Characters / The Magicians The Physical Kids

The Physical Kids

Quentin

Quentin Makepeace Coldwater

The protagonist of the first book, but certainly not the hero. Intelligent but childish, imaginative but oblivious to the feelings of others, he is deeply dissatisfied with reality (and pretty much anywhere else he ends up sooner or later). Quentin believes that becoming a magician or finding Fillory will solve all his life's problems and make him happy. It doesn't.

• Absent-Minded Professor: After taking a teaching position at Brakebills, he quickly gains a reputation among his students as an eccentric, as he spends all his time muttering to himself and working on a secret spell.
• Acquired Situational Narcissism: It's a mild case, but he tends to think of himself superior to the inhabitants of whatever world he just left behind; when he's accepted into Brakebills, he looks down on Muggles; when he aces his exam and enters second year early, he looks down on the fist years; when he leaves the magical world, he believes himself more sensible and mature than the magicians who fund his new lifestyle; when he returns to Brakebills after a long stay in Fillory, he gets very vocal in the belief that he and Julia are better than any of the faculty there. He's finally broken of this habit in The Magician King when he's forced to swallow his pride and ask for a job at Brakebills.
• Aimlessly Seeking Happiness: His primary motivation and a Fatal Flaw mentioned very early on in the novel: despite his academic success, he feels unfulfilled, and seeks the world of Fillory for the simple fact that it's meant to be always happy there. This remains with him throughout the novel, serving as the bedrock for every real mission he sets himself: his eagerness to excel at Brakebills, his search for a purpose in life after graduation, and his search for a heroic journey in Fillory; for good measure, it ends up getting himself and his friends seriously hurt, and often ends up ruining what happiness he'd already found. He finally grows out of this in Book 3 in favor of a more grounded sense of contentment.
• Allergic to Routine: Quentin all but falls in love with Brakebills when he first arrives, and there are enough twists and turns to keep him interested in the first few years; however, by the final year, he's gotten very bored with the place. The same goes for his post-graduate life and his home life with his parents. Eventually, Alice has to call him out on these tendencies when he starts getting irritated with Fillory. The end of the novel eventually drives him to commit to something on a permanent basis.
• Ambiguously Bi: Walked in on Eliot having sex with a guy, watched for a minute, and expressed that it bothered him that Eliot never came to him for such a thing before deciding he wouldn't have gone though with it. Later, during his drunken tryst with Janet, it's implied that he ends up having sex with Eliot as well, but Quentin doesn't give this much thought.
• Ascended Fanboy: He was obsessed with Fillory his entire life, and eventually becomes one of its kings.
• Asleep for Days: After the climactic battle with the Beast, Quentin ends up unconscious for the next six months while being healed and treated by centaurs.
• Author Avatar: According to Grossman, early-series Quentin was a lot like himself as a teenager.
• Benevolent Mage Ruler: In Fillory - to the point that it's how the second book got its name. Though hardly as responsible as the others, he's still praised for his benign rule over the land.
• Boring, but Practical: Spent two weeks of his sword training learning how to sheath and unsheathe his sword.
• Captain Ersatz: In the preface for the re-release of his first book, Warp, Grossman says that Quentin is essentially Warp's protagonist, Hollis Caulfield if he could do magic.
• Character Development: Throughout the first book and a big chunk of the second, Quentin is convinced that a carefree life of adventure and hedonism is the only way he can achieve happiness, remaining stuck in a pattern of thinking himself superior to whatever lifestyle he just left behind. However, after having his views dissected by Poppy and journeying through Cornwall, Quentin admits that the world is beautiful enough to live in and begins to see the benefits of appreciating what he has instead of recklessly chasing thrills. Eventually, this paves the way for the ending in which, upon getting kicked out of Fillory for good, Quentin reacts with optimism instead of his usual misery.
• Childhood Friends: With Julia. Of course, given the aforementioned Acquired Situational Narcissism, he dumps her and James not long after he enters Brakebills and doesn't think of her much until she abruptly re-enters his life as a hedge-witch.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Tends to take unnecessary risks in pursuit of heroic deeds, though for him it's less about the "helping people" part than it is his fantasy of being The Hero.
• Cool Teacher: Once he takes up a teaching position at Brakebills, some of the students see him as this because of his easygoing style and his mastery of exotic magic they've never seen before.
• Crossing the Burnt Bridge: When he first returns to Brakebills, he's very vocal in proclaiming himself superior to Dean Fogg and everyone else at the school, clearly believing that he's never going to be back there ever again. After getting kicked out of Fillory, he's forced to eat his words and ask the Dean for a job; to his immense relief, Fogg actually gives it to him.
• Cyborg: After getting chewed on by the Beast during the final battle, Quentin has to have his right knee, right shoulder, right bicep, and about two thirds of his collarbone replaced with an enchanted wooden skin. He actually quite likes it.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: In his final year at Brakebills and the next few months of his life post-graduation, Quentin is anxious for something to do with his life; of course, he doesn't know how to make it happen and quickly descends into unfulfilling hedonism. As such, once he gets past his initial concerns, he blithely flings himself into Fillory despite the risks, in the hope that he can find purpose in heroism and ruling over the country.
• Disability Immunity: During the second book, a swordsman manages to take Quentin by surprise and tries to cut him in half - only to end up getting his sword stuck in his prosthetic wooden collarbone, giving Quentin precious time to recover and retaliate.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Quentin really shouldn't be allowed to handle delicate social matters, as he will piss off everyone involved - and piss them off further by trying to row back from the edge. During The Magician King, a simple matter of trying to compliment Julia by saying she's too good for the hedge-witch crowd results in him accidentally insulting her; his efforts to make up for this immediately results in him insulting all of Julia's fellow hedge-witches... and his attempt to make up for that results in him belittling all the effort she went to learn magic.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: It takes a ton of effort, a lot of false starts, a lot of heartbreaks, humiliations, losses, and near-death experiences, but at the very end of the trilogy, Quentin achieves happiness by building a new world with Alice by his side; in the process, he is finally able to put aside his obsession with Fillory and use his magical powers to do something constructive with his life.
• The Eeyore: Played with; when his lifestyle begins to lose inertia, he tends to go through gloomy, borderline-depressive spells where he grows dissatisfied and pessimistic about everyone and everything. In fact, he actually begins the story right in the middle of one, only to be snapped out of it by his arrival at Brakebills.
• Executive Excess: Towards the end of the first novel, Quentin decides to leave magic behind and get a job in the real world via the Brakebills' old boys network. As a result, he ends up in the position of associate management consultant at Gunnings Hunsucker Swann, and thanks to the enchantments placed on the job, he can waste as much time as he likes without repercussions. Most of his time is spent gaming, jacking off to internet porn, or getting shitfaced, to the point that his assistant has given up on trying to schedule him into meetings. Ludicrously enough, Quentin is actually able to delude himself into believing that he's become a happy, responsible adult member of society by doing this... until his old friends convince him to stop running away and become a magician again.
• Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: After losing his throne and being banished from Fillory, then being fired from his teaching position at Brakebills, Quentin finds himself becoming part of a magical heist crew - not because he actually needs the money, but simply to keep himself from going off the deep end like he did back in the first book.
• Fatal Flaw: His childishness and obsessive desire for happiness, which frequently get him into trouble.
• Freudian Excuse: In the second book, it's revealed that Quentin was an only child raised via Hands-Off Parenting; though his mother and father gave him plenty of freedom, the fact that they never asked anything of him gradually made him feel as if he had nothing worth giving, hence his arrested development, his aimless need for happiness, and his obsessive longing for self-worth.
• Graceful Loser: In the second book, Quentin finds himself trapped outside Fillory; after the initial frustration has faded, he begins to adjust - not by deluding himself into hating what he left behind, as he normally does, but by genuinely appreciating what he has. When his final attempt to return to Fillory seemingly fails, he concedes gracefully, acknowledging that he can still be happy with his friends, his magic, and even the possibility of settling down. Ultimately setting the stage for him being forced to leave Fillory... and reacting with optimism instead of despair.
• Grade Skipper: Skipped the first year at Brakebills alongside Alice.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: His spell to create a Magical Land in the third book wouldn't have worked without his near useless discipline.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Undergoes a humbling fall from grace in The Magician's Land, losing first the authority he had in Fillory then the respectable position he'd gained at Brakebills, reducing him to lurking around in strip-mall bookstores in search of criminal employment.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: The aftermath of his journey to Fillory and Alice's death results in a depressive period in which he adopts this mindset and goes on to believe himself superior to all magicians because of his ability to live in the real world... even though his new lifestyle is funded by magic. It takes his meeting with Emily Greenstreet to make him pull back from the edge.
• I Just Want to Be Special: At the start of the book, anyway; alongside his overriding desire for happiness, Quentin desperately wanted something to leaven the mundanity of his life, to the point that he went so far as to master sleight-of-hand and conjuring tricks just to feel more magical - though the Boring, but Practical reality of the subject turned him off a bit. As such, he jumps at the chance to attend Brakebills.
• Innocently Insensitive: At times, Quentin's childish attitude leads to him insulting or hurting people without meaning to. For instance, at one point in the second book, he tells Julia that she didn't miss a thing by failing the entrance exam to Brakebills... when Julia had been forced to endure several painful months of depression and Sanity Slippage as a result of her failure, and had become so desperate to learn magic that she prostituted herself to Hedge Wizards and ended up having a traumatising encounter with a monstrous demigod who murdered her friends and raped her. True, Quentin didn't know most of this at the time, but it's still a bit presumptuous.
• Jumped at the Call: Once he learns what Brakebills really is, he barely gives it a moment's thought before catapulting himself into the wizarding school of his dreams. Subverted when it comes to Fillory, which he's much more cautious about; it takes his growing dissatisfaction with life and the collapse of his relationship with Alice to get him enthusiastic about the journey.
• Locked into Strangeness: After witnessing Alice's Heroic Sacrifice Quentin's hair turns pure white.
• Longing for Fictionland: Quentin dreams of finding a way to Fillory, a fairytale kingdom where he can find the happiness he always desired. He eventually succeeds... but it's nothing like his expectations.
• Mad Dreamer: Along with his open longing for Fillory and his daydreams of unhindered happiness, Quentin is unusual because as Alice points out, he's probably the only magician who actually believes in magic: all others know it exists, but Quentin is the only one who honestly and truly believes in it - perhaps because he finds fiction more believable than reality.
• Mage Marksman: Is good with a bow and arrow. Has mentioned that he could use magic to make the arrows easily hit their target but thinks it unsporting.
• Manchild: While holding all the intelligence his age and education would suggest, Quentin also has numerous childlike traits, including an aversion to the routine and the mundane, a tendency to act or speak without thinking, and, of course, his obsession with the Fillory book series (which were intended for children). Plus, the self-induced collapse of his relationship with Alice leaves him in an extremely sulky, petulant mood, to the point that even Alice herself calls him a child.
• Magicians Are Wizards: Quentin's first encounters with magic were in practicing sleight-of-hand, enough to get the attention of a talent scout working at the local novelty supply shop where Quentin bought his props. Later, one of his first inklings that the Brakebills entrance exam might be more than it seems is when, while performing for the professors, he accidentally makes a coin disappear for real.
• The Millstone: For much of the first book, Quentin is more liability than asset; quite apart from all the times he ends up getting someone hurt due to his own bad behavior, he's also next to useless in fights. Thankfully, he grows out of this by the second book.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Quentin's childish attempt at a prank accidentally summons the Beast, traumatizing Professor March for life and getting Amanda Orloff killed.
  • Later, he summons the Beast again in his attempts to play at being a hero, resulting in Penny's hands getting chewed off and forcing Alice to sacrifice her life to save the day.
• Relieved Failure: By the end of the first book, Quentin has failed every single adventurous goal he's set himself and, as a result of his depression, believes it was for the best; he even abandons magic to live a "normal" life of Executive Excess, believing himself to be much more mature as a result. However, he eventually realizes that he isn't really happy or wiser at all, and he's just believing his own line of self-justifying bullshit.
• Secretly Earmarked for Greatness: Quentin Coldwater was earmarked by Brakebills three years before his enrolment, back when he was learning how to perform sleight-of-hand; the man who sold Quentin the props was actually one of the faculty's talent-spotters. Up until he's finally whisked away to Brakebills, Quentin isn't even aware that real magic exists.
• Supporting Protagonist: To Alice in first novel, and Julia in the second.
• This Loser Is You: Serves as something of a veiled jab at people who actually wish they could live in a fantasy world, as it's continuously pointed out that these worlds are real places with real people and real drawbacks - not to mention the fact that Quentin's eagerness to live his fantasies ends up getting people hurt.
• Took a Level in Badass: He's mostly useless in combat throughout the first book, even after the Ultimate Final Exam at Brakebills South (where he was soundly trounced by Alice anyway); however, after studying magic alone at the centaur monastery, he finally learns to actually apply himself of his own accord - so that when he joins the fray in The Magician King, he's practically unstoppable.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: After graduating, Quentin's growing lack of purpose leads him into a hedonistic period where he drunkenly cheats on Alice; then when Alice gets fed up with him and screws Penny, he turns extremely petulant and starts making everyone around him miserable - most prominently threatening Penny. It takes the disastrous aftermath of his first journey to Fillory and his encounter with Emily Greenstreet to clean up his act... though he's still a little bit on the insensitive side during the second book in the series.
• Took a Level in Kindness: In sharp contrast to the thoughtless, narcissistic Manchild of books one and two, Quentin Coldwater begins The Magician's Land as a much wiser and much more sensitive human being.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Having learned the basics of taking on animal forms in the first book, The Magician's Land sees him finally make use of this by transforming himself and Plum into whales so that they can swim to Brakebills South.
• Whatevermancy: When Quentin finds out his Discipline is unclassifiable, he says "I'm a nothingmancer. I'm a squatmancer."
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: He finds out in the third book that his discipline is the ability to fix small objects; though he finds this a little anticlimactic at first, he soon accepts this as one of the facts of life he has to live with.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Ends up on the receiving end of one of these from Alice when it looks as though he's going to become dissatisfied with the fantasy world he always wanted.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Quentin spends almost the entirety of the first book in the series imagining himself as the hero of a story, imagining that he'll be the big, bold world-saving hero of Fillory. It doesn't work out - in part because Alice is the real hero of the story. Afterwards, he deludes himself into thinking that the moral of the story is that he should never have tried to be happy in the first place, and later, that Magic Is Evil. Suffice to say, he's disabused of this notion by an encounter by someone even more deluded than he is.

Alice

Alice Quinn

One of the most intelligent students in her year and one of Quentin's few real friends at Brakebills prior to joining the Physical Kids. Though shy and socially awkward, Alice is easily the best of the Physical Kids when it comes to spellcasting and magical theory, and as she slowly emerges from her shell, she becomes more and more inclined to show her strengths.

• Action Girl: You do not mess with Alice. She's not only powerful and confident in fights, but when she was denied entry to Brakebills, she found out the location of the school and broke through its protective magical barrier herself. She was literally admitted because they had no way of keeping her out.
• Alice Allusion: A girl who ran away to a magical world and underwent a number of strange transformations before coming out the other side in one piece.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Her father spends most of his time modifying the family home with magic and making it thoroughly uncomfortable in the process, while her mother spends most of her time working on fairy symphonies that probably don't exist. Alice dreads returning home to them, especially when Quentin decides to tag along, pointing out that both of them are prime examples of what happens to magicians who lose their way following graduation.
• Apologetic Attacker: In a moment of Sympathy for the Devil, she apologizes when she's about to kill The Beast.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Her transformation into a niffin is portrayed like this in Alice's Story, allowing her to venture beyond Fillory and explore all worlds at random.
• Badass Bookworm: The most studious of the Physical Kids and undoubtedly the most effective in combat once she gets used to the stress of the battlefield, ultimately being the only member of the Physical Kids to fight and win against the Beast in single combat.
• Barrier Warrior: Alice casts Fergus's Spectral Armory when fighting The Beast which temporarily gives her phantasmal armor and a polearm which fade in and out of visibility.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Shy, quiet, gentle, and one of the best magicians in the entire series; mess with her friends and loved ones and she will fuck you up as Martin Chatwin found out the hard way.
• Big Brother Worship: She adored her older brother Charlie, being the last to see him off before he was teleported to Brakebills; his death left her deeply depressed, exacerbated by her parents' descent into eccentricity, and gradually destroyed what little confidence she had.
• Brought Down to Badass: Towards the end of the third and final book, Quentin manages to restore Alice's humanity... and even without the godlike power of a Niffin, Alice is still a better magician than Quentin will ever be — a fact that she proves by turning him into a dragon during the final battle.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Quentin notes Alice's "heavy breasts" more than once, including while they're having sex, which is clearly depicted as part of her attractiveness.
• Child Mage: Alice's Story shows her first experiments with magic occurring when she was around ten years old; even though she only managed to move a coin by an inch or so, it's still an early sign of her precociousness, as most magicians don't - and often can't - begin learning magic until their teenage years.
• Commonality Connection:
  • She and Quentin share their first moment of real friendship when she reveals the loneliness and anxiety she's suffered as a result of her past, allowing Quentin to realize she's actually in the same boat as him in terms of limited confidence.
  • In Alice's Story, her friendship with Penny begins when he notices that she's reading his favorite book in the Fillory series, drawing her into her first real conversation with a fellow Brakebills student.
• Cynicism Catalyst: It's actually stated that the death of her older brother, Charlie, was what caused her parent's collapse into eccentricity, the loss of Alice's limited confidence, and her eventually running away from home. However, what she doesn't know — until Janet tells her the story — is that Charlie died in transforming into a Niffin shortly after trying to heal Emily Greenstreet.
• Deadly Upgrade: Alice uses the usually accidental niffin transformation this way in order to defeat the Beast.
• Demon of Human Origin: Is referred to as a demon several times when she's a niffin.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: It's downplayed compared to Quentin, but she wants a purpose in life that she can apply her powers to and - more importantly - prevent her from ending up like her parents. In Alice's Story, it's revealed that witnessing their mutual descent into hedonism upset her so badly that she tried to walk out on the Physical Kids altogether and would have made it to the airport if the cab driver AKA Jane Chatwin hadn't been able to talk her out of leaving.
• Determinator: If Alice wants something done, nothing will stop her from accomplishing it, even if she has to take astonishing personal risks to do so; among other things, she took an incredibly risky journey on her own all the way to upstate New York and walked the last five miles through heavily forested territory just to get into Brakebills for the entrance exam.
• Flash Step: Part of her capabilities as a niffin: at one point in the third book, Quentin isn't sure if she teleported towards him or just flew at him really quickly.
• Foreshadowing: Ends up passing the Ultimate Final Exam in the Fourth Year by using a deliberately-botched spell that would have ended up killing her if she'd gotten it wrong... thus setting the stage for when Alice deliberately botching another spell in the final battle as part of a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Grade Skipper: Skipped the first year at Brakebills alongside Quentin.
• Heroic BSoD: In Alice's Story, the realization that she and Quentin have ended up just like her parents nearly shatters her confidence altogether, leading her to break down in tears after leaving them for the evening. Returning home to find Quentin naked in bed with Janet and Eliot leaves her sitting catatonic at the end of the bed, completely broken. It takes the arrival of Penny to rekindle her energy.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Combining Deadly Upgrade with Taking You with Me, she becomes a niffin to destroy Martin.
• He's Back!: After being brought back to human form in The Magician's Land, she spends several chapters depressed and gradually being guided back towards reality, showing little sign of her studious, driven, slightly-eccentric self. However, when a disagreement between Quentin and Penny threatens to turn violent, Alice reacts by sucker-punching Penny in the face. From then on, Alice is back in action and ready to join Quentin in the final battle.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Noted for being quite petite, she comes across as even smaller due to her lack of confidence, and often ends up paired with men far bigger than her - including the tall and willowy Quentin and the rather imposing Penny. Made all the more obvious in Alice's Story.
• Humanoid Abomination: Her niffin form, a humanoid figure formed from luminous blue fire with no grasp of sanity and no interest in human life.
• I Am Not My Father: Alice fears that one day, she'll be reduced to the same level of pointless, purpose-deprived existence as her parents, and makes Quentin swear that they'll never make the mistake of falling into that particular trap. Quentin, being Quentin, fails to live up to the promise. Ironically, she ends up turning out like her brother instead.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: After being restored to humanity in the third book and suffering a vicious case of depression as a result, Alice requests a double scotch.
• Improvised Golems: During the final battle with the Beast, Alice uses sand to conjure up an improvised glass golem.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: Fergus's Spectral Armory temporarily gives her martial arts abilities.
• Light 'em Up: Alice's magical discipline is a form of light-manipulation known as Phosphoromancy, which is used to burn a path into the Physical Kids' cottage.
• Mad Woman In The Attic: The narration in the third book actually calls her this when she's a niffin living in the alternate version of Plum's house.
• Mistaken for Undead: Her Niffin form is mistaken for a ghost haunting Brakebills in The Magician's Land, and despite being treated as dead personality-wise, Alice is still very much alive.
• "No More Holding Back" Speech: Delivers one of these to herself in Alice's Story, finally overcoming her inner lack of confidence while on the Ultimate Final Exam and challenging the world to "stand aside and watch me burn."
• Not Quite Back to Normal:
  • Following the transformation classes at Brakebills South - during which Alice and Quentin have sex while in arctic fox form - Alice experiences another dramatic spike in confidence, turning down Mayakovsky's ingredients and tackling the finale exam on her own. She attributes this to having a few fox traits left over from the transformation.
  • Much, much later, Alice's transformation into a Niffin is undone, returning her to human form. In the final pages of The Magician's Land, though, Quentin notices that Alice's eyes are now a very intense shade of blue, indicating that she still retains a tiny bit of her Niffin self.
• Occult Blue Eyes: As a Niffin, Alice's eyes are as blue as the rest of her. Interestingly, her eyes remain the same intense blue even after her humanity is restored.
• Odd Friendship: Alice's Story reveals she was actually friends with Penny for a while; given Alice's Shrinking Violet tendencies and Penny's overwhelming arrogance, it's hard to imagine a more unusual relationship. Unfortunately, it fell to bits when Penny made the mistake of believing that she was in love with him, resulting in the failure of their friendship, the temporary collapse of his morale and his failure to skip the first year at Brakebills - and from there, his punch-up with Quentin.
• One-Winged Angel: Alice's transformation into a niffin: "Do you think you're the biggest monster in the room?" A rare example of this trope in that a) it's used by a good guy, and b) it actually wins the fight.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Alice is generally a sweet-natured girl with no heart for serious hate and even less for physical violence, so the fact that she resorts to calling Janet a cunt after she reveals the Emily Greenstreet story is a sure sign of just how deeply the story hurt her. Likewise, Quentin is completely taken by surprise when Alice loses her temper with him and slugs him one square in the eye; even more so when she goes so far as to have sex with Penny as revenge for Quentin's own infidelities.
• Parental Neglect: Alice's parents could not care less about her, being too absorbed in their own pointless hobbies to pay even the slightest bit of attention to her. During Alice's Story, when she ran away to Brakebills they scarcely noticed, and after she was briefly sent home to await the start of term, they casually asked "where have you been?" as if she was out buying groceries a little longer than usual.
• Perpetual Smiler: Never stops smiling once she's transformed into a niffin.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: More than makes up for her short status in sheer magical mastery, especially once she becomes a Niffin.
• Posthuman Nudism: As an all-powerful Niffin, Alice is stark naked.
• Posthumous Narration: Variation. In Alice's Story, it's soon revealed that the reason why she's able to discuss things she didn't personally witness is because she's narrating the story as an all-powerful omniscient niffin.
• Power Floats: As a Niffin, she just flies everywhere and doesn't bother walking.
• Pure Magic Being: Is made of pure magical energy following her transformation into a niffin.
• "Reason You Suck" Speech: After the full extent of Quentin's inability to live a stable adult life becomes apparent, Alice lets him have it and does not hold back. Even when he manages to summon up some indignation during the second round of the argument, Alice still manages to leave him flummoxed by pointing out that he's the one getting dissatisfied with the paradise that he always wanted.
• The Runaway: After Brakebills failed to invite her, Alice ran away from home and travelled all the way to the campus— even going so far as to travel the last five miles on foot when public transport couldn't get her any closer. To the surprise of the faculty, she actually managed to find her way onto the school grounds, where they reluctantly gave her an entrance exam and accepted her.
• Sense Loss Sadness: After being returned to human form, Alice suffers a brief but debilitating depression over the loss of her incredible abilities and senses; with Quentin's help, she manages to recover.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In Alice's Story, it's revealed that she eventually had enough of the purposeless post-graduate life and tried to leave the Physical Kids altogether. In the end, her cab driver was able to talk her out of it and return her to their apartment... just in time to discover Quentin's one-night stand with Janet.
• Shorter Means Smarter: Arguably the smallest character at Brakebills next to Bigby, and undeniably the most intelligent and learned, a fact firmly demonstrated by the fact that she is one of only two pupils to skip the first year.
• Shrinking Violet: Initially, Alice is almost chronically averse to showing her face in public and grows incredibly self-conscious the moment any attention is drawn to her; studying for her exams alongside Quentin and Penny encourages her to emerge from her shell and gain a little confidence.
• Sympathy for the Devil: During the final battle against the Beast, she finally recognizes that the monster everyone's been afraid of is really just a child who never grew up and never recovered from the threat of being ousted from the one place that made him happy. Perhaps seeing a lot of Quentin in him, she actually chokes back a sob and apologises to the Beast - before transforming into a niffin and ripping his head off.
• Teen Genius: Out of a whole school full of geniuses, she's quickly judged to be one of the smartest out of all of them, having even mastered several advanced spells before her first term begins.
• Took a Level in Badass: Already having increased in confidence by leaps and bounds throughout the story, she reaches her pinnacle when she - out of all the magicians in the group - takes the fight to Martin Chatwin and wins.
• Turn Out Like His Father: It's believed that the Brakebills faculty refused to explain what happened to her brother or admit her to the college in case she ended up suffering the same Magic Misfire-induced death as Charlie. In the end, she does - but as part of a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Like all of the Brakebills students, she's learned how to transform into animals, but out of the entire cast, she's the only one who manages to weaponize it.
• Waif-Fu: Subverted. When her anger at Quentin finally boils over, she sucker-punches him in the face and hits him several times; because she's much smaller than Quentin and has even less combat training than him, they're all inexpertly aimed and largely ineffectual. However, the first blow to the orbital ridge really hurt. Double subverted once she makes use of Fergus' Spectral Armory against the Beast.
• Weak, but Skilled: She's a small and unimposing girl with no taste for violence; she doesn't have Janet's confidence, Eliot's natural gift for magic, Josh's massive surges of strength, or Penny's gift for battle magic. What she does have is knowledge and skill, making her more effective at pure spellcasting technique than any of the Physical Kids - to the point that she's the only one that can match the Unskilled, but Strong Beast move for move.

Eliot

Eliott Waugh

Sophisticated, laid-back, too-cool-for-school and openly gay, Eliot is the first student magician Quentin meets and befriends upon arriving at Brakebills; he serves as his guide in his early days on campus, and when Quentin joins the Physical Kids, he becomes one of his closest - and most eccentric - allies.

• The Alcoholic: Already a little inclined to drinking at Brakebills, having traded his desserts for extra glasses of wine and spending most of his spare hours seeking out new and interesting vintages; after graduating, his lack of direction in life results in him turning into a petulant alcoholic with no objective other than to torture his liver to death. It takes Penny's arrival and the journey to Fillory to pull Eliot back from the transformation into a completely Addled Addict.
• Benevolent Mage Ruler: In Fillory, being the first of the Physical Kids to take the notion of ruling the kingdom seriously; alongside Janet, he's the one who actually returned to govern the place after everyone else had either died or given up on the idea entirely.
• Break the Comedian: Eliot provides much-needed levity to the gruelling classwork at Brakebills with his trademarked snark and razor-sharp wit. Even his graduation-induced descent into alcoholism doesn't completely dampen his sense of humour. However, the disastrous events of the final battle in Fillory leave him completely crushed: Eliot's first response to Alice's fatal transformation is to throw the Crown away with a howl of grief, eventually joining the others in splitting up the Physical Kids. However, he eventually reappears on Quentin's doorstep with a renewed sense of humour and an offer to bring him back into the magical lifestyle - which Quentin accepts.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Seems to be a better magician than Alice but doesn't make any effort in school.
• Character Development: Being the High King of Fillory allows him to grow from an egocentric, hedonistic cynic to a responsible, civic-minded monarch - though he's still a smartass.
• Cultured Badass: Manages the "cultured" part quite well throughout the novel, being very well-acquainted with art and fine wines, but he doesn't get to the "badass" part until the journey to Fillory.
• The Cynic: Doesn't think very highly of humanity and prefers to think himself apart from them, embittered from his years of being bullied for his homosexuality.
• Deadpan Snarker: A smartass from beginning to end, he's always very quick with a snappy quip if someone asks a stupid question or makes a silly argument, as Richard discovers.
• Drink-Based Characterization: A classy, too-cool-for-school snob, Eliot spends much of his time seeking out fine wines, and also likes occasionally cooking with them as well. However, after graduation, as he grows less classy and more dysfunctional, he begins drinking just about anything he can get his hands on, even chasing Dayquil with vodka when sick.
• Expy: Word of God says his character was significantly based on Sebastian Flyte from Brideshead Revisited.
• Farm Boy: Eliot was actually brought up on a farm in Oregon.
• The Fighting Narcissist: After getting into his first real fight in Fillory, Eliot remarks that any damage to his hair will result in him bringing his opponents back to life so he can kill them again.
• Finger-Snap Lighter: Does this for Quentin one of the first times they met.
• The Gift: Has an intuitive grasp of magic, putting him above most of the Physical Kids except for Alice.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Chain-smokes Merit cigarettes, the only brand he can cope with, and though it's regarded as an unhealthy vice he remains a tentatively heroic figure. It actually becomes a Calling Card when Eliot leaves one of his smokes behind with his farewell letter to Quentin in the first book.
• The Grotesque: Mild example — he's described as having a mouth twisted to the side in a permanent half-grimace, and some disfiguration to his jaw as well.
• The Hedonist: A chain-smoker and a wine-fancier in his teenage years, he's the quickest to adapt to the mindless hedonism of post-graduate life, drinking and shagging his way across Manhattan and paying little attention to his own health. He eventually clears up his act once he takes control of Fillory, however.
• The High King: Ascends to the role of High King of Fillory.
• I Hate Past Me: By The Magician's Land, he does not look kindly on his past self, believing that he didn't have any emotions that weren't ironic or chemically-induced, and is afraid that losing Fillory might cause him to revert to his old, alcoholic self.
• If It's You, It's Okay: Drunk and at his most dysfunctional, he makes an exception to his usual sexual tastes by having sex with Janet.
• Power Gives You Wings: Attains a pair of feathery wings at the conclusion of the first book.
• Rage Breaking Point: During his duel with the Lorian champion in the third book, Eliot loses his temper when he realizes that said champion is using a weapon stolen from the hermit killed at the start of the invasion, prompting him to unleash a magical No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Proves to be the first of the four monarch to actually do something practical instead of chasing adventures: not only does he set out to rescue Quentin when he goes AWOL in the second book, but he even goes so far as to lead Fillory's armies against the Lorian invasion and defeat the enemy champion single-handedly.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Wears expensive shirts with his Brakebills uniform, complete with cuff links, despite the latter being against the rules and getting him routinely punished. Also, apparently as a child he was once thrown into a dumpster by the other kids because his pants were pressed.
• She Is the King: Inverted Trope. At the very end of the novel, Eliot jokes that he was considering being one of the two queens of Fillory instead being one of the two kings. However, rules are rules...
• Straight Gay: Though a little bit hammy at times, he's not overtly camp despite being overtly homosexual. However, he does make an exception for Janet.
• Tantrum Throwing: Dramatic variation; after seeing Alice sacrificing herself to save them all from the Beast, he throws the crown of Fillory away with a howl of rage and grief.
• Undiscriminating Addict: While at Brakebills, Eliot's drugs of choice are restricted to fine wines and Merit cigarettes, but after graduating, he starts drinking just about anything he can get his hands on. After watching his friend slowly going to pieces over the next few months, even Quentin has to comment after finding Eliot mixing vodka with dayquil ^note which, incidentally, can result in hallucinations and serious liver damage .

Josh

Josh Hoberman

The most light-hearted of the Physical Kids; a amiable overweight magician most often found cracking jokes or jollying parties along, he's not among the academic high-flyers at Brakebills or even especially consistent in terms of spellcasting. However, what he lacks in finesse he makes up for in raw power.

• Ascended Fanboy: During the final chapter of the first book, he's apparently using the Neitherlands to reach Middle-Earth, where he hopes to "bone an Elf."
• Beneath the Mask: His breakdown during the Welters finals reveals that, under his cheerful exterior, Josh is deeply unsure of himself and plagued by low self-esteem — especially at Brakebills, where he often worried that he'd be thrown out for poor grades.
• Benevolent Mage Ruler: Becomes one of the kings of Fillory when Quentin gets booted out at the end of the second book.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Regarded as a bit of a doofus, he's nonetheless still a Brakebills graduate and capable of feats that most people can only dream of; indeed, one of his accidental surges of power ended up annihilating the threat that was endangering the other Physical Kids.
• Big Fancy House: During the second book, it's revealed that he now lives in an extravagant Venetian palazzo as a result of selling one of the magic buttons.
• Big Fun: A jolly, boisterous figure eager to join in the fun and encourage the merriment.
• The Big Guy: On top of being one of the few members of the Physical Kids inclined to use his muscles to any significant degree, he's capable of immensely powerful surges of magic, allowing him to bring down The Brute of the enemy force during the journey to Fillory.
• Boldly Coming: He wants to find Middle Earth specifically to get in an elf's pants, as stated above. The second book reveals that, amongst other things, he ended up having sex with a Harpy.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Josh has the worst grades of the Physical Kids and barely manages to graduate from Brakebills; for good measure, most of his spells either fail to work at all, or overload to a ridiculous extent. Then, in Fillory, he destroys a massive burning demon that just killed Fen, the badass Kung-Fu Wizard of the group by sucking it into an Unrealistic Black Hole.
• Ditzy Genius: Magically inept, academically awkward and occasionally lacking in common sense, he’s still just as intelligent as any other Brakebills entrant. During the hunt for an alternate route to Fillory, he believes that Cornwall is in Canada and actually doubles down when corrected... only to then launch into a spiel on the astral folding technique he’ll use to get them there!
• Drunk with Power / Drunk on the Dark Side: Played for laughs. Josh tends to get very excited when his spells actually work, especially in games of Welters, and eagerly brags about his power. Eliot jokingly compares it to someone being pleased a meal emerged looking like it did in a cookbook.
• Fat Idiot: Though he fears he's turning into one of these due to his dodgy grades and unpredictable spells, he's ultimately cleverer and more capable than he appears.
• Friend in the Black Market: In The Magician King, Josh serves as a black-market operative to the legitimate magical community and the hedge magicians, providing the underground with vital magical supplies from the legit world and the Brakebills alumni with access to things no respectable merchants would be able to provide them with.
• Global Ignorance: Incorrectly guesses that Cornwall is in Canada, claims that England is part of Europe, and doesn't know that Penzance is a real place.
• Gravity Master: Can summon black holes in his magical power-surges.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Nervous over an incoming Welters tournament, Josh is driven to drink a little too much of the booze his parents sent him for his birthday, ending up late for the match and for once too pissed to keep up his confident exterior.
• Inept Mage: As mentioned, he's not the most capable spellcaster out of all the Physical Kids—in fact, his spells have a nasty habit of not working at all. However, when they do work, they're ridiculously overpowered. In one case, he spent twice as long as any other students did on getting his marble to move... but when it finally worked, the marble flew out of the building and embedded itself in a tree - where it remains to this day.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: In the sequel, he's made a name for himself among the hedge magicians as "the Fixer," a bridge between the legitimate magical world and the underground communities. Though he's still on the bottom of the Brakebills food chain, his comprehensive education has made him more powerful and more knowledgeable than most of his current colleagues put together.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Takes Quentin's place on the throne after he and Julia leave the picture, proving just as eager to work on the front lines as he did before.
• Sad Clown: His outward humour and jollity disguise an awful lot of depression and self-doubt.
• Stepford Smiler: Type A — he appears outwardly jolly and carefree, but is secretly hiding a lot of anxiety, depression and even burgeoning alcoholism, and fears he's going to be kicked out of Brakebills. He improves somewhat after he graduates, but it's not until the second book that he really loosens up.
• Stout Strength: Tall and overweight, he uses his physique in order to break up fights between students that actually resort to fisticuffs on Brakebills grounds.
• Squishy Wizard: Subverted; while not exactly a combat specialist, Josh is strong enough to break up the fist-fight between Quentin and Penny.
• Thinking Up Portals: Is the only member of the main gang to learn how to do this.
• Took a Level in Badass: In the sequel, he spent lot of his time between the novels on an adventure through the Neitherlands, exploring, falling in love, and even becoming a hero of sorts; upon his return to earth, he takes this even further by setting himself up as the Fixer, helping to bridge the "official" practitioners of magic with the underground groups. Finally, the ending sees him becoming one of the Kings of Fillory after Quentin is booted out of the country.
• Unrealistic Black Hole: Can conjure one that sucks in enemies.
• Unskilled, but Strong: He's not much for the subtler points of magic, his skills are awkward at best, and his grades are hardly the best at Brakebills... but Josh makes up for it in sheer, out-of-control power, to the point that most of the team start running as soon as they see him launching one of his big spells.

Janet

Janet Puchinsky

The only other female member of the Physical Kids, she's known for her force of personality and her promiscuous attitude towards sex. Easily the most forceful of the group and probably the only one to take the group's direction seriously, she can usually be relied on to direct their energies to a concrete purpose and rally them around a specific goal.

• Alpha Bitch: In her less-than-pleasant moments, she can come off as this, being aggressive, manipulative, vindictive and jealous - and all too willing to take out her frustrations on the targets of her envy.
• Benevolent Mage Ruler: In Fillory, she actually does the job of running the kingdom while everyone else is in the field.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Arguably; she's normally pretty likable, if a bit on the bossy side. However, in her moments of frustration, she isn't above lashing out in a way designed to leave serious emotional scars. Case in point, revealing the truth behind the death of Alice's brother - right to Alice's face.
• Boyish Short Hair: In keeping with the trope, Janet's a tough and aggressive character all too willing to take charge of the group, especially in Welters.
• Cathartic Crying: Janet doesn't like to express emotional vulnerability, so even when she's sick with worry over Fillory's worsening condition in the third book, she keeps her grief at bay. However, when it looks like Fillory is done for, she completely breaks down in floods of tears and has to be helped to safety by Julia.
• Character Development: Janet got some of this during her time as regent; a chapter of the third book has her detailing a three-month trip to annex a desert that led to much introspection on her part. Also, in sharp contrast to how she once treated it as just another adventure, its revealed that she's come to regard Fillory as her home.
• Combat Pragmatist: Startles everyone by actually bringing a gun to Fillory and shooting one of her opponents.
• Gossipy Hens: Not above exchanging a little gossip every now and again for the purposes of entertainment, hence the scene where she gleefully reveals the story of Emily Greenstreet.
• Green-Eyed Monster: During her fifth year, she's reportedly envious of the relationship between Quentin and Alice and upset over the fact that she herself can't get into a relationship with Eliot, resulting in her covertly jabbing at Alice's traumas.
• Heroic BSoD: Completely breaks down when it appears that Fillory is well and truly doomed, and is left sobbing helplessly as Julia spirits her away.
• An Ice Person: Her discipline is ice magic, and she makes devastating use of it in The Magician's Land in shutting down the Prince of the Mud.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Variant - in the third book, Eliot admits that he used to speculate that Janet's anger and emotional armor might be concealing a wounded little girl who honestly just wants to be loved. However, after hearing the tale of her erupting with rage at the Foremost in much the same way she once went off at her father, he begins to wonder if the only thing she's concealing is even more anger and more layers of armour.
• The Leader: Generally takes charge of the group in circumstances that require a clear head and bossy leadership, though she shares the position with Penny during the journey to Fillory. As such, she steps quite readily into the role of a queen in Fillory, and indeed seems to be more focussed on the work than any of the others.
• Lovable Alpha Bitch: What she is most of the time; though bossy and promiscuous, she binds the group together in celebration and work alike.
• Mage Marksman: Brought a gun with her to Fillory and uses it to defend herself in Ember's Tomb.
• Never My Fault: Even in the third book, she's unrepentant for shagging Quentin and breaking Alice's heart.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Janet doesn't like to seem emotionally vulnerable, even reacting violently to more condescending displays of pity; as such, when she becomes distraught to the point of breaking down in tears at the sight of Fillory coming to an end, it's a sign of just how dire the situation has become.
  • She also tends to keep people at arm's length, putting limits on her emotional interactions with them even if she counts them as her close friends; Eliot, her closest friend, didn't get to hear about her past until they're alone and facing down a potential apocalypse. As such, when she goes so far as to hug Julia - who she isn't especially attached to - she's officially been pushed to her emotional threshold.
• Out of Focus: Out of all the Physical Kids, she arguably got the least amount of focus in the first book, lacking the serious one-on-one moments of vulnerability of Alice, Josh and Eliot; even her biggest scene features her talking about someone else. Likewise, the second book features her ruling Fillory while everyone else is off having adventures. Finally averted in the third book.
• Parental Neglect: Her parents did not give her much attention when she was a child, packing her off to boarding school at the tender age of eight; in one notable instance, her dad failed to pick her up from school one afternoon and never called to provide an explanation of any kind, leaving her waiting for hours on end - until her teachers had to buy her some dinner just so she wouldn't go hungry while she was there. Needless to say, Janet does not have fond memories of her childhood, and reacts very badly when people attempt to treat her with anything akin to paternal concern.
• Personality Powers: Her ice-magic discipline matches her harsh, relentless, and sometimes-cruel personality.
• Really Gets Around: Well-known for being promiscuous. She even shagged Eliot during a drunken bender.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: She's the one running the kingdom while everyone else is off having adventures or fighting wars.
• Warrior Prince: Despite being more admin for most of her reign, she's not afraid to get her hands dirty, to the point that she conducted an invasion between novels.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Chides Quentin for recklessly pursuing adventure early in The Magician King, reminding him of what happened the last time he went looking for trouble in Fillory.

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