#motherland fort salem s1

[bellxcollar]

“Wishing the happiest of birthdays to my gf”

from Ashley's Instagram circa 2020.

[arbitrarygreay]

The story of Tally Craven is that she is not someone who desires leadership. She would be perfectly happy to follow someone else's lead if they did a good job of it. The story of Tally Craven is that she lives in a world where people do not do a good enough job of it. The story of Tally Craven is that she doesn't desire leadership, but she can be pretty good at it, and she'll do it if she feels like she needs to. The story of Tally Craven is that her environment makes her decide that she needs to take the initiative because no one else is doing it right.

[marzipanandminutiae]

[lying awake at 3 AM] in Motherland: Fort Salem s1, how is it warm enough in Salem, Massachusetts on May 1st for the characters to be running around in wispy sundresses

[lottieurl]

s3 tho is quite literally how incomprehensible i sound like while word vomiting at the speed of light about whatever my brain latched onto

motherland fort salem is such a show i feel like my brain melted. like there's enough in it to Scratch My Brain in just the right way for me to get stuck for hours thinking about the ideas in it that i wish were more properly explored. but then the show is also like. the terrorist communicates by talking to a balloon in a mirror. before the seemingly immortal hot war criminal kinda dies she turns into a? tree bark? she's speeding through her pinocchio arc ig. they say "we could be canon" twice and won't stop saying. THE MOTHER. magical mushroom that can kill you chooses to make a lesbian immortal????? there's an orgy at some point. lyne renée's "alder's song of mourning" is such an insane sound i developed a new auditory cortex

[ferrisraccoon]

Happy Birthday @motherland

Motherland: Fort Salem premiered 3 years ago on March 18th, 2020.

I tried to keep everything as s1 pilot as it could be ✂️

please consider giving me a tip on ko-fi if you enjoy my work 🥺

[heartrate160]

Now that Motherland Fort Salem got taken off of Hulu in the US…did anyone manage to download and can share?

We can swap!

Someone shared a s1 file (all episodes on one video- I might take the time to split them) and S2 (but was missing some episodes) with me, so I have those Google drive links

I’m looking for S2 and S3 downloads if anyone managed to get them before they disappeared 😭😭

(Or maybe someone in a country that still has it streaming can download? 🤞🏽)

[crea-miserymind]

WATCH PARTY 🎈 MOTHERLAND

if you want to know why Scylla looks so shocked, come tweet with us S1 ep 9 & 10 of Motherland: Fort Salem to boost stats and save the show !

Don't forget to tag @hulu and DISNEY PLUS in all your tweets!

---

[smokestarrules]

i just thought i’d come here n say that i found u through toh (and sidebar - i appreciate how much u love pretty much everyone in that show n don’t disrespect differing opinions), but seeing ur posts about warrior nun gave me the push to finally watch it. i’m only at 1x05 but i wanted to say thanks already cos i kinda love it so far.

(p.s. for similar reasons i may end up watching motherland fort salem which has been going off and on my list for a while now)

Yes, I'm always super glad to hear that!! You should absolutely watch Warrior Nun. If you're loving s1 then s2 is going to blow you out of the water. It's incredible and deserved better.

Motherland: Fort Salem is also a very good show. I didn't get as quite obsessed with it as I did WN, but I definitely recommend that as well. There are some scenes from it that literally have never left my brain.

[lycanhood]

Thoughts on Motherland: Fort Salem (So Far)

Hey so I know I may be a little behind on this one, but I’ve finally binge-watched Motherland: Fort Salem and I’ve had alot swirling around in my head about it for the last few days. This is a little bit of a review and a little bit of rant, but there will be SPOILERS ahead which I’ll try to mark accordingly. 

I think the concept for this show is so fucking cool. Really and truly, alternate history in which the witches of Salem made a deal with the Massachusetts Bay Colony to form a military and fight the New World’s wars in exchange for mercy from extermination essentially. So they form a Witch Army. And Army of Witches!! That’s fucking cool. It is. Sadly, I think the concept may be entirely too cool for Freeform. 

By that I mean to say that this super cool and entirely edgy idea is just too heady for Freeform to do properly. This idea belongs on HBO or Netflix, because those networks thrive on subject matter like Motherland: Fort Salem. (Sidenote: wtf is it called that? Just name the show ‘Fort Salem’. That kinda tells us everything we need to know about the premise right there in two word. Adding ‘Motherland’ in there just makes it too long and oddly Russian.)

There are just alot of little things about this show that kept it from realizing what I felt could have been some pretty amazing potential. I’ll try to organize those little things as best I can. But the one big problem I had while watching this was that the best thing about this show is it’s alternate history premise isn’t given enough attention.

What I mean is...I’m interested in the show, because I’m interested in what the world (what America) might have looked like if we had a military operated by supernaturally powered women for the past 300+ years. And Fort Salem just doggedly refuses to actually show me that world. The show doesn’t like to explain itself or really explore what it means to be a woman (witch or otherwise) in this alternative America. Most of the show takes place on Fort Salem, a military headquarters of sorts that is mostly strife with political games, attack strategies, training drills, and odd rituals. I have so many questions about this world: Are non-witch women treated differently due to the fact that their country is run and protected by women? There’s a female president in this timeline, so that’s certainly a possibility. If there are male witches as well, why don’t they fight in the same army as the female witches? And since they don’t fight in the main army, what is their mysterious role in this world? We see them making weapons and babies, that’s about it. In 1x5 “Bellweather Season”, the unit goes to a wedding which celebrates a 5 year contract of marriage between the couple. What’s up with that? Why only 5 years? Are they expected to have a child during this time period? if they do have a child are they expected to stay together longer than the 5 years? How many times are the male witches expected to get married? How many children are expected or allowed? Because this show is full of only-children which is statistically different from our own reality. How long are wicthes expected to serve in the military? They’re entire lives? We don’t see any female witches living as civilians at any age (other than Tally’s mother due to tragic circumstances). 

What is the source of the witches powers exactly? They’re abilities are sonic/auditory in nature, usually requiring the use of their vocal cords. Why? How? There are brief moments where it seems like sound is less necessary like when Raelle heals, or when the witches use Linking to connect to one another. There is also the use of herbs/drugs to fly, that doesn’t seem to require sound at all. 

We’re told the female witches get some kind of power-up or energy boost from having sex (or perhaps just feeding off the sexually energy?) with the male witches. Hence, the Beltane orgy ceremony in episode 1x04. What’s up with that? Does this power-boast only come from sex with male witches or would sex with human men do just as well? Would human men have a less potent effect? And is the power-boost depended on heterosexuality? Because throughout Raelle & Scylla’s sexually relationship no such power-up is ever mentioned. 

See so many questions, that the show simply doesn’t feel the need to answer. I understand the desire to avoid bogging down a show with exposition. But their are ways to do exposition right and in interesting ways. Exposition is sometimes necessary, because the more the audience knows about this world, the more rich and detailed, and so close to real is is to them, the more likely they are to be invested in it. 

And make no mistake the world and my curiosity about it is what kept me watching. 

For much of this first season, the characters don’t have any room to become people. I don’t dislike these characters, but they have yet to really bloom into more than archetypes (Abigail: the legacy, the leader, the overachiever. Tally: the innocent, the hopeful, the lynchpin. And Raelle: the rebel, the cynic, the shitbird)

Alot of time in the early episodes were spent following the same formulate. Raelle runs off, ditching training to go wander around and finds Scylla. Abigail and Tally follow after her, because they need her to do well in training because they pass or fail as a unit. I can not even tell you how many times Raelle causally ditches training, gets caught, gets told how much trouble she’s in, and then doesn’t actually face any consequences at all. She has to do guard duty overnight once. And that was just for being late, not even all the times she leaves in the middle or doesn’t show up for training at all!

I just wish this show focused on different beats in the pulse of this story, and made more of an effort explore this world and these characters through the lens of 3 young women who have just been essentially drafted into the military. Instead of skipping all that training I wish I could have seen so much more of it! That would have been a fantastic way to explain this world’s magic system to the audience! It’s built-in easy action-paced exposition right there! That the show just has no interest in. 

And at last, I’ll talk about the show’s main romantic pair, Raelle x Scylla. Sigh. I’m not hardcore against this pairing. I’m really not. But I am frustrated with the way the writers chose to unfold their relationship. We find out early on that Scylla is an agent of the Spree (big bad witchy terrorists), and I hate that. Because then they try to make me ship Raelle x Scylla even though I already know that shit is going to end in pain and betrayal. I cam’t ship something that I already know is built on lies, dude. I just can’t. That could have been a big awesome emotionally reveal in the later half of the season, instead of the dreadful thing I was anticipating from basically the very beginning. I’m as big a fan of enemies-to-lovers as anyone, but not like this. It’s more fun when both parties know they’re enemies, you know what I mean?

Anyway, I know it’s easy to point at the writers/devlopers and say “Man, I would have done this so differently...” but in Fort Salem’s case it’s my biggest take away.

Even from the very first opening scene, where the Spree (Scylla herself) commits a frightening and ruthless act of terrorism at the mall. Okay, big bad introduction for the Spree there. But how about introducing the audience to the world of this alternate history first? Use that awesome premise. Do a cold open, Salem, Mass 1692 Sarah Adler is about to be hanged as a witch until she opens her mouth and changes the world forever. Show me that. Set the stage of history. The villains could have come later. They always do.

All in all, I don’t hate this show ( I know this may have turned out more rant than review, but...) I was just really disappointed by the execution of a premise I felt had great potential. But, it’s not necesarily too late. Season two can still course correct and pull us into this world outside the fort’s walls, and manage to bring the characters into their own as they find their way back to one another. I’ll keep watching, because if this show did anything for me, it made me curious. 

[privateraelle]

besties

[incorect-motherland-fort-salem]

[talking about Scylla]

Alder: she must be punished she massacred an entire village and she makes us look bad

Raelle: you don’t have all the facts

Alder: which are?

Raelle: I love her

[bellxcollar]

Bellcollar gazes 👀

[arbitrarygreay]

Who has two thumbs and is back on their "defending Alder" bullshit?

Something I love about the show is the way that everything is multifaceted. Most everyone's actions get to be a blend of righteous, self-serving, justified, and both productive and counter-productive all simultaneously, because that's how it is in real life.

In this post we are examining S1, the unavoidable way narrative and world-building intersects, which is that the beginning of the show is a permanent turning point of change in that world. The question then becomes why this specific year? There a relatively stable status quo to be disrupted in the first place, so what changed for it to set the stage for revolution?

Since this is a "defending Alder" post, we must answer the implicit questions in Anacostia's statement from 1x9: "I've known Alder since I was a kid. I've seen her make hundreds of tough calls. But never like this. Never with such disregard for the cost of her actions."

What changed this particular year that was not the case throughout Anacostia's lifetime? Obviously one could assume that Alder was actually this corrupt the whole time and Anacostia just never saw it in person before, but even Petra wasn't perturbed by Citydrop, only moving to action when she learned about Scylla (and, of course, the unit end up making the same call later with Penny). So Citydrop isn't really the thing. Especially when in 1x2 General Clary actually faults Alder for not being more extreme and ruthless after losing her daughter. It's not even the telling of lies to everyone about The Spree executing the hostages, because President Wade made the same call twice (the second being Nicte's execution) to uphold those lies to the public while Alder stepped down. Well, there is Alder's total dismissal of rehabilitating Scylla, but I feel like she has a point because Scylla carried out the damn mall massacre and also Porter's suicide. As with how Wade treated Nicte, a pardon should not have been on the table.

The thing that was almost undeniably corrupt in S1 was Alder puppeting President Wade. Not only was it violating the Hague's laws and the ethics for which those laws were made, but she did it to prevent her retirement, and increased her authority while at it. When combined with the reveals of S2 (Alder keeping the Spree around as a convenient enemy), there are some real "Chancellor Palpatine grants himself war powers" vibes.

And yet. The details that go unsaid in that paragraph. Was there something new that made Alder decide that she could not let her trusted subordinates take up the torch, that she had to handle it all personally? Let's work backwards (and also set aside aforementioned General Clary saying they should move to more extreme methods, does this not apply). What came before that order to retire? Well, before we get to the defense, there is an accusation of Alder hoarding information from the chain of command, which is also extremely fair, and an issue she repeats in S2. There's Citydrop again, which we discussed above.

But then. The Tarim. The entire purpose of the meeting from Alder's end was to ask Wade for permission to save the Tarim. Wade denied that permission before she transitioned into everything else. So, when Alder puppeted Wade, yes she blocked her own retirement, and yes, she increased her own authority. But what does that increase actually entail? What did Alder change from her power before? To now be able to take action globally at her discretion. What did she do in the immediate aftermath of that power grab? A disproportional retaliation against the Spree and Dodgers, as she did in Liberia? No. Alder used her new powers to create a Tarim rescue mission, at the risk of causing geopolitical strife with Russia and China. And did she sit back on her throne and let her war meat carry out her will from a distance? No, she decided that for this specific mission, she needed to go herself. Not the decisive and final strike against the Spree that she also made Wade talk about, but this rescue.

So, Alder's desperation to save the Tarim played more of a role in her corrupt puppeting than The Spree. Let's keep working backwards. She set that meeting up with Wade to plead the case for the Tarim mission. What happened before that? She expressed the intent to have that meeting to Khalida and Adil. Before that? She learned about the state of the Tarim from Petra, and then dismissed the existence of the Camarilla. So, at this point in time, Alder really was focused on the Tarim above concerns about Russia/China or the Spree (in the US), much less the Camarilla.

Still working backwards, what's next in that Tarim thread? Alder met Khalida in the greenhouse after she was healed of the Witchplague. Now, this is operating very much on interpreting Lyne's acting in that scene, but there is a vibe that Alder wanted to interact with Khalida as a child, as she does the Fosterlings. When she first tries to sing with Khalida, her demeanor doesn't mirror how witches look when performing military techniques, but instead matches how Alder looks as she sings a lullaby to the Tarim boy in 1x10. Singing with Khalida wasn't just about gaining an asset, but a social activity.

Speaking of 1x10, Alder is specific and consistent in how she speaks about her sharing of Seeds (as she would do with the Tarim songs). She saw that the Veil Of Secrecy state that the Tarim maintained is an extension of how apparently all witches were before Alder acted out on the scaffold. Alder knows from experience that that security through obscurity is untenable. Only by going public could she create the kind of stable witch's place that did not exist in history before then. She permanently changed the paradigm of who did the hunting. It's very hard to argue with the claim that the world is a "better safer world" compared to the counterfactual where all witches continued to act like the Tarim for those 300+ years, despite militarization opening up novel avenues of corruption. Base rate fallacy strikes again! More people die now every second than they did the past, but that's also because we have billions more people now, too. The proportion of people dying now is so much lower (especially infant mortality). I bet, also, that by creating the Hague to regulate the interaction of witch militaries (basically, so we didn't have World War Witch all of the time), they even reduced non-witch losses to armed conflict compared to our world.

But that line of thinking applies to everyone and everything (like, in the future, the Witchbomb as asset). Why, then, is Alder focusing on the Tarim here to the exclusion of other groups that need help? In 1x10, she says, "The Tarim and their songs, they're the last surviving link to something I thought was gone forever." In 1x6, she says, "The songs your people sing remind me of those my own family carried for centuries." This puts her enthusiasm to sing with Khalida in a whole new light. Sharing the song is a way to relive that familial connection (Eliot says as much in After the Storm 1x3).

But if we go further back, there's a startling reversal in Alder's position on the Tarim. She discouraged proliferating any information on them. In 1x4, she told Petra to focus on the Spree (it's only in 1x9 that they learned those hunting the Tarim were the same people who attacked the Bellweathers), that the Tarim were classified. And, of course, we complete our backtrack of this thread in 1x3's Hague council. Ironically, here Alder advocates for what she will puppet Wade for in the future, telling everyone to stand down in order to avoid geopolitical conflict. This is after being told that children and elderly are dying. Yes, Sharma insinuates that it's so Alder can go after them herself, but Alder's later discouraging of Petra to do anything about them shows the truth of Alder's intent. Before that, Alder extremely notably supports the Tarim not be militarized (which therefore shows in hindsight that she did actually learn from the Martyrdom!!!), directly after she exclaims that the Tarim's song was something she recognized on a visceral level ("in my blood"). After hearing their potential military asset rare Seed, Alder was still all for the Tarim's self-determination to die without compromising on their ideals. Not until Adil and Khalida seek their help does Alder decide that they (and their songs) need preservation.

So, we have completed winding back through the season, and what is the seed that will eventually grow into Alder grabbing power by puppeting the president? That she heard something precious, reminding her of her own family. In the 1600s, Sarah Alder destroyed a status quo that had lasted for millenia in order to prevent losing such things ever again. Was that a power grab, too?

[marzipanandminutiae]

the one thing about the Beltaine scene in Motherland: Fort Salem s1

the average high on May 1st in Salem, Massachusetts is 61F

what's with all the bare feet and floaty sundresses

all my New England pagans know that "first day of summer" is purely symbolic hereabouts

[ignorant-rat-carcass]

IYKYK

[not-so-useless-les-bien]

Season 1 recap of our witches in every episode

So stoked for s2 of MFS!