The Philosopher's Soul

HIM (Source)

THIS BEAUTIFUL SON OF A EWE WON’T STAY DOWN

Remember folks: knocking a zombie down does not mean they’re re-dead.

cue the Chumbawamba, etc

This is why you always double-tap the zombie, Samut!

Emma Handy and two other friends I don’t know sprinting into the feature match area to hug Autumn and everybody openly crying in joy is the best moment in Magic history forget literally everything that came before it

What a fucking moment.

(Image source)

Take a fucking bow. 

Dog snaps

Floofs!

@genevieve-sharp Profound. 

@genevieve-sharp- Truth?

Ehr, Both Chandra and Gideon are non white. Gideon is what we in real life call “Middle-eastern”, and Chandra is at least half-Indian (on her mothers side). Sarkhan and Narset are both Central Asian (Sarkhan being Mongol and Narset Tibetan), and Tamiyo despite being non-human is clearly east asian. Samut is Egyptian, Huatli is Mayan, And of course, Teferi is Central African. And we just got another ethnically African planeswalker about a month ago in the form of Aminatou (A.k.a the best planeswalker ever). Kiora, although a merfolk, is clearly Polynesian.

Both Lily and Chandra are at the least Bisexual (Both have shown attraction to both males and females in story). Karn is Asexual and doesn’t really have a gender identity, and neither does Ashiok. And since prior to the Tarkir storyline we have had multiple characters in story (and on cards) who have been gay, lesbian, and trans.

Sure WotC still has a way to go, but saying that they don’t have representation when they clearly do, including several main characters, is not just wrong but disingenuous.

Without getting into the issues around most of these, the statement was Gatewatch. The ‘Pocahontas’ representation, as it’s been called, doesn’t count for much until they’re actually recurring members of the story. Adding background characters of color isn’t quite the same thing as having them represented in the story. And the two you mention are problematic. I think they’ve been making comparably great strides, but there’s a long way to go and retconning your characters to be POC isn’t the way to do it.

Gideon is Mediterranean, which isn’t the same thing as Middle Eastern. He’s a Greek analogue, and it’s taken almost a decade for his artwork to ‘realize’ that. That hardly counts for much, either.

Chandra is gaelic-looking woman from a time when Wizards of the Coast used Indian names on white people or fantasy creatures to make them sound exotic. This was back when WotC talked about Liliana being Middle Eastern until they realized that they gave the Middle Eastern woman a Veil…

Adding in an obviously Indian mother a decade later doesn’t change the fact that they dropped the ball from the start, and there was zero indication Chandra was anything but snow white until Kaladesh. I wished they had just owned it, honestly, because Kaladesh is diverse and her parents could have been white Kaladeshi while simultaneously introducing the first actual South Asian representation in Saheeli.

But no. Instead, we get Chandra O’Nalaar, who, despite biracial children having a wide array of features, looks more like my very, very white niece and nothing like my half-white/half-indian son or any of my friends or relatives, down to the ¼th or 1/8th Indians. Red hair and freckles are certainly possible for her, in as much as they’re possible for anyone, but it would be exceedingly rare in such a way that it’s obvious Chandra was never intended to be South Asian representation.

^ This. Basically all of this.  Couple of points I would add: Liliana being an essentially white woman with a veil as her signature weapon seems kind of worse to me than playing into what I recognise is a bad stereotype of “Middle Eastern woman with a veil.” It’s a smaller case of the same thing as Chandra where it might have been better to just own it.  Also, if you’re going to tell a story that has a (reasonably) fixed set of main characters, as Magic has done since Origins, what matters isn’t that the representation exists in the Magic universe somewhere but whether it is “on-camera”, so to speak. For the difference between the two and why it matters, see everything about the Nissa/Chandra queerbaiting. One cannot expect people to be happy knowing these characters exist if we never see them or stories are never told about them, perhaps because (like in Alesha’s case), they’re dead.

Bookmarking for future questions about X. 

Boris Groh is one of my favorite artists, mostly because of his works that feature LARGE skeletons just doing their thing

This is by far my most successful post on tumblr and I am really fucking glad because my main man Boris deserves to be recognized for his work. Even if its mostly getting passed around in the form of memes about cheese.

So cool!

Nothing against the asker, but this particular complaint has been really overblown. Ever since the very first Commander product, there have been decks where the two alternate Commanders have little to nothing to do with the stated theme.

The politics deck in C11 had Chaos and Land Destruction alternates.

The C13 grixis spellslinger deck had group slug and sacrifice matters alternates.

C14 elves had lands matter

C15 enchantment deck had Lifegain.

Many of C16′s partners had little to do with the main 4-color legend’s theme.

The C17 dragon tribal deck had a rattlesnake commander and a big mana/storm enabler in Ramos.

I’m not sure why C18 in particular has caused people to latch onto the notion that a deck’s alternate commanders have to play into the advertised theme, when historically this hasn’t really been the precedent.

I can only speak for myself, but:  When the decision was made to design the decks around themes rather than colours (tribes, last year), I expected that all of the potential commanders of the decks would be at least related to the theme of the deck in question. This could be as simple as “being of the correct tribe” last year, or “being an artefact” or “caring about enchantments” in some way this year (see below).  That is what changed. If, say, Nazahn had been a Kor instead of a Cat whilst the rest of the decks got 3 on-tribe Commanders, there would have been an uproar. The same principle applies here- Windgrace is awesome, but the spider commander has zero relevance to the theme whatsoever and Gyrus cares far more about your graveyard than your land count.* I don’t expect you to share my disappointment- I’m merely offering an answer to the question of “what’s different this time.” If you’re going to design the decks around themes, I expect themed Commanders (plural). C17 met this expectation, C18- in this case- did not.  *to pre-empt the reply: No, having X in the cost does not make Gyrus a lands-matter commander. He is just as effective if you ramp him out early using Sol Ring and Mana Vault as he is with a bunch of lands-in play. A commander has to reference or involve lands, specifically, in some way to count as a “lands-matter” legend for me, just as Brudiclad counts as an “artefacts-matter” legend because he makes them. Life from the Loam or Creeping Renaissance are lands-matter spells- Lavalanche is not. 

@astralarchivist that was an edited passage created to troll people. Aminatou has never appeared prior to this release

I will hold my hand up and also admit to being trolled by this. Well played, whoever you are!

@vorthosjay: I saw a reference to Aminatou somewhere in one of the Time Spiral novels- Teferi and Freyalise are talking about Karona? Sorry I can’t be more specific. 

EDIT: Time Spiral, Chapter 5: “I was travelling with Aminatou at the time”?

I always liked Ugin’s explanation of this:  “The Multiverse is boundless, but its contents are finite.” Infinite space, finite number of objects and things.  

Yep, I really needed this today. 

The Good Place is a remarkably moving piece of media, particularly for today, because it takes the inherently nihilistic viewpoint that humans are the ultimate torture for other humans and turns that completely on it’s head, showing growth and character change in every character with brilliant and subtle writing while at the same time completely reversing what it first posits and suggesting that humans are what drive other humans to become better, and our attitudes are a direct result of our situations in life that we can consciously effect and change. It suggests that growth is a decision, not that we happen upon it. This is important, philosophically and optimistically, especially because it does all this while telling No Exit it is inherently flawed in how it sees humans and is entertaining, staying relevant and popular in today’s fast paced and constantly changing media. In this essay I will–

@swmystery27

Accept no substitutes. 

This is also my interpretation. Going off the post-Scars timeline of it having been “about a generation” since the Mending (vaguely), that’s enough time for Lili to have aged naturally from whatever age she was immediately post-Mending to the age she is in The Fourth Pact.

WARNING- LONG POST OF STORYTELLING THOUGHTS:  I think this is quite informative to me, personally, in understanding my problems with the most recent changes to Ugin/Bolas’ history (and, to be perfectly honest, with the direction of Magic’s story as far back as Origins).

I’m not really fine with what you describe. Like, at all. And I understand this has been happening since Origins, and will continue to happen, and there are principled reasons behind the decision to do that (as in, it’s not “lol continuity doesn’t matter cry more” or whatever flak gets thrown at the creative team). I was not OK with it when Origins happened and I’m not OK with it now. It seriously affects my ability to enjoy the story, which is why I’ve never shut up about the Origins retcons and why the continuity/timeline errors in Dominaria bothered me. And if it’s going to continue happening then I seriously have to question whether I should keep following a story that will upset me- if only a little- every time it does so. I really enjoy the little details of worldbuilding and character, and I consider (in any medium) the statements of creators outside of their work to be canon to that work in regard to them. In my eyes, for instance, Dumbledore is canonically gay. So when Doug says, as he did back then, “Ugin is from Tarkir. We have consistently thought of Ugin’s homeworld as being Tarkir.” I consider that to be canon and for the most recent story to change that is therefore (in my eyes) a retcon. Now, retcons aren’t universally bad- I’ve read Kelly’s recent thread on this, and his arguments are reasonable. But they do carry a cost each time they happen, because they send a clear message that the creative team care more about being able to tell the story they want to tell than they do about making that story entirely consistent with what’s been established before it. And I’m realising that I’m not really capable of enjoying an ongoing story in which that is so obviously the case (and I mean no insult by that last part, it’s just clearly not new). 

Why not? Because when I read a story and invest in characters and the little details of those characters, in any work of fiction in any medium, I have to be able to trust that those events, and the important details of those events (more or less), will still have happened in the long-term, and not be glossed over or changed so that Wizards can tell the story they want to tell at any given time. And I can’t do that with Magic’ story right now (and perhaps never could). How am I supposed to care about whatever’s currently going on if this is not the case? How can I, say, allow myself to get swept up in bits of Chandra and Nissa’s romance or whoever the Raven Man turns out to be if I know that the details of those plots can be rewritten to better suit whatever Wizards wants to do next? I need assurances that these things will stay true in some stronger way than just “yeah, the broad strokes of this happened.”  That’s just not the case right now, and it’s a big part- along with the entire Gatewatch plotline, essentially- why I’m no longer enjoying the official story. I’m not saying any of this to rag on anyone’s work or imply it’s of inferior quality to how it used to be. If other people do, I’m genuinely glad for them.  I’m just getting the distinct sense it’s not for me anymore, and honestly that’s pretty hard to take.