app (xim).

OOC
Name: Giz
Contact: ghoulsonfilm
Other characters: n/a

IC
Name: Quentin Coldwater
Canon: The Magicians
Canon point: 4x13
Age: 27

History:

The Magicians takes place - mostly - on modern-day Earth, where a vast, magical society exists hidden in plain view. At a remote magic school in upstate New York, a handful of mismatched grad students, including the blundering, anxious Quentin Coldwater, find out that not only is the fantasy realm from a popular children’s book series real, but something from it wants to kill them.

Quentin Coldwater – “Q”, to his friends – has a literature degree, an arsenal of close-up magic tricks, and a history of psychiatric hospital stays. He’s struggled with depression since his youth, and his favorite outlet has always been books – specifically, the Fillory and Further series, a Narnia-esque (but don’t tell him that) story about three young siblings finding a magical world on the other side of an old grandfather clock. Then, one day, Q’s life gets turned upside down when he wanders through a hedge and into a hidden world of his own: Brakebills University of Magical Pedagogy.

Being a magical grad student is awesome – at least until the part where Quentin and his classmates accidentally let a horrifying monster called the Beast onto their campus. The Beast turns out to be from a different world, and not just any world: Fillory, the fantasy realm of Q’s childhood dreams, in the flesh. So, armed with fanboy lore, straight liquor, and some shaky magic skills, the ragtag band travels to the land of Fillory, where animals speak, and the air contains more than negligible amounts of opium. From there, Things Don’t Go Well. There is a lot of maiming, a touch of forced marriage, and a bit of Quentin’s girlfriend, Alice, sort of dying.

Quentin immediately devotes the next several months of his life to bringing Alice back, a task that nearly kills him, and which gets him no thanks from Alice’s antagonistic, knowledge-hungry spirit. He eventually succeeds, against Alice’s wishes, and his well-meaning presumption drives a wedge between them. There’s little time for Quentin to question his actions, however: there’s an apocalypse on, and the whole universe is in the crosshairs.

Ember, one of the twin ram gods of Fillory, is bored with his creation, and sees unbridled destruction as the only solution. To stop the destruction of both Fillory and Earth, Quentin kills Ember. Killing a god, however, has consequences. As punishment, the old gods – ancestors of the minor deities in charge of Fillory – have magic turned off entirely, sending the magical world into turmoil.

Quentin feels responsible for the magicless state of the world, so when he’s alerted to a quest that may restore magic, he jumps on the opportunity. For months he and his friends search two worlds for several magical keys, one of which is only obtained after Quentin has lived for fifty years in an alternate timeline with his best friend, Eliot, and discovered romantic feelings for him. When all the keys have been found, the questers travel to an upside-down castle, where they will be able to use them to turn magic back on.

There is a catch, though. The castle contains a horrific monster, one they have been warned must never be allowed to escape. Just as in most areas of Quentin’s life, Things Again Don’t Go Well, and while magic ids restored to the universe, the monster winds up possessing Eliot, and dragging Quentin on a global tour of chaos and murder.

For months, Quentin and his friends search down every lead to undo Eliot’s possession and get rid of the monster, all while Q is tormented endlessly by a sadist with his best friend’s face. He never gives up, however, and in the end, he takes the fight right to his own grave. Faced with an opportunity to banish the monster forever, Quentin takes a risk and winds up in his own crossfire. He awakens in the Underworld, where he is allowed to see his friends for a final time, and then he calmly moves on to whatever lies beyond.

Personality:

✔︎ Problem-Solver: Quentin is a born fixer. Whether it’s a broken mug or his dad’s cancer, he feels not only a motivation but a deep, personal responsibility to mend everything around him. He states expressly that he sees little point in even having magic if it doesn’t give him the power to fix real problems in the world, and he’s devastated when he finds that some of the worst pain around him – his dad’s terminal illness, his best friends’ trauma – can’t be touched by a simple magic spell. Still, he goes to great lengths to solve what he can.

✔︎ Dedicated: Building off that, Quentin is incredibly loyal and persevering; not only will he try to fix all his loved ones’ problems, but he will run himself to the ends of the Earth doing so, no matter what happens. As gloomy and defeatist as he can be about himself, when it comes to helping those he loves Quentin will stop at nothing. Bringing Alice Quinn back to life nearly kills him, and he faces antagonism from her at every turn, but he does every single thing he can to see her safe in human form again. He suffers abuse at the hands of his possessed best friend for months, but never gives up for one moment, and eventually dies to save him – and the rest of the world. Quentin is a smart guy, but he does not know the definition of the word “quit”.

✔︎ Hopeful: For a clinically depressed tangle of anxiety and self-loathing, Quentin can be a surprising source of positivity. One of his friends states that while they all know magic exists, Quentin is the one who truly believes in it. Despite all the darkness in his life, he retains an almost childlike trust that the world can be good, that nothing is past saving, that magic can still be a beautiful and wondrous thing. Even after the childhood fantasy world of his dreams has been ruined by dark truths, his pure love for the idea of it that kept him alive as a kid is still strong enough to spark life in a withered, magic flower (yes, this is a very cheesy show at times).

✘ Self-Loathing: Among the first things we learn about Quentin is that he believes he is “the most useless person who ever lived.” This assessment was given during a particularly dark moment, on admission to a mental hospital, but this self-hating tendency is an ongoing problem with Quentin. He hates his face, he hates his hair, he hates how he can’t hold his liquor – and that’s just the small stuff. On a much larger scale, Quentin has a habit of attributing every bad situation to his own innate deficiencies, even when he has no control over what’s happening. He thinks that he destroys everyone around him – such as Alice and Julia – no matter how tenuous his connection to their pain. Quentin could probably find a way to blame himself for global warming, and that is not an exaggeration.

✘ Self-Sacrificial: One troublesome aspect of Quentin’s nature is his tendency to put himself last, occasionally to a near-lethal degree. This is certainly tied into his chronic depression and non-existent self-esteem, but it manifests in a habit of throwing himself at a problem without regard for safety, or consideration of alternative means. He quite calmly commits to an eternity guarding the Castle at the End of the World, despite little need for such a drastic action, because of his own perceived need for punishment. Worse, he later causes his own death by casting a spell under deadly circumstances with no attempt at an escape plan. While he is incredibly brave and selfless, without a doubt, Quentin’s complete lack of regard for his own well-being places this tendency towards martyrdom more in the realm of self-destruction than heroism.

✘ Awkward: While this definitely isn’t a dire character flaw to the degree of his depressive and destructive natures, it’s one Quentin demonstrates frequently in his day-to-day life. He is both physically and socially graceless, blundering through life with his head half-stuck in his sweater. He tells the wrong stories at parties, he stumbles over his words as often as his feet, and he is uncomfortable in most situations that don’t involve him sitting alone with a book.

Powers/Abilities: Quentin is a magician, which is fairly comparable to any other magic-user from a fantasy canon. He has the innate ability to channel ambient magical energy with or without the use of spells, which require complex hand gestures rather than wands and words. Some magicians can perform incredibly powerful acts, such as lethal strikes in battle or resurrection of the dead, but it requires access to a large energy source and a level of strength and control that Quentin is far from attaining. With a few brief exceptions (in a moment of extreme turmoil he manages to create a small black hole), his magical aptitude is limited to smaller-scale spells: telekinesis, translocation of objects, and illusion casting, to name a few. His greatest level of skill is with mending magic. This boy can fix your broken mug like no one else. He is also extremely skilled at plain old sleight of hand tricks, making him a talented pickpocket when the occasion arises.

Regret: Choosing to go to Castle Blackspire to restore magic. He knew the monster inside was dangerous and understood the importance of keeping it there, but he had no idea the true scope of the risk he was leading his friends into. Turning magic back on came at an unthinkable cost, leading to the loss of Julia’s godhood, the possession of Eliot, and the death of Quentin’s father. While Julia expressed that she would do it all again just to have magic back, she observed that Quentin would not, a notion he confirmed through his silence.

Inventory: A deck of cards, and the clothes on his back.