Bluff City Season 2
spoilers for all of bluff city: season 2
well, they did it again lads.
they made me feel feelings about a show that once had an infinitely long puppet piloting a hot air balloon away from a watch heist to the chagrin of an increasingly strange family and four surly but loveable teens
what I appreciate about Bluff City as a concept is that the wandering eye of the camera (or the different game with every arc if you want to be pedantic) forces you to consider the setting from a sociological rather than interpersonal perspective
I think even the Divine Cycle seasons (which time jump from anywhere between five and fifty thousand years) are necessarily locked into the perspective of the PCs of that era – we know what the characters care about and because of that association, we cry out when those things are twisted or destroyed with time.
Bluff City arcs rarely share characters between them. when they do show up again, they've either aged into different people or are thrust into such a different context that they become different people – notably, most of these returns are during the first season of Bluff City (InSpectres -> On the Promenade; No Greater Love -> Messy Business; A Boxer, A Bowling Alley, and a Bird -> Extracurriculars). The only explicitly returning PCs from Season 1 to Season 2 were two of the super-kids for Capers – but even then, their personal arcs took a back seat to the politics of Blough City and The Tunnel Project.
the returning "characters" of Bluff City are the ephemera of a city's social life – a bird let loose, a Lincoln town car, a business card with a strange name, a pizza-themed casino, a tunnel that goes down forever until it goes up. they are the after-effects of people reverberating throughout a city, carrying new meanings across multiple contexts – even when the signifier is robbed of the society that produces its sign(s)
season 2 is more concerned with examining a setting before, during, and after a complete and total man-made collapse. the Dream Askew game – the final game of the season and also the first – introduced Bluffington Beach years ago as a desolate waste ruined by technology-accelerated class division and the consequences of natural disaster. of course, the normative and the rich don't see any of that. their life continues while the small apocalpyses of capitalism accumulate on the backs of the marginalized and estranged.
the most recent arc (Give Way to Open Sky) is the best piece of drama podcasting that has ever hit the airwaves (sorry Nightvale). Jack de Quidt's strange ressurection (or "distant transfigured ghost") of the Frankie Already character is a brilliant accident of actual play storytelling. here is how a city breaks you and blames you for the mess. here is how a legitimate community changes you and uplifts you towards your best self. here is how a psychic maelstrom hates you for trying to make yourself more important than you ever could be. here is how you are important in important contexts.
Austin Walker's Augur character – a self-fashioned dysphoric Maiden in Black of Demon Souls – brings many of the themes of decay and cyclical history of the season to the forefront. Dream Askew is not and can not be a game about true "protagonists" leading the charge against the ultimate evil. that's not how things work Bluff City-way! it has to be about the shrinemaidens and shopkeepers, the Lautrecs and Andres of the world as they go about their day to day life trying their damnedst to keep things together in the face of overwhelming tragedy... while also being gay as hell
Ali Acampora is one of the greatest roleplayers in Actual Play. I don't think anyone really gets the interior psychology of a character like when Ali gets rolling. her refusal of the intimacy of psychic connection, instead insisting that absolute knowldge of your closest partner's thoughts would instead make that divison between you all the more clearer, was breathtaking. real End of Evangelion hours
Andrew Lee Swan gets the final in-character word for the season, deservedly. they are such an incredible talent. no notes.
there have been some complaints from the audience that Season 2 has been too depressing due to the Tunnel Project succeeding and leaving the three cities to ruin. it's important to me however that the city (in its architecture, its businesses, its most prominent landmarks) dies to give way to the city – the communities that populate it and make their lives there outside of capital. the spirit of Bluff City is contrained by the desperation caused by the nature of cities – as Austin points out, Atlantic City was founded as a resort for rich Philledelphians who tired of the city (a racially coded concept for many reasons) to find time to relax on stolen land. communities are an accidental consequence, not the intended outcome. its been doomed from the start, but isn't that a good thing?
I am excited to see the Tablefriends' next project. I also want to see Bluff win. subscribe to Friends at the Table on Patreon to listen to Bluff City: Season 2. Zoo Free Forever
