#road to palisade spoilers

[humanmorph]

"[high pitched and tinny] Let’s dive in. Let’s dive in. It’s time to dive in. Get ready to [audio distorts and slows] dive. Diiive. Diiiiie…" (The Road to PALISADE 20: City Planning Department)

so that's what i've been working on for the past 2 weeks! i wanted to draw something for this intro ever since i first listened to it (as a companion piece to my other gur drawing, though it of course ended up being way bigger in scale), but it only really gripped me about halfway through PALISADE ep 18. the next morning after that i listened to this narration on repeat for about 45 minutes and then made a big sketch on 4 sheets of paper at my desk at work.

anyways, i haven't listened to the new episode yet but i think i'm probably ready for whatever they're gonna throw at us with the next sortie. i'm gonna believe, against it all, in millennium break. for gur

(i recommend listening along while scrolling! + transcript btw. if anything is hard to read)

[boo-cool-robot]

ali describing austin’s special plot-relevant NPCs as “his pets” is so funny. austin goes to the shelter and smug bisexual men stare at him sadly from the kennels. every season he picks one and trains him to make speeches about the Material Conditions.

[archipithecus]

Bonus Episode: Marielda NNAF Fundraiser Livestream (+Realis teaser)

Jack: (…) Janine, I think it is exceptionally powerful to say that this story contains two elephants that are offscreen.

(…)

Jack: You know, any story, that doesn't visibly feature elephants, could realistically [f]eature any number of elephants offscreen.

(…)

Sylvia: Feel free to reimagine past seasons of Friends at the Table with two elephants, just offscreen.

The Road to PALISADE 05: Wagon Wheel Pt. 1

Art: Uh, I'm going to be playing Broadleaf.

Art: Uh, Broadleaf's pronouns are he/him. Elephant person.

(…)

Austin: (…) Art, real quick, what was Broadleaf's relation to, how did you get involved with Millennium Break?

Art: I think, I think he was on Icebreaker. I think he came in at that time and left probably in the middle.

[clementineskesh]

Transcript:

“This is a message”... (scoff) Did I ever speak with such confidence? What hubris. What did I believe in? Appointed times which moved swiftly from week to month, outpaced by their machines and the delays wrought by our petty arguments. What did I believe in? A god as empty synecdoche for justice; a god so easily diluted and dispersed. What did I believe in? You who listened once and is dead now and you, too, who listens tomorrow beyond my reach, beyond your own.

And what do I believe now?

That there was more to see than I ever could. That I haunt a corpse of a queen soulless, ambitious blood replaced by compulsive sap. That the revolution never needed me, that the shape of empire is a circle, a noose, a strand of metal caught tight around neck, a blindfold, a manacle. A manacle which must be broken. I believe in us. I believe that us is longer than us. I believe in oil on aprons, I believe in black eyes. I believe in yellowed posters on the wall. I believe in sacrifice. I believe that justice given is no justice at all. I believe in tired knees and bad backs. I believe in drawers or closets or bureaus of replacement parts. I don’t believe in music but I do believe in dancing. I believe in whispers in ears and so I speak. I believe that this will be heard, well after it's needed. Well past the long nights. I believe against it all in Millennium Break. My name was Gur Sevraq, and I have been stolen from you. But you will win anyway. You must.

[guccigarantine]

the Somerset House being a Branched is so fucked like they’ve been chained in the form of this awful wealthy family’s home for so long that the current residents of the house don’t even know that the place they’ve been living in was literally alive and sapient the entire time

[millenniumbreak]

[arohawke]

two things:

it sure is something that we hear from this ghost? remnant? but ostensibly gur sevraq, who sounds disillusioned with their belief in the path charted by autonomy. i don’t even think this is about going back to who they were as a follower of perennial, but the views they profess are profoundly in line with her and i wonder if she watched him become a follower of autonomy confident that he would somehow come back, like everything does

meanwhile, the principality is puppeteering gur’s corpse as a prophet not only of progressive asterism, but specifically as a figure that leads the ending of the schism caused by logos kan’tel. once, stel nideo put their effort toward maintaining the power of asterism by assimilating the prophet of autonomy into a new branch of it instead of contending with a whole new religion; a thousand years later they have used the prophet of autonomy to strengthen asterism once more; the shape of empire is a circle

[ninthprime]

road to palisade 20 spoilers below

i'm happy we're all mutually fucked up about gur sevraq together. there's so much we can talk about. do you ever think about how isolating it would be to only be able to communicate with the person who you were in a mutual murder with and to have that person be as self-centered as clementine kesh. ever think about how awful it would be to have a close connection to multiple deities and then to lose it. remember how gur was speaking to autonomy itself in the second witch in glass intro but in road to palisade 20 he says they are "a god as empty synecdoche for justice, a god so easily diluted and dispersed" implying what happened at the end of partizan and the end of their connection caused them to lose the faith they preached. if i'm remembering right some of the resin heart folks even ended up on the reflecting pool so gur can see their church services and realize he doesn't even connect with them anymore. it was stated gur thinks of apparatus as a sibling and now gur has to be on the reflecting pool watching apparatus and unable to communicate with them. in the first witch in glass intro they say "sometimes hours pass, and i lose myself- and time, too" which implies they're disassociating all the time. in the next intro he calls himself a coward for not killing clementine and he still hasn't killed her. i suspect they know valence is dead by now but i bet they found out when they also found how crysanth died and had to put mourning aside to monitor clem's feelings. his body is literally being puppeted by imperialists twisting his revolutionary words into their ideologies and that's what most of the galaxy knows him as now. oh and it seems he's replaying his death all the time

anyway no wonder they sound completely miserable

[wereshrew-admirer]

"valence will handle it"

[lizzybeanbutt]

some fatt related post that I'm clearing from my drafts

[podcastingpineapple]

Something something we are the divine fealty.

Something something guardian of the mirage.

[humanmorph]

i keep forgetting that veronique and fealty kidnapped gucci that one time. i wonder if that got brought up and when and who said something first

[blanksandwich]

"You always were a coward, Lament! Now I have you where I want you." Is so good. This whole scene with Deutsche and Knighton and Gimme Gimme is what I love about f@tt. Nobody else is doing it like them. Collaboration! "I cut their head off." "It's the second spy!" "And then the gravity goes out!!" Love love love.

[clementineskesh]

Whatever remains of gur sevraq doesnt know that valence killed themself taking out crysanth immediately after seeing what happened to gur. "Valence will handle it."

[guccigarantine]

V’z qlvat. V’z tbvat gb qvr

Inyrapr jvyy unaqyr vg

Ab— url lbh!

V pna’g orne—

Qba’g fubj zr—

Gurer’f gbb zhpu—

QBA’G

[swallowtailed]

palisade 56 / finalisade interlude

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

very tidy chapter titles also

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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