Post by sadeyedlady on May 18, 2017 0:07:13 GMT
ok so like.... The other week I accidentally wrote Matty a fucking essay on tumblr (sorry Matty!) and it occurred to me that you guys might actually apreciate it so here, have... whatever the fuck this is.
Ok, right, so, I love Plum. That is the primary thing I took from chapters seven through nine, this series has frankly yet to give me a POV character I didn’t adore and Plum is no exception. The thing I found really fascinating though, obviously, is her descriptions of Fillory.
Now, Fillory, Fillory it’s self is interesting. Fillory is different to other worlds, we know that “But in Fillory, magic and thing were somehow one and the same. Magic existed on Earth, sure, but Fillory was magic. It was a fundamental difference.” We’ve been told that again and again, magic in Fillory is part of the fundamental nature of the world. It’s the glue that holds everything together and, as such Fillory it’s self almost has a presence within the narrative. It’s this giant, unseen force that’s always there, always acting on the characters. Fillory has this, almost gravitational pull, and as a reader you’re always aware of this tug. Quentin feels it, very strongly, it’s the motivator for almost everything he does, and where it’s not the motivator it’s the driving force. Now Quentin is very aware of this, and a lot of The Magician King is Quentin becoming increasingly aware of the way so much of his story is outside of his control, and a lot of Quentin’s character growth is him becoming aware of this fact and making his peace with it. “You don’t get the quest you want, you get the quest you can do” is a quote I think sums up a lot of the second book. Quentin very much does not get the quest he wants. In fact I’m pretty sure there’s nothing Quentin wanted less than to inadvertently dump himself on his parents front lawn and then spend three days dicking around trying to get back to Fillory (where, I might add he finds a year has gone by and Eliot has begrudgingly begun, and half completed the quest he passed up at the start.) But in many ways the story wouldn’t’ve worked otherwise, for one thing, a lot of the Magician King is about Julia, and the time Q and Julia spend together on earth is vital for their development not to mention that Fillory needed Josh and Poppy, and in a very literal sense, I think it sent Julian and Quentin to get them.
The first key dumps Quentin and Julia on his parents front lawn, the second dumps him and Poppy in the neitherlands. Neither of these locations are random, magic, Fillory, sent them where it needed them to go. And that’s something you see throughout all of the books. These little nudges the characters get that put them exactly where they need to be. You see it in the first book largely through Jane and you see it in the third book. All of these strings that come together to put everyone where they need to be to serve Fillory, all of the characters being pushed around like chess pieces.
And Quentin, Quentin loves Fillory, even when he know’s it’s manipulating him. especially when he knows it’s manipulating him because Quentin, ultimate, more than anything believes in Fillory, believes in magic (although I think there is very much a discussion to be had about what the distinction between magic and Fillory even is but now I’m getting off topic) and Quentin doesn’t just acknowledge that magic and Fillory are pushing him around in this cosmic chess game, he takes great comfort in it. To Quentin this is his destiny, his faith in Fillory and in magic is unquestioning. Quentin loves magic “naively, romantically, completely” “nobody loved Fillory the way Quentin did, not even it’s high King. Nobody understood it like he did. Nobody enjoyed it like he did.” And all this means that, although Q is generally very aware that his life is at the whim of this impossibly huge, unseen force he’s completely powerless against, he responds to this knowledge with disgruntled amusement, it’s irritating, sure, but ultimately he trusts this force to get him where he needs to be, because ultimately Quentin trusts Fillory to look after him.
“He and the Chatwins were through.
Except it seemed that they weren’t. He’d said good-bye and buried them and mourned them- the Chatwins, Fillory, plover, Whitespire- but there must still be some last invisible unbroken strand connecting them to him.
That name was a message- a hot signal flare shot up into the night, sent specifically for him, across time and space and darkness and rain, all the way from the bright warm centre of the world.”
There’s a lot of segments like this throughout the series, where Quentin feels the “tug” of Fillory, often it’s described that way too, although here it’s an unbroken strand, the effect is the same, no matter how far Quentin gets from Fillory he’s always connected to it, all roads lead back to Fillory. And the wording of the last part especially interest me, frankly I always assumed Quentin meant Fillory with that. Fillory has, in many ways always been the centre for him. And the “bright warm” visuals are very indicative of Fillory (there’s a reason the show does that thing with the visuals where everything in Fillory is literally so much brighter than everything else.)
Now, this, in contrast with Plum.
Plum who, grew up knowing she was a Chatwin, who grew up knowing something dark and terrible and nameless happened to her family, something that she, two generations later is still reeling from.
“Something had happend to that family. There was a curse on them, and its name was Fillory… When Fillory and earth touched the collision was pure damage, and the Chatwins were the point of contact. They were right there at ground zero and they were blown to vapour, like the human shadows at Hiroshima.”
She feels the presence of Fillory, very strongly, maybe even more so than Quentin. But Plum, Plum doesn’t know what Fillory is, she just knows what it did, and what it did, was destroy her family, Martin and Jane, they both vanished age fifteen never to be seen again and the others, well what happened to them it really did a number on them. And Plum, at this point doesn’t know Fillory is actually literally real, she doesn’t know what happened but she knows it was something and she knows magic is real and she knows that means that “whatever it was that had torn through her family like a lion through a flock of loitering gazelle” might be real too, and part of her is very aware that if she digs too deep, it might just find her too. But despite all this she feels its call, “ she could hear Fillory calling to her, or if not Fillory the something- somewhere beautiful and distant and sirenlike where she had never been but that was somehow home.”
Plum feels this, in very much the same way Quentin does, she too is aware of this presence, this influence this call of Fillory, but unlike Quentin it scares the shit out of her. Fillory isn’t this bright, beautiful, magical, wondrous place to her, she’s not in love with Fillory the way all of the other characters are, she feels this tug on her life, on her actions and she’s not comforted, she’s terrified.
And when Fillory finally does reach out to her “what it felt like was, Fillory itself had reached out and tugged lightly on the invisible thread tied to the fishhook that was lodged firmly in her back, and it had whispered :Don’t forget. You belong to me.”
Don’t forget. You belong to me.
and in that one chapter the presence of Fillory goes from something wonderful and beautiful and loving, and, almost a little divine to this horrifying, monstrous, malevolent force that will eat you up and spit you out as it sees fit and that is a fascinating perspective.
Now, I’ve always though that the most interesting, the most compelling thing about Quentin as a narrator is this bright eyed wonder he has for all things magical but it makes even more interesting to see a perspective that so violently opposes that. I think the thing is that both of them are right, and neither of them are, Fillory is everything Q sees in it, but it’s also everything Plum sees to. Magic is, in many ways a force of nature made sentient, and again Fillory is magic and that is both beautiful and wondrous and absolutely fucking terrifying.
Q is, and always has been an un-reliable narrator and one of the things the alternative POV’s offer you is a bit of a…. Reality check so to speak. This reality check is definetly the most striking though.
Ok, right, so, I love Plum. That is the primary thing I took from chapters seven through nine, this series has frankly yet to give me a POV character I didn’t adore and Plum is no exception. The thing I found really fascinating though, obviously, is her descriptions of Fillory.
Now, Fillory, Fillory it’s self is interesting. Fillory is different to other worlds, we know that “But in Fillory, magic and thing were somehow one and the same. Magic existed on Earth, sure, but Fillory was magic. It was a fundamental difference.” We’ve been told that again and again, magic in Fillory is part of the fundamental nature of the world. It’s the glue that holds everything together and, as such Fillory it’s self almost has a presence within the narrative. It’s this giant, unseen force that’s always there, always acting on the characters. Fillory has this, almost gravitational pull, and as a reader you’re always aware of this tug. Quentin feels it, very strongly, it’s the motivator for almost everything he does, and where it’s not the motivator it’s the driving force. Now Quentin is very aware of this, and a lot of The Magician King is Quentin becoming increasingly aware of the way so much of his story is outside of his control, and a lot of Quentin’s character growth is him becoming aware of this fact and making his peace with it. “You don’t get the quest you want, you get the quest you can do” is a quote I think sums up a lot of the second book. Quentin very much does not get the quest he wants. In fact I’m pretty sure there’s nothing Quentin wanted less than to inadvertently dump himself on his parents front lawn and then spend three days dicking around trying to get back to Fillory (where, I might add he finds a year has gone by and Eliot has begrudgingly begun, and half completed the quest he passed up at the start.) But in many ways the story wouldn’t’ve worked otherwise, for one thing, a lot of the Magician King is about Julia, and the time Q and Julia spend together on earth is vital for their development not to mention that Fillory needed Josh and Poppy, and in a very literal sense, I think it sent Julian and Quentin to get them.
The first key dumps Quentin and Julia on his parents front lawn, the second dumps him and Poppy in the neitherlands. Neither of these locations are random, magic, Fillory, sent them where it needed them to go. And that’s something you see throughout all of the books. These little nudges the characters get that put them exactly where they need to be. You see it in the first book largely through Jane and you see it in the third book. All of these strings that come together to put everyone where they need to be to serve Fillory, all of the characters being pushed around like chess pieces.
And Quentin, Quentin loves Fillory, even when he know’s it’s manipulating him. especially when he knows it’s manipulating him because Quentin, ultimate, more than anything believes in Fillory, believes in magic (although I think there is very much a discussion to be had about what the distinction between magic and Fillory even is but now I’m getting off topic) and Quentin doesn’t just acknowledge that magic and Fillory are pushing him around in this cosmic chess game, he takes great comfort in it. To Quentin this is his destiny, his faith in Fillory and in magic is unquestioning. Quentin loves magic “naively, romantically, completely” “nobody loved Fillory the way Quentin did, not even it’s high King. Nobody understood it like he did. Nobody enjoyed it like he did.” And all this means that, although Q is generally very aware that his life is at the whim of this impossibly huge, unseen force he’s completely powerless against, he responds to this knowledge with disgruntled amusement, it’s irritating, sure, but ultimately he trusts this force to get him where he needs to be, because ultimately Quentin trusts Fillory to look after him.
“He and the Chatwins were through.
Except it seemed that they weren’t. He’d said good-bye and buried them and mourned them- the Chatwins, Fillory, plover, Whitespire- but there must still be some last invisible unbroken strand connecting them to him.
That name was a message- a hot signal flare shot up into the night, sent specifically for him, across time and space and darkness and rain, all the way from the bright warm centre of the world.”
There’s a lot of segments like this throughout the series, where Quentin feels the “tug” of Fillory, often it’s described that way too, although here it’s an unbroken strand, the effect is the same, no matter how far Quentin gets from Fillory he’s always connected to it, all roads lead back to Fillory. And the wording of the last part especially interest me, frankly I always assumed Quentin meant Fillory with that. Fillory has, in many ways always been the centre for him. And the “bright warm” visuals are very indicative of Fillory (there’s a reason the show does that thing with the visuals where everything in Fillory is literally so much brighter than everything else.)
Now, this, in contrast with Plum.
Plum who, grew up knowing she was a Chatwin, who grew up knowing something dark and terrible and nameless happened to her family, something that she, two generations later is still reeling from.
“Something had happend to that family. There was a curse on them, and its name was Fillory… When Fillory and earth touched the collision was pure damage, and the Chatwins were the point of contact. They were right there at ground zero and they were blown to vapour, like the human shadows at Hiroshima.”
She feels the presence of Fillory, very strongly, maybe even more so than Quentin. But Plum, Plum doesn’t know what Fillory is, she just knows what it did, and what it did, was destroy her family, Martin and Jane, they both vanished age fifteen never to be seen again and the others, well what happened to them it really did a number on them. And Plum, at this point doesn’t know Fillory is actually literally real, she doesn’t know what happened but she knows it was something and she knows magic is real and she knows that means that “whatever it was that had torn through her family like a lion through a flock of loitering gazelle” might be real too, and part of her is very aware that if she digs too deep, it might just find her too. But despite all this she feels its call, “ she could hear Fillory calling to her, or if not Fillory the something- somewhere beautiful and distant and sirenlike where she had never been but that was somehow home.”
Plum feels this, in very much the same way Quentin does, she too is aware of this presence, this influence this call of Fillory, but unlike Quentin it scares the shit out of her. Fillory isn’t this bright, beautiful, magical, wondrous place to her, she’s not in love with Fillory the way all of the other characters are, she feels this tug on her life, on her actions and she’s not comforted, she’s terrified.
And when Fillory finally does reach out to her “what it felt like was, Fillory itself had reached out and tugged lightly on the invisible thread tied to the fishhook that was lodged firmly in her back, and it had whispered :Don’t forget. You belong to me.”
Don’t forget. You belong to me.
and in that one chapter the presence of Fillory goes from something wonderful and beautiful and loving, and, almost a little divine to this horrifying, monstrous, malevolent force that will eat you up and spit you out as it sees fit and that is a fascinating perspective.
Now, I’ve always though that the most interesting, the most compelling thing about Quentin as a narrator is this bright eyed wonder he has for all things magical but it makes even more interesting to see a perspective that so violently opposes that. I think the thing is that both of them are right, and neither of them are, Fillory is everything Q sees in it, but it’s also everything Plum sees to. Magic is, in many ways a force of nature made sentient, and again Fillory is magic and that is both beautiful and wondrous and absolutely fucking terrifying.
Q is, and always has been an un-reliable narrator and one of the things the alternative POV’s offer you is a bit of a…. Reality check so to speak. This reality check is definetly the most striking though.