Some Less-Than-Timely Thoughts on The Adventure Zone: Balance
I’ve wanted to write about The Adventure Zone (TAZ): Balance since pretty much the instant I first finished listening to it about two months ago. I haven’t, up until this point, because it took me over a year to listen all the way through and I didn’t feel comfortable making any claims about it until I had listened to it a second time. Now that I’m just about finished with my relisten, I finally feel comfortable in my knowledge of the material. So, because I’m incapable of loving something without dissecting it, here are some thoughts on TAZ Balance that are about two years too late. (spoiler warning for pretty much all of TAZ Balance)

The way I listened to TAZ Balance at first was in a rather unengaged way. I wanted to finish it because many people had told me it was good, and I wanted to understand what all the fuss was. I also listened out of order, an unintentional but nevertheless horrific crime. I enjoyed it and I thought it was funny, but I didn’t start thinking about it deeply until Ep. 59. Lunar Interlude V: Reunion Tour — Part Two. I remember being incredibly moved by the reveal of Taako’s forgotten and missing twin sister, Lup. The line “outcast but never alone” rattled around inside my brain for weeks, for reasons I couldn’t quite place. There’s something so moving about the idea that “outcast” is not a synonym for “alone”, the idea that not belonging does not lead to isolation, that two people can not belong together. The idea made me emotional in a way I didn’t quite understand at the time. Looking back on it, I think that moment struck me because it resonated with my experience in the closet as a gay person. You are an outcast, yes, but if there are enough visible people around you, enough outcasts proudly being themselves, you are never alone. No matter what society tells you, or how strange society makes you feel, you’re never really alone.
I think TAZ Balance impacted me for a lot of reasons, but a more technical one was that I listened to it at a time when I was feeling very disillusioned with film and TV as mediums. As a podcast, TAZ Balance isn’t the antithesis of those two things, but it’s pretty close. That change in medium was something I needed. TAZ Balance is “messy” at times, yes, but it isn’t messy in the same way that some films or TV shows are “messy”. There is very rarely any editing in TAZ Balance outside of the music and cuts for time and pacing. There are no retakes, no re-doing of scenes. It’s almost purely, at least on the part of the players, improvisational. This fact can make TAZ Balance seem messy at times, yes, but it’s a uniquely human messiness that I can’t be mad at. It’s storytelling in its purest form.
Now, after my second time listening, when I think about TAZ Balance I find myself thinking about time. TAZ Balance is a story about a lot of things, including a deals warlock and The Grim Reaper But Hot, but one of those things is time and what it means to have “time”. Barry and Lup had, as Griffin McElroy puts it, “something that nobody else ever had: time. All the time in the world.” Magnus and Julia had a comparatively minuscule time together, but their love is not presented as lesser in any way. So maybe it’s not about the time you have, but what you choose to do with that time. That’s the question that my favorite arc, The Stolen Century, poses: what would you do if you had all the time you could ever want? Who would you become? You see, The Stolen Century has a double meaning: it’s a century that was stolen from the IPRE crew, erased from their memories against their will, but it was also a century that they stole, from their fates, from the universe, from linear time itself. So, with that stolen time, what would you do? Would you, too, “choose joy”?
My favorite episode of TAZ Balance is, without a doubt, Ep. 64: The Stolen Century — Chapter Five. However, my favorite moment comes at the end of what I believe is the series’ shortest episode, Ep. 62: The Stolen Century — Chapter Three, the beach episode. Instead of ending with the main theme, the episode ends with the track “No Dogs on the Beach!”, an acoustic guitar reimagining of the earlier “No Dogs on the Moon!”, which fades out to the sound of waves crashing on a shore. The peace of this moment moves me in a way I don’t quite have the words for yet. Maybe I’ll try to fill my life with similar stolen moments of peace in this crazy, crazy, world.
