#midst things

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I only realized with them all put together in this post that this is essentially the arc of the scene

[captainofthetidesbreath]

hey, given the conversation that takes up the bulk of this episode, can we circle back to whatever Rawfield was starting to say here before Merlin cut everyone off in case it was relevant to said conversation

[captainofthetidesbreath]

what is Midst about?

Oh, this is a QUESTION.

Midst is space fantasy New Weird about three people whose lives are disrupted when The Trust, a society based around quantifying the value of good and bad deeds, takes interest in the planet-like islet of Midst.

Midst is about how the moon will explode and the government will spend more time talking about how bad this is for the economy than organizing disaster relief.

Midst is about what happens if The Good Place point system was an economic policy.

Midst is about a cult expanding its sphere of influence and its attempts to maintain hold on a cast of new converts, increasingly disillusioned devotees, and escaped apostates.

Midst is about the mechanics of blame, guilt, fault, accountability, and culpability and how emphasizing sole individual responsibility (for good and bad) deflects from the role of institutions, structures, environments, cycles, and ideologies in perpetuating harm.

Midst is about trying to balance the metaphorical books by making them very much not-metaphorical and how understanding that you can never (figuratively) zero out in reality shapes the way different people face or run from what they've done, hope for redemption and absolution (or not), and relate to themselves and others.

Midst is about taking the phrase capitalism as religion literally.

Midst is about a murder case in a frontier town that swiftly escalates into a major public scandal that reaches into the highest ranks of the federal capital and threatens to destabilize its most prominent institutions.

I promise none of these are exaggerations in the slightest.

[captainofthetidesbreath]

my favorite thing about this Unend episode is that Cleo's dark mica sword remains completely unexplained at the end of it

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CRYING that Merlin watches this incredibly improbable very magical event of dumping out the contents of the divination pouch in zero gravity landing in a perfect and tidy line, and his reaction is "well, once doesn't mean anything, do it again"

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given this is the Cosmos, all of these people suck at least a little and I'm excited to learn how

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Third Person: We have Liam and Marisha here to join us as guests.

Liam and Marisha: We've infiltrated the group. Literally. Our characters are moles.

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When it was said "Felix looks exasperated", I literally thought "when doesn't he" but then it was clarified this is notable bc this is quite an emotion to be feeling after you went through a very physically and emotionally harrowing near death experience and are seeing a friend you tried to sacrifice your life to save (the exasperation is because seeing him means he immediately got his ass got too), and you know what, yeah, fair, exasperation is a crazy emotion to be feeling right then