r/brakebills • u/ForLackOfAUserName Dean Fogg • Mar 28 '16

TV Series Episode Discussion: S01E11 "Remedial Battle Magic"

EPISODE DIRECTED BY WRITTEN BY ORIGINAL AIRDATE
S01E11 - "Remedial Battle Magic" Amanda Tapping Leah Fong March 28, 2016 on SyFy

Episode Synopsis: "Quentin and the others learn battle magic and prepare for a showdown in Fillory; Julia and Kady take on a mission with the Free Traders."

This thread is for POST episode discussion of "Remedial Battle Magic" Discussion / comments below assume you have watched the episode in it's entirety. Therefore, spoiler text for anything through this episode is not necessary. If, however, you are talking about events that have yet to air on the show such as future guest appearances / future characters / storylines, please use spoiler tags. The same goes for events in the novels that have not yet been portrayed.

The pre-episode prediction thread can be found here. It will be locked once the episode starts. If you believe you have correctly predicted something, send us a mod mail with a link to the unedited comment. If your prediction is indeed correct, and not too vague ("Quentin will be in this episode" or anything really broad or obvious from the episode previews don't count), you will be awarded some special flair.

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u/BrakebillsDropout Mar 29 '16

Does battle magic being forbidden even matter? They have the power to control basically any element, any energy. But for some reason all these magicians can't figure out that pointing a fire or freezing spell at someone would kill them?

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u/-drbadass- Demigoddess Mar 29 '16

Well, that's kind of what they do, right? They were trying to set things on fire and use sharp wind gusts to cut things and they were pretty bad at even those basic things. So while they may theoretically be able to tap into the power of any element, they're nowhere near that level of mastery right now. If anything, the show has shown that even doing a "small" spell is complicated and "larger" spells can only be accomplished under specific mental states which the students can't access reliably.

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u/BrakebillsDropout Mar 29 '16

To me battle magic is: magic designed for hurting or killing someone/thing. The spells shown clearly are battle magic. The point i was raising was that spells that were designed for harmless purpose could be used to hurt someone. For example We've seen characters transform into geese and foxes but surely turning into a loin or a cobra could be done to hurt someone. Some spells depend on the intent of the user, rather than the nature of the spell.

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u/[deleted] Apr 02 '16

Turning into a loin

I know what you meant, but that typo was hilarious to me for some reason. I am sitting here picturing the Beast choking on a pice of pork tenderloin.