#greater boston spoilers

[cosmicpines]

One of my favorite things about Greater Boston is that, sometimes, I don't know if it's the train or the podcast making noise. I listen to podcasts on my or when I'm going to see friends, so I often listen to Greater Boston on the T. The Red Line, usually, because I'm a MIT student and we have our own stop. I think about there being a secret lab whenever I get on.

It's the little things that make me know how much love is in this show, you know? It's listening to the season 3 finale and hearing the sound of the screeches and going "wait, are Dimitri and Mallory on the Green Line?" moments before Mallory says it. It's the one time I recognized the voice of someone being interviewed. It's Nichole saying she's going to get Pinocchio's, the pizza place I usually get pizza from when I decide to be fancier than Bertucci's. It's knowing that's the same pizza place that makes me feel fuzzy inside.

When Covid hit and I had to leave, I listened to Greater Boston just to hear the sounds of the T.

I never listen to an episode in one place. I never listen in one sitting, especially not one as long as this. I walk around my little bubble of Cambridge to go to work, to get lunch, to go out, and I hear the stories and they tug at my heart. I listened to the train. Smash as I arrived in Kendall. Oh, the timing wasn't that perfect; we could only dream of such things. But last sequence riding from Park Street to Kendall. I didn't plan on it; I was just coming back from seeing a movie with a friend. It meant something, though. Dancing as I stepped on the the T. Smash as I stepped off. It wasn't quite perfectly timed, but what in life ever is?

Greater Boston is about magic. Literally, in some cases, but so much more than that. It's that Bernie can always deliver a letter, no matter where it needs to go. It's that Louisa can figure out that narrative quirk and use it in the narrative. It's that Michael can understand every person he wrote a letter to and write them beautifully, even when he was starving. It's that Dimitri is always lucky to be in the right place at the right time (except the one time he wasn't). It's that Nika is always unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (except the one time she wasn't). It's Gemma, who never believed in herself but had to find the man she met and summoned and saved. It's... god, I'll be here all night if you let me. Greater Boston has some of the best character writing I've ever heard.

It's Leon. Oh, it's Leon. He willed himself to die and willed himself to live on. He snarked at an omniscient being and took over his job. He shouldn't have. He should have. He made so many mistakes. He made no mistakes. He cared, he loved, he fought, he won. He became the spirit of Boston itself; he touched every heart in the city just in a desperate desire to help. Not just his friends, not just his loved ones. He took a man everyone would have given up on and helped.

An incredible season. Thank you, @greaterblogston. Cheers to a phenomenal season.

also, just to ruin the mood a bit, there was an amogus on the tracks

[hephaestuscrew]

Michael Tate was introduced in Greater Boston as someone mourning his best friend; his grief after Leon's death is a key part of his character arc. Four seasons later, in his farewell letter to Louisa, we hear him thinking of himself as a best friend who someone else would mourn - a kind of tragic role reversal. In that letter, Michael refers to both Leon and Louisa as his "best friend". As he faced the prospect of death, he thought about how it felt for him to lose Leon and he used that experience to empathise with the grief and anger and regret that Louisa would feel at losing him. He tried to ease the pain that Louisa would feel at his death while knowing that he couldn't. There's something so powerful to me about that potential cycle of loss. Michael, whose narrative has been so shaped by grief, had to confront the idea of someone grieving for him with a similar intensity…

[clonerightsagenda]

wasn’t particularly looking forward to Greater Boston having a romance plot this season because I’m not really into that but the angle being ‘man locks you in his office to die? seduce his wife’ is so funny I’m not even mad

[seaweedsawyou]

On one hand, train suicide as an imminent threat.

On the other hand, so much hope for fail women.

[biwonderland98]

Obsessed with the fact that they stuck Felix Trench in there, accent and all, and just told him to be fake-British Mark Wahlberg. Unhinged behaviour <33

[applebunch]

one time chelmsworth gets WAY too busy to sort through his own belongings after a move so he asks vincenzo if he can do it for him (chelmsworth thanks him 7 times) and vincenzo is having a GREAT day until he starts picking up books like "The Deadbeat Dad’s Emergency Guide to Last-Chance Redemption" and "An Inadequate Parents’ Guide to Unearned Love" and "What To Do When You're a Terrible Father with the Best Son in the World and You Wanna Blow Yourself Up".

[greaterblogston]

The Lonely Side of Salad: Writing Half of ‘Arugula’

Warning - This post will have heavy spoilers for Episode 44 of Greater Boston (Arugula).

Before the start of pandemic I was thinking about changing jobs. I had worked at the same college for nearly fifteen years. I loved it but things were beginning to wear on me in ways that were continuously frustrating. Then the pandemic grew to the point where quarantining was necessary and I found myself working from home, sitting next to my daughter, logging her on to Zoom kindergarten every morning. We did YouTube Yoga. I helped her learn how to ride her bike wearing masks in a nearby church parking lot. We even made a storytelling podcast. 

Then my college started rumbling about financial shortfalls. They laid off my boss. They promoted me and then told me I had to help layoff 12 people. Then a job I had applied for before the pandemic hit reached out and asked me if I was interested. I interviewed and got the job and was so distraught about what was happening at my current college that I accepted. 

I started a new job in June of 2020. I can not begin to explain to you how strange this was. We had meetings every morning to discuss what initiatives we were working on. I panicked about this every day. I was new. I didn’t have any initiatives. Nobody was talking to me. I’d get the occasional email, the odd request. But days would go by with no feedback from my boss or colleagues. I sat at home refreshing email and literally trying to Google what I should be doing for work. 

Soon after, my new supervisor quit. Then several other colleagues quit, more than a dozen key college figures. There was talk of a toxic work environment driving people away. I would come to find out this was true later. As more and more people left, this particular person would become my supervisor. I logged into work every day assuming I would be fired. My new supervisor was mean spirited, critical, and vindictive. I had full-on panic attacks. And the whole time, I continued to try and help my daughter survive Zoom school. My wife works in healthcare and clinics never close. 

I was writing Season 4 of Greater Boston at the same time and I was having a difficult time with it. The show we started was full of optimism and hope and I was sitting there thinking about how wrong everything was. The horrible day of letting people go over zoom was in my thoughts daily, and although I knew it would happen whether I was involved or not, my involvement left me emotionally devastated. These were colleagues I had tried to energize to buy into an unhealthy work ethic our college promoted - do more for the spirit of the place. We’re a family. We can do this if we pull together. And then seemingly overnight we were cutting costs, we were letting them go via a streaming service. Dispassionately. With tight legal wording. 

Meanwhile communication continued to be an obstacle at my new job. When people were communicated with, it was with derision and division. Faculty felt cut off from their students. Students were having a difficult time learning in a forced learning environment. Without face to face interaction, with only emails and forced sterilization of Zoom calls (cameras off, mics muted), the different unions and working groups were assuming the worst about each other. Everything was broken. Nothing felt like it mattered. 

At night I would sit and listen to music and ask myself this question. How did I get here? How did my life unspool in such a direction that was making me completely miserable? Obviously the pandemic played the biggest role but there was so much wrong beyond that. I felt completely cut off from my family even though we were spending more time than ever. I would break down into tears occasionally and it scared them. I would try to hide my emotions but then resent that I had to hide them. Even therapy wasn’t an outlet. It just felt like work. Zoom call. Discuss your feelings. Breakdown. (Nods sagely). See you in two weeks. 

So it was with all this in mind that I sat down to write half of Episode 44. Every character is in a precarious place in this episode. Leon is struggling with having so many characters and people to deal with, and Ethan’s experiments aren’t helping. Gemma is struggling to disclose that she actually has the spirit of Leon in her possession all while Dimitri has joined her, despite Leon’s pleading. Dimitri is struggling to find his place in Red Line, helping Gemma. And he’s struggling to give hope to Nica. And Nica is struggling to find any sense of hope at all. The only hope here is Omi’s offer to take a few of them with her. There is a comfort in her decision to sink into her sadness, to own it, to wrap it around herself like a blanket. Hope, after all, is a struggle. It’s work. At the time even though I was only at this job for months, I was applying for new jobs, telling myself it could be better, that I still had control. And I was exhausted in doing this. Not only was it taking significant physical energy, the emotional energy was draining - forcing myself to focus on a better future during an unprecedented global disaster that had left me numb at best, overwhelmingly depressed at worst. 

I knew I had to address these feelings with my writing. That’s how I best process most of the things I struggle with. I started Episode 44 over and over again and was not satisfied with it. It felt like the antithesis of what Greater Boston should be. There was no finding strength in community, no comfort in each other. I was reminded of a quote from one of my favorite writers, Richard Yates. “If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy.”

This is of course true. But I’ve always subscribed to the notion that what unites us is the fact that we are all cut off from each other, and that we’re all looking to each other for comfort, guidance, and love. *Spoiler Alert* - there is even a line that touches on this later in Season 4. 

So this episode starts not with any of our main characters. It begins with people waking up, starting their days. And the only thing that unites them is that they are alone. They are alone and the sounds of their routines are being processed by Leon, who is also struggling to accept all the various characters thoughts and internal narrations. The sounds of people in isolation adding to a symphony of loneliness. In the episode description, I wrote the following:

[The morning routines slip back, one at a time. Someone is crying silently. We do not know who. Nobody speaks to one another. There is no talking. Nobody is together. Everyone is alone] LEON (pained) My head…I can’t — 

And then to top all this off, I have a character we’ve never heard from call their partner and tell him they’re leaving. They can’t deal with it anymore. It could be they’re saying goodbye to their partner. It could be they’re saying goodbye to...well, everything. I wanted to leave that ambiguous, but also hint that the loneliness of a life surrounded by so much possibility, vitality, people was too much for someone who had all that around them all the time and still felt impossibly alone to their core. It just doesn’t seem right or fair. Their partner composes a song to deal with his sadness. This is a standin for me, writing this episode. He writes and sings these lines:

If you dug yourself a hole Unearth the lonely dirt below You still won’t find, my love Space for loneliness to grow.

Nica gets the submarine at the end of this episode. Dimitri means it to be a signal of adventures to come, but Nica takes it her own way. She’s sinking, settling into her cell, her loneliness. There was once a fantasy of her meeting celebrities and getting famous, a fantasy of what she would amount to. But at this point in time, she feels her cell - completely cut off and isolated - like a ship designed to sink in the water - is all she can amount to. 

But it’s important to remember that this is a choice she’s making, just like Gemma is making a choice about not disclosing Leon to his siblings. To lead back to the conversation Michael has with Chelmsworth in Episode 11 - choice really does govern everything, even how you feel.

Speaking of Michael, it wasn’t originally intended this way, but we ended up pairing the sadder aspects of this episode with something completely different - Michael and Louisa going to meet Autumn West. Originally this was going to be parts of its own episode Alexander was writing, but we combined them not only to give people a break from the bleaker stuff, but to show the other side of this choice. Michael is with one of his best friends. He is apprehensive about meeting the wife of the man who attempted to kill him, but focuses not on that aspect. Instead, he focuses on the connections they share. He gets excited by what they have in common, not what divides them. 

It’s obviously not always that easy, but I think for me writing this episode helped reinforce that two things can be simultaneously true. We are all, in the words of Richard Yates, inescapably alone. But that by itself isn’t reason to despair. Hope and human connection? It is challenging, difficult work, but in choosing to look for our commonalities, even if they exist only in the way we are all isolated? We chose to not give in to something that can never grow for the sake of something that may. Loneliness is easier because while everyone says there are no guarantees in life, being sad and isolated absolutely provides one. I urge you to gamble on believing in something greater. 

[peanutsandbitterstep]

the Stamatis Family News hour!

[somuchbetterthanthat]

I AM GOING TO BE UNSUFERRABLE ABOUT THIS AREN'T I

It's so good to hear Marlo and Guy, and the fact they're such small characters, technically, but hearing them interact again is SO important and beautiful and meaningful and your heart just squeeze and YELLS when Guy ALLOWS HIM TO ASK A QUESTION,

and the question.

the question.

fuck.

THIS IS WHY THIS PODCAST IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PODCAST IF YOU WANT TO LOVE HUMANITY

[epictamis]

Me: Some almonds, goldfish, pretzels and yogurt is enough dinner for me

My guardian angel (Currently taking the form of Leon Stamatis to try and get me to listen to him): I am scheduling adding a vegetable at 5:20 pm. You should follow it

[hephaestuscrew]

By the way, I am still thinking about the Greater Boston Season 4 finale, and I am obsessed with the idea that when you have days where you wake feeling strange and unsettled without any identifiable cause, it might be because someone who you never met but who would have narrated you kindly has passed on out of the world.

[clonerightsagenda]

(Greater Boston episode)

They killed Matt Damon??

[queenbeyondthewalll]

#what #is this #I live in greater Boston #must explore

The podcast Greater Boston is, without a doubt, one of the single best podcasts ever made. With four seasons so far, it takes place in an alternate universe Boston, has a cast of beautifully written and acted characters, and centres around the Red Line seceding from Boston to become the city of Red Line and how the hell you turn public transit into a functional city while also dealing with pre-existing social issues like racism and classism. But what it’s really about is people, and community, and how we’re all connected and need other people to be better people ourselves. It has some of the most brilliant twists I’ve seen in a long time, things that would have me pausing whatever I was doing while listening so I could just stare at a wall while I absorbed whatever had just happened. It’s full of absolutely absurd things that they present in ways that have you accepting them as perfectly reasonable, which I personally adore in fiction. I’m not from Boston, have never been to Boston, but it does feel very much like a love letter to the city, even with how they’ve fictionalized a lot of stuff

If you’re at all into fiction podcasts, or are considering trying to get into them, or are open at all to getting into one, I would suggest trying out Greater Boston

Thinking about the podcast Greater Boston again, and specifically Monty Linzer-Coolidge. Born on the day of the Red Line vote, named for the man who abandoned it. Moved into a train city as a newborn and spent the first, what, year of his life strapped to his mom while she ran around being Head Cop of Train City, committing the occasional crime. Communicates fluently from the day he’s born through gas because Cop Mom has psychic gas powers. Is lulled to sleep by being rocked back and forth very fast, presumably because he’s spent his entire short life living in a train. Survived multiple terrorist pranks, still an infant. His parents and him leave Train City to squat in an abandoned cheese-themed amusement park with a group of train refugees and also a hippy commune polycule. As far his young mind knows, life is mostly trying to set up new functional societies in unlikely places

[tanoraqui]

Dungeon Meshi Liveblog: So, that "If you like dragons so much..." moment in the S2 trailer...

....yeah I'm sure this'll be fine.

For no particular reason, I wonder what diplomatic relations are like between Shuro's island (of which he is prince) and this one, and with the Western elves. Btw, to zoom in...

goodforhim.gif

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Mithrun has the 'looks effortlessly, unconsciously cool' ability and, apparently, the instinct to stand dramatically in high-up places, of Kaladin Stormblessed. I have to respect that.

.

Thistle seems completely unable to parse that Falin isn't just the dragon. He doesn't just treat her as a tool: by the standards of this comic, he treats her like she's dead. Hell, he treated the dragon like it was dead: ignored its need to eat (and rest), smothered its will under his own....and now he's doing the same thing to Falin. He's not even aware that she needs to eat. He's forgotten what is necessary to be alive, even though he still goes through some of the motions himself.

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hi this is the most painful thing so far. Laios thinking this through with typical Laios systematic consideration. And this is one of his foremost thoughts, that he won't let Marcille have Falin's perma-death on her hands; he'll do it himself.

Hey, you know what? The Stamatis family from Greater Boston COULD do Dungeon Meshi, and the Toudens COULD do Greater Boston. I'm gonna think about that later.

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hey Laios what the FUCK does that mean.

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LOVE this visual. God the chapter covers are all so good.

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eyes eyes eyes eyes eyes

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ok I WAS spoilered for Marcille being a half-elf, too, but I think this is the first mention of it in canon! Very exciting! I don't know what it means for her socially, but I can't wait to find out!

It's so funny to think fo Thistle probably wandering past Senshi at some point and just kinda going, "Weirdo," and continuing on his way.

The great thing about this fight is that it genuinely WOULD be better if Thistle won and the lion remained bound. Mithrun lasted what, like a couple decades at most, as Lord of his Dungeon? Thistle has kept this place stable for like a thousand years (as the demon slowly fed on not just his desire but those of all the people he was trying so hard to protect.) He's trying just so hard, this poor guy. Whom we definitely do need to stop, because he IS losing this battle for his own sanity, and with it, the stability of the dungeon.

.

*singing* eyes eyes eyes eyes...

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Dude, weren't you raised mostly by tallmen? How are you this racist.

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Marcille, I love you. Laios, I love you in a different way.

.

Ouch.

LOOK WHO'S TALKING

eyes eyes eyes eyes...

.

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unironically excited for Thistle to enter his maniacal laughter phase in anime s2.

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I'm fascinated with how this comic portrays the patterns of natural ecological biomes and the patterns of human social structures and history with exactly the same tone. The behaviors of animals and monsters and humans. The psychological profile of a dungeon lord and the corresponding life cycle of a dungeon. I want to eat it. I want to put an ecologist, an anthropologist and a political scientist in a room together with this comic, and listen to them talk about it. I want to kiss Ryoko Kui on the mouth. I don't want to do my chores, go to bed and then go to work, but unfortunately life SUCKS that way. Motherfucker why is it 1am again.

[applebunch]

.........ok so is anybody else thinking about that one part of the episode where leon hears michael for a second? like anybody else? what does that mean? is leon gonna get michael back? what the hell's gonna happen when leon gets michael back?

in episode 30, leon compares michael to a summer's day to "flipper, rushing to the aid of a floundering diver," because when "everything fell to chaos, ...[michael] guided [their] way through it." comparing "chaos" to water.

leon compares getting overwhelmed by his omniscience to drowning.

he says that he can only focus on so much at a time (like filling a mere glass with water and drinking it).

because if he focused on EVERYTHING, it would overwhelm him, (filling the entire house with water, drowning himself).

he is. definitely drowning right now.

you know what flipper does? save drowning people.

if leon gets michael back, will he try to rely on michael in that way? and if he does, how would that go over with michael himself? idk about you, but i can't help but get the impression that if leon started narrating michael again, michael would maybe like... notice, somehow?

[peanutsandbitterstep]

it’s so funny whenever i get reminded that Oliver West is spiritually attuned or whatever the correct phrasing is. former business owner of a media company who prides himself on being an evil mastermind is also in touch with the supernatural and that same media company revolves around precognition

such a delightful combination of characteristics. sad to see him go but happy he was able to do things that were good (unless he isn’t actually dead)