ROUND 2 — Match 21 of 138
Beast Quentin (The Magicians)
Problematic because: "He's from Timeline 23, where Alice brings Quentin back after the original Beast kills him, but she can’t restore his Shade. In Magicians terms, that basically means he comes back without the part of him that gives him normal human empathy/conscience, and he immediately becomes a much bigger problem than the Beast he was supposed to replace. He kills Martin Chatwin’s Beast, kills Ember, steals a god’s power, causes the Old Gods to shut off magic, then keeps his own magic through one of the keys while everyone else loses theirs. After that, he starts killing magicians and hedge witches because he sees them as threats, including massacring Brakebills. He also copies the Beast’s whole look with the moths and extra fingers because people are already scared of the Beast, and he realises that reputation is useful. Very rough alternate timeline for the guy who normally spends half the show having guilt spirals. The Alice part is especially grim - she brings him back because she loves him and thinks she can still fix what happened to him, and then he lets her live specifically so she has to suffer with the guilt of resurrecting him. Later, when Timeline 40 Julia and Josh end up in that timeline, Beast!Quentin is hunting Julia because a vision showed him she might release something worse than him while trying to restore magic. He turns Fillory into a giant Fillory and Further museum, kills Alice, and only stops when Julia puts her Shade into him - once he actually feels the weight of what he’s done, he kills himself with the Leo Blade." Propaganda: "He takes all of Quentin’s most uncomfortable traits and removes the parts that usually keep them human. The Fillory obsession, the self-importance, the insecurity, the need for the story to mean something, the belief that he understands this magical world more deeply than anyone else - all of that is already in Quentin. Timeline 23 just asks what happens if he comes back without the moral brake. And the answer is bad. Very bad. But it’s interesting because it’s still recognisably Quentin in the worst possible direction, not a random monster wearing his face."
vs. Scott Summers/Cyclops (Marvel)
Problematic because: "on a personal level has been kind of a deadbeat dad/abandoned his wife/has had affairs at various points in his history. Has also been a morally dubious revolutionary/kind of terrorist. at one point killed his mentor. debatably justified or not justified or on occasion not even fully in control of some of these actions depending on who you ask" Propaganda: "scott summers my goat. I always feel bad that the 2 main live action versions of him designated him as the kind of "boring square" when he's really not that at all in the comics (at least when well written lmao) - he's often very serious and intense but definitely not boring, and I honestly think the fact that he's gotten more morally grey and kind of personally messy over the years makes him a more interesting character and is also kind of fully understandable. What if you were an autistic teenager with abandonment issues and a traumatic brain injury that made you continuously and uncontrollably shoot energy out of your eyes and you could hurt and kill people if you literally just looked at them without a protective filter on your face at all times and then your mentor/father figure (who can read your mind) put the weight of the world on your shoulders and made you lead a team of other kind of messed up teenagers, including your girlfriend (who can also read your mind). Would be hard not to become a kind of messy adult."
Who should advance?
Beast Quentin
Scott Summers/Cyclops
(Disclaimer: All text above was sent in by submitters and not written by OP.)
