Friends at the Table: Spring in Hieron
Sep. 30th, 2019 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kate_nepveu(I wrote most of this a couple weeks ago, and it's just languished in a folder, so I'm determined to get it done tonight no matter what.)
So I'm still on my Friends at the Table binge, and by skipping the prior season, I managed to listen to Spring in Hieron, the finale of their five-year fantasy arc, just after it was released. Spring is absolutely not the place to start listening, but if you're wondering whether to start with Hieron (I recommend the Marielda mini-season) or their first SFF season COUNTER/Weight, I can at least tell you that Hieron by and large sticks the landing. (Their second SFF season, Twilight Mirage, is the one I skipped, so I can't comment on that as a starting point. Yet.)
(I did also, while this post was languishing, listen to a three-episode game they ran in the Fall of Magic system, which was very lovely and might also be a good starting point. It's an episodic quest story (here's a review of the base game), so it doesn't have the urgent narrative propulsion of their main seasons, but it has a lovely dreamlike tone, and gives a good sense of the kinds of characterization and imagination that the Friends tend towards. And I love how the ending snuck up on me.)
I said this is not the Hieron season to start with for two reasons. First, of course, there's two full seasons and one mini-season of backstory, and there's only so much that the recap episodes can do. Second, at the start of the season, the players are split into three groups, and the gameplay for one of the groups is not real cheerful listening—for good reason, no question about it, but I don't like to think of that strand as part of a new listener's introduction. (Shoutout to Ali, the show's producer as well as a player, who intercut all these strands. When the players are split into two groups, the groups alternate episodes, but cutting back and forth was definitely the right call here even though it must have been a substantial amount of additional work.)
Anyway, the season is in a bunch of parts. There's the opening three-strand part, which is focused on character development and worldbuilding rather than adventure (such good character development! They've all come so far!). Then everyone comes back together for a couple of downtime episodes, in which they regroup and debrief. I loved this, it was so great to have everyone together; plus, many of the players formalized their characters' changes by changing classes and/or alignments, which felt very exciting.
The bulk of the season is a series of two-team adventures (a home and an away team), interspersed with shorter everyone-together sections. I really, really liked all of this: exciting adventures, fun mixing-up of characters across the various teams, and thematically-satisfying conclusions to the big problems with exciting possibilities ahead.
And then there's an extended epilogue, about which I have mixed feelings. First, the players have made a considered and deliberate artistic choice to leave certain things open-ended. I understand and respect that, but to my taste, the epilogue is closer to last-minute cliff-hanger than life-goes-on. Second, a key element felt like getting hypnotized by the hard choices, in a way that I thought undercut a major theme of the season. Also, it made me sad. Don't get me wrong, there's some amazing stuff in the epilogue that I loved hearing . . . but the very last episode, I'm pretty on the fence about whether I want to have heard it.
(It was weirdly stressful listening in near-real time! I consume so little media as it comes out that I'd forgotten what that tension was like. It was nice being done in time to submit questions for the postmortem, though (I'm unjustifiably proud of having one answered). The next season, starting in a few weeks, is in the same world as COUNTER/Weight and Twilight Mirage, so I'm currently listening to Twilight Mirage; after that, I'll decide whether to catch up on the Patreon content before starting the season-in-progress.)
Instead of addressing things in strict chronological order, I think I'll start with the extended epilogue, just so I'm not ending the post on a down note.
I was really surprised when Austin said that Galenica was still around; I had thought that the moon plan was a joint one between them and Severea. And I was unsure how I felt about reconfiguration as an imminent threat again; it seemed repetitive of the whole Samot situation. (Especially since Austin had also introduced the scary sea from a lower strata—Devouring? Desolate? A new existence-ending threat, anyway.)
And then, they pulled whatever card it was, and picked solving a big problem rather than starting a project for safety and comfort . . . and chose to accelerate the Gray Duke treaty rather than the other ongoing projects . . . and decided to do so by using magic to deceive everyone. I recognize that there's a case that these were the most interesting choices, in terms of the conflict generated; but I personally would have weighed more heavily the importance of unity and community to the season and the epilogue, in making those choices. (Like I said: it made me sad.)
I also can't disentangle the Understanding from the decision to have reconfiguration as the sword of Damocles. If Galenica wasn't out there saying "I might reconfigure at any time," there's no plot reason for the Understanding; but also, we the listeners wouldn't have been left with that major cliffhanger. Imagine instead if Galenica left on the moon and a rival church forms, disagreeing with Hadrian about the role of gods, and we end on the possibility that they may create their own god who will have the power to reconfigure. Still open-ended, still accepting the truth that this is how Hieron works, but not teetering on the edge.
I don't know. I was a bit reluctant to even start the epilogue, because it was so exciting and satisfying to see them on the brink of this new world with so many challenges and discoveries ahead of them, and I had doubts that even six episodes could address that satisfyingly. But until the very last episode, I thought the Quiet Year's broad-strokes format was covering a lot of great ground (bug riding!!!!!). Once the Understanding came up, though, the shift back to an intensely personal scope was a little disorienting and possibly not the best fit for the Quiet Year. (And more generally, it's a little hard to do a pass-the-torch story when the torch is being passed to NPCs.)
Going back to the beginning, now:
The three-strand arc. The characterization in the Aubade arc and the Fero & Samol show was great. I always especially like whenever there's an extended sequence with just Austin and one other player, and I loved it so much when Hadrian said to Hella, "When we get out of here, do you think that we should maybe consider . . . taking over the world," that I literally quoted it in an email. And while it was a little jarring to hear Samol encourage Fero to be active, coming directly as I did off Winter, it was very welcome (unsurprisingly, given my reaction to Samol there). As for the University arc, I'm not saying that the characterization wasn't great, it was just kind of overshadowed by how much the dice hated them and how bleak everything was as a result. Wow that was tough listening.
The reunion and reset was so exciting, I loved all the alignment/class changes and new bonds. Plus, Adelaide/Hella, finish the drink!
And then new adventures. The Isles of Flight arc: justifies its existence solely through the boats conversation, like fifteen minutes—ten transcript pages, from 33 to 43!—of marveling at rich people nonsense, I love that that stayed in the episode. I find it hilarious that they managed to get a space exploration arc into their fantasy world; that needs to go in the drinking game. I vaguely feel like the Mistral didn't get used much the rest of the season, but that might not be fair? On reflection, though, I'm not sure the Isles journey could ever have pointed to a big-picture solution, which feels a little suboptimal. (I loved the Isaac Adelton comedy show starting in the wreckage of the New Archives, though, and almost wanted him to be kept around for the sake of Hella turning over her responsible-person leaf.)
The assassination attempt arc: well that ramped up sharply. Also add to the drinking game "kill a deity." Bye, Samol, I'll miss you, but I'm glad that you died as an active choice to save your son, because I had been feeling uneasy about the way your willingness to die in Winter was framed as rooted in your pain and angst. And it's so interesting to see the mechanism of healing Samot as one of the first factors influencing where he eventually came to as a character.
And then the next set of arcs, starting with Alycon: also add sentient robots to the drinking game! (Yes, yes, they already had robots, but the pala-din and anchor spontaneously gaining sentience really brings it home.) This was all very good: the fight with Arrell was so tense, and Throndir got to be extremely emo.
The dragon: I capslocked extensively about how they DARED use Samol's body for that. I was delighted that they hog-tied the bone dragon, even only temporarily (also, Hog-Tied By the Bone Dragon should be a paranormal romance). Further extensive capslocking on the Snitch Nightly = Solarch reveal; I loved the intimate storytelling of Lem's dream, but I kept waiting for the relevance, because I'd looked up who the random-confessing person was and was like, oh, this guy, the one who took Hitchcock to tea? I'm just really not convinced that this worked in terms of what we saw then, or that it was necessary for him to be a previously-existing NPC; well, except for that bit of backstory about how Maelgwyn ended up in the gauntlet, ouch. Anyway: reconfiguration, the first time I was surprised to realize it was a possibility again in this season, but sadly not the last, and another factor in the Samot arc that I didn't realize was happening.
And then! Maybe my favorite thing in the season is when they decided, if this dragon is such a threat, let's just go right fucking now? Which was so clearly not what Austin thought was going to happen, but made so much sense. My heart was in my throat the whole time, but Adaire's hilariously-effective backstabs and the power of teamwork saved the day. Plus Hella as pala-din and Adaire/Hella! They were so sweet, I was literally clutching my heart with the hand that wasn't holding the dog's leash listening.
The trip to Marielda-that-was: I was kind of amused how quickly the overthrowing-Ordenna thing developed and resolved. I'm not saying it was wrong, it made perfect sense and was totally fitting: but talk about your fantasies of political agency, one coup and one deity-thwarting, all in a day's work. (I kept wanting to find, all through listening to this, a document that someone made up keeping track of all the significant swords in Hieron, because I never felt sure I knew what was what; I'm glad to say that per the postmortem, I was not alone, there was some episode that required last-minute pickups because of sword confusion. Anyway, here that document is, fwiw.)
The final University arc (I cannot believe that they got all the way through Spring without renaming the University): I thought some of the early episode descriptions in the season came a little close to spoiling the actual episodes, but I loved spotting that Fantasmo's quotes started being responses to Benjamin in the couple of episodes before he came back. That was such a lovely reveal—they said in the postmortem that Nick's arrival was a surprise to the other players, as was Ali's early on—and I was really glad Nick got to come back for the denouement. With the callback to Autumn, asking if Samot knew why he joined the University!
I very strongly wanted to smack Samot on the nose with a newspaper during all of this, but I did recognize and appreciate that there were lots of ways it could have gone and that the whole ending developed organically from multiple elements (unlike my feelings about Samol in Winter). I did briefly hope that he was redeemable, but it was too much of a risk. Hadrian probably gave him a happier ending than he deserved, but Hadrian didn't do it for him, and it was the right note overall for the season.
In short: really great stuff, as I said above the cut, and I'm sad to say goodbye to the people and the world. This beautiful fanart by Suedeuxnim sums up my mood very well.
Two minor notes:
First, I was kind of hoping that the next fantasy season would be Severea's moon adventures, but per the postmortem that's not planned right now.
And second, I want the most niche of crossovers, Ephrim's tiny sun from the epilogue meeting Sieh's tiny planets from the Inheritance Trilogy, with or without their associated persons. If only I participated in Yuletide . . .
+1 (thumbs-up, I see you, etc.)?
no subject
Date: 2019-10-02 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-03 10:41 pm (UTC)Yeah, it's just the very last episode that I'm considering attempting to erase from my brain, except that of course it doesn't work like that.