#FINALISADE!!!

[swallowtailed]

palisade 46…. finalisade part 1…….

i am committed to calling it finalisade btw

god what an intro. all-timer. perennial and future arguing! character intros in reverse order! everyone’s hooks and bonds! and parti with the most joy-filled bars of the entire season <3 extremely good

doubt is such an excellent setting element for the finale

love to listen to character creation at the end of the story. u know? love to gather up sprawling storylines and clarify endings. i’m always thinking abt the structural implications of playing finales in different game systems but/and the ceremony of character creation is so compelling. i remember really liking this in futura free as well

thisbe and cori came out with a really interesting pair of goals. “mend the scattered shards of divinity” and “my bloodied hands must break the wheel”. they’re very similar: huge goals, hard-won goals, goals that seem impossible. both in that space of world-altering scifi heroism, you know? while also being each other’s opposites: thisbe to mend, without thinking of herself; cori to break, and to do it personally. falls out similarly to their views on purpose, which makes sense given they’re stating their lives’ work. characters!!!!

levi’s goal being about himself rather than the revolution is: extremely good. he’s kinda where cori was at the beginning of palisade, which makes so much sense for mirage kids. knowing the ideal but not the reality

glad that eclectic’s goal is to expose the bilats’ crimes rather than to win the war by solving palisade’s mysteries because the latter is… fraught. will be interested to see what that endgame looks like—can palisade actually sell “awareness as action”?

gotta say i continue to not be compelled by clem coming back as a pc. the problem with a character who fundamentally cannot change is that after the end of their tragedy there will not be a new story to tell. treading the same ground.

brnine <3 they should get to have all three goals!!! they’re ignoring their grief by throwing themself into work! it makes sense!

“emotionally stunted, refuses to deal with grief, won’t say the name of the person most important to them, betrayed by their situationship, captain of a ship that was meant to be a promise that will never be fulfilled” yeah that sounds about right

feeling vindicated re Season About Grief. also enjoying that brnine’s goals and obstacles all hang on connection/inability to do so. it’s extremely tidy.

the joker already being perennial is fantastic. there’s probably an event horizon of too many things already having significance to continue developing a narrative and i doubt it’s actually possible to cross but if anyone would do it it’d be fatt

ugh god on a close listen the twilight mirage sound in the finale theme is so soul-shattering. falling asleep/waking up mixed with motion’s motif…

[ahcoffeebeans2]

THE FINALE OF PALISADE aka FINALISADE: FINAL SCORE!!

wanna know all of the fun stats associated with PALISADE now that the FINAL EPISODE has been released? I've got you right here!

on palisade...

Palisade Length: 5 days, 18 hours, 56 minutes, and 51 seconds (or 138 hours, 56 minutes, and 51 seconds) over a total of 62 episodes

The exact middle of PALISADE occurs at 69 hours (nice), 28 minutes, and 25 seconds or 2 days, 21 hours, 28 minutes, and 25 seconds - or 46 minutes, eight seconds into PALISADE 33 (AKA Cori's introduction to her Dust world). Cori, therefore, is the heart of Palisade

the road behind us...

Road to Palisade Length: 2 days, 17 hours, 12 minutes, and 1 second (or 65 hours, 12 minutes, and 1 second) over a total of 20 episodes

Together, the Road to PALISADE + PALISADE equals 8 days, 12 hours, 8 minutes, and 53 seconds (or 204 hours, 8 minutes, and 53 seconds) over a total of 82 episodes

For those curious, the 69th episode of Road to PALISADE + PALISADE is PALISADE 49: A Palette of Colors pt. 4

This means that PALISADE overtook The Road to PALISADE about 18 minutes and 8 seconds into PALISADE 33: Seize the Chance pt. 4, where Austin and Janine discuss how Thisbe attacks The Ingrate on Chimera's Lantern.

The exact middle of Road to PALISADE + PALISADE occurs at 102 hours, 4 minutes, and 26 seconds into the seasons - or 4 days, 6 hours, 4 minutes, and 26 seconds. This occurs at 1 hour, 59 minutes, and 09 seconds into the episode PALISADE 17: Upon Our Grace pt. 4 (or when Austin reveals Broadleaf's death and the success of Baseline) (AKA the episode with Need 2 in the episode description)

the stats at the table...

The total length of Friends at the Table is 38 days, 5 hours, 44 minutes, and 46 seconds - or 917 hours, 44 minutes, and 46 seconds.

The exact half of Friends at the Table now occurs at 458 hours, 36 minutes, and 23 seconds - or 19 days, 2 hours, 18 minutes, and 11 seconds. This occurs 3 hours, 43 minutes, and 46 seconds into the Spring in Hieron Post-Mortem (previously, the exact middle of Friends at the Table from Sangfielle below was during the Twilight Mirage Post-Mortem - coincidence!!). This is where Austin discusses The Road to PARTIZAN and reveals the PARTIZAN theme.

In approximately 92 hours of Friends at the Table - which, given their track record, is around 23 episodes of your average season - we will have reached 1000 hours of fatt. Fitting, given that the aniiversary is less than one month away

palisade errata

The Palisade playlist (youtube mirror) ends at 114 - 115 tracks (one track was removed from all streaming services for unknown reasons hence the approximation), clocking in at around 6 hours and thirty minutes

The Palisade soundtrack clocks in at 16 songs for a total of 57 minutes and 30 seconds of music.

PALISADE is the longest season of Friends at the Table in terms of hour count, beating out Twilight Mirage (5 days, 13 hours, 26 minutes, and 4 seconds) by 5 hours, 30 minutes, and 47 seconds. Twilight Mirage currently reigns supreme at 70 episodes (68 episodes plus the Post-Mortem and Episode 00)

[zeiat]

i finally finished the finalisade finale and

bro i'm so emotional about brnine and thisbe... here, look at brnine's thisbe relationship mechanics in chronological order from the start of partizan:

Thisbe is capable of more, and if I can get her to trust me, I can use that.

Thisbe wants offworld too, and I want to know what she'd spend to do it.

Thisbe doesn't think I'm significant.

Thisbe is an important part of my past.

Old friends.

Thisbe is an important part of my life.

brnine thisbe platonic married PM 1430-forever imho!!!!

[humanmorph]

me skipping through finalisade episodes wow this sounds so good i wish i could listen to it

[swallowtailed]

palisade 62 / finalisade side b track 6

on palisade!

one thing about fatt, they can stick a landing. more specifically austin and jack by their powers combined can stick a fucking landing. tbh let me talk about the outro first, actually:

stunning final track. loved hearing it morph from the palisade theme into other tunes.

a joy to hear from parti one last time!! probably my favorite npc of this season.

and to lift back out into the frame of perfect imperfect as hosted by layer luxurious (broadcasting from the planet of palisade, which is a lovely touch)—it’s my audio drama past coming out, but i do so love a diegetic radio show. we were promised that we would hear the end of the perfect millennium! and we did! satisfying.

i wasn’t sold on the plot of this sortie, but janine brought it home—has been bringing it home all arc. her work in this finale has been really, really cool. super solid science fiction. going from questlandia back into armor astir felt like an odd zigzag—much like dipping into and back out of the mirage—but the thread of blossoming sentiences was very strong.

(would like to take time to dig into the thematic structure of this season, now that it's over, but for now i am just pointing at it)

god, just knowing that brnine survived, and continued the fight… that's a win. closing on them bantering with thisbe was, i agree, the perfect final image.

brnine’s gravity clock changing to “thisbe is an important part of my life”... thisbe saying they’re a good captain and asking to watch a movie, and brnine immediately teasing her… they’re friends ;-;

also—season about grief—it was jokes, but thisbe saying “i was stating a fact, i wasn’t mourning” and brnine replying “sounded like mourning to me”, and ending palisade on that exchange… a good note of closure on that theme, i felt.

there’s been a lot of excellent character work this season—brnine, thisbe, cori, figure, jesset, and august all stand out to me. i’m trying not to make this post too long but man. genuinely incredible stuff.

perennial blooming again with thisbe’s gift of the pollen was really lovely. as was all the imagery in that scene

thisbe throwing sixes to speak with perennial was so Dice Game. one last little bit of serendipity for the road.

also thisbe being integrated with various different ways of being is very “it’s not a field it’s a garden” to me

i am looking forward to seeing how they treat this new phase of the divine cycle, because a transformation like that of the divine arbor would be devastating to a lot of lifeways & ecologies. it is far from the only time this has happened in the divine cycle! but it’s a great chance to concretize that. kudzu and other invasive species were raised in a previous ep; i’m also reminded of area x from jeff vandermeer’s annihilation. what i would like to see: a focus on new social forms, cf scavengers reign. fatt typically does not dig into ecologies, land relationships, etc, but perhaps they will look more in that direction in the divine arbor’s new world? who knows. either way i’m gonna be sitting here talking about ecological readings because unfortunately i do think it’s important and relevant lmao. (while i’m talking on the season scale, this is something i really want to see in sangfielle as well. which is a setting that even more deserves some time spent on the land.)

cori’s scene with elle was great. her storyline this season has been so fun—losing none of the bravado, but coming more into herself. i thought she was gonna give elle some of her blood but a ritual knife is probably a better gift.

can’t wait to see where they’re at next divine cycle season!!

“if only you could get five more minutes” made me laugh

glad that levi made it out! starcrossed is a wild name for a team led by a guy who kicked off his career by defeating the fear of death—kinda thumbing his nose at fate—but it seems like he’s pulling it off so far.

can local plant-based organizing be a viable alternative to galactic capitalism? i sure fuckin hope so!!

leap vanishing with present would have been extremely space opera

perennial blue ribbon…

i did overall really enjoy this season. i think it’s their best yet, for character work and executing on big ideas. a sharper take on twilight mirage. it’s dense but it has momentum. they really do get better every season imo... like my season ranking does kinda just go directly up in chronological order

god. palisade.

stay tuned~

(also, while we’re here, thanks for reading! this is something like the sixtieth of these weekly palisade ep posts, which is wild. it’s been a weird year and a half, personally—a lot of time in motion—but tuning into palisade every week and then thinking and discussing together has been really fun. so shoutouts!)

[swallowtailed]

palisade 48! finalisade pt 3!

eclectic's scene: yall. YALL. THE GARDEN OF FIDELITY. this is exactly what i have been hoping for all season. fidelity and her garden, her locus of control, are an invasive species introduced by colonizers on the planet palisade (which is a body). introduced species can be both a symptom and a direct method of colonization. the garden of fidelity is deliberately spread, and grows opportunistically (ex. in the dark, on goop) out from colonial settlements--as much a part of the infrastructure of colonialism as city city etc. which resonates perfectly with the whole tm-era garden thing, because like... a garden is created intentionally, altering the land for a purpose. agriculture is contextual. and for it to be fidelity, one of the mirage divines, doing this!! so anyway. very excited about this addition.

uhhh what was this scene about again, aside from introduced and invasive species as a vector of colonization. oh yeah right. love that eclectic is like, i will get in touch with the actual divine i was created from and use the divinity left in me to break a prison open, and i will not acknowledge it at all. i hope he and august get to argue at some point. they're such interestingly opposed characters.

also, setting: really reminded me of the fifth season. (the bit in the geode at the end. u know.) and i gotta say, a blank corporate building sitting in a deep dark cave is actually the scariest thing they proposed

thisbe's scene: ok, doing this out of order for the plotline. very pleased that we immediately got to visit the afflicted lands. i do really love when the divine cycle is in the space of divines being literally the thing they are. which is not nearly always the case but i did feel like this scene was framed in that way. so, yknow, "what's a divine" is the eternal question, but also sometimes someone uses integrity to break the hold of guilt and opposition on leadership. as a writer with a serious interest in thematic structure i simply enjoy it. also it's paired with questlandia's emphasis on clear priorities and goals, so we have both thisbe's pragmatic approach almost independent of the divines involved and august righteousness witnessing something extremely on the nose for his current position

thisbe's relationship with cori being exhausted is so good. i mean, sad. but putting the mechanic of exhausted relationships into the blue channel's whole situation is, i think, very clarifying

the divine kingdom... miserable, obviously. very curious if that is something that's going to last into p3

clem's scene: the problem, as i see it, is that the most compelling question raised by having clem onscreen is the potential to ask, like, can mbreak finally separate themselves from the principality. and this was raised in the episode! but the problem is that they can't actually confront that, because having clem as a pc requires her to stay present and tied to the rest of the cast, and so no progress can be made because clem has to be There, Forever. which was already fully litigated in partizan! ok. i'm done.

things i enjoyed about that scene: august hating everyone in the room and also himself. jesset shooting clem in the face. (eta oh my god i forgot to mention jesset's gun hand. jesset what is going ON.) mustard red fucking Appearing.

[swallowtailed]

palisade 55 / finalisade pt. 10

this is so fucking funny

incredible. they've done it. double feature finale. i don't even want to try and guess how many episodes are left. sometime around 44 or 45 i said they should do thirty more AS A JOKE

i'm not sure i agree that motion is the loose end that needs tying up with an armor astir sortie, but i still think it'll be fun and i'm really excited to get perennial onscreen. hoping both cori and elle can make it >:)

more to the point i gotta say questlandia did not hit as a finale for me, which i think was largely due to the changes in the pc cast and the lack of rp. it felt like the conclusion to a different season. (wrt all the delegate plotlines in particular.) i'm not entirely sure that this next sortie will resolve that for me, but knowing fatt it might well.

because i'm always curious about stuff like this, i am really wondering when they decided to do another armor astir sortie

okay let's talk epilogues a bit though. with the understanding that any/all of these may cease to be endings per se. brnine:

brnine ends up fulfilling the future they envisioned for themself at the beginning of questlandia--continuing the fight outside the mirage. a millennium break admiral, leading the revolution... it really does change lives huh

character of All Time, btw. not entirely sure if this is their ending as a pc but still. All Fucking Time

sorry to hear they broke up with both jesset and gucci. dating sim fail ending. married to the job [ghost of valence]

delicious however that brnine's kingdom-level "unfortunately" ending is a rise in cults of personality and popular hero-worship. that does feel like an accurate downside outcome of a revolution story focused on a crew of heroes where the broader cause keeps getting beat down and the main character crew keeps winning. (that's one detail that really delivered on palisade, imo.)

august and levi:

i liked the twilight mirage's role in these epilogues because it was so uneven. we have the mirage getting twisted around trying to figure out whether august's justice was done well because they didn't directly experience the invasion, while also starting to join the fight in the broader galaxy per levi's epilogue. the high-minded naivety forced into practice is really compelling to me. (cf volition's conversation with thisbe.) not that we haven't seen idealists before in the divine cycle, but i'm eager to see what an attitude of radical forgiveness looks like outside the mirage.

similarly i found levi's localized approach disconnected from the goals of mbreak/other pcs in a way that is... realistic to the character, but might just get overwritten in the next in-universe push toward connection and coalition building, because i don't really see fatt moving away from that framework. (it's not a bad one necessarily, i just don't think they're leaving it.)

anyway. august. man. deciding to join wakeful and then getting stranded for a week that turns into a year, and never quite getting up to it again... brutal. (also completes a very well structured arc.) there are a lot of voids left by unfulfilled desires in these epilogues.

but not in levi's! very hopeful final beat there. both for the character and for the revolution. partizan ended with mbreak reviled as terrorists, now palisade ends (uh. "ends") with a new movement and new hope known throughout the galaxy.

ctc+eggs breakfast is so accurate

thisbe and cori:

thisbe and cori started out with a mirrored pair of goals and now they have a (differently) mirrored pair of epilogues. seizing your freedom and launching off into the galaxy and then realizing that means you're stuck wandering alone. (which does hit a little close to home. lmao.)

very reminiscent of the sangfielle epilogues, by the way, but doesn't work as well after a full season of crew bonding imo

thisbe being able to know and acknowledge and grasp her own freedom, being able to follow her own curiosity, is such a huge win for her. she's come so far.

tbh i'm disappointed that the scattered shards of divinity goal didn't come to pass, because thisbe did get some wins there! two wins and a... something! so that didn't really feel fair. but the chimeric cadent and the afflictions being out in the galaxy does actually feel kind of hopeful to me.

(man, i really wish we'd gotten more about partial palisade and the planet of palisade.)

i have to say, i really liked how cori's epilogue went despite the massive wave of misfortune. the shift into wandering felt more fitting for cori, since she's had a whole arc about losing her place with the devotees. assuming she's coming back in p3, an arc about finding/rebuilding community would be lovely.

also elle getting yanked back by arbitrage was of course inevitable and thus delicious. i'm considering fic ideas. watch this space.

clem:

clem's fortunately/unfortunately was so funny. vindictive. austin being like "there's no one around to tell clem she's done a good job" followed by jack going "and gucci doesn't even like her". and then the only future she can see is one in which she's still powerless and not ruling anything because not even being an oracle can help clementine kesh. satisfying.

so anyway

it was nice to see eclectic again. pleased he didn't fully vanish from the narrative (a ghost!), and the new look is slick. i'm curious whether he's gonna try to mount an escape while separated from wakeful. maybe that's not even an option anymore, though.

who do we think is gonna be on the next sortie? levi for sure, and eclectic (unless leap), and like, it's gotta be cori. are brnine and thisbe coming back? are jack and art playing???

sort of a philosophical question here but is questlandia arguably the holiday special

god it's so funny that they've done this. when i first heard this was happening, i was initially like, this is kind of a failure case of fatt's black box pacing for the week to week perspective. but it is also extremely funny. friends at the table.

[swallowtailed]

palisade 52 / finalisade pt. 7

THEY SAID IT

"I think if Valence saw me now, part of them would be proud of me. And I'm happy enough with that" what if i just cried forever

like, it's such a resigned sentence. they're not sure valence would approve of how they've reshaped their entire life in their honor. but it still feels like such a victory.

also, like, fucking obviously valence would be proud. ofc brnine does not know that. but c'mon.

three years and seven months, by the way, since pzn 38, which i believe is the last time ali said "valence" in character as broun or brnine.

and to say this to jesset to convince him not to throw his life away for his ideals--not to sacrifice himself to take out one of a thousand antagonists--brnine saved jesset from valence's death. god. fuck

and then jesset replying, "it's this. it's tears forever. you don't get to win. you just have to keep trying, and losing people." and "it's a vow to fail." season about grief. this is the flip side of the blue channel making it through the stellar combustor arc because they're willing to barter with their own mortality. it's an awful way to survive. but you have to.

i mean, there's no real way to answer "how do you keep living when death is inevitable". that's one of the big ones. but also thinking back to... idk, maybe the violet cove arc?? not entirely sure but i remember glossing an early arc as "how do you continue in the face of opposition" (this was back when the faction game kept doing massive smackdowns). getting increasingly abstract but it's the same question basically. and it's a good act 2 question! it is perhaps the only act 2 question! so, anyway. enjoying this.

think jesset needs to talk to perennial honestly. compare notes on how it all repeats and how to find hope knowing that. especially with future having shown him (reflected to him?) the world he's dreading. (fucked up, btw. fucked up!!!) (also, "i've seen the future, and no one is going to be sad about me" immediately reminded me of "i have seen the stars and they will not save us".)

hearing motion speak again after jesset left the exoskeleton and realizing that he'd been speaking with her voice was spine-chilling, great voice acting on austin's part

the hug..... the forehead kiss.......... they're just two bros

really pleased that levi was part of the scene, given how he mirrors jesset. i'm actually very excited to see where he goes in p3

other episode notes

glad we got some explicit discussion of where clem's actually going in this story. i still think her storyline is played out but i would accept her merging fully with the iconoclasts and floating around in space forever.

cas'alear's pitch is an interesting bit of setup. it does feel like we're kind of just waiting to be told what the big shift into p3 is gonna be, which takes some of the steam out of the palisade finale.

congrats to leap on winning

thisbe struggling with the weight of free will... i love her

august dreaming about a reunion with wakeful is so upsetting and good

maidstone cross feels like a character from an entirely separate season lmfao. it has been so long

are there... only two episodes left of palisade????????

[swallowtailed]

palisade 56 / finalisade interlude

i love when fatt does episodes like this. feels like a rare treat. the ceremony of structure is so delightful to me

very tidy chapter titles also

levi taking the lead in these scenes was a great dynamic. have been thinking lately about how fully dre inhabits characters. all those conversations were so fun because of that

perennial not having told cori the future she sees because she's afraid of making cori hopeless: the classic mistake!!!! what a fallible, mortal, caring error

i adored reflective welkin and xylem's story. really, really good. will be posting more about xylem in a second but like... the other-than-human romance of it all... weeping wailing

related: i very much appreciated janine's goopy moon plant! that's some speculative ecology right there! (it's probably not a plant, it's probably some archaea business, but that's okay.) and thisbe giving brnine a moon goop closed terrarium was really sweet

so curious what thisbe's project is. mysterious grafted shrub???

very insidious for arbitrage to be working on systems of connection and community. seeing it prey on, like, mutual aid (" ") is fun. unfortunately i was never a fan of black mirror

i enjoyed the rube goldberg machine of contracts because it calls very nicely back to the adagio in g. connadine's still trying to set the world on rails by predicting/precipitating individual actions

really beautiful music throughout. that sound in the song over cas's scene was... reminiscent of motion but distinctly not?

not feeling convinced by cas's plotline, though. they're just giving up, then? declaring the millennium over and hoping mbreak fixes everything? really curious what perennial's response will be

i am so excited that the nobel are (maybe? slowly?) coming onscreen

brnine scene: showstopping. fascinated by their aura of simultaneous silliness and heartbreak. saying to levi's face "that would be so fucking funny" if they just left?? lmfao

but young idealist and cynical mentor is a classic for a reason. levi going on faith that brnine's not gonna bolt...

god, it's so good. i'm so excited. gonna be an all timer sortie

palisade theme is back!!!! my friend the palisade theme is back!!!!!

[swallowtailed]

palisade 54 / finalisade pt. 9

ah, god, palisade. felt very tender about the prospect of this episode. unfortunately the dice went so bad that i'm now like eek. oof. uh oh

ultimately though i don't actually think the balance of fortune and misfortune is going to be especially impactful to the overall thrust of the epilogues? there's a lot of other narrative material coming to bear on characters' endings, and fatt tends toward pyrrhic victorics anyway. also, yknow, preexisting plans for a sequel season.

cori's balance is really pretty bad though lmao

brnine leaving without the blue channel was very surprising to me at first, but i liked where they ended up with their burdens--largely juking them simply by running away, yet still haunted by the knowledge that lattice is aboard the blue channel, and leaving only with the promise of returning. that's all very brnine. it doesn't quite feel like a full ending for them, though.

it was also very sweet that their last conversation involved both being a mentor figure to cori and getting deadpan roasted by thisbe

loved the minnow aquarium portal concept. every school of resonant minnows being quantum entangled is so fascinating to me. it's probably hilarious on a physics level, but i don't know enough quantum physics to tell, so i'm mostly just enjoying imagining that the minnows photosynthesize, haloarchaea style. or i would also accept that they're spacecraft remoras

also--blue channel being the first of a series of waterway names among mbreak, then brnine building an aquarium as mbreak's way out of the mirage--that felt really clean.

really interesting that brnine still feels the "nail in the head" of apostolosian nationalism. never dealing with their past <3

it's true that having the world without end still around is accurate to the overall approach to time in the divine cycle, but that still does not make it realistic in any way lmfao. however i do think jack's wrong that it's a different fisherman. obviously that is the same fisherman.

incidentally jack has been killing it on worldbuilding all finalisade

dre protesting that they should know when their characters are dead was extremely funny

wakeful generation ship has a lot of potential. excited to see where that goes

related: i'm so curious about austin's list of unresolved threads

i really liked the bit of cori and elle's banter we got in cori's scene. they have such a fun relationship. excited to (hopefully) see the two of them in p3--i'd love to see cori to navigate betrayal, conflicting allegiances, etc (per arbitrage contract) in an existing relationship. redefine devotion for herself, maybe. i'm still not compelled by arbitrage as a villain but i'll make an exception for yuri

the shed that transports you somewhere else: sangfielle crossover

also extremely good music holy shit

cori murdering gallica was a wild beat. (elle for elect of present??) and i'm so, so excited to see cori's epilogue with perennial

one more episode left... epilogues... finalisade of finalisade........

[swallowtailed]

sitting at my desk having a little finalisade cry to the palisade outro

[swallowtailed]

palisade 61 / finalisade side b track 5

i love when janine pushes plot points because they're always incredible. thisbe is growing an organic divine!!!!!!!!!!! the divine arbor! god it's SO cool

and it's pretty easy to ask, what is really the difference between growth via mitosis and rebirth of a divine via gumption. both are inherent to the organism, right? (also you could read the equiaxed as a similar grafting process.)

anyway love to take concrete action in the precarious space as the boundary of a social construct. thisbe's plotline in the finalisade has been so compelling to me. standout of the season tbh

i'm still very very curious about how thisbe's been growing this divine (what did it start from??), but i'm sure we'll get into the implications eventually

interesting discussion of invasiveness in this ep re the divine pollen gambit. i would also like to contextualize said gambit in terms of solar geoengineering, specifically the various aerosol injection proposals that have been put forward in recent years. which are all just so... fucked

(i really do not have the time rn to put together actual analysis using geoengineering ethics (or invasiveness, even. which tells you exactly how much i do not have the time) but i do think it'd be interesting)

oh lmao and while i'm on real world analogues, the pollen injection concept is literally just crispr. space magic crispr

anyway the thing i loved about the space magic crispr approach was asepsis being a conduit for the divine arbor to grow on/in motion. asepsis as a decomposer turning motion into substrate for plants... pulling the embodient of undeath back into the cycle... fucking excellent

thisbe rights

ok other non-plant notes

banger intro. it's cool to see the season-long motif of movement framed as a defense of stillness. also obv we're familiar with motion & undeath at this point but it still hits tbh

also the new music was great

cori and the dad smashers band tour tshirts when

really enjoyed cori's honorable duel that she won with the power of love

brnine and thisbe... who are you to each other... please do not die...

levi doing mad max was very fun

feel like there's been a lot of "stratus-style" descriptions lately. curious where the definition/role of strati currently stands

can feel the fatt engine spinning up now and i'm excited about it

[swallowtailed]

palisade 57 / finalisade side b track 1: sundews :)

[swallowtailed]

palisade 56 / finalisade interlude: thinking about trees, wood, and timber

oh my god yall. i cannot describe how thrilled i was to meet xylem. a wood-shaped branched!! studying light!!! meditating on time!!!! what a perfect expression of the other-than-human experiences palisade's been exploring.

my immediate first thought on xylem's description was that there's something really compelling about branched personhood involving a consistent yet changeable internal geometry (cf ants walking in a circle). wood is a very organized material, and the branching pattern of trees recapitulates itself. (i'd argue this is also true of human cell structure, tbh, just a bit less obviously.) (*also wood doesn't grow continually! only the outermost ring of a tree is alive. the interior layers are dead tissue. i'll get back to that in a second.)

and wakeful immediately kicked off with suspicion at a perceived lack of cohesion or stability, which was even more fascinating, because wakeful is Also Like That--addressed later by comparing wakeful to a tree (internally structured, each part recapitulating the whole). i almost want to read wakeful's initial reaction as... jealousy? at being able, allowed, willing, free to change as you please. and conversely, that xylem saw a like creature in resolute welkin. which is also very revealing about how the branched view selfhood.

okay, the dead heartwood thing. the only living part of the bole of a tree is the outermost ring (which includes the xylem, the water transport system). the old rings die, but remain as structure. wood is a great record-keeper. each new ring is shaped by the circumstances of its growth--not just water, but light, wind, the surrounding trees, the eroding slope, disturbances from fire and storms and animals--and all of that can be read as long as the wood lasts. unless the tree is so old that its heartwood decays and hollows out, leaving a lacuna at the center. but that's just forgetting. we all do that. anyway: time, for trees, is simply longer than it is for humans, and the experience of that time is recorded in the body of the tree. so what a good way to engage with long-time from the branched perspective! a branched tree! (do we even know how long the branched live? does it depend on their form?)

going to split this point out as its own post but: really liked that xylem takes many forms of wood, rather than just trees. there's a context of influence and reshaping there that i think is important

meanwhile also a really lovely and heartwrenching relationship. i love the invention of new intimacies.

lastly. "some secret war-ending quality hidden in the light all the way out here". did make me cry. it's... yknow. that's the job. or you hope that's the job. it's probably not. but it might be.

[swallowtailed]

palisade 60 / finalisade side b track 4

i love when perennial omits/revises/manipulates information :) it's such a fun weakness for a time-traveling machine god. the one thing she can perfectly control is her own behavior, and her only method of influence is what she tells or doesn't tell her allies... anyway i thought it was very funny that she was just straight up fucking lying to cas'alear about the multiverse.

and also a little heartbreaking that she can only allow herself to taste victory as deception

also, intro jumpscare! was not expecting it at all. lowkey very perennial to make listeners (me anyway) go "hold on have we or have we not heard this before, thought this was a recap but it might be new"

while i'm on the topic, it was expected (genre) but still sweet that perennial was so charmed by the blue channel crew. she thinks leap's funny! she recognizes brnine's depression! excellent argument for exploding the focus on 1:1 pilot-divine relationships

speaking of brnine i am just sitting here watching them. their reunion with routine, leap roasting them with a help roll... still everyone wants them to be captain brnine and still they are simply not!

the successful invention of this doohickey felt like the resolution to the invisibility radio that keeps you cold from the stellar combustor arc

similarly, have been enjoying the splashy house rules approach to this sortie. armor astir is a fun game

"you're getting perennial blasted, which is like being flavor blasted, and not any other type of blasted"

"real recognized real but for depression which is so real"

also austin going "are you ever done??" to ali asking for vibes on perennial was so funny. blue channel polycule true ending

"the patron saint of divorcees"

clem showing up was extremely silly. kind of a fun production-level echo of art's starbucks parking lot adventure in episode 1, also. wondering if jack's gonna cameo / who as.

still feel a bit like i'm waiting for the plot to kick in. reminiscent of the train brain sortie, but with even less danger. there's just not a lot of urgency to this combat

six step clock to end the perfect millennium

[swallowtailed]

palisade 58 & 59 / finalisade side b tracks 2 & 3

okay it is pretty compelling that motion is Inside Everyone now. good solid twist. nice and insidious. march of empire etc etc

brnine's bluetooth bugging out and accidentally broadcasting their music over the comms: that's my captain

very tasty that everyone's looking for "the old brnine", trying to encourage them, asking them to come back. even asepsis! i think there's a real question there of, like, is this a temporary setback for the daring and wholehearted captain, or is this just how brnine is now. are their friends reaching for a version of them that's just gone. the more the other pcs ask, the more i wonder--like, it would've been easy to say levi's pep talk was enough to wake them up, but it clearly wasn't.

(thisbe: "brnine is capable but brittle. they deserve to live a better life than this. get them to it." cori: "did the captain always look this tired?")

in some ways it'd be a win for the entire season for brnine to get a happy ending

cannot fucking believe the wizard orb has been just barely offscreen all season. smh

noted that cas'alear met with perennial entirely offscreen. that's probably hiding something

still very pleased the original palisade theme is back <3

i do think this eternal finale is the right decision in terms of the overall shape of palisade. entering the mirage is probably too big of a move to justify in a six-episode arc. also palisade is now very evenly divided in terms of runtime--three twenty-episode segments with the intro of the stellar combustor and the entry into the mirage as act breaks. (four 20-ep segments if you count the road.) but i am feeling it drag on a bit from a week to week perspective. feature not a bug, though, i think.