#also road to partizan is so fucking good

[vforvalensa]

relistening to friends at the table it's wild to me that they followed up spring in heiron with partizan and i listened to that in real time.

[humanmorph]

seeing the gur drawing in my notes now is so. on one hand im still very happy people like it so much : ) on the other hand i am taking -2 damage every time i see it because aauugh. arghgh gur

[iantimony]

for twitter replacement i have tried cohost. i have tried (kinda) plurk. none of my fucking friends are on either so i am gonna go back to simple tumblr posting.

listening to road to partizan...episode 5 where they were all kids helping the mech pilot software chip (jack) get back to her mech was so good...i did almost cry at the end of that...it was also very

jack: the most heartbreaking thing you can imagine

the rest of them: 7-year-old level fart joke

also the mephis longhands third-person bit is extremely good. so is smack talk and his brother, david back talk

[chicknparm]

It's halfway through the year! Got any favorite albums/books/tv shows/whatever to recommend? (Congrats on the marriage btw ❤️)

Hi hi! I've finally remembered to answer this! So I'm terrible at keeping up with New Media so I'll just list some stuff I've been into lately, and mostly keep it to recent-ish things when I can.

Friends at the Table (Podcast) - Forever and always, this show rules. The best RPG Actual Play show, the best podcast, one of my favorite works of ongoing fiction. I fell off when Morv was here but I finally caught up and am current on Palisade, which means I'm now getting to dive back into Twilight Mirage. For you, Bri: Palisade and TM seem to have a lot in common to me. They're both sprawling, ambitious follow-ups to beloved sci-fi seasons, and they both have moments that absolutely knock my fucking socks off. But they're both also kind of inconsistent and took a while to get going imo? Even 50 episodes into both, I find myself tuning out a lot more easily during certain arcs where others have me glued to my headphones. Keeping some of the Partizan characters around has definitely prevented Palisade from dipping too far though, since I think that batch of characters might be my favorite from just about every player. Kalvin Brnine 4ever. For others who might be reading this: Other Actual Play shows have better production value, visual aids, professional voice acting, and might be easier to follow, but all the things that make Friends at the Table kinda hard to get into are the reasons why it rules, actually. It feels less like watching improv, and more like watching a writers' room for a TV show go to work. And that kind of thing is infinitely more interesting to me as a storyteller. I cannot get enough of "behind the scenes" type stuff where you see the process of crafting a story, and to have it be a main aspect of the show itself makes Friends at the Table a treat to watch. I promise you, you will not find cooler world-building or a greater commitment to narrative in any other show in the genre.

Street Fighter 6 (Game, lol) - The best fighting game on the market currently. I've started going to local tournaments and getting to know some of the competitive players in my city, and let me tell you there's nothing like it. It absolutely rules to feel myself get tangibly better at a skill, and not only celebrate it myself, but have other people celebrate with me. Hearing people cheer when I pull off something cool, and hearing them root for me against the better, more established players really dulls the pain when I (frequently) hit road blocks and feel bad about myself. I think fighting games are really cool, but finding your local Fighting Game Community is the absolute best way to experience community in video games and it's not even close.

This Could All Be Different (Novel) - Borrowed this from my beautiful, kind, iconic wife. It's a (seemingly loosely autobiographical) novel about a lesbian immigrant who finds herself struggling to find herself and find community after moving to Milwaukee for a decent (or so it seems) job. It started out kind of slow, and a little rough, but once it got its hooks in me it was in there fucking DEEP. I finished it within like 36 hours of picking it up for the first time, which is extremely rare for me. Maybe it's just been a while since I've read a good-ass novel but the craft with which the protagonist's arc was conveyed really knocked me on my ass in hindsight. We watch her grow, improve, face the consequences of her actions, learn to accept community and unlearn some toxic coping mechanisms, but none of it feels as hokey and contrived as it very easily could be. Her changes are almost never acknowledged by the story or narration, it's just something that happens. Hopeful but not saccharine. The love story is an integral part of both the plot and the characters' arc, but it is so far removed from the Fanfic Trope Zone that seems to have taken over the shelves of every bookstore near me that it should barely even be included in the pitch. Really challenged how I think about family, politics, community, and my own self-image in ways I was absolutely not expecting. Huge fan.

I Saw the TV Glow (Film) - I don't think I have anything to say about this that other people haven't already contributed. I did not Love this movie the way other people did, and it didn't Hit me the way it Hit almost everyone else I know. I was expecting to sob and walked away with dry eyes. But I've thought about it just about every day since I saw it. The tragic core of the film is something I absolutely recognize and find affecting, but I do not Relate to it the way that many others do. Due to how it came about there was basically no Denial phase in my realization of my gender. Well, maybe there was about the specifics, but the notion that I was Not Cis was basically immediately followed by hard conversations and coming out to friends and experimenting with presentation and pronouns and self-concept. I am not exaggerating even a little bit when I say that if I hadn't been too scared by the Creatures, and had watched Buffy, the Vampire Slayer when I was a kid I might have ended up in an extremely similar situation to this film's protagonist. If I had to grapple with identity in that way surrounded by the violently oppressive aspects of patriarchy that I was already victim to in school, I definitely would've buried it in the dirt. In my Letterboxd review I said that I had to talk myself into giving it more than 3 stars. I eventually succeeded, and I'm guessing I'll add more and more to that rating as I rewatch it over the years.

Um anyway that's what I'm thinking about at the moment, and that's what I've got the Brain Space to write up, thank you so much for this ask! It's always fun getting a prompt (even if unintentional) that forces me to put on my Critical Writer cap. And especially thank you for the congratulations, I married my Tumblr Crush and I couldn't be happier :') Thank God for Life is Strange.

[archipithecus]

hey, by now i've listened to all of the main feed, so here's the good What Ifs from Spring, Partizan, and Palisade (including Roads)

SPRING IN HIERON

ART: What if the rock was shaped like a fish?

AUSTIN: ... what if Kermit could also make... his own choices.

AUSTIN: ...what if fire was made out of plastic or metal?

Art: Like a bouillon base, but what if there was no France.

Austin: What if you could get a croissant from like a twenty-five cent, like gacha machine?

Keith: Um, what if I made an animal out of mushroom?

JANINE: What if he fused with the flower fox? That’d be cool as hell.

Keith: Yeah. I mean, I definitely have thought of ‘what if I made a animal that kil- that just ate all the bad stuff.’ That definitely has crossed my mind.

Janine: What if we did a season of buff horse men and squatting frog people?

Janine: What if it’s like, a string of pearls that’s untied on one end?

Austin: What if in the core of the earth, someone was like, seeding the world? What if Johnny Appleseed was at the center of the earth with a hammer?

AUSTIN (overlapping): What if Family Feud but Jeopardy?

Austin: What if it Ric Flair had on platemail?

Austin: it’s built out of some material that almost looks like, ‘What if porcelain was metal?’

Jack: It’s like, ‘what if a branch crossed the Grand Canyon?’

Art: What if we had some sort of giant like, sap situation?

Dre: What if he’s Paul Bunyan?

ART: Yeah, business rain? Uhuh. [Austin laughs] [Art laughs] As we call it. Um, what if- what if that were made of pollen? And I think what that like, sort of, feels like, is- it’s like frozen orange juice? You know how like, you freeze orange juice-

PARTIZAN (and ROAD TO)

JANINE: What if it’s just like a very smooth deer face but it’s just like skin?

ART: You know like a mood ring? [Agreement from Dre, understanding from Janine] Like, what if that was a hat?

Austin: Well, it should look like a mech first, right? So, maybe draw like a — I guess, again, is it a humanoid mech? Is it a — like a hypercat? Is it a four-legged giant mech? Like what if it’s a four-legged quad-leg mech, but the top of the mech is above the house? Do you know what I mean? Like, the four legs are the four columns are the four columns at the edges.

Art: Um, what if Memphis Longhand, in the style of Ricky Henderson, exclusively referred to himself in the third person?

SYLVIA: Like, like what if lasers were coming out of— like, what if there was a flamethrower but lasers? Like, four of those basically got Integrity.

AUSTIN: Yeah. What if you stretched a hexagon wide? What’s a wide hexagon called?

Austin: What if my gun had eyes or whatever?

Sylvia: Yeah! What if you could like be a dropout from your fucking supersoldier fascist regime?

Art: Yeah. They’re like… At one point they were very powerful, militarily. I said it’s like, “what if the archbishop of this monastic order was Genghis Khan?”

AUSTIN: Okay. Like a giant- Like what if a mech threw a flashbang. [Ali laughs] Okay.

AUSTIN: I love how much your mech is like what if Heat Signature was a game about mech theft.

Austin: Right, you are an empath, you have empathic abilities, and so this was like, what if the Library of Alexandria was alive, and then you were there when it burned.

Janine: What if a radio tower could climb a mountain? And talk to a telepath?

Janine: What if we just like...what’s that thing called when you have a skateboard and you grab the back of a truck and you risk dying?

Austin: Skitching? What if you skitch the train?

Janine: What if we just skitch the train in our mech? [chuckles]

AUSTIN: I got it, I got it, boom. So imagine this spider- six eyes, kind of like a- this is the one, there's one that I think is grosser and it's not that one- yeah it's not that one that I think is grosser. It's this much- very friendly looking, big mandibles, six eyes that almost look like two arrows pointed inwards in like a… what is that actual character on your keyboard called? You know what I'm talking about, the greater and lesser signs, but made of three dots? And Gur Sevraq is like that, but what if that was an EXO from Destiny.

AUSTIN: ...what if you could buy just the hood of a hoodie and put that on.

KEITH: And, like, The Hobbit is a book. And then Lord of the Rings is like, what if I wrote— and everything else he ever wrote was like, “What if I did Wookieepedia, but for my— that one book that I did that was good?” [Austin laughs]

AUSTIN: What if Michelle Rodriguez was a fancy, black waistcoat wearing, ribbon tie, butler with hair slicked back?

AUSTIN: It's like, what if you knew Bruce Wayne dressed up as a something and beat people up and you knew that he had like a batcave or he had like a cave where he kept a bunch of gadgets and shit. (Ali laughs) But you didn't give a fuck about like Batman. Right?

AUSTIN: ... what if the newsies from Newsies remained radicalized instead of taking whatever fucking compromise Hearst offered them.

AUSTIN: So, in this moment, in this like, all consuming white of your mind that fluctuates, it's as if, it's as if it's both um, nothingness, it's as if it's the white room of the Matrix, right? But what if white, what if, what if, y'know, brightness could have texture, could be fluctuating, not in color or intensity, but like a curtain in your mind.

AUSTIN: What if it's a sewing machine as big as like, a seven floor building, or an eight floor— you know what I mean?

ALI: Everyone is obsessed with that idea of like -- I talked about this in the bird Live at the Table where it was like, hot plates that you cook meat on. What if you did that but it was, like, a cake pan, and you put steak in the middle of it --

JANINE: I’m just saying, what if you put a steak and some potatoes in a feedbag, and then put it on a pizza? (...) what if instead of doing big deep dish steaks, they do, like, deep dish steak pies now.

JACK: Yeah, it’s like basically, “what if a corridor was a long weird room connected to a smaller, rectangular room.”

AUSTIN: It's like, what if the character from Journey was like a dope, sharp, sharpened cloth Divine.

Keith: And I’m thinking about the synovial fluid, which I know that I’ve used before, but what if we replaced it with goo and I would just— leaked goo!

AUSTIN: So mood- what if like the trim on this instead of being gold, is like the mood shit? So it changes based on how excited Leap is? What else? God. I love it- I’m in love with pirate Leap.

AUSTIN: Um, so they're kind of like… What if Scorpion was a cool knight mech [chuckling] and also had a sword under his left arm, right?

ART: Yeah, well, let’s just get a— We can— What if you were a big cloak?

DRE: Okay. What if in addition to the back of the drill, it's just a U-Haul truck. [pausing] [laughing]

AUSTIN: … it is very easy to imagine everything is happening at Hitman level. But what if Hitman— What if Agent 47 was 12 feet tall? How would that change… [Dre laughing] [chuckling] How would it… How would it be hard to hide him… sometimes?

Janine: What if -- what if it’s just Splatoon now. This is just Splatoon. With a truck.

JACK: So I thought to myself, “What if Dave Batista was a massive birdman who takes down mechs on foot.”

AUSTIN: And the Branched were like, Yo does the principality have God on its side, we should find out we should genuinely find out, because what if there is, what if there is a God and that God is against us?

AUSTIN: But what if someone wants to be a sun? And you’ve activated their normal mode and now they’re the sun? And that actually is not as good for you.

Jack: The big inspiration for Kalar is, like, what if Dave Bautista at the beginning of Blade Runner was a bird person. Just a huge—

AUSTIN: ...it's like a long, um, rectangular, main holem thin, almost like a ruler. And then what if a ruler had a bunch of, um, like, uh, s- not like- disks basically attached to it on the left and the right? gigantic huge.

AUSTIN: What if you, and only you, switch the “g” to a “j”?

PALISADE (and ROAD TO)

JACK: Well, we know what it looks like when Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team make mechs, that’s Armored Core. But this is like what if him and his team made mechs while they were making Bloodborne or Dark Souls, right?

AUSTIN: “what if an executioner was a giant robot,”

Art: I mean, what if, what if the thing is just worse? We can just, what if we just keep dialing up the knob that says religious fanaticism, until...

AUSTIN: This for me is like: “What if Ocean's Eleven had mechs?”

AUSTIN: What if the way it works is that it has to go to the center of the galaxy to take a picture of the galaxy?

AUSTIN: It's a… I’m looking at my shock mount for my microphone, currently. What if that was as big as… a country…

AUSTIN: It's like what if you took all of the lines of a triangle or a pyramid, and kept drawing them for, like, [chuckling] twice as long as the pyramid is.

AUSTIN: What if there was a steel rubber? You know? Rubberized metal. [overlapping] And…

AUSTIN: [overlapping, half-chucklin] It is pretty cool! Don’t get me wrong! But it’s like what if a particular thing happened and then the way it got remembered was just like the moment in Bad Boys where [half-chuckling] Martin Lawrence and Will Smith their big guns up in the air…?

Art: Yeah, like, what if those little broom things in front of a street sweeper were little hover things?

AUSTIN: ... what if you built cyborgs out of statuary, you know?

Austin: But what if it was filled with really beautiful liquid?

Janine: I mean, listen, when Austin first pitched the idea of like, glass aristocrats, my first thought was like, what if a powdered wig was made of solid glass, and so everyone was just walking around shaved bald, wearing these glass lumps on their head? But we've gone in a direction —

Art: I do, I feel like, I feel like there's a little bit of — okay, this wouldn't work, but come with me on a little journey. What if you could like, attach a plow to the back of a motorcycle?

KEITH: Oh, but what if I did something really cool?

AUSTIN: I think the Fudgie the Whale does like a little frown face. It's like a, it's like what if Fudgie — y'all know who Fudgie the Whale is, right?

AUSTIN: We've got sort of, what if someone gave Scyther four legs, and a radar unit.

Jack: Um, but this is the Brink's answer to like "what if we had Siri, who knew everything and answered all our questions?"

KEITH: “what if we made fashion that could kill you?”

AUSTIN: I’m making it… I’m— “What if fashion could kill?”

Austin: Our ship, the ship we’re on, shakes and creaks as if it's like…it's like turbulence, but what if instead of feeling like turbulence, it feels like you've gone from being like a plane in the sky to like a submarine.

Austin: ... what if Kurt Angle became Jon Moxley, right? What if Kurt Angle went to the Olympics, and then when he got to the WWE, was like, “That's, I'm — because I didn't win in the Olympics, fuck pro wrestling — or, fuck professional, fuck Olympic wrestling.”

Jack: God, yeah, what if we do space LA

Austin: Yeah. What if an English garden had a French garden inside of it? [chuckling]

Austin: ... in my mind, March is like, what if a Motorola Razr was a Columnar, right? Uh, a slick flip phone of a guy, you know?

Austin: Uh, and I haven't fully placed Guilford, but I think she's like, what if — she's like, what if one of those old telephones from the 1920s was a Columnar. You know, right, the handset —

Keith: But what if the person that dumps you is Jamie Foxx? Or that you were dumping was Jamie Foxx.

Austin: It's like, what if the largest, lowest canyon you've ever seen has been taken over by a mall, or a high-scale hotel, or a kind of extremely arrogant, you know, architectural project, like the sort of like... hey, what if we built a city that goes across our entire country? Maybe that's a real thing that's happening somewhere in the world right now, who could say?

Austin: And opposite your hill, on the other side of the village, on a different hill, there is a group of 4 Bilateral mechs, the ones that you felt, coming down that hill towards the village, while fighting what I can only describe as... what if a knife was a dragon?

Keith: Sorry, what if a — if a knife was a dragon?

Austin: Yeah, what if a knife were a dragon? What if there was a knife

Austin: Well, you know, it could also be, what if a dragon was a bunch of knives, right?

Austin: ...a Gueridon is literally like, what if a side table was a siege tower?

Austin: It’s like a Brian Eno UI sound. You know what I mean? It’s like a Windows 95—it’s not like the bump! It’s like, what if you could make a nice sound—I know that Brian Eno literally made that sound, but what if you could make an error sound that’s a little calmer than that? That’s a little like, ‘an error is happening right now.’ You know? And I think it says, ‘Memory limit reached.’

Austin: Like, what if Canada was a volcano, you know?

Jack: What if the top of earth, that is to say, the ice that's up there, could be popped off —

Austin: Wobbly person, uh, my, my note here to Annie for the art: what if a mummy could be a mech, shawled and wrapped and deteriorating?

Austin: Uh, to which, Jack, you said — I don't know if you have this open, you said, “oh my god, lol. What if a city was a city?”

Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But a, but a, yeah, gotcha. What if 7-Eleven made a chalice?

Art: What if 7-Eleven made a chalice.

AUSTIN: ... what if Nostradamus was basing all of his prophecies and predictions on the Divine Past/Crystal Palace’s last big, you know, transmission, basically?

DRE: Sure. It’s ‘what if god was one of us?’

AUSTIN: What if god was one of us and looked kind of tired, you know?

AUSTIN: So it’s like, you know, what if My Bloody Valentine was doing string quart—like, the op—you know how like, string quartet albums exist, and are miserable, and are just like, ‘what if a string quartet played this Radiohead song?’ This is the opposite, which is like, what if My Bloody Valentine was playing classical music, but like, had all the most fucked up pedals you’ve ever heard in your life?

AUSTIN: What if an idea could be undead and then you put it in a coffin and then you shipped it across the world to another person who’s undead, the Witch in Glass? I guess the Witch in Glass isn’t technically undead, but she kind of is. Perennial did just bring her back, right?

AUSTIN: They could be ‘what if Eugene Levy is a Columnar?’

AUSTIN: I think—but what if it has the ridge of a Triceratops?

AUSTIN: What if it’s a Triceratops minotaur? it’s important that it has three horns for lore reasons.

ART: Yeah, this is really ‘what if Wes Anderson made Ocean’s Eleven’? And—

JACK: Also, what if there were Tricerataurs?

Austin: What if a flower were a speedboat, you know?

Austin: “what if a Triceratops was a minotaur”.

Austin: What if Phrygian was a rise and grind TikToker? TM.

Austin: You hear the laughter of…it sounds like what if there was a— what if you made a machine— oh, what if you made— you know when they do, like, hard drive music? You know what I'm talking about?

Austin: What if you did that and then made it do, like, the sound of a fox laughing?

Austin: ... what if you took a more medieval approach to, like, British foxhunting gear?

Austin: You know, what if a soldier was a robot is truly the vibe.

Art: What if something creepier?

Austin: Uh. Some questions. Go ahead, walk me through the tags. This is like, in Metal Gear Solid, what if Snake only had to get one key card?

Austin: They are…what if you— imagine an animal, but instead of muscle, you had something that looked like the enamel of teeth.

Austin: Uh, what I said before was: they’re like what if muscle was made of tooth enamel.

Austin: These are the ones who look like tortured saints. They are posed— these are the ones that look like what if St. Sebastian was a mech.

Austin: ... what if America lost all of its nuclear weapons overnight? You know, I mean it doesn’t exactly work the same— maybe all their nuclear submarines or something, you know?

Jack: Right, right. Eugene Levy, but what if he was an elevator…

Austin: That’s the what if dragon—a dragon was made of blades? Do you remember that? What if a dragon was made of knives?

Austin: The first one is “what if a mummy could be a mech, shawled and wrapped and deteriorating?” And the second one is “a slowly moving statue whose features are always fluctuating under a stone shroud.”

Art: Like, what if a hundred Needlers were fired at once?

Austin: Uh huh. What if, when you went through puberty, instead of your voice regular cracking, it went, like, muppet mode? [Ali and Keith laugh]

Austin: There’s a real lost dog quality, except what if the dog could grow until it’s the size of the ship.

Austin: Yeah. “Kurosawa did it right. But what if instead of a katana, it was a laser sword?”

Austin: Yeah. Uh huh, right, exactly. [Dre chuckles] They are— they are kind of— they look like they are robots made out of like, what if you made a kind of medieval knight’s armour— specifically kind of like a bulbous knight you know vibes, but the armour instead of being made from metal, was made from like really hard tooth enamel. That’s what these guys are like.

Keith: It is a later one, yeah. It’s like, what if Waking Life was an X-Files episode?

Art: [cross] Like, what if—what if Steve Urkel was scoring 80 points in an NBA game?

Art: Yeah, like what if…what if the coke vending machine looked like it would kill you?

Art: Oh. Okay, what if it’s the opposite? What if it looked like it was going to kill you but didn't? [Austin laughs]

Austin: Are there any other—I guess it’s like, what if the CIA was hosting the NBA All-Star game that day and also LeBron James was there in a mech?

Keith: What if the Superbowl was done, like, at Raytheon, but only for Raytheon executives?

Austin: Yeah. I don’t—yeah, ah, mm… No, I don’t think that there is that style of worker here. I think—but, you know, there might be a big—a tall Roomba. “What if a Roomba were tall” is what you actually get here.

Janine: What if instead of the cat face it’s the barrel of a shot gun.

Ali: My immediate thought was what if it was the Yoshi sounds to the lizard videos, but it sounded creepy, so that’s the best that I can explain it.

Austin: So it is—it’s not even just like the Bridge to Terabithia, it’s like what if you—what if Canada was Olympus, you know?

Sylvi: Yeah, what if Canada was sucked into the firmament? Like…

Jack: Hey, what if the sun was evil?

Jack: Sorry, Austin. What if the sun was evil?

Dre: [overlapping] It's like: “What if… What if you just cut the shirt part out of a cover-up?”

Keith: It might be the opposite. It might even be, like, disturbing to—I mean, to go from, like, to go from having your sort of Divine origins be abstract to being, like, confronted with [Austin: Right] you know, the, like… being a sliver of something else, being like Adam’s rib, is such a weird—like, what if you had to live your whole life as a rib?

Art: And I want everyone to hear the apprehension in my voice as I say this. But what if everything’s just like, spookier?

Art: Yeah, what if the vibes were just a little worse?

Austin: Yeah, this is a little “what if a dragon was entirely teeth,” you know? Was made of teeth.

Jack: There’s a real sort of, like, what if Ethan Hawke—no. Ethan Hunt—no. Which one is Tom Cruise?

Art: You know, like, what if a ferret was the size of a greyhound bus?

Austin: [laughing] What if we kissed at Point Banana?

Jack: Yeah, what if the spacing Guild was the actual ships? Which they kind of are, but you know what I mean.

Dre: If anything, I see this group as like, what if Robin Hood and the Merry Men also did like guerrilla warfare?

Austin: What if everybody was a DoorDasher? What if everybody was on Taskrabbit?

Janine: What if it’s a gun that shoots good and fast and right?

Keith: Oh, god. It’s like, what if the wild west took place in post-apocalyptic Middle Earth?

Austin: ... before you DM'ed someone, what if Windows was like, “Are you sure about this? Are you sure you want to try?” [Ali chuckles]

Keith: It’s like what if a pinecone was from Spongebob.

Friends at the Table is a podcast focused on critical worldbuilding, smart characterization, fun interaction between good friends, and asking "what if X was Y? what if W could do Z?"

anyways here's a non-comprehensive selection of some times FatT asked good hypotheticals

(spoilers for Autumn in Heiron, Marielda, Winter in Heiron, COUNTER/Weight, Twilight Mirage, Sangfielle, and some Bluff City i think) (i know Spring, Partizan, and Palisade must also have good "what if X was Y?" but i'm still catching up) (this got way long so i'm putting it behind a readmore) (shoutout to Search at the Table at https://curiosity.cat-girl.gay/ for letting me do this) (also to Transcripts at the Table for writing this all down in the first place)

KEITH: What if I was a snow...hawk… ART: What if you're like, a Dr. Seuss animal? KEITH: Yeah! What if I was a star-bellied sneetch?

KEITH: (laughing) What if the bird was a can opener!

AUSTIN (as Zaktrak): It's like, what if a, what if a factory or train or a windmill could read a book?

AUSTIN (CONT.): And then he, he looks up, he actually has like a very… his build is kind of like, angular and… not thin in terms of like, weak? But he has a sort of… androgynous character about him, in terms of his like, what you would think of as like his body structure. And… very beautiful blue eyes. He’s sort of like, what if David Bowie was super black.

AUSTIN: And that's kind of like, the picture you get of her, is like, What if Fero was like, 30% less hyperactive? Still way more hyperactive than everybody else in-- the world? (laughter) but like, just a little more in tune, with the world.

AUSTIN: What if fire was matte?

ART: What if a—what if a 90s after school special needed some graffiti

AUSTIN: Yeah. He asks you, um... watching what unfolds, and there's, there's, it's--and this is the fuckin' nerdiest thing I'm ever gonna say; it's like what if A-ha's Take On Me was an AMV? Was an anime music video?

AUSTIN: Ali’s character, how did she describe her character, “what if Han Solo used to be Beyonce?”

AUSTIN: It’s like, what if the American government was just another American company?

AUSTIN: It’s like what if holograms did gifs, basically?

ART: You how like Han Solo’s always talking to the Millenium Falcon, but what if the Millenium Falcon-- AUSTIN: Could talk back? ART: Had a chance of, yeah, of deciding he was angry.

SYLVIA: For example. Like just p - yeah, what if they have psychic assassins there. Oh! What if this planet’s an alien? What if this planet is a psychic assassin? Which is a great sentence I just said.

AUSTIN: Yeah, I should note that this is also like "What if the Super Bowl was attended by high fashion models?", right?

AUSTIN: We don’t get a lot of elderly non-binary people. And so Saint Auger is like, what if someone you knew from Portland was 82?

AUSTIN: It’s almost like, what if a crown could be a dunce cap?

AUSTIN: It's like- what if there was a really enterprising twelve year old, who like, [laughs] made a physiology- uh, person- a physiology like, model, but with dirt and rocks and sticks. Also there's no face, the face is also just one of this solid black rock plates.

AUSTIN: And again, there’s just light streaming in through—I think this room is mostly, like, does not have a huge window, but it does have little eyelet windows at the top of the, towards the ceiling, that run horizontally along the room, and just like, bright—it’s almost like, what if colour could be shadow? Do you know what I mean? Like, what if instead of it being that a shadow crosses your face, it is this prismatic glow that moves across the group of you as this thing crawls around this space station.

AUSTIN: It’s like white and blue, there are stars, it- you know, I think that the- it’s, it looks like the way you might imagine like, what if the UN had spaceships?

AUSTIN: What if you mixed your- your selfhood, with the notion of wings. Or the notion of flight. Not just flying. That’s where we’re going.

AUSTIN: This giant battleship that’s like ‘what if a millipede instead of legs had guns and what if it was all around it’?

AUSTIN: This thing is like the size of like a major city. This thing is like, what if Manhattan was a battleship. And instead of buildings it had guns. Except now they’re made of weird black glass.

AUSTIN: The first time he showed up I described him as what if Canderous Ordo decided to have a robot body one day? And slowly began to replace it.

AUSTIN: There’s a little— Yes, it’s like what if a cow— what if Christian Slater was playing a cowboy from New Jersey, and also was Canderous Ordo. And also he eats through his hands.

AUSTIN: There is just this like… I think it’s just metal unfolding across space. Like, at some point Volition just kind of spat out a, a, almost, it looks like a cloud of ink but instead of ink, it’s metal. And it’s just unfolding indefinitely in space like a huge— like what if Akira, what if at the end of Akira when Tetsuo turns into a weird flesh monster? It was that but various types of metal, just like bubbling all over the place throughout space, and I don’t know how you deal with that! But suddenly in the middle of the Mirage there is just this, this ink splatter, this, this gaseous, you know, spread of metal.

AUSTIN: And it’s like — again, it’s like a pistol — it’s like what if a pistol was also like a curved sword, like almost like a scimitar or something?

JANINE: What if we do a live show, but the only live show we ever do is at Bakucon?

ART: Um, let me tell you, this is a nice coat, you guys. Um, I think it’s sort of like what if… What if a leather duster jacket was like an ephemeral idea.

AUSTIN: It’s like … I think the way I described it was, what if there was a Companion Cube that could have its corners pulled apart and in the middle is a weird glowing sphere?

AUSTIN: He has this dope, like, “What if the Millenium Falcon was a deep V?” Instead of just that little bit at the top, it goes really deep down. Or like, “What if Pacman was really long?” You know what I mean?

AUSTIN: Okay. You find him like, rolled under the bottom of his, uhh, or like on a, it’s not rolled under, he’s on like a little, like cart that has a pneumatic lift, or it’s like, it’s like a, it’s like a robot that walks around. It has like- it’s like a Boston Dynamics- like what if a Boston Dynamics, like four-legged robot was also a thing you laid on top of? Like one of those carts that goes underneath a car, to repair it. You know what I’m talking about?

AUSTIN (as Morning’s Observation): [exhales thoughtfully] Like what if milk was a solid.

AUSTIN: But it still has that ribbony-quality? [chuckles] It still has the sound of fabric rubbing on fabric? But is definitely amplified a great deal, probably? And also, we know it’s sharp, so there’s probably some… sharpness to it? You know… there’s probably, like… what if a ribbon could be a sword you pull out of a sheath?

AUSTIN: And also, Saint Sommer is a big lion man. Saint Sommer is, like… Skein. And is a big… a big… like, a big lion man. Not like Lion-o from Thundercats. Like… what if Scar could… had a big human body? Was, like… What if Scar was cut?

KEITH: And it sort of like, snap! Like, that, it's like… when we were talking about what the sound it makes, I was picturing… what if folding a blanket sounded like sheet metal?

AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know I think it’s like, I think this is very much like, what if the Venom symbiote was made of thread, right?

AUSTIN: So maybe it's like a- like imagine, what if a mop could just mop by itself.

AUSTIN: I won’t talk more about that stuff, but you already saw the big picture of “what if Connecticut was a space ocean,” so, you have at least some context there.

AUSTIN: It’s huge. It’s the size of a continent, right? It’s “What if South America was a big circle?” It’s “What if Europe and Eurasia was a big circle?”, constantly cast on this planet. And, you know, from space it kind of looks—not flat necessarily, right, because it’s a curved planet, it’s a sphere, or spherical, but, you know, it’s flat.

AUSTIN: It’s like what if Texas stood up.

AUSTIN (as Morning’s Observation): “What if cars brought things to you instead of bringing you to things?”

AUSTIN: It’s just like a very bright, colorful—like, what if Steven Universe did the Sailors of the Ark? What if that team did it? It’s very good.

AUSTIN: It’s like what if it’s a can opener that does that. Like a living can opener like. Grrrngaaah! I’m going fucking open holes in things! Grrngaah!

AUSTIN: Imagine that they're almost- in my mind they're like what if a martini shaker was a piston.

AUSTIN: It's like what if you could package a sunset, y'know? Into like a cube

AUSTIN: I can't believe we started this recording by looking at pies [KEITH and DRE laugh] that make me hurt and ended with ‘what if all foods could be jelly juice?’.

AUSTIN: I saw a big buffalo picture and I was like what if that was a person, that looks cool.

ART: But what if some of these skeletons are like, sick of this shit?

AUSTIN: I think I pitched this show as like: what if Ghost in the Shell but-but magic and witches instead of cyborgs and stuff?

JACK: So, out come this nascent organization who we’re calling Shapeknights. Who are -- I think the easiest way to say it is “cowboys for trains?” They are, like -- what if instead of the cowboy riding alongside the train on his horse, he was corralling the train? Or he was trying to understand the train, or was trying to --

ALI: I think Marn, herself is a little bit more like—like what if a capybara was a siamese cat?

KEITH: Yeah. So, I wholeheartedly recommend this movie, but if not, if you don't know what I'm talking about with the goggles, at least look at that. ‘Cause it's a good image. It's sort of like, what if you had a jeweler's loupe that had a jeweler's loupe that had a jeweler's loupe?

ART: It’s like, what if the antagonist won the Mummy movie right, this is what happens-

KEITH: What if instead of one, big, beautiful hat I have two small, beautiful hats?

KEITH: Like what if they made headphones just for being cool at a party?

KEITH: What if you make pizza by opening the box? That it was an empty box until you opened it.

AUSTIN: What if insects were made of teeth?

JACK: She’s the fuckin’ person of the train. She’s like what if a train could output a person.

KEITH: What if the train was a nice train?

ART: What if a Madame Tussauds came to life?

AUSTIN: What if fire could be a ghost?

AUSTIN: Looking through this here, sounds like what you wrote here was “What if a dolphin was like a velociraptor?”

AUSTIN: They’re hitched. Yeah, they've been hitched. Three of them have been hitched. And I said horse, but I want you to imagine is what if…what if a shrimp were a horse?

JACK: You sort of just like rise up the slope. It's a bit like what if a train was an escalator.

AUSTIN: What if Beyonce was Poison Ivy?

AUSTIN: All my cards on the table, Millennium Black is like what if Blade stopped being a vampire hunter and started being a casino owner.

AUSTIN: He's sort of like what if Alex Jones wasn't terrible

[skyberia]

oh boy since no one else has crash coursed you: Friends At The Table is a LONG runner with a lot of seasons, so here's a fast breakdown:

Their Magical Universe: Marielda, and the Seasons of Hieron. (I found Marielda very enjoyable but couldn't get through Hieron)

The Urban Fantasy Magical Realism Universe: Bluff City, which is set up as an anthology and is thus very digestible. (Very very funny and sometimes extremely moving. I rec the first every Bluff City episode, "A Boxer, A Bowling Alley, And A Bird" to everyone, it's a hilarious heist involving a bird, a boxer-- anyway.)

The American Gothic Universe: Sangfielle. (I can't say a lot about this one as I have not tackled it yet but its allegedly stupendous.)

The Science Fantasy Universe: Counter/Weight, Twilight Mirage, PARTIZAN, and the upcoming PALISADE.

Now, about that last one since its the one you're being recced. This is a HUGE universe but while each season takes place in the same universe, each season happens hundreds if not thousands of years apart, so outside a few neat references, there is no connecting thread. I am ENAMORED with Twilight Mirage and feel like it changed me as a person, and I've had some success getting other people into it.

But I know academically, logically, that PARTIZAN is the better season. It's less rough, it's got a much tighter plot tempo and pacing, and the soundtrack is batshit fucking WILD good. I think it's a very good starting point. There is also the Road To PARTIZAN prequel games that help set up the universe. You don't need to listen to those.

If you enjoy listening to character creation and want to know what the fuck universe you are stepping into, start at PARTIZAN 00: The Divine Principality. That will both give you background on the universe and you can listen to all the players pitch who the fuck they're playing.

If three hours and twenty minutes of set up sounds boring, just go directly to PARTIZAN 01 and you'll be fine.

Also consider Twilight Mirage later, it's fucking incredible.

BOWS DEEPLY

oh my god thank you SO much for this!! super super appreciated, looking at that whole feed full of episodes did kind of intimidate me but this makes me a lot confident abt giving it a try, thank you!!!!

[callmearcturus]

you made me want to listen to fatt but i had no idea they were recording since 2014 and now im kinda overwhelmed. where would you recommend starting?

FATT is getting a lot of attention lately with Austin being quoted in big articles and the big midseason finale of PARTIZAN, so Austin actually recorded a short “how to get started with FATT” and I concur with his advice, though I have yet to be able to get into COUNTER/WEIGHT and prefer Twilight Mirage.

I think if you have A Lot Of Time for a longass science fantasy arc, Twilight Mirage. Probably my favorite story in any medium at this point.

If you want to see what the current fuss is about, PARTIZAN.

If you are interested in indie TTRPGs and want to listen to a lot of them, go a bit earlier and try the Road To PARTIZAN prequel arc, they play a lot of different games to ‘build’ the history of PARTIZAN and some of the games are phenomenal.

If you prefer fantasy to science fiction/science fantasy, then try Marielda. (I’m listening to this right now, it’s very good, fucking LOVE ME some The Quiet Year, best fukcing game.)

And if you want to start where I did, try out Bluff City, which is an anthology series that takes place in an Elseworld Atlantic City, in which they tell stories about really terrible heists, about wrestlers, about ghosts, and about conspiracy theories. I love Bluff City because each ‘arc’ is like 2 to 4 episodes long and very digestible. Also I love the setting. (Also, the first arc, “A Bowling Alley, A Boxer, A Bird” is fucking hysterical at times.)

[iantimony]

almost no longer tuesdaypost

listening: I FINISHED TWILIGHT MIRAGE !!! AND THE POSTMORTEM!!! it was so good. i'm powering through the road to partizan episodes right now, i'm in episode 4! i AM listening to them on 1.3 speed to get through them a little more expeditiously, and i'm also not letting myself backtrack if i miss a line or two, just kinda absorbing the vibes before slamming into partizan proper!

reading: flight of a one-winged dove, bloodletter, post canon sangcheng, mind the tags, i'm not normally a sangcheng girly but this really really hit. never knew i was a dancer, isozyme, modern AU lesbian sangcheng, maybe i AM a sangcheng girly now?? anyways mind those tags etc

watching: cowboy bebop with boyf :) we're on episode 22, we'll probably watch the movie soon ...? was told around here is a good spot to do that, so as much as i always like watching things In Publication Order, will probably do that soon

making: i have frogged and restarted that stupid star stitch laptop case like six times. i am committing to it now. i really didn't like the original shape of the object i was creating using the spruce crafts tutorial that comes up immediately when you google "star stitch tutorial", but i found this one (has one less double crochet on the ends) and i like it a lot better. so i'm working through that now! i also had a moment a few days ago that was like. ok i want to restart it. but before i do that i should wind the skein into a ball so it's less annoying. ah shit my ball winder is winding it really fucked up and wonky, oh i googled it and i can take the top off and pop the gear back into place and that should fix it! gotta find a screwdriver for that first -- so tl;dr i fixed my ball winder, wound the skein into a ball, and started the project again. huzzah.

also, started another fanfic! what if harrowhark was the abhorsen-in-waiting. she's actually been the abhorsen for about a decade, the previous abhorsen died ages ago but she's been pretending that her father is in seclusion or something and has just been sending her out on his behalf. gideon was mysteriously dropped off and raised alongside harrowhark for reasons unknown. the kingdom is ruled by lich-king john gaius, a member of the royal bloodline who has dipped too much into free magic, transcended death and, while not malevolent specifically, has really started to cock things up kingdom-wide re: the dead. ianthe is a free magic sorcerer. i just think there's a lot of tasty potential there.

misc: i am once again On An Antibiotic [confetti] if i am not patient zero for the next antibiotic resistant bacteria it will be a goddamn miracle. anyways. onwards. hopefully this is the last one for a while…!!

[callmearcturus]

duosangel replied to your post

I was legit about to send an ask about where I should start because your posts have finally convinced me I need this in my life.

oh 1000% start with Twilight Mirage

so the way Friends At The Table works to my knowledge is there are three universes

1. The Hieron Universe. This is the fantasy series, it’s supposed to be tremendous but also very heavy, my friend Nina assures me its exquisite, but it’s hard to get into. The Marielda mini-season is the best jumping on point for it, I’ve heard.

2. The Divine Universe. Counter/Weight, Twilight Mirage, The Road To Partizan, and now the on-going Partizan. Now, I have tried Counter/Weight about five times and I have failed out every time. Which is very annoying because I want to get into it so bad. But what really clicked for me as a good jumping on point for FATT was Twilight Mirage. It’s a Science Fantasy universe that follows a utopia in decline as this society called the Divine Fleet flies around the universe. They are accompanied by machines so intelligent and skilled they are close to godlike, so are called Divines. And when episode 1 of Twilight Mirage starts, only one is left alive, the last from a fleet of 300. Later, Austin described Twilight Mirage as the team’s messy queer utopic fantasy, and I fucking dig it.

Twilight Mirage is my favorite story. Period. End of sentence. I would give a non-insignificant sum of money for the chance to experience Grand Magnificent’s story in particular for the first time again.

3. Bluff City. This one is only available on the Patreon feed for 5$ but you can listen to the first episode in the main feed, and it’s fucking amazing. It’s sort of a magical realism set of short stories set in an alternate universe Atlantic City. It’s stupendous and is probably what locked me in as a FATT fan. Yeah, I got a 5$ patreon sub before even listening to Twilight Mirage. That’s how good Bluff City is. The first arc is a two-parter and is about the most fucking stupid heist of all time and how it goes so fucking wrong. 10 out of 10.

And overall, it’s worth saying: all of FATT is queer. Most of the cast members are queer, including multiple nb people. The music fucking bangs like nothing else, and the interspersed monologues fuck me up. Some dude named Keen showed up in a monologue at the end of the Road To Partizan and i nearly fucking cried. I love it.

IMO Start with Twilight Mirage 0, the worldbuilding episode. I know its long but honestly it’s INCREDIBLE.