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necessarian) wrote2019-03-26 09:57 am
necessarian) wrote2019-03-26 09:57 am
Entry tags:
sad about eliot waugh
what else is new?
listen - i have been thinking a lot about how everyone is reacting with bafflement to quentin's single-minded self-destructive determination to keep eliot's body safe, even if it means siding with this highly dangerous monster. obviously they don't know that quentin is quite literally in love with him*. they also don't know what happened on the mosaic quest. BUT i think it goes deeper than that.
consider, if you will, that eliot has very few friends. he has margo - that's a given. he has quentin. later on, he has fen. but eliot and the rest of the group? superficial, at best. connections non-existent at worst. like has he ever held a conversation with josh? or kady? my hot new theory that is making me cry is that everyone (bar margo and fen, but they're in fillory) is so confused at quentin's egregious devotion to the monster because they don't really know eliot, they don't conceptualise him as a real part of their friendship group. it's been acknowledged on-screen that quentin is the glue keeping the gang together. quentin introduced eliot to almost everyone else, but eliot remains emotionally distant. even margo and fen, who were introduced by eliot via his connection with quentin, have gotten on better with the rest of the gang. this is because of eliot's fundamental insecurities and the way he distances himself from people, and in this essay i will... actually get into it. i hate the "in this essay i will" meme because people ought to actually commit to writing the damn essay! so here it is:
"i bond fast" is the biggest lie that eliot's ever told, even bigger than "hey i know we were functionally married for fifty years but maybe you don't actually want to go out with me." eliot does not bond fast. he bonds hard. superficially, he seems popular and well liked, but one of the first things we learn about him is that he's ride or die for margo. he does open up to quentin early on, but note that it's instantly establishing a depth of connection - and it's reciprocal. quentin sees eliot as someone he can open up to, because for whatever reason he's clocked eliot as a safe bet, someone who's willing to help him out and to listen. (never mind that their early friendship has undertones of cher and tai and that i have always maintained they should've been endgame. never mind that.) but the thing is, i don't think anyone (except margo) actually confides in eliot at all, at that stage. so eliot sees this guy opening up to him and goes, holy shit, i can do that too? like right off the bat he shares his deepest, darkest secret with quentin. as someone who's been the weird outcast bully-bait kid, i can 100% confirm that oversharing to the first person who seems interested is a real phenomenon, which quentin and eliot are both going through simultaneously with one another.
so, we have this incredibly deep friendship from almost day one, because quentin and eliot are both in desperate need of someone who'll listen and take them seriously. note that they both already have this - in julia and margo respectively - but one more confidante never hurts. i think the point can be made that their friends view eliot-and-margo as a friendship unit, and perhaps to a lesser extent quentin-and-julia. so none of the others really think of quentin-and-eliot as a unit, even though it's been there since the very beginning. it starts as a confidante sort of thing, but blossoms very quickly into the kind of friendship where they properly care about one another, in a demonstrably physical sort of way. it just... isn't on the other characters' radar. until now.
also i want to talk about eliot and fen! imo this is potentially the more interesting example, because they don't choose each other, but become close anyway. and it takes much longer. whereas we're introduced to eliot-and-margo as an established unit, and we get to see how that may have happened mirrored in eliot's instant connection with quentin, with fen we actually get to see eliot grow into a real pyramid building sort of friendship - that is, it starts from absolutely nothing, and coalesces to a peak. and the emphasis here is on how much time it takes. early on, eliot is wary of fen, he distances himself from her - the same way he does with everyone else - but the more time they have to spend together, the more they get to know each other, to the point where i think it's pretty clear now that eliot thinks of her as family. and this took not only a lot of time, but also an arranged marriage and some very extenuating circumstances. now, with that in mind, think about eliot's shallow connections with the rest of the group. if it took this extended pressure cooker of a situation to get him to make one friend without the magic of an instant connection, think about how much longer it might take with alice, julia, josh, kady, and penny.
eliot has a lot of walls up; we know this. we know that most of these walls are to his detriment. and now we're seeing real consequences of those walls: at the time where he really needs people on his side, trying to save him, all he has is quentin, and nobody else really understands why quentin feels so strongly about him because (a) they don't know about the mosaic and (b) they don't really know eliot, like, at all. obviously by the end of 4x09 he has margo on side too, and my bet is that's going to be something the other characters understand. i mean we've already seen josh and fen's reaction: they are familiar with the margo-and-eliot unit, and there's absolutely no surprise there that margo is going to drop everything to save him. but nobody has extended that same understanding (or even trust, particularly in the case of penny and alice) that quentin is doing the right thing by doing the same thing.
what's really exciting, i think, is that people are slowly starting to realise. they're cottoning on that eliot is more than one of quentin's best friends - i mean, quentin has a lot of love in his heart, he has lots of best friends. i think this is why the scene in the library, where alice is eavesdropping, affected me so much. because it's the first real acknowledgement we get that someone is starting to realise the extent of what eliot means to quentin. (even julia shrugs it off, when penny gives her a questioning look.) and it's exciting, too, that it's alice - because she's been on the receiving end of quentin's intensity, but never like this. quentin and alice's relationship had emotional depth but it sprung up in spurious circumstances (the trials), and after that it was mostly a physical thing. (i'd argue the emotional side of the quentin/alice relationship becomes one-sided fairly early on, because quentin is in love with an idealised version of alice and alice is, well, alice. i want her to work through her issues on her own, without a romeo dragging her down - so it's a good thing quentin's moved on.) whereas, from the start, quentin and eliot chose each other, and now that this connection is literally plot relevant, nobody else knows what to do about it. i'm excited to see where this goes.
okay. thanks for coming to my ted talk.
-
*the simple act of typing that out activates a sleeper agent in my brain who blows the dopamine pipeline wide open and releases all that good jubilation. guys, can you believe? after five years of desperately shipping this and being angry about what the books did with quentin and alice? that i am finally dining at a three michelin star restaurant? life is good rn.
listen - i have been thinking a lot about how everyone is reacting with bafflement to quentin's single-minded self-destructive determination to keep eliot's body safe, even if it means siding with this highly dangerous monster. obviously they don't know that quentin is quite literally in love with him*. they also don't know what happened on the mosaic quest. BUT i think it goes deeper than that.
consider, if you will, that eliot has very few friends. he has margo - that's a given. he has quentin. later on, he has fen. but eliot and the rest of the group? superficial, at best. connections non-existent at worst. like has he ever held a conversation with josh? or kady? my hot new theory that is making me cry is that everyone (bar margo and fen, but they're in fillory) is so confused at quentin's egregious devotion to the monster because they don't really know eliot, they don't conceptualise him as a real part of their friendship group. it's been acknowledged on-screen that quentin is the glue keeping the gang together. quentin introduced eliot to almost everyone else, but eliot remains emotionally distant. even margo and fen, who were introduced by eliot via his connection with quentin, have gotten on better with the rest of the gang. this is because of eliot's fundamental insecurities and the way he distances himself from people, and in this essay i will... actually get into it. i hate the "in this essay i will" meme because people ought to actually commit to writing the damn essay! so here it is:
"i bond fast" is the biggest lie that eliot's ever told, even bigger than "hey i know we were functionally married for fifty years but maybe you don't actually want to go out with me." eliot does not bond fast. he bonds hard. superficially, he seems popular and well liked, but one of the first things we learn about him is that he's ride or die for margo. he does open up to quentin early on, but note that it's instantly establishing a depth of connection - and it's reciprocal. quentin sees eliot as someone he can open up to, because for whatever reason he's clocked eliot as a safe bet, someone who's willing to help him out and to listen. (never mind that their early friendship has undertones of cher and tai and that i have always maintained they should've been endgame. never mind that.) but the thing is, i don't think anyone (except margo) actually confides in eliot at all, at that stage. so eliot sees this guy opening up to him and goes, holy shit, i can do that too? like right off the bat he shares his deepest, darkest secret with quentin. as someone who's been the weird outcast bully-bait kid, i can 100% confirm that oversharing to the first person who seems interested is a real phenomenon, which quentin and eliot are both going through simultaneously with one another.
so, we have this incredibly deep friendship from almost day one, because quentin and eliot are both in desperate need of someone who'll listen and take them seriously. note that they both already have this - in julia and margo respectively - but one more confidante never hurts. i think the point can be made that their friends view eliot-and-margo as a friendship unit, and perhaps to a lesser extent quentin-and-julia. so none of the others really think of quentin-and-eliot as a unit, even though it's been there since the very beginning. it starts as a confidante sort of thing, but blossoms very quickly into the kind of friendship where they properly care about one another, in a demonstrably physical sort of way. it just... isn't on the other characters' radar. until now.
also i want to talk about eliot and fen! imo this is potentially the more interesting example, because they don't choose each other, but become close anyway. and it takes much longer. whereas we're introduced to eliot-and-margo as an established unit, and we get to see how that may have happened mirrored in eliot's instant connection with quentin, with fen we actually get to see eliot grow into a real pyramid building sort of friendship - that is, it starts from absolutely nothing, and coalesces to a peak. and the emphasis here is on how much time it takes. early on, eliot is wary of fen, he distances himself from her - the same way he does with everyone else - but the more time they have to spend together, the more they get to know each other, to the point where i think it's pretty clear now that eliot thinks of her as family. and this took not only a lot of time, but also an arranged marriage and some very extenuating circumstances. now, with that in mind, think about eliot's shallow connections with the rest of the group. if it took this extended pressure cooker of a situation to get him to make one friend without the magic of an instant connection, think about how much longer it might take with alice, julia, josh, kady, and penny.
eliot has a lot of walls up; we know this. we know that most of these walls are to his detriment. and now we're seeing real consequences of those walls: at the time where he really needs people on his side, trying to save him, all he has is quentin, and nobody else really understands why quentin feels so strongly about him because (a) they don't know about the mosaic and (b) they don't really know eliot, like, at all. obviously by the end of 4x09 he has margo on side too, and my bet is that's going to be something the other characters understand. i mean we've already seen josh and fen's reaction: they are familiar with the margo-and-eliot unit, and there's absolutely no surprise there that margo is going to drop everything to save him. but nobody has extended that same understanding (or even trust, particularly in the case of penny and alice) that quentin is doing the right thing by doing the same thing.
what's really exciting, i think, is that people are slowly starting to realise. they're cottoning on that eliot is more than one of quentin's best friends - i mean, quentin has a lot of love in his heart, he has lots of best friends. i think this is why the scene in the library, where alice is eavesdropping, affected me so much. because it's the first real acknowledgement we get that someone is starting to realise the extent of what eliot means to quentin. (even julia shrugs it off, when penny gives her a questioning look.) and it's exciting, too, that it's alice - because she's been on the receiving end of quentin's intensity, but never like this. quentin and alice's relationship had emotional depth but it sprung up in spurious circumstances (the trials), and after that it was mostly a physical thing. (i'd argue the emotional side of the quentin/alice relationship becomes one-sided fairly early on, because quentin is in love with an idealised version of alice and alice is, well, alice. i want her to work through her issues on her own, without a romeo dragging her down - so it's a good thing quentin's moved on.) whereas, from the start, quentin and eliot chose each other, and now that this connection is literally plot relevant, nobody else knows what to do about it. i'm excited to see where this goes.
okay. thanks for coming to my ted talk.
-
*the simple act of typing that out activates a sleeper agent in my brain who blows the dopamine pipeline wide open and releases all that good jubilation. guys, can you believe? after five years of desperately shipping this and being angry about what the books did with quentin and alice? that i am finally dining at a three michelin star restaurant? life is good rn.
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