in 2019 had the main character Quentin Coldwater (played by Jason Ralph) "sacrifice" himself when he canonically struggled with depression and suicidal ideation, using harmful imagery and messaging around the "sacrifice", all to deal with an actor leaving. The showrunners John McNamara and Sera Gamble lied about why they had killed off the character and later said it was definitely not suicide when McNamara literally said in interviews they left it "ambiguous".

John McNamara speaking at the 2019 SDCC panel, after season 4 has aired (around 19min in the below video):

This is not a morbid thought, I promise you. It'll sound morbid, but it's not. We all have one thing in common in this room, right now, all of us. Every single one of us. At the end of this hour, we are all going to be one hour closer to death.

Every step of the way was wildly thoughtless, irresponsible and hurtful. So many people connected with Quentin because of his history with depression and suicidal ideation. This is why I can't let it go. I hope JM got someone else to talk to about this instead of working it out via characters on a tv show.

I posted these snippets on twitter back in 2019.

[sadlittlenerdking]

It will forever gut me that Quentin’s last year was haunted by the mirage of what could have been and the knowledge (belief) that he’d found happiness and would never achieve it again.

[thequeenofsastiel]

Just finished ep 8, and I can hardly begin to express how disappointed in You I am. They took an extremely complex character who doesn't fit neatly into any kind of psychological box, and gave him the Hollywood DID treatment. I thought perhaps we'd finally realized that demonizing people with DID and acting like their other selves are vicious killers increases stigmatization of those with that disorder and that it's not okay. It's lazy, harmful writing. People with DID deserve better.

[lunaraindrop]

cactus & jasmine for the ask game! 🌵

Woo-hoo! Thank you so much for asking! 😊

Cactus: Something I am currently learning (about): Ever since I was a little girl, I have wanted to and have tried to learn sign language, particularly ASL. I thought it was cool, and I wanted to learn to talk to HoH/Deaf people. There was never any classes or opportunities inside school for me to learn (which still pisses me off), so I would check out library books every once in a while and try to learn that way. When I was older, I would look signs up on YouTube and mirror what I saw. This helped me more, to see signs in action.

When I first started to learn about education, I found out that teaching sign language in early childhood was such an amazing tool to give infants, toddlers, and nonverbal children.

In an ironic twist of fate, my mother gets more HoH every year. Her bosses at work have offered to pay for her to have hearing aids...but she is too vain. Because of this, I find myself talking with my hands and facial expressions more around her, and explaining to wait staff and retail workers that she has trouble hearing (you know, when she goes off on them because she thinks they said something they did not, or she is rude because she doesn't think they answered her questions, but that is another story). I feel like my mother would have had an easier time losing her hearing if learning sign language was seen as fundamental as learning English.

Because of these things, I have added ASL in little bite sized bits to my preschool curriculum. Things like learning the ABC's and a word or two a week like "turkey" and "pumpkin" around Halloween and Thanksgiving. The principal of the school *really* loved the idea. I even contacted the local university's Communications Disorders department for collaboration and advice.

TL;DR I'm learning ASL.

Jasmine: Oh dear. When I read this, a book or movie did not come to mind. My mind jumped automatically to the end of Season 4 and all of Season 5 of The Magicians. Because fuck you Sara Gamble, I don't need that shit. But, well, if you folks know me as well as I think you do, you could probably have guess that answers by how much I still scream that, ahem, *clears throat*

QUENTIN COLDWATER DESERVES BETTER

and

I REJECT YOUR CANON, Q IS NOT DEAD

So, instead, I will reach deeper and tell you about yet another show I stopped watching.

Grey's Anatomy.

Once upon a time, I used to watch that show. I found it clever and funny at times. I like clever and funny medical dramas. It is one of the reasons I like House MD. (Another is my undying love of anything Robert Sean Leonard, but I digress). My favorite character on GA was George O'Malley. Spoiler Alert, they killed off George. I stopped watching after that. I would hear from friends how the later seasons were so *gooood* because they would make them cry so much, and I was like, no. I'm depressed enough. I don't need a show to make cry. I need books/movies/tv to make me feel *hope* and *joy* and *wonder*. Sure, sadness will come, but I can't handle that being the focus.

(I know you are thinking of Eddie Munson right now, but I don't think he's dead either, so hah. He and Q are safe with me, thank you very much)

So...yeah. That was a lot. I hope I didn't scare you away! Feel free to ask me things!

[trueloveandotherscificoncepts]

posts ghostwritten by Quentin Makepeace Coldwater

im neurodivergent so i suck dick for the mouthfeel

[kingandqueenofgoodtime]

The more I watch and the more I know (because I know a lot of things I haven't watched yet because I love spoilers), the more I wonder how on Earth is it possible to hate your own character as much as the writers of SyFy's The Magicians hate Eliot Waugh.

Like, don't get me wrong, they acted shitty towards lots of their characters and don't even get me started on what they did to Quentin, but Eliot? My precious baby boy Eliot who has grown so much over the course of the show (and I'm starting to suspect he somehow did it without much help from the writers, because how can someone write his growth and then whatever the hell 4x13 and S5 are, in terms of what they did to Eliot, is beside me), who has such a big heart in spite of what he tried to pretend to be like initially, who cares so much about all of his friends and not only his friends but people he meets and Fillory's people and Fillory itself and who bonds ridiculously fast... like, really fast, who is so brave and kind and smart and creative and responsible and mature (once again, in spite of what he looks like), who realy was meant to be a king because he's a natural at it and who was a good damn king and bumping him to eventually make Margo High King is... just another can of worms I don't want to open right now (to classify: I love Margo to bits, I just don't think that her becoming High King was really necessary, she was a badass High Queen and she could show patriarchy what's what just fine while being the High Queen and, maybe unpopular opinion here but, making her the High King actually was detrimental to her fight against patriarchy... but, as I said, another can, so we are moving on for now), who had a lot of shitty things happen to him and who somehow still found joy and beauty in life and felt everything very deeply and loved with his whole heart even when he was afraid of that love and... and... I can go on and on about Eliot and all the ways he deserved much better than what the writers did to him, but the point is:

Eliot Waugh deserves so much better than what The Magicians' writers did to him.

So. Much. Better.

Like, I don't have the words to describe just how much better he deserves.

And instead of everything good he deserves, instead of fucking happiness and love and peace but maybe not so much quiet, the writers took away all that which he held most dear – literally, all, Quentin, Margo, his friends, Fillory, you name it, they took it all away – rendered his characters growth useless and basically just crushed him.

So, I'm circling back to my initial question that cannot be answered:

how on Earth is it possible to hate your own character as much as the writers of SyFy's The Magicians hate Eliot Waugh?

[wolfnprey]

How much do I have to steal donate for Jason Ralph and Hale Appleman to reunite and give the proper Queliot ending that the show, characters, and fans deserved?

[fixated-on-something]

Guess what I’m trying to learn by ear on guitar…

Tear time :)

[riotrose8]

Reliving it in reading this got hard when the tears blurred the screen.

Our Flag Means Death vs. The Magicians

I was not sure whether I should even write something, but the closer the season 2 finale and, hopefully, a 3rd season of OFMD comes, the more nervous I get. So it's gotta come out.

Thing is, I trust David Jenkins. Or, more accurately, I want to trust David Jenkins.

But 4 years and *checks watch* 6 months ago I also trusted the showrunners of "The Magicians".

Because they, too, responded thoughtful and kindly on Twitter to their fandom's worries. They assured us they were aware of how important queer representation was, and that they would handle their show's queer pairing of two main (!) characters with the utmost respect and sensitivity. They said they knew how badly queer people were treated on the media and they did not want to do that in their show. They had done their research, they carefully listened to their fans, and they were different.

A lot of fans were NOT convinced by that and maintained that it would still turn out to be queerbaiting. We others, we trusted. They obviously knew what they were doing!

For those of you who were not around here back then or simply not in the fandom, and who have no idea what I am talking about, let me try to summarise the shitshow what happened.

"The Magicians" was a very original, weird, entertaining and, for 3 seasons and 12 episodes, good urban fantasy show about a group of young, well, magicians. It was based on a book series of the same name by Lev Grossmann.

The main character, Quentin, was canonically struggling with clinical depression. At the beginning of the show he had admitted himself to a mental health clinic, and he was on medication, and his illness was treated as a part of his character throughout the show. And they received a lot of praise for their sensitive, realistic representation of people with depression and their continuing struggle.

Around Quentin there was an ensemble of other main characters. His (male) best friend (Eliot) was gay and played by a gay actor.

Season 1 ended with a drunken decision from Quentin, Eliot and Eliot's (female) best friend (Margot) to have a threesome; which basically ended Quentin's het-relationship (with Alice) that had developed during the season. This was the first indication that the depressed main character Quentin might also be bisexual.

In season 3 there came a mind-blowing episode where Quentin & Eliot spend the entire rest of their lives living together in a cabin in the woods and raising a son, in what turned out to be an alternative timeline. Basically, in order to solve a plot-arc relevant puzzle, they move to the cabin where the puzzle was set, not knowing how long it would take. After a few months together Quentin initiates an affair with Eliot. A little bit later a woman, with whom Quentin then has a child, moves in; a couple of years later she dies, Quentin & Eliot raise the kid together, and when Eliot, the older one, finally dies of old age, leaving Quentin alone behind, the puzzle named "The Beauty of all Life" is finally solved, the timeline reset, and young Quentin & Eliot in the past receive the solution of the puzzle together with the memories of their life together in the other timeline.

It was a beautiful, beautiful episode. Heartbreaking and life-affirming and queer and just wonderful. It also established beyond a doubt that the depressed main character Quentin was definitely bisexual (and polyamorous).

Then, for the whole 4th season, Eliot was separated from the rest of the group and in great danger, while Quentin and the others tried to find and save him. And when Eliot had to do some soul searching, he remembered something the audience never saw from that one season 3 episode, they added a brand new scene: after they both had been stunned into silence by having the memories of a whole other life dropped onto them, just where the original episode had ended, Quentin had actually asked Eliot if they should "just try it", because "who gets proof of concept like that"? And Eliot, scared of the gravity of it and full of abandonment issues, had shot him down. Present Eliot decides then, if he ever sees Quentin again, to stop being scared and just go for a relationship with him.

(On the other side of the plot, Quentin gets more and more desperate and frantic, trying to find Eliot and save his life. He is clearly masking a steadily worsening spiral into a severe mental health crisis.)

It's queerbaiting, said the nay-sayers and skeptics. It will never happen. At the end of season 4, Quentin will get back together with his ex-girlfriend Alice, they're End Game, and Eliot will end up dead alone at the sidelines, undergoing character development through loss, as a gay character should. /s

They thought we were naive, but we thought they weren't paying attention. Two (2!) episodes in two (2!) seasons with the sole purpose to set Queliot up as a couple, in canon. This wasn't subtext, it wasn't queer-coding; it was text, it was spoken aloud, it was named, it was shown. Why would they do that if nothing else would come of it? Also, they had promised us. The gay actor who played Eliot repeatedly stated how proud he was to be on a show where this was happening, he was just as excited as us, he was one of us.

Then the season 4 finale came, and it wasn't exactly queerbait.

It was much, much worse.

I was on Tumblr right after the finale aired, and it was eerie. No episode reactions, no gif-sets, no comments or shitposts or anything. Even the nay-sayers and skeptics couldn't bring themselves to utter the well-deserved "told you so"s to break the stunned silence. All that was missing from the scene were actual tumbleweeds blowing across our dashboards.

Even from the actors of the show who were on twitter, usually very active and involved, came only radio silence. The last tweet for a while came the day before the finale aired. It was a tweet from the POC actor of an unrelated character, who had spend the last season supporting queer fans and assuaging our fears that something bad might happen to Queliot. And this tweet from him simply stated that he had just found out he had filmed a fake finale scene, one that was never intended to be aired, and that it had served its purpose: he had no idea how the season would actually end.*

And here is how it did end: with the clinically depressed and queer main character blowing himself up in order to permanently ban that season's big bad. He had saved Eliot before that, but he didn't get a chance to talk to him, instead he did get a final scene straight out of the suicidal ideation fantasy handbook: after he killed himself, he witnessed his friends, unseen by them, grieving for him and acknowledging how his sacrifice had made all of their lives better in various ways. And no, I'm not making this up.

And it wasn't even the end of the showrunners stupidity, because in an utter display of tone-deafness, they were taking to Twitter celebrating themselves for the progressive (!!!) decision to kill off their White Male Main Character™, to focus more on the POC characters in the show. And, of course, the recently introduced cis-het male white dudebro character, who had started as a guest but somehow kept getting more and more screentime lately.

They had pulled a Bury Your Gays, but With A Vengeance. In only 10 minutes of screentime they had completely destroyed everything that had made their show critically acclaimed, retroactively un-deserving all the praise and recognition they had gotten for good representation of mental illness and the courage to introduce a canon queer relationship between their established main characters.

And they didn't even get it. They honestly expected praise for their "woke" decision to kill of their White Male Main Character™ (they kept repeating it like a mantra), and they reacted like children when they were instead confronted with an epic shitstorm from upset and angry queer and mentally ill fans.**

In hindsight we realised that what had fooled us was them just parroting the right words and phrases back at us. They had no idea what queerbaiting was. They had even less of an idea what a Bury Your Gays was. They didn't know what we meant when we said that queer representation was so important, and that we were worried if they would do it right; and they didn't understand that they themselves were lying when they answered that they would handle the queer representation in their show with care and respect, because they didn't understand what care and respect in relation to queer representation even was. They didn't even realise that his depression alone, and even more so combined with his absolute lack of toxic masculinity, separated Quentin from the usual White Male Main Character Trope they somehow so desperately wanted to fight - and for some reason they didn't even seem to have realised that they (accidentally?) written him as bisexual? (I am still not too clear on how that even could happen.)

And that's where my worry for "Our Flag Means Death" and David Jenkins comes in. Yes, he was publicly flabbergasted when he learned about queerbaiting and how deeply it had traumatized queer fans and destroyed our trust. He publicly noticed, he publicly cared.

But does he really understand?

Even if he knows and understands queerbaiting (now), does he also know what a Bury Your Gays is? Does he understand?

The historical Edward "Blackbeard" Teach died November 1718. The historical Stede "Gentlemen Pirate" Bonnet died a month later, December 1718. That's at the very most less than a year from when our favourite gay pirate couple is now. And yes, David Jenkins makes it a point to screw with history, he does what he wants no matter what. But their death dates are pretty huge. A fixed point in time, if you will.

I want to believe that all the faking of deaths talk is indeed foreshadowing, that they will be officially dead to history, but actually have run off together to open Jeff's Inn by the Sea, with a Bar & Grill and Other Delicacies & Delights, Snake Snackery, Gift Shop and Fishing Gear in the back. That we will get our Happy Ending. That they will get their Happy Ending. No Bury Your Gays. Everyone lives, just this once, everyone lives.

But what if it is a red herring instead of foreshadowing? What if it is supposed to make their eventual deaths even more heartbreaking and tragic? WHAT IF DAVID JENKINS DOESN'T ACTUALLY KNOW ABOUT BURY YOUR GAYS? What if he says he does, what if he believes he does, but what if he doesn't actually understand?

What if he just says what he believes we want to hear, without really understanding the reason?

For me personally, that's not even the worst of it.

When "The Magicians" season 4 aired, I had just gone through the worst depressive episode of my life. It was actually the reason I hyper-fixated so strongly on the show and why I had repeatedly binge-watched the first three seasons in a span of only 3 weeks. It was the reason I obsessed over Quentin, the character who was in a place that I was in just months before, I place I had lost and felt I would never reach again, a place that gradually and painfully I did reach again by the end of those weeks. When I had caught up with season 4 and the finale aired, I was actually a lot better. But even then, Quentin's death and the way he died hurt me, confused me, triggered me, set me back. Talking to other fans with the same problems helped. Removing myself from the fandom and not looking at anything Magician's-related for near-on two years helped also.

And I was in luck. Only one month later "Good Omens" was released. I had liked the book, I had looked forward to its adaption, but I was completely unprepared for what Neil Gaiman had done with it. It healed me, it fully filled the void "The Magicians" and Queliot had left inside me, and it made everything better.

In "Our Flag Means Death", Stede is clearly on the autism spectrum. I was bullied at school, just like him, not for being queer, but for "being a fucking weirdo". Because I have ADHD, like Ed. Unlike Ed I don't have the hyperactive kind, but the inattentive kind. I can never tell if someone is sarcastic or sincere. I also have difficulty with and anxiety in social situations, and I have almost never felt accepted by my peers or my family. I am permanently masking. I relate deeply to Stede's belief that he has to change in order to be worthy of love. I also related deeply to Ed's mental health spiral and suicidal ideation in the beginning of season 2. I obsessed for days over the moment when Ed decided to finally let go, only to be saved in the very last moment by love. It felt way too real, way too familiar, and it was so important for me and my state of mind that it ended in hope. They managed to take the trauma and make it cathartic. So even if my genderfluid ass didn't relate better to mlm relationships than to any cishet relationship, relating a whole lot to Stede and only a little less to Ed because of their neurodivergent traits will be enough for their deaths to destroy me. Just like Quentin's death almost had. And I don't even know if there will be a "Good Omens 3" to stop my fall only a month later.

*= with the exception of the actor leaving the show, none of the actors on "The Magicians" knew. They had all been given fake scenes to film. They didn't even know their colleague was leaving them until the day the finale aired.

**= when I had finally distanced myself enough from the show emotionally and wondered if I should maybe watch season 5, it was included in my Prime subscription anyway, I was told not to, because a) apparently the showrunners had written it as a giant FUCK YOU to everyone who was upset by the season 4 finale, and b) because they had done all the characters dirty, but especially fan-favourite (and mine) Eliot, apparently he fared even worse in season 5 than in season 4. But I am glad to be able to at least inform you that season 5 pretty much tanked both critically as well as in viewership, I have never seen a show go from successful and popular to irrelevant and hated so quickly and so completely.

[mlobsters]

damnit the magicians was really such a good show. it was so funny in that biting way, touching, beautiful. and they blew it all up and flushed it down the drain.

[asterdeer]

rip quentin coldwater you would have loved "shake it off (taylor's version)"

[a-liv-e]

so I napped for five hours and then I had a sex dream abt matt berry and then I cried about a tv show that ended 5 years ago. Follicular phase goes crazy

[mlobsters]

The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman

I was 16 the first time I was hospitalized. I just—I couldn’t get out of bed, like, at all. My brain breaks sometimes. And my dad brought me the books, and I read them, and I felt enough like me to at least try to get back in the game, you know?

[ii-magician]

I rewatched 3x05 A Day in The Life and then 4x05 Escape from the Happy Place back to back and I am unwell

[fortunatelythevoid]

It’s been years but I’m still angry at the 4th season of the Magicians