#you think i can't save quentin coldwater?

[clarajohnson]

the magicians s2e5

brakebills continues its tradition of fucking my shit

LOOKS GOOD! QC

i love that q gets sent to corpo email job hell and he still can't get professional enough not to lose his floppy hair never change you little freak boy

soup? the fuck?

kady and eliot should've gotten together to discuss curl care. i wanna show kady how to break a curl cast.

i don't subscribe to parts of a tv show being necessary or unnecessary or w/e but i always think jules's pregnancy plot is fucked. just horrible.

fucking eliot waugh is allergic to saying normal things "oh the miles we must walk" "to our violently attractive progeny" man either fuck quentin wordsmith coldwater or get normal

i love you pregnancy bunny

guess it's one of those situations where you wouldn't know unless it happened to you but i truly cannot imagine learning you're a magician and then abandoning it. abandoning other shit? yes. leaving literally everyone from brakebills behind? yes, sounds smart. but dude i would've just moved to another continent and cast little cantrips until i got old and died

margo's puffy gossamer sleeves and her dramatic wavy hair ohhhh

also her fuchsia lip is so iconic

i love how bloodthirsty abigail is

"i just don't actually know if you accepted my apology..." desperate pathetic man

who else saw the giant pile of knotted rope and thought you know what i wouldn't mind making that my task for the day

ugh i know the eye horror is coming and i'm going to HATE ITTTTTT

the fillory stuff is always tricky because fillory united is objectively right lol. sorry eliot and margo.

bayler. what a name. fu fighter. even better.

are people masturbating in their offices that often? i've worked in several offices and as far as i know nobody was jerking it. but i guess i wouldn't know, if they were doing it right.

q's email to alice's parents was very nice actually. this show kind of has to bluster past grief this season because there's so goddamn much going on (and then it will slow down for grief for ages and ages and ages later) but when you think about it, q thinking his beloved girlfriend has died to save him is like. whew. there's so much you could've worked through from just that, q.

i love stella maeve's crying face

how many times in his life do you think q was flirted at with the line "you're a fucking dork"

that's my favorite too AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

i love that el and margo coordinate their outfits so often. similar fabrics similar palettes etc.

poor emily. jesus. god.

otd does a great job playing emily playing alice, but in large part it reminds me of some of the hallmarks of real-alice, particularly, the way her eyes are always SO active. SO bright and evaluating.

in political terms i respect eliot's decision. BUT as a matter of personal ethics i appreciate margo so much more. she's just-- she's right. she's kind of completely right.

unbelievable read from mayakovsky on "it's amuaoazing" so many vowels in that word

i love you fu fighter fen i LOVE YOU !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SKIPPING THE SCENE IN THE CLINIC SORRY !!!!!

niffin alice lfg let's FUCKING go

[terresdebrume]

what happened with the magicians?

This got really long so we're using a cut. TW for references to depression, suicide, queerbating an possession under that.

Okay so. The (original) protagonist of The Magicians is Quentin Coldwater. Quentin is established from his very first shots to be depressed enough to warrant a stay in a mental health facility (can't remember if we actually see him for the first time as he leaves it, but I think that might be the case). He is also very quickly established to have been depressed for a long time and using his favorite books, the Fillory series (an expy of Narnia) as a way to cope through escapism.

In the first episode, Quentin and his best friend Julia are both invited to take the entrance exam to Brakebills University (of magic). Julia fails, Quentin succeeds, cue a lot of magical adventures that reveal Fillory to be a) real and b) a lot darker than the books make it seem.

Throughout the first four seasons, two things are regularly touched on:

Quentin's ongoing struggle with depression and anxiety

Quentin's romantically charged relationship with his friend Eliot Waugh, who is also a mess but in a different way (this is relevant later).

Quentin's mental health is more or less prominent during the show, depending on periods, but one defining moment is when Quentin and his friends are looking for magical keys for Quest reasons, and one of them causes its bearer to suffer from acute depression and commit suicide, often withing 48 hours. During this subplot, Quentin volunteers to hold the key because he's familiar with how not to kill himself, and gets to deliver a powerful speech about the fact that he's been beating his natural depression for years, which means the key doesn't stand a chance against him... which is later proved right since Quentin doesn't kill himself and the quest succeeds.

The Quentin/Eliot relationship also has its more or less romantically charged moments. However, a key subplot is that during the quest for keys, Quentin and Eliot end up trapped together in a different time, where they eventually get together, adopt a son, and grow old together until Eliot dies of old age, allowing Quentin to find the Life Key and further their current quest. When they go back to their own time, young again, Quentin asks Eliot out, citing their lifetime together as a solid "proof of concept" but Eliot, for many reasons, gets scared and turns Quentin down. (If memory serves, he pretends to have forgotten the parallel life, but don't quote me on that.)

Anyway, the next season, as a result of the keys quest, Eliot is possessed and trapped in his own body/mind. Quentin is hellbent on getting him back and pretty much the only one who believes there's anything to get back after a while. Meanwhile, Eliot is trapped in his own mind and discovers that the key to getting back in control of his body (however briefly) is to go into his worst memory, which turns out to be...the day he turned Quentin down instead of getting together with him. Cue a self-hating monologue, Eliot showing Quentin he's alive by referencing the asking out conversation, and resolving to ask Quentin out if they survive their current arch-villain.

Eliot is freed, the quest is not over, so the conversation is postponed, although as I remember it there's an understanding of sorts between Eliot and Quentin (might be misremembering there). At a minimum, the strong implication is that something is going to happen there...except in the very last episode, Quentin sacrifices himself to save everyone in a way that makes him actually ask if he committed suicide, to which the answer was 'you were loved so of course it's not a suicide'

Which not only was strong queerbait* but also the way it was done left me with the distinct feeling that Quentin giving his life up was like. The only 'valid' ending (there was someone else with him who could have been in his place) and to make matter worse, Quentin immediately decides to move on from the afterlife, getting a definite perma-death instead of remaining a character for a while.

It's like... when I try to explain it it feels a bit like I'm reaching because it's a lot of cumulating little things that made it eminently frustrating and just... hurtful. As in, this character who was depressed but managed to carve himself a relatively happy life despite multiple world-ending dangers thrown in his face, who was inches away from getting some more joy in his life from a queer relationship, was unceremoniously killed in a way that implied he'd chosen that for like, "the greater good"!

And to make matter worse, the showrunners afterwards (from what little I saw, someone correct me if they have more accurate info) essentially were like 'well he's depressed anyway so it's only fair'. Which is fucking bullshit.

Eta: At least we got vindicated in some way because after that Season 5 tanked so hard the show got cancelled (COVID probably didn't help either)

*Also reinforced by the fact that Sera Gamble, the showrunner of The Magicians was also the showrunner who brought the Destiel queerbait scandal to Supernatural season 7, with such "subtle" and "accidental" hints as a giant fucking bi flag in the background while Castiel is being admonished for loving Dean too much... anyway, this is getting away from the point of this ask, but it did show Sera Gamble already had some questionable showrunning decisions under her belt.

[eidetictelekinetic]

Me: *posts new chapter of Into the Sky*

Me: *begins chapter 3*

Also me: *writes over six pages of a new oneshot in which Q is yeeted out of the Mirror Realm split into a kid-shade and a mostly-shadeless-adult*

Also also me: *has opening lines of two more s4 fix-it oneshots (er... I hope they're both oneshots, ambient-ghost!Q might get away from me)*

Also also also me: *has a fluffy sequel to Shine Through My Memory, the daemon multiverse, and other fandom WIPs on the docket*

Well fuck.

[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.

[eidetictelekinetic]

Have a clip from my new Magicians WIP!

The first thing Margo notices when she opens the door is that they’re in identical clothes. The black hoodie and black jeans Quentin had worn the last day of his life (first life?), shrunk to child-size on the little boy who’s coloring on the floor. Or he was coloring on the floor. The little boy - Q, maybe, call the adult Quentin? - looks up and squeaks, eyes wide and terrified before he darts around to hide behind the chair where his adult self sits. 

Quentin, who had been looking out the window, turns to look their way, head tilted as if he finds them mildly interesting. “Oh, hello. I wondered if anyone was going to stop in.”

It’s Quentin… but it’s not Quentin. Margo didn’t know Julia well enough at the time - still doesn’t, really - to appreciate the difference when she’d been shadeless. Her experience of Alice as a Niffin had been brief but Niffin Alice had definitely been nothing like her human self, and the Monster hadn’t even known how to pretend to be a generic human, much less Eliot. Her hallucinated Eliot had been basically a more vivid memory of Eliot, turned a little wacky, and so doesn’t count. Which means that Margo has never really experienced this for herself, this person who is still one of her people but at the same time isn’t.

“You didn’t think anyone would?” That’s Eliot, and at the sound of his voice, little Q peeks out from behind the chair, waving quickly - at Eliot, but not at Margo - before he hides again. Quentin just shrugs, and if his vague interest when they came in had been unsettling, it’s worse now that his focus is on Eliot. Because Quentin has never been mildly anything where Eliot’s concerned. 

And then his expression turns cold, his gaze shifting back to her, then back to the window. “Well, when no one seemed to notice me until after I killed myself, it did seem possible that no one would check in now that I’m back. Though I guess coming back split like this is crisis enough for me to be worth your while again?”

[eidetictelekinetic]

Quentin wakes up, and life carries on. Maybe not quite as it did, but it always carries on.

Start from chapter 1!

[eidetictelekinetic]

After talking to himself - literally - Quentin makes his choice to live or die, while in the living world, waiting leads to some new understandings.

Start with Chapter 1!

[eidetictelekinetic]

In which the boys continue to pine, Julia and Margo have their say - and then Eliot finally has his, which leads to some long-overdue confessions.

Start from Chapter 1!

[eidetictelekinetic]

Quentin survives the Mirror World thanks to Alice's daemon (and his own) but is in a coma from the magic backlash. His friends are left to see if he'll ever wake up, while in the Underworld, he has a choice to make.

[eidetictelekinetic]

Me: writing a Magicians 4.13 fix-it with daemons

Me: needs two Underworld characters

Me: looks around to see if anyone is watching

Me: yanks two characters from elsewhere in my daemonverse because I fucking can

[eidetictelekinetic]

Taking this to the blog - should my fix-it for 4.13 have daemons or no?

[eidetictelekinetic]

Magicians Fic Masterlist!

Hey, so, seems like a good day, for no reason whatsoever, to update and repost my Magicians fic masterlist! 

All my fics ignore or fix canon from 4.13 at the latest, and onward from there - although since I refused to watch s5, what s5 elements do appear are used differently (and possibly inaccurately).

Check ‘em out below the cut!

Series

Witch Oil and Marsh Fire

In which a Timeline 40 with daemons splits three ways as the events of season 4 come to a close, where the ripple effects of 4.11’s timeshare spell create a spinoff from season 1 onward, and where in front of the Seam, Quentin Coldwater’s life takes two different turns. But even when that turn leads to death, the story isn’t over yet.

Basically, daemons + timeline shenanigans + multiple fix-it options.

All posted fics in this verse are completed, but the verse as a whole is not.

Oh, And I’m Still A Far Cry From Gone: Quentin survives the Mirror World thanks to Alice’s daemon (and his own) but is in a coma from the magic backlash. His friends are left to see if he’ll ever wake up, while in the Underworld, he has a choice to make.

Now There’s Only Love in the Dark: In our last timeline, everyone got to live. In this one, Eliot and his daemon wake up in a world without the one person they’d most wanted to see - but they aren’t about to just accept that and move on.

(Companion fic to Turn Around, Bright Eyes)

Turn Around, Bright Eyes: Quentin and his daemon walk through an arch, but never catch a train. They run instead, trying to find their way home. Along the way, they stumble across new faces, a job to keep them busy until they leave, and eventually a goddess. But in the end, whether they live again or not comes down to a choice - and how brave they can manage to be.

(Companion fic to Now There’s Only Love in the Dark)

Between the Sand and Stone

Everett’s sea of magic contained power of all kinds, and when he died, so did he. This included a not-insignificant amount of time magic. And Quentin? Traces of the timeshare spell still lingered on him, and it was, after all, his spell that set off the blast.

(And what is mending anyway, but a kind of physical magic with hints of time magic and healing to it?)

The surges aren’t the only side effect of the blast that accidentally returned magic to the world, and the already-unstable Timeline 40 splits along a fault line, leaving ripple effects in both the realities it creates. The only way to mend things is to work together.

All listed fics are complete; however, the verse itself is not. Path Unwinding is also the first in a new series set in Timeline 41, Please Tell Them Our Names.

If I Could Fall Into the Sky: Quentin survives the blast in the Mirror Realm, but at the cost of half his leg. In the aftermath, he’s sent off to recover, but the thing is, he’s not sure if anyone is really going to want him to come back now.

As for Eliot? Well, first he has to find out what actually even happened. But even once they straighten themselves out, the consequences of magic are more complicated than they expected.

I Stopped Into a Church: On the other side of the split, Eliot and Alice actually investigate their options rather than just dumping things in a supposedly magical well, and everything changes.

Holding My Last Breath: After the doorway, Quentin falls, and keeps falling - until he learns to run again, and the running may save him even now. Or, the story of the Q in the mirror from If I Could Fall Into the Sky.

Till We Reach the Circle’s End: Quentin and Eliot are ready to retire from saving the world and magical crises, but they have one last mess to fix - saving another Quentin from beyond the grave.

But they won’t be doing it alone, not when another Eliot has been working with Alice Quinn toward the same end. Not when both their timelines’ magic is a mess, and the two Fillorys aren’t much better.

One last mess is more complicated than they expected.

And Now I’ll Be Here (Whatever Way Our Stories End): In which Quentin picks a gift for Eliot that gets back to the roots of his love for musicals, but that isn’t the only surprise he has in store over the coming days…

On the Path Unwinding: “You need to go off the garden path.” - Jane Chatwin

“The bridge between your past self and your present self is delicate. If you break it…” - Alice Quinn 

After forty timeloops, one little shift caused by Quentin’s timeshare spell was enough to create a splinter timeline - Timeline 41. In Timeline 41, “Mike” is around for longer, but Eliot, Margo, and Quentin get closer in the end. So do Alice and Penny. Friendships take unexpected turns, and they left the garden path behind long ago, but all roads lead, in the end, to Fillory.

Standalone Fics (or fics with just one sequel)

[A de facto s1 AU after 1.07]

Posing Riddles and Playing Tricks: Jane never let herself think too hard about the consequences of the time loops, and she still doesn’t, but this particular consequence is the most stubborn of them all. And he never knocks.

Jane and Quentin 1 have a series of conversations as the time loops unfold and as Quentin 1 prepares to try and help out in Timeline 41.

(I'd Marry You) With Paper Rings: In Timeline 40a, Quentin and Eliot are getting married. Weddings are known as a time for family, but it turns out found family isn't the only kind they have.

Things are a little more complicated than expected, but their happy ending is assured after all they've been through to get there. It's just some of the details that need to be sorted out.

i’m a little out of tune: It's easy for Quentin to figure out that he's bi. It's not quite as straightforward to figure out why, most of the time, he doesn't seem to want anyone at all anyway.

And even when he has a word for it, even when he knows there's nothing actually wrong, the trouble of only being able to want under specific circumstances means knowing what to do about a crush on one of your best friends is even more daunting. Especially when it's not going away this time. [WIP]

Do I Even Dare (To Speak Out Your Name): In a world with daemons, things with the Monster might possibly be worse. But they have a plan, and once it works, everything will be fine. Right?

fall away to the sound (of my heart to your beat): In a world where you bond to your soulmate at the first skin-to-skin touch, things go a little differently from the moment Quentin and Eliot meet, and things end - so far - happier too.

could not ask for more (than this time with you): Quentin always spends his birthdays quietly. Eliot isn’t going to change that, exactly, but he can definitely improve upon it.

Cupcakes and Other Gifts: For Eliot’s 26th birthday, Quentin gets him cupcakes and Broadway songs. For his 29th, well… the cupcakes are still a thing, but Q also has a plan for a very nice wake-up call. He manages to make both times a surprise, too.

And Also With You: After surviving Order 66, there’s only one place Quentin can think to go. [Star Wars fusion]

Shine Through My Memory: In which Brian and Nigel meet, fall in love, and have months together before the Monster shows up. Once his memories are back, Quentin faces the events of season 4 with a second layer of proof of concept lingering in his mind. It only makes the grief sharper, but can it also give him an anchor to hold onto? And what happens when the dust settles?

I Just Want You For My Own: Two years on from the Monster mess, Quentin and Eliot have settled into a happy, fairly quiet life. And this year, they both have a great idea for how to cap off the holiday season. The thing is, it’s the same idea. [Sequel to Shine Through My Memory.]

Lay Me Down (Pockets Full of Stones):  In which Quentin survives the events of 4.13 by taking such bad care of himself he never actually makes it to the Mirror Realm. Also in which everyone loses him for a day, and Eliot is Not Happy about this.

(one kiss) it all comes down to this: Eliot gets hit with a curse right out of Disney’s collection, and when Quentin is the one to break the spell, the two of them have a long overdue conversation.

down to the one bright spark: Eliot goes to the realms of the dead to convince Quentin to come home with him.

like a perfect picture (in a broken frame): At the doorway to crossing over, Quentin Coldwater makes a different choice, and his own magic pulls him back to the living world. But magic is never simple, and he comes back split apart. Those who love him have to fix him, but in the meantime are faced with a frightened child and an adult who can’t feel anything but the cold.

in my field of paper flowers: It starts with lilacs, and then the tulips show up.Or, Quentin has chronic Hanahaki Disease, and he doesn’t want anyone to know about it.

the heart of this star-crossed voyager: It’s Quentin’s birthday, after all.

This much is true across all the stories - the question is, what’s happening in each one? Good news - they all have happy endings.

don’t write me off (just yet): Eliot Waugh has a problem. His manager and best friend Margo Hanson has lined up a duet for him to save his flagging music career… but he has to come up with the song, and Eliot can’t write lyrics to save his life. Enter Quentin Coldwater, bookstore part-owner, temp plant boy… and born lyricist.

As Quentin, Eliot, and Margo work to get the song ready, music isn’t all they’re building together. [A Music and Lyrics AU]

go anywhere i want (just not home): Quentin comes back from the dead and promptly leaves town. He believes he’ll never belong again, and the best idea he has is to become a nomad. But the truth is, he really wants to come home. He just doesn’t think he has one.

shipwrecked (in the cracks of light):  Quentin returns to New York, Brakebills, and his old friends after rebirth and a few years away, but coming home is not as simple as returning to a location. It takes time to heal, and time to let himself open up again, but home isn’t as lost as he once believed it to be. He just needs to find it in himself to trust that. [Sequel to go anywhere i want (just not home)]

the second one might be profound: When the rest of the group decides they can't risk letting the Monster go free any longer, Quentin takes drastic measures to prevent Eliot from being banished with it.

After, Eliot is the one left figuring out how to prevent Quentin suffering the same fate.

return to the sunlit lands: … no one is coming for him, if he is going to get out he’ll have to save himself. And if he does get out, he can never go back, because there is no place for him there anymore. He can’t imagine they’d even want him, and he has no interest in pity or obligation.

If he gets out, they’re never going to know.

Quentin escapes the Underworld, and finds himself in Narnia. But, having seen his friends let him go and move on, he believes there’s no point in trying to get back, and settles down where he is. But his past is not done with him yet, as he learns when a window opens between Narnia and New Fillory…

farewell to shadowlands: When the triad monarchs of Narnia invite their New Fillorian counterparts for a diplomatic visit, Eliot's main goal has less to do with diplomacy and more to do with Cair Paravel's court magician - Quentin Coldwater, returned from the dead and in Narnia, of all places.

But when faced with a Quentin who is anything but happy to be reunited, Eliot has to figure out how to fix what's broken, all the more difficult when he doesn't even know why Quentin's so angry with all of them. [Companion fic to return to the sunlit lands]

strange incidents of life: Most days, Quentin Coldwater is broadly satisfied with his life. Maybe not happy, but content. Then one day an actor runs into his bookstore to hide from the paparazzi, and everything changes. [Notting Hill AU]

written by fire on stone: Quentin and his daemon save themselves, and as soon as they're strong enough, they run far, far away from everyone they once called friends. They believe they're unwelcome and are too hurt and angry to want a welcome anyway. So they plan to vanish and start again, alone but for each other, convinced they can rely on no one else.

But it turns out running away is never that simple. [WIP]

[eidetictelekinetic]

In which Quentin goes to New Fillory and has one more unhappy reunion to get through, but then he finally gets some answers. And then loses a fight with a plant, so to speak.

Start from Chapter 1!

[eidetictelekinetic]

Quentin and Eliot return to New York, and settle in for one last mission before they can finally retire for good.

This fic is now complete!

Start from Chapter 1

Part 1 of Between the Sand and Stone

[eidetictelekinetic]

Quentin and Eliot are ready to retire from saving the world and magical crises, but they have one last mess to fix - saving another Quentin from beyond the grave.

But they won't be doing it alone, not when another Eliot has been working with Alice Quinn toward the same end. Not when both their timelines' magic is a mess, and the two Fillorys aren't much better.

One last mess is more complicated than they expected.

Part 4 of Between the Sand and Stone

[eidetictelekinetic]

With Quentin alive and whole again, there are several conversations to be had.

Now complete!

Start from Chapter 1!