#taz meta

[anistarrose]

gnashing my teeth. the nested time loops in taz balance. the final cycle of the stolen century, they believe the grand relics are their bitter victory — their long overdue key to never letting the loop restart, never forcing them to do this all over again. they believe that with this sacrifice, they finally have the cycles conquered — and then, what do our heroes do, but lose their memories? they have to start from square one. relearn who they are. rebuild their bonds with each other that spent a whole century cultivating.

us, the audience, who are starting the podcast with episode one — we missed that story the first time you lived it. the first time you told it.

so, tell us again.

tell us how you met each other, tell us about your job. tell us the the destruction that no one but you survived, tell us about the way it shaped you. tell us all the hidden depths of the mongoose — tell us about your friends, the two lovers who cheated death together. tell us how you grew closer, throughout all of this.

tell us about the person who saw all of existence, who glimpsed the meaning of it all. tell us about the restless souls, the dissatisfaction — and how you reached out to that person at the center of it. tell us about a kingdom of robots. tell us, maybe don't admit it quite yet, but show us: the three of you growing closer still.

tell us a story about a time loop in a time loop in a time loop. where the apocalypse never ends, but your death never sticks. tell us how it affected you — for your actions to have no consequence, until they did. tell us how you'd do anything to stop the cataclysm, to break the loop, and tell us how for that, you were judged. tell us how you did good recklessly.

and tell us about the twins, tell us about the liches, about what you're willing to sacrifice. tell us how you leapt into danger to save a friend. tell us how you let yourself be saved. tell us everything you've finally had time to (re)-learn: how to care for each other and be cared for. tell us how you learnt to trust. tell us how, finally, you remember the mistakes you made last time.

we, the audience, missed that story the first time you told it. we need you to tell it again — but this time, this one special time, you'll have a shot at a better ending.

so tell us this story about time loops. tell us this story about stories.

#taz #taz balance #taz balance spoilers #ipre #thb #taz meta #yes i'm still emotionally recovering from the “over and over” poem i reblogged the other day #can you tell? can you tell what it made me think of?

[eliias-bouchard]

why the fuck was garfield making a flesh homunculus of magnus btw. why magnus specifically??? like on a meta level. what the fuck? did griffin think magnus was gonna die first? like that's a reasonable assumption to make and it worked out perfectly but what happens if one of the other horny boys had been killed in wonderland and had to fuckinf possess a mannequin. for the rest of the arc. ???????

#taz #taz spoilers #taz balance #taz balance spoilers #garfield the deals warlock #taz magnus #magnus burnsides #?????? #taz garfield #magnus taz #the adventure zone #taz meta #the adventure zone meta #like what the fuck. griffin explain

[yardsards]

more taz balance thoughts:

you ever think about how in real life, the names "john" and "johann" are just different translations of the exact same name

and how the characters of john and johann are foils, in a way

how both characters had their ideas spread throughout the multiverse, whose ideas were heard by everyone, who showed what power a word or a story or a song could have on the world

how john started off as a motivational speaker, meant to spread hope and satisfaction. how johann's first appearance showed him as unsatisfied and hopeless, meant to be forgotten.

how john ended up spreading hopelessness, how johann ended up becoming a beacon of hope

#eliot posts #taz #the adventure zone #taz balance #taz meta #john taz #john the hunger #johann taz #currently only on pttm on my relisten but thats not gonna stop me from going bonkers over story and song

[grumpyoldsnake]

Listening to TAZ for the first time in several years

Once again I really must ask: where the heck do these dudes pull all these heartfelt and compassionate speeches from?

#I say ‘all these’ #it isn’t *that* common #but god I’d swear there’s at least one or two per main story campaign; if not more #that do actually hit me in the feels #(of the ones I’ve listened to. which! is admittedly just balance amnesty and dust [both seasons] so far) #taz #taz meta #life flails #podcasts #the adventure zone

[umbraastaff]

the well-written meta post is not coming together but you know like... something about blupjeans taking so long to realize they're in love, and the fact that they're essentially in a time loop... being in a type of narrative built to represent stagnation, and falling prey to that idea for a while, and then realizing they don't need to be still.

the fact that them falling in love doesn't miraculously break the time loop because they've had a big revelation. (although it does, later, save them all -- that they were able to become liches anchored to one another, and that one of those liches was the only one able to remember or warn anyone against the dangers of lucretia's plan.)

but it doesn't break the time loop! they are in this stagnation for so much longer afterward. but they love each other. the whole crew loves each other, and allows that love to grow and develop, and. this tiny huddle of people loving one another isn't what saves everyone, in the end, because it takes more than just them. it takes everyone to save everyone.

but trapped in a boat, bouncing from tragedy to tragedy, they love each other. they lift each other up and hold each other accountable. they remind one another of the weight of sacrifices and the worth of worlds. they save each other.

#the adventure zone #taz balance #stolen century #taz meta #blupjeans #mine #balance #meta #text #this version got away from me too but it's more readable

[geodebiome]

no context gonna post this in my taz meta tag. i have a lot to say about taako and if i ever actually make Une Poste about it. then ill have it right there

#taz meta #dont EVEN mind me rn. my blog is a collection of pictures for an eventual collage

[stingrae-gayy]

I think what makes Goncharov so compelling is that it combines some of what I like to call Tumblr's Greatest Hits.

1. Fandoms overanalyzing properties in ways the creators never intended or could even comprehend. (See: miles long meta posts, Cas is Lamp, homoerotic angst read into action/comedy content like Pacific Rim or the MCU)

2. inventing something extra-canonical and acting like it is an actual part of canon. (See: Glup Shitto, TAZ Grad's Bingus debacle, BBC Sherlock's Sebastian Moran as played by Michael Fassbender)

3. the ages old tumblr experience of only learning about a property via gifsets and fandom textposts that end up on your dashboard (See: people thinking Destiel was another angel, thinking Destiel was canon ages ago, knowing inside jokes for fandoms despite never watching whatever the fandom is based around)

And lastly,

4. Making fun of non-tumblr users by way of making fun of tumblr users (See: simply saying things like Horse Plinko Eeby Deeby Blorbo lil meow meow Super Hell)

All of these have combined into a mass hallucination of a film that has not ever existed and yet has a cast, plot, director, release date, narrative themes, subtext, ships, fan theories, etc. This shit is incredible

#goncharov #goncharov 1973 #spn #destiel #cas is lamp #supernatural #super hell #tumblr #heritage posts #pacific rim #newt x hermann #mcu #stucky #stony #shipping #fandom meta #meta #taz #taz grad #sherlockbbc #bbc sherlock #johnlock #sebastian moran #superwholock #raeriginals #unreality

[passerkirbius]

Where are all the Audio Fiction Fandoms?

To be clear, this isn't me complaining, and I know, there are plenty of fandoms for audio fiction podcasts and the like.

But I have always found it weird how few shows get the big, self-sustaining kinds of fandoms, the ones where there's always at least a little trickle of fanfic and fanart. So weird, in fact, that I've been thinking about it on and off for the last 5-6 years, and I have a few theories I'd like to share with y'all as to why, and to see if I can't get some feedback from the audio fiction fans on Tumblr.

Theory 1: Audience Size

The first theory is mostly about demographics - fundamentally, a fandom has to be large enough to sustain itself, and only a certain number of audience members are going to become the kind of fans who make fan works, so ultimately, an audio fiction show needs to get popular enough before fan works start appearing.

There's plenty of support for this theory, of course - Welcome to Night Vale, Wolf 359, The Adventure Zone and The Magnus Archives are titans in the fiction podcast space, and indeed they have big fandoms. But, with that said, there's plenty of other podcasts that are just as big that don't have fandoms, so this can't explain it all.

Theory 2: Audience Distance

This one is similar to the first, but subtly different. A few creators in the space I've talked to have noted that they'd never make fan works of their friend's shows - that feels weird, like deliberately treading on their friend's work. They don't have this feeling when playing in big fandoms, or fandoms where they don't know the creator. This implies to me that fans need a certain level of distance from creators in order to feel comfortable playing with that fictional space. While this is less the case now with the fall of Twitter, a lot of shows, for better or worse, used social media as the primary pillar of their marketing, as well as using Patreons with special access as part of their monetization strategies.

In short, it's never been easier to get close to the creators of your favourite shows, and for smaller shows, the most exuberant fans - the kinds who might make fan works - are also the kinds of fans who will take those opportunities to get closer to the creators. In short, there just might not enough social distance for fans to be comfortable creating works, not at least until the audience grows sufficiently that a creator simply cannot be that close with their entire audience.

This theory I'm not so sure about these days - this one is probably a lot more dependent on the generation of fandom you belong to. Older generations of fandom are more likely to have this queasiness around creator closeness, because they were creating in a time where fandom was a shadow realm, desperately hidden from The Powers That Be, and "No Copyright Infringement Intended" was carved into fan works as an eldritch attempt at legal protection.

Theory 3: Audience Age

To be clear - there are fans of all ages out there. But it is clear to me that fandom trends young, and part of that is just the time needed to participate in fan culture - creating and consuming takes a lot of time, time that tends gets scarcer and scarcer as you get older (there are obvious exceptions of course - stay-at-home mothers have consistently been a major force in fandoms!). It's possible that audio fiction fans just tend to trend older, and thus don't have the time available to create and consume fan works.

Honestly, I'm not sure how relevant this one is - Audio fiction is becoming more popular with younger audiences and slowly shedding the "old fuddy-duddyness" that surrounded it when I was first getting into the space. And, ya know, there are audio fiction fandoms out there, so obviously either the youth aspect of fandom isn't a thing, or it is, but audio fiction audiences are still trending young anyway.

Theory 4: We're getting what we need!

A lot of academic discourse often focuses on the idea that fandoms create for a reason - and that reason is often to focus on parts of a fiction that the original text, for whatever reason, doesn't. The most obvious form of this is the many, many, many examples of ships and erotic fanfiction. You, as a fan, watch a show, see something between two characters, and get frustrated that the show isn't giving you more of that, won't make what is clearly obvious to you, explicit. So, you consume and/or create fan works that help relieve that tension instead.

Or, in shows where the focus is primarily on plot advancement or action, you feel a desire to get to know the characters better - you see the stirrings of these characters, you want to know them better, but the show just isn't the type of show to give you that slow, character-heavy scene/episode that you know would give you exactly what you need, so, again, you go consume and/or create fan works to fix that.

It's very possible that a lot of audio fiction is already built to give these sorts of fan audiences what they want. There's already romantic relationships, characters are openly queer, the nature of the audio medium means that character-heavy scenes are something that the medium directs creators towards, so there's already a lot of character engagement. So, for many fandoms, there just isn't much need to create fan works - there's no tension between what the show is and what it could be.

Theory 5: We can make our own at home!

One interesting theory is that one reason that people make fandom is because, fundamentally, the creators understand that they're not going to be making a film, or a TV show, or a book. They have creative urges, and they're not in a situation in life where they're likely to overcome the enormous barriers to entry in mainstream media, so, in combination with the stuff in theory 4, they play in other people's worlds instead. They know that there's already an audience who will consume their work (they're part of that fan community, after all!), so they can get that validation of creation without needing to create their own TV show or film or book, etc.

Podcasts, however, are different. Now, it's not true to say that podcasts have low barriers to entry - to create a podcast, there's a lot of skills you either need to learn yourself, or find collaborators with those skills. But, those barriers to entry are much lower than visual media. At the very least, audio production is significantly cheaper and less complicated for an equivalent runtime.

Better, podcasts have absurdly low barriers to publication - There are no gatekeepers to satisfy, no distributors you have to convince. Once your thing is made, pretty much no one can stop you from distributing that work. You don't even really need to pay for a podcast host - there's a few free podcast hosts now. So, once you've done the work, pretty much nothing stops you from publishing said work.

So... If you're a creative fan, who loved a show but thinks you can do better? Well, you can! You don't need to play in other people's spaces, you can be inspired by the podcasts you listen to to create your own original work, in the same medium and genre.

What do y'all think? Which of these feel right, which of these feel obviously wrong? Are you part of a audio fiction fandom? What does your fandom feel like to you on the inside? As a audio fiction creator, it's kinda hard for me to get into the inside of fandom culture, so insider perspectives would be super neat for me, so please reblog this to anyone you feel might have an interesting perspective on the whole thing!

#audio fiction #audio drama #podcasts #fiction podcasts #welcome to night vale #the magnus archives #tma #wtnv #podcast theory #fandom #audience feedback requested! #taz #the adventure zone #wolf 359 #fandom meta #fandom culture

[chekhovs-tantrum]

Re: lack of AtN news:

I am noticing a lot of snarking at Tor (swipes in Tor's comments, general moaning in tags) regarding lack of Alecto cover or release date — and don't get me wrong, I am starving for news too —

but uhh does pressuring Tor mean they go and pressure Taz, or the cover artist? My understanding is that Taz has some diagnoses that might make things hard for her at times, and my assumption is that if AtN is taking extra long, it's because everyone's working hard to make sure she sticks the landing.

I don't know the politics of publishing, but I know everyone making money off this books wants to drop this book, because capitalism. So if there's no release date... isn't it likely that someone is dealing with shit (Taz, or an editor, idk), and needs a little more time to perfect the masterpiece we all love?

Yes I want more Alecto content, yes I want to snarf up everything this brain wizard writes and chew on it like corn string stuck in my teeth. But I never want my love of an artist's content to come at the expense of that artist's mental health or general wellness.

#idk man it smells like capitalist ick to me #but I just know so little about publishing that I'm nervous to ask #maybe it's nothing #and like idk what the situation is here but it feels weird to pressure artists ever even if it's indirectly #yes I recognize Tor is a company but Taz is a person and so is her cover artist and editor and everyone involved in this #let's just take care of each other ok? #Alecto the ninth #alt meta #locked tomb

[buffintruder]

I love Lucretia as much as anybody can, but I think she's sort of an antagonist; not to the other characters, but to the themes.

We all know one of the major themes is the power of support from friends. You can see it in Merle's choose joy speech, and the power bear teaching Magnus that the meaning of strength is asking for help. In the climax, the thb use a machine powered by interpersonal bonds (which powered a spaceship for a whole century using the connections the crew had with each other) to summon allies and defeat the main villain.

Even before that, and probably in a less considered manner, there is no arc the thb go through without requiring the help from someone else. From helpful hints from npcs, to Hurley and Sloane doing most of the work in getting them the Gaia Sash, they wouldn't have gotten a single relic and would have died a dozen more times without the aid of others.

Now let's look at Lucretia. She shoulders the burden of saving the world completely onto herself, actively taking away the choice from the rest of her crew. Even the method she plans to stop the Hunger is incredibly symbolic; she wants to sever every bond their plane has with the world outside. She wants to isolate it. Her plan cannot work because it so completely goes against the theme of the show

#digging up ancient meta from the depths of my phone's notes app #taz #the adventure zone balance #lucretia #my post

[lostsometime]

Relistening to taz balance and I had a revelation:

the first time the voidfish sings? The first time we hear the notes that will become ‘egg babe’? Is immediately after Lucas was making a fuss about, like “Well what if the voidfish dies!? What if it reproduces asexually and pops out a baby voidfish?!”

They all thought Lucas was upsetting it, but actually it was trying to agree with him! He said “baby voidfish” and Fisher was trying to say “YES, THAT!”

#Taz #taz balance #meta #my meta

[anistarrose]

one of the most endearing (and slightly emotional) things about TAZ Balance to me is how it sets up this color symbolism, primarily around red and blue, that completely breaks down and ceases to mean anything once you get to know the characters' real backstories — but how this breakdown is actually completely warranted, because all the color symbolism is just completely made up bullshit in-universe. like. Lucretia just made that up for dramatics. all of it.

because, come on. she's a storyteller at heart, and a visual artist too. you can't convince me she chose blue for the Bureau for any reason other than to juxtapose with the Red Robes — to tell a story she thought would motivate the Bureau; a story with themes, and symbolism, and a color key. the total breakdown of her symbolic binary between good and evil, between blue and red — the way it all turns out to be meaningless, as far as indicating alignment or even identity — actually circles around, to come back and mean everything.

and that meaning is about the way Lucretia aligns herself with blue, despite the old red robe that she definitely still has tucked away somewhere, among her most treasured and guarded possessions. it's about the way Lucretia had the power to — and felt that she had no choice but to — reassign the very color the story associated with Barry, from the iconic blue to the terror-inspiring red. it's about the way Barry felt he had no choice but to play along and let her.

because Balance isn't a story about good and evil, especially not beneath the surface. and in a way that I think is part intentional, part beautifully unintentional on Griffin's part, the use of red and blue show this — they show that Balance is really a story about stories.

#taz #taz balance #taz balance spoilers #lucretia taz #barry bluejeans #taz meta

[tazmilygray]

happy late birthday to kirby super star!

#kirby #kirby super star #meta knight #sailor dee #taz~art

[gnarlystarships]

pacing around my house like a caged animal thinking about taako and lup and barry

#i have no insightful meta analysis or anything #THEY JUST…THEY…………….. #bashing my head into a wall #taz #taz balance #ograt

[ducknewtonistrans]

Devo's character arc really hits too close to home though. Finally getting out of abuse you were trapped in and you're so full of pent up rage and anger that used to keep you safe that now just pushes away everyone that cares about you. And eventually you just accept that you must be a bad person because you keep hurting people you love. And you think you just brought the awfulness with you, you're out of the storm but you're tracking mud and rain into your new home. Your abuser is gone but the hate you protected yourself with is still there, and it can't tell who's the enemy anymore.

#abuse tw #taz ethersea #taz devo la main #taz ethersea spoilers #taz ethersea meta #projects onto Devo a little bit #rannbles #is this meta does this count as meta #i don't actually know what that word means ngl

[umbraastaff]

Is nobody going to talk about how the lost "Magnus takes the Chalice" arc would have been the perfect capstone to the existing Stolen Century foreshadowing throughout Eleventh Hour? I mean--

Making the half-selfish (sparing yourself the grief and having to see it among your family), half noble (it's to save someone or something) choice that only you can make, a choice that nobody else gets to be in on. Nobody else gets a right of refusal on being saved.

Fuck the timeline to save your town. Fuck the rest of the planar system to save this one plane from a terrible war. Decisions made from grief and love for your closest family. A family that has to realize through all the attempts to wipe their memory and time and lives and break through to snap you out of it.

#the adventure zone #taz balance #Lucretia #taz lucretia #magnus burnsides #magnus #balance #text #mine #meta