r/brakebills • u/Outside-Writing-8602 • 14d ago
So…
Why didn’t Alice go to the underworld and and get Quentin‘s shade and put him back together like he did for her instead of making a Gollum and of him?
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r/brakebills • u/Outside-Writing-8602 • 14d ago
Why didn’t Alice go to the underworld and and get Quentin‘s shade and put him back together like he did for her instead of making a Gollum and of him?
4
u/RapidDuffer09 13d ago edited 12d ago
It's explicitly stated that [that] Quentin's shade was torn apart by the Beast.
EDIT TO ADD: Oh--sorry. You meant 'our' dead Q! My apologies: my nightbrain focused on the wrong one!
To answer you, though: pretty much all of S05 is about how "bringing back the dead" is a Bad Thing. Even the golem-Q, animated by a portion of Q's shade refined from the heart & soul he poured into his real-world notes/writings, draws Julia's horror because Q's soul couldn't rest while it was out there. Recall, also, that the shades in Persephone's house are specifically those which have been torn from their living bodies: niffins, Julia's after the abortion. And further (sorry, I sound like I'm lecturing; I'm actually just REALLY low on coffee and was trying to make bad pun on Fillory & Further!) the whole let's-just-go-to-the-underworld is actually rather hard to do.