Motherland: Fort Salem and a few questions
Aug. 1st, 2022 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brainwaneI am watching and really enjoying Motherland: Fort Salem, which is currently in its third and final season. I saw the first 5 episodes maybe last year, then started watching the rest, and am already on season 3, episode 4. I didn't time it perfectly, and will thus be waiting for the last few episodes over the next few weeks, but if you are already all caught up then please say so in the comments and maybe we can talk about this show which I have heard very few people talk about! (Thank you, ads in the NYC subway system, and Marina Berlin, for bringing the show to my attention.)
It's a soapy, plotty, pulpy show about military witches, with tantalizing worldbuilding and lots of character moments where people sacrifice or take risks to Make A Stand or Have Each Other's Backs and so on. We follow three new cadets as they form a unit, deal with intrigue and relationships, fight various enemies, etc. I am a sucker for the super idealistic one who Wants To Serve And Protect The Innocent. There's substantial violence and goriness in this show, including the graphic deaths of innocent people, so watch out for that if that'll bother you.
Most of the characters are women; in season 2 we meet a nonbinary character. A queer romantic relationship is one of the most important ones in the show. Several major characters are Black. Most of our main characters are from the US, but we also get some globetrotting and some characters from elsewhere since events quickly take on a global scope -- and one main character is from a sovereign indigenous nation in the North American Midwest.
Now, my nitpicking questions/notes:
Question for people who have already seen all of season 1: the Spree have a facility in "Middlebury, Vermont." Yet the map in the opening credits does not include the state of Vermont; that area seems to be part of Maine. How can we reconcile this? Maybe "Vermont" is still recognizable as a, like, region within Maine?
Note for people who have watched through season 2: the Mothertongue instructor, Channing Grafton, is the guy Anacostia remembers dallying with at her first Beltane!
Question for people who have watched at least up through season 3, episode 3: Nicte Batan showed Tally what she really looks like during that fight on the roof: her original appearance (played by Arlen Aguayo Stewart) has a lot of facial disfigurement, and so most of the time she covers that up, using Spree (off-canon) work, to hide that face with an unmarked version of her own face. Then in Season 3 we see that she often uses a specific different face, that of a Black woman played by Kandyse McClure. When the Marshal comes aboard the bus and discovers Scylla and Nicte (who are disguised as men), his magic destroys their disguises revealing Scylla's true face, but only revealing Nicte as played by McClure. Why doesn't the Marshal's magic show Nicte as Tally briefly saw her? Is Nicte, like, layering disguises one atop the other, so that the Marshall only peeled off the top layer?
And: has the show, so far, discussed gender transition or shown us any binary trans witches?
It's a soapy, plotty, pulpy show about military witches, with tantalizing worldbuilding and lots of character moments where people sacrifice or take risks to Make A Stand or Have Each Other's Backs and so on. We follow three new cadets as they form a unit, deal with intrigue and relationships, fight various enemies, etc. I am a sucker for the super idealistic one who Wants To Serve And Protect The Innocent. There's substantial violence and goriness in this show, including the graphic deaths of innocent people, so watch out for that if that'll bother you.
Most of the characters are women; in season 2 we meet a nonbinary character. A queer romantic relationship is one of the most important ones in the show. Several major characters are Black. Most of our main characters are from the US, but we also get some globetrotting and some characters from elsewhere since events quickly take on a global scope -- and one main character is from a sovereign indigenous nation in the North American Midwest.
Now, my nitpicking questions/notes:
Question for people who have already seen all of season 1: the Spree have a facility in "Middlebury, Vermont." Yet the map in the opening credits does not include the state of Vermont; that area seems to be part of Maine. How can we reconcile this? Maybe "Vermont" is still recognizable as a, like, region within Maine?
Note for people who have watched through season 2: the Mothertongue instructor, Channing Grafton, is the guy Anacostia remembers dallying with at her first Beltane!
Question for people who have watched at least up through season 3, episode 3: Nicte Batan showed Tally what she really looks like during that fight on the roof: her original appearance (played by Arlen Aguayo Stewart) has a lot of facial disfigurement, and so most of the time she covers that up, using Spree (off-canon) work, to hide that face with an unmarked version of her own face. Then in Season 3 we see that she often uses a specific different face, that of a Black woman played by Kandyse McClure. When the Marshal comes aboard the bus and discovers Scylla and Nicte (who are disguised as men), his magic destroys their disguises revealing Scylla's true face, but only revealing Nicte as played by McClure. Why doesn't the Marshal's magic show Nicte as Tally briefly saw her? Is Nicte, like, layering disguises one atop the other, so that the Marshall only peeled off the top layer?
And: has the show, so far, discussed gender transition or shown us any binary trans witches?
map (Season 1 nitpick)
Date: 2022-08-02 03:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-08-03 07:23 am (UTC)The map stuff - I mean it's not always clear how much their world differs from our America, but it is linked to tribal areas I thought, and Vermont just means green mountain anyway.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-08-04 07:44 pm (UTC)I don't think I've seen any discussion of binary trans witches? But if there is broad social acceptance, it's pretty easy for them to be invisible.