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necessarian) wrote2019-04-05 10:47 am
necessarian) wrote2019-04-05 10:47 am
Entry tags:
thinking about alice
turns out i'm still not done with 4x11. you know, you give these things time to sit, you chat to your friends, you solidify your opinions. this is a post about alice, but it is also about q and alice. if you like q/alice as a ship this is not the post for you.
the short version is that alice and q shouldn't get back together and if they did it would be lazy writing.
the long version is this:
i never liked alice in the books. this is, unfortunately, because she was written as a love interest and little more. sure, she's smarter than everyone else, but that's ultimately her undoing - and that would have been an interesting storyline to explore, if it hadn't ended in quentin using the power of love to bring her back from niffindom, and then they got to be happy and in love forever. yawn. but, i've started to like alice in the show, especially in season 4 - and that's no coincidence. up until 4x11, alice's function in season 4 was not that of a love interest. she was her own character, and it was fucking great.
i really, honestly thought the show was going in a more interesting direction with this relationship. once alice was human again, she kept fucking up, and q kept trying to force his idealised vision onto her, and it led to their relationship fragmenting. then alice full on betrayed the whole crew, driving what looked to me like a final nail into that coffin. q got over her. (with the 4x05 retcon, combined with the fact that the actors made the conscious decision to play q and eliot's relationship as "fundamentally changed" post-3x05, we know he's been in the process of getting over her for a while now.)
and, you know, i think it's good that they split up. they both fucked each other over, and their relationship was never exactly healthy in the first place. it was obsessive, it was tv romance. it even has shades of the manipulative: quentin does this a lot in early seasons, and we also saw it in 4x11's past!alice, where she said he was the best thing to ever happen to her (yikes). if they got back together after all that, it would be sending the message that this kind of all-consuming made-for-tv love is like, in any way redeemable. and the magicians has always been good about being a little more realistic than other shows when it comes to human displays of emotion, so, you know, i guess i had high hopes for this relationship ending badly?
4x11 (and the 4x12 promo, though i won't leap to conclusions) kind of torpedoed that. (i also saw someone saying that jason said in an interview the season ends on a hopeful note for q/alice, but until i see that anywhere else i'm not taking it as confirmed.) let me start by saying that i really liked the q and alice stuff in 4x11 - with the exception of that horrifying wig - right up until the end of it. i liked that we explored the way their relationship has changed since then, and that they were able to work together as friends even after they've split up. it's perfectly natural for exes to stay friends. but, somehow, that never happens in television. the magicians has shown us time and again they can buck the conventions of television, proving these conventions are far more societal than inherent to the medium. so why not this one?
this isn't about queliot for me. though i'm a die hard shipper, i'm not one of those people who desperately wants their ships to be canon. i mean, i've shipped queliot since the books. i'm used to this. yeah, i got my hopes up a little when the fact that they literally fell in love was acknowledged in canon, but in a show like the magicians there's really no saying where they'll go with that detail. and, in the long run, there are already several fics i'm more invested in than the show, so, you know.
what this is about is doing justice to a character i was just starting to come around to. letting alice be more than a love interest. letting exes be friends. following through on alice's narrative arc of becoming more independent, and quentin in getting past his obsessive feelings for alice.
i just. really hope the show doesn't let us down on this front.
the short version is that alice and q shouldn't get back together and if they did it would be lazy writing.
the long version is this:
i never liked alice in the books. this is, unfortunately, because she was written as a love interest and little more. sure, she's smarter than everyone else, but that's ultimately her undoing - and that would have been an interesting storyline to explore, if it hadn't ended in quentin using the power of love to bring her back from niffindom, and then they got to be happy and in love forever. yawn. but, i've started to like alice in the show, especially in season 4 - and that's no coincidence. up until 4x11, alice's function in season 4 was not that of a love interest. she was her own character, and it was fucking great.
i really, honestly thought the show was going in a more interesting direction with this relationship. once alice was human again, she kept fucking up, and q kept trying to force his idealised vision onto her, and it led to their relationship fragmenting. then alice full on betrayed the whole crew, driving what looked to me like a final nail into that coffin. q got over her. (with the 4x05 retcon, combined with the fact that the actors made the conscious decision to play q and eliot's relationship as "fundamentally changed" post-3x05, we know he's been in the process of getting over her for a while now.)
and, you know, i think it's good that they split up. they both fucked each other over, and their relationship was never exactly healthy in the first place. it was obsessive, it was tv romance. it even has shades of the manipulative: quentin does this a lot in early seasons, and we also saw it in 4x11's past!alice, where she said he was the best thing to ever happen to her (yikes). if they got back together after all that, it would be sending the message that this kind of all-consuming made-for-tv love is like, in any way redeemable. and the magicians has always been good about being a little more realistic than other shows when it comes to human displays of emotion, so, you know, i guess i had high hopes for this relationship ending badly?
4x11 (and the 4x12 promo, though i won't leap to conclusions) kind of torpedoed that. (i also saw someone saying that jason said in an interview the season ends on a hopeful note for q/alice, but until i see that anywhere else i'm not taking it as confirmed.) let me start by saying that i really liked the q and alice stuff in 4x11 - with the exception of that horrifying wig - right up until the end of it. i liked that we explored the way their relationship has changed since then, and that they were able to work together as friends even after they've split up. it's perfectly natural for exes to stay friends. but, somehow, that never happens in television. the magicians has shown us time and again they can buck the conventions of television, proving these conventions are far more societal than inherent to the medium. so why not this one?
this isn't about queliot for me. though i'm a die hard shipper, i'm not one of those people who desperately wants their ships to be canon. i mean, i've shipped queliot since the books. i'm used to this. yeah, i got my hopes up a little when the fact that they literally fell in love was acknowledged in canon, but in a show like the magicians there's really no saying where they'll go with that detail. and, in the long run, there are already several fics i'm more invested in than the show, so, you know.
what this is about is doing justice to a character i was just starting to come around to. letting alice be more than a love interest. letting exes be friends. following through on alice's narrative arc of becoming more independent, and quentin in getting past his obsessive feelings for alice.
i just. really hope the show doesn't let us down on this front.