Late on the train to 'Midst'
Hello all, and it's time once again for me to try to infect you all with my weird niche interests. In this case, it's a podcast that was recently(ish) picked up by Critical Role, which is how I heard about it. But I can say right now that those folks who still follow me from the Magnus Archives day are probably going to enjoy this one. Hell, I think a lot of my followers might, so let me pitch 'it 'Midst' to you.
'Midst' is a narrative podcast with three narrators. So rather than a strict script, it's three people with great voices telling you a story, narrating actions, slipping into and out of different character voices, all set over a really well-engineered sound-and-musicscape. The episodes are loosely outlined, but the actual scripts are improvised between the narrators, weaving in and out of each other's narrations and 'yes and'ing their way into a greater whole. It may sound a little confusing, but I found it surprisingly easy to follow along with. And each episode ranges from 15 minutes to a half-hour, so it's an easy listen. The second season has just begun to release over at the CR YouTube channel (there were 2 seasons out before CR picked it up and is releasing remasters, so beware spoilers if you go to the tag here).
Okay, unless you're a nerd like me, the technicalities of the podcast might not mean quite as much to you. But the setting is where things start to get really interesting. This is a space western. Classic, but definitely also not classic. While the vibe is pure space western, with a feel that's vaguely akin to 'Firefly' or 'Trigun' or 'Cowboy Bebop', the actual setting isn't so much space as it is the Un.
The Un is somewhat liminal, a vast sky filled with light from an undetermined source, filled with clouds and glittering mica shards which defy gravity and can slice through almost anything in their way (though they can be deflected). On the largest of these shards some people have set up homes. And elsewhere in the Un are islets, tiny planets that make up the habitable universe of 'Midst'.
There doesn't seem to be a proper central authority in the Un, but the closest thing they have is the Trust, a cult based around the worship of what seems to be a space western stock market, in which all of its members have their deeds (and themselves) weighed and judged. And those people in the Trust, the Trustees, wear their morality literally on their sleeve. Those deemed 'good' either from good deeds or (far more often) from inherited goodness or goodness based on their position in society, have white Valor beads adorning them. Those deemed immoral, or (again more often) in debt have Caenum, black beads denoting how much they owe the Trust. Those Trustees in debt seem to exist in something close to slavery, constantly having to do more and more work to try to break even. And the entire Trust society is built on their backs.
Below the Un is a velvet black fog so thick it lays like an ocean at the bottom of this universe, its surface an obsidian mirror. This is the Fold, a place where a dark mist can penetrate through anything and bring with it Tearrors, events in which the fabric of reality itself seems to tear itself apart. People and things die or go horribly (or sometimes not horribly) wrong thanks to the Tearrors. These Tearrors can be kept at bay with a weird sort of lightbulb, which is how folks can stay alive in the Fold without completely coming apart at the seams.
And there, at the Meridian, half in the Un and half in the Fold, rolling through both to create perhaps the only place in this universe with both a night and a day, weird as both are, is Midst. A small islet of red dust and weird plants and animals. A place where people live and work and die. A place that feels a lot like a western.
And with that, we have our setting. And within this setting are vast array of characters, but for this particular story, there are three protagonists. Each of them is solely narrated by one of the three narrators, and it is around them that the story and the world of Midst unfolds.
Lark is perhaps the protagonist we know the least about, but she's also the protagonist who feels the most classically western for this space western. She's a monster hunter living on the outskirts of society on Midst. She sells hides, and she has few friends and fewer words. She's gruff, dangerous, and has lived long enough that she's got a dark past and has seen some shit. She also has a red glove that apparently kills anything it touches, which is cool.
Lark is intelligent, grounded, but is also largely a mystery at this point. She's also got a hound dog named Landlord, who is the best, and is the only character who is apparently guaranteed not to die.
Look at this wet cat of an armored man. Everything about him screams try-hard, wannabe, senpai-notice-me energy. If Lark is the western character, Phineas is the space character, hailing from the Trust. He is in debt, but also the Adsecla (second in command) of an elite group of cop-soldier-celebrities. The media follows them everywhere, which is something of a problem for a guy who is terrible with people and the media in particular. Phineas is a decent guy, fairly good at his job, but nothing he ever does is good enough, and all his best instincts are being systematically squashed by the cult he has fanatically devoted himself to. There is no one who believes in the Trust more than Phineas, even as it's griding him down to nothingness.
If you like a character who is pathetic even when he's doing cool things, who never wins, whose struggles all seem to come to nothing, and you can't quite figure out if the universe just hates him or if he's his own worst enemy (it's probably both), then Phineas is the character for you.
Look at him. Just look at this weird, alabaster, spidery guy. I know that I and many of my followers love a bastard man, and Mr. Weepe is a grade A bastard man. He is a co-owner of a cabaret on Midst, and he oozes his way through every scene he's in with some of the best lines and worst actions of the podcast. He has the power to be both alluring and repellant, he's got an absolutely delightfully bizarre voice and and even weirder laugh (and yet is also part of a really cool musical number), and he is both terrifying and pathetic all at the same time. This asshole contains multitudes. And a lot of those multitudes revolve around screwing someone over for his own gain.
He should be the least sympathetic of the protagonists. Lark is a cool and aloof badass. Phineas wants to be a good man. Weepe? He wants to be rich. He wants to be powerful. He is also constantly plagued by a mysterious medical condition that seems to have been brought on by exposure to an extremely severe and almost-lethal Tearror. He is somehow, weirdly, sympathetic, at least up to a point, and not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. What can I say? I am predictable, and Moc Weepe is definitely my favorite of the protagonists, even if he's demonstrably the worst.
I won't spoil the plot, as that's part of the fun. I can at least spoil the first scene, which is also the finale of the first season (they loop back to explain how they got to this event throughout the run of the first season): we are on Midst. All three protagonists are there.
And the moon has just exploded in the sky.
2087
pixelskylines
areudirty
titsay
