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Episode 171: Nahiri with Seanan McGuire
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Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! This week we met with Seanan McGuire to discuss her recently released Nahiri comic and her wider work on Magic story. How did Nahiri spend her years before her long sleep? How does one deal with the loneliness of being an old walker? Join us as we delve into the Lithomancer. Spoiler alert - we discuss the contents of the comic in detail. Go read it first!
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Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor Message
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to a very special episode of Goblin Lore podcast. We have a wonderful guest lined up for you tonight, but first, I'd like to thank the Grinding Coffee Company. They're our sponsor, LBGG and Minority Run Coffee Company, providing all your caffeine needs. Thank you again for them sponsoring us all the time. I'm Taya, she, her, or they, them. You can find me at tayatransends on Twitter until I get booted off.
00:00:59
Speaker
I'm working on it. I'm going to get banned eventually. I'll see what finally does it, but I'm going to get there.
Guest Introduction: Seanan McGuire
00:01:07
Speaker
And joining us today, we don't have Hop, but Alex is here with us tonight. Hi, I'm Alex Newman, found on, well, I'd say found on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler, but I've taken Twitter off my phone, so I might not be found there in the future, but we'll see how that goes. And my pronouns are he, him.
00:01:25
Speaker
And I am very excited to introduce our guest tonight. She's been doing more and more Magic Story lately. Most recently, the Nahiri number one comic from Boom Studios. Welcome, Seanan McGuire. Thank you for joining the show.
Focus on the Nahiri Comic
00:01:42
Speaker
Thank you for having me. My pronouns are she, her, and my name is mostly native vowels.
00:01:49
Speaker
Yeah, and you're like super well known for being an amazing writer, Kat, and most recently Magic, and especially anything to do with Planeswalkers. Yes. I'm a very big Planeswalker fan. Yeah, you have a brand on Twitter for sure. I mean, everybody needs one. Yeah. And we're going to be talking a lot about the Nahiri comic tonight.
Potential Planeswalker Comic Series
00:02:13
Speaker
So spoiler warning, if you haven't read it yet, please go
00:02:17
Speaker
buy it wherever you buy comics now and read it and then come back to the podcast. Or maybe we'll hype it up enough that you actually decided to go buy it afterwards. Either way, buy it so we keep getting more of these wonderful comics. They've been fantastic. The Ajani one is also amazing. And I want to keep seeing more of these.
00:02:38
Speaker
Yeah, I guess we can get right into it. We always start with an opening question, and I'll pose it to you first, even though I have a feeling I know what the answer is here. But if you could pick a planeswalker to have their own comic book series, who would it be? I think you are correct about my answer. I would honestly give a comic book series to Ty Varkel out of Kaldheim. We've had very little story stuff with him thus far, but he is one of the
00:03:08
Speaker
best like truly good-hearted planeswalkers, he's a golden retriever with pecs. And watching him wander around the multiverse just encounter things would be delightful. I think that we have plenty of big smashy-smashy action and the world is going to end again. What we don't have enough of is Kaia taking Tyvar around to all the coffee houses on Ravnica so that he can experience Biscotti.
00:03:35
Speaker
That sounds amazing. You just did a Twitter thread on why everyone should love Tivar more. And that was such a fantastic thread. I do basically that same thread like every six weeks because it frustrates me that no one's getting on the Tivar train. Like the boy's just amazing. Plus he could put Teferi in the ground, no problem. And that's horrifying. Yeah, it is. It's just like Omnixalis was the one who could put Gideon in the ground.
00:04:04
Speaker
And yeah, as I like your point about him being able to take on Teferi, that just shows how awesome his power set is. And I would love to see more of his power set. There's so much you can do with transmutation. Oh yeah. For me, I would like a, I would like a redone. Chandra had her own comic book series, but it wasn't very good. Was it in the boom continuity?
00:04:27
Speaker
Not in the Boom continuity. It was done before Boom started doing Magic Comics. Okay, so the really nice thing about the comics continuity is that it is not the game continuity, which means right now the only comic continuity that is canon is the stuff that Boom has published. Everything else was in a different multiverse. Chandra is more than up for her own series again, or a mini series.
00:04:53
Speaker
I would absolutely love for her to get her own series. And I just want to see, you know, she has that. I mean, she's still a relatively young woman and just has that wide eye curiosity and wants to see what everything is and then see what it does when it's on fire.
Magic Community and Personal Connections
00:05:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:15
Speaker
I think for my answer, I'd go with Garak, and I'm kind of cheating here, and unfortunately Hobbs isn't here to kind of chuckle at the fact that I like to cheat when we do these answers, because I want to kind of take a story idea that I heard somebody pitch on Twitter, and unfortunately I can't remember who it was, but they wanted a story where it's centered sort of around Garak, but really it's about him being the best dad for the Kenrith twins while they're competing on the Battlebond world,
00:05:44
Speaker
And that just- I would totally be there for coach Garrick on Kylo. Yeah. So that's my- I love the Kenrith twins. My brother and I like to joke that if Magic the Gathering were actually a mush, the old multi-user shared hallucination text-based role-playing games, Will and Rowan would in fact have been our shared application.
00:06:09
Speaker
because they encapsulate very nicely who we both are as magic players.
Nahiri's Backstory and Character Influence
00:06:14
Speaker
I'm a chaotic red player. He is a blue player whose favorite archetype is Solitaire. And they're just built on the same kind of characters that we always play. They are fantastic. Seanan has a wonderful Will and Rowan Throat Kager commander deck that I have gotten the pleasure to play against several times, and I really do enjoy that deck.
00:06:34
Speaker
You say wonderful and then you kill my poor babies every time they try to come out to party. I didn't kill either of them last week. That is true. You just did four billion damage to the rest of the table. Yes, but that did no damage to any planeswalkers. That is true. You are forgiven.
00:06:52
Speaker
So yeah, so Nahiri came out, what was it, about three weeks ago now at this point? Four weeks? December 1st. December 1st, wow. Yeah, it's kind of flown by. I can't believe it's the 18th already. And this was a new, definitely a whole new take on a character that we've largely seen cast as a first, a side character, and then as a villain, mostly.
00:07:22
Speaker
And it was just kind of for background, what we've gotten in Nahiri's history is we got this mention of this character named the Lithomancer from Zendikara. We had no idea who it was for the longest time.
00:07:37
Speaker
Then they released Nahiri's card in the Commander 14 set that had all the planeswalkers, but we got no story for her then. We got a little story later about her waking up from her sleep to take care of a small Eldrazi breakout on Zendikar sometime in the path. And then she really became central to the story in the Shadows Over Innistrad block where she was absolutely cast as the villain of the story.
00:08:05
Speaker
And then she got recast as largely the antagonist in the Zendikar Rising one. Clearly the person who was supposed to be opposing the well-intended Nissa, I see whose intentions you believe there, but Nahiri did get a little murdery in
Themes in the Nahiri Comic
00:08:29
Speaker
hers. And that was one thing I thought was really interesting is that this comic takes Nahiri in a completely different direction
00:08:36
Speaker
and does a lot to humanize her that we hadn't seen before. And this is, okay, my cat is currently standing on my keyboard. This is making it harder. What was so compelling about Nahiri to you that made you want to write an entire comic book about her?
00:08:59
Speaker
Uh, well, I, I love her. Um, I mean, I think that kind of shows through, but I love her in part because she is an absolute illustration of what cycles of abuse do to people. If you look at her canonical backstory without me inserting any of the things that I think should be there. She's look at her first card. She's what max 19.
00:09:23
Speaker
when her spark ignites because she is an old walker. So as soon as she sparked, she stopped aging, which means that Soren picked up a baby, probably on her first planes walk, if not her act, you know, if not one of those first couple, with no one to teach her what it is to be a planes walker, no one to teach her what she is now.
00:09:43
Speaker
or that she's not going to age and go through these normal life cycles like everyone else on Zendikar.
Challenges of Comic Writing and Collaboration
00:09:49
Speaker
And he teaches her from there. He teaches her everything she knows about being a planeswalker and that her primary purpose is to protect her plane. That's your only job is keep your plane safe. And then he convinces a baby.
00:10:04
Speaker
that he should be allowed to imprison the ancient evil in a can on Zendikar, leaves the Eldrazi there and leaves her there, unaging, trapped in a community that doesn't know what a planeswalker is with nowhere to go and no one to talk to for hundreds of years. If you look at her canonical timeline, it is straight up the story of a teenage girl who gets picked up by an older man and abused, and then locked in a closet while everything she's ever known dies.
00:10:34
Speaker
Yeah, it really is pretty awful. You know, it's, I feel like I'm going to be, it's like nothing about her backstory excuses her trying to wipe out the Queen of Innistrad, but, you know, there's a lot there about her that shows, you know, the
00:10:57
Speaker
She wouldn't have had a chance to develop is like a normal human would have yeah My big catchphrase when dealing with Nahiri in any context is cool motive still murder You know, she did terrible things and she doesn't deserve to just be forgiven for them because she was hurt and
00:11:15
Speaker
but she was very badly hurt by someone that has mostly gotten a pass for it, quite honestly. You know, Soren still gets to be the sexy face of Innistrad, while Nahiri just gets to be a monster again. Yeah, and I do think that that lack of story and just the
00:11:39
Speaker
space around her does make her a fascinating character to build more out to you. There's a lot of room to fill in those gaps. So when I asked if I could do an Ahiri comic for the follow up to Ajani,
00:11:57
Speaker
because they said I could do another planeswalker and had me pitch the ones that I might want to do and of course Tyvar was on the list because have you met me. But when they said I could do Nahiri, they were really interested in seeing something that went into her time before the Hela Vault. And when you look at her canon timeline, the tragedy of Nahiri is that there is nothing canonical before the Hela Vault.
00:12:24
Speaker
She sparks, Sorin trains her, Sorin convinces her to help him fight the Eldrazi. The Eldrazi are imprisoned on Innistrad. She hangs out awake for two, three hundred years, watches everyone she's ever known or loved get old and die, and then goes to sleep. And she sleeps until Obnixola starts messing with stuff and the Eldrazi start to stir.
00:12:48
Speaker
Nahiri doesn't get to have a life. She never has an existence other than this waiting game that Soren has put her into. So she's never learned emotional regulation. She never learned to play nicely with the other children. What she learned was that being a planeswalker is this brutal thing where you beat the crap out of people and then you lock them and stuff. So she really just brought Soren back the lessons that he taught her.
00:13:20
Speaker
Yeah, which you just answered my next question was whether you pitched Nahiri or they asked you to do Nahiri. So I think it was a good choice on the character. There's so many planeswalkers
Nahiri's Perspective on Immortality
00:13:34
Speaker
that have little to no story that I think that she was a very good choice to write this comic around. And the comic is beautiful and it stretches across multiple planes.
00:13:47
Speaker
I made my poor artist go through like 10 planes in two pages. I thought I was going to get shanked in a parking lot. I did have a question about the planes choices actually. Did you choose those planes or was that more of a collaboration between you and some folks from Wizards? I chose all the planes that we went to. Basically based on does that plane have a truly iconic mountain?
00:14:16
Speaker
We did get bounced off of one plane that I had wanted to go to, and I don't remember the name of it now, but it turns out that it didn't exist when I wanted to have Nahiri swinging through. Okay, that's a good reason not to go there. I can see why Mercadia made the list now if Unique Mountains was one of the criteria for visiting the plane. Yeah, there are no hints buried in the planes that Nahiri goes through. It was just in story she is trying to find
00:14:46
Speaker
Mountains that she can bring pieces of back to the mountain. She is friends with So that the mountain can learn from those other mountains And I needed the best iconic mountains. We've created over 30 years of a card game So
00:15:01
Speaker
And that kind of gets to the central story of this comic. And it really is, all in all, it's kind of about making a first friend and kind of understanding what friends are and just change in general, you know, and lack of change. So putting a, you know, an old walker, a mortal walker, contrasting that with the way a mountain would experience age was a really interesting take on the whole concept.
00:15:32
Speaker
Yeah, I just needed to find something that would live as long as she did that wasn't another planeswalker because you're working in this space where you have to avoid colliding with anything established. And there were so few available old walkers that are as old as she is. And the first visit to the mountain in this book predates like even the non walkers on Dominaria like Joda by thousands of years.
00:15:58
Speaker
It predates Dominaria to a large degree. The plane is there, but none of the civilizations that we would identify as Dominarian are there yet. Yeah, this takes place between the Age of the Thrawn and the Brothers' War Ref somewhere in that several thousand year gap.
00:16:20
Speaker
Which I'm actually I was excited to get some more story in that gap period too because there's there's a lot of space there that can be filled in I Honestly liked getting to go to Keld before it was Keld because I've always liked that region Yeah, yeah, I did and just kind of noticing that in the first few pages even you
00:16:44
Speaker
It gets to that concept of things changing is that you have Nahiri not yet the lithomancer, Ghirdra already the doom of the depths, and then the mountain not yet cowed. And that kind of that pattern follows through early in the story. Yeah, that's a great way to kind of frame that conversation about change.
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah. Also, I love that this is a story. I mean, there's obviously conflicts that happen as backdrop or that are in the thing. But I love that this is a story being told that isn't just people throwing spells at each other sort of thing, which is a lot of what the card game magic is itself. And so it's nice to have stories that are building the characters outside of those tense, those smaller moments. I was always an X-Men fan.
00:17:37
Speaker
And the reason that I was an X-Men fan was because they played baseball. There were all these other superhero comics, but they never got to just play baseball or have a slumber party. You didn't have the feeling that they knew and liked each other. And I want to know that the Planeswalkers, at least within certain axes, know and like each other.
00:17:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of the story is bigger than the pages that it's contained on the 30 minute episode of the show or whatever the particular medium is. Yeah, that feeling of world comes from stuff other than just the fights. Yeah, and the worlds in this are like, you visit a lot of planes and they are very visually distinct. Yes.
00:18:22
Speaker
The idea is that, you know, Nahiri becomes friends with this mountain and starts bringing her friend bits of other planes to experience because the mountain cannot leave. And, you know, the building of communities and friendships is largely why I'm still interested in magic at all.
Making Nahiri Relatable
00:18:48
Speaker
So that aspect of it, I've made most of my good friends through magic, a large percentage of them. And it's just finding that thing that brings people together, even if it's just sharing rocks is kind of that was really touching to me in this story. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, for me, the important thing was you can watch the mountain teach her what consent is.
00:19:15
Speaker
Yes. Yes. Because that has never happened with Mihiri. Again, she was a baby. Like, it feels weird to be calling a 19 year old a baby, but I have asked people to look at her first card and tell me how old they think that girl is. And the guesses come between 16 and 19. So I'm erring on the side of legality to have a little bit of sympathy for Soren. But you know, she was a teenager. How many of us were that good at consent when we were teenagers?
00:19:46
Speaker
Oh, I know. I'm definitely not. And, you know, how many people, how many teenagers giving God-like powers are going to have any idea what to do with them? Exactly. So I really wanted to show something that Nahiri would care about the opinion of. You know, here's the only mountain she's ever found that will actually talk to her, that will interact with her. She wants that mountain to like her. So when the mountain starts saying friends ask,
00:20:13
Speaker
and it's not okay to do things without people's permission, she's actually gonna listen. Yeah, that was really key. And it kind of goes into my next question is, how do you approach taking a character largely portrayed as a villain and make them likable? It helps if you like them.
00:20:38
Speaker
It was strongly recommended that I avoid Soren Markov as much as possible because I'm not sure I could write Soren sympathetically. But if you like a character, it doesn't matter if they're a bad guy or a good guy, you're going to find the motivations they speak to. With Mihiri, a lot of the key is that when I'm dealing with the terrible things that she's done, that we know she's done, I have to keep track of the still murder part.
00:21:05
Speaker
Like I'm not trying to make you forgive her for the things that she actually did that were bad. Um, if you've read my Ajani comic, which was also by boom, there is a sequence with Nahiri who shows up on Innistrad. And, uh, Arlin is pretty much just down to kill her immediately. Like Arlin is not here to listen to Nahiri's excuses. Nor should she be. What Nahiri did to her is not necessarily ever forgivable.
00:21:34
Speaker
And that is something I would love to explore. I would love to do a story or a comic where Nahiri and Arlen have to work together for some reason, because Nahiri is Arlen's soren in a way. She didn't have nearly as much time to torment and mess her up, but she is the older planeswalker who instead of being a role model became a force for destruction. Yeah.
00:22:03
Speaker
Alex is largely tuned out of current story due to how he feels about Phyrexians in general, but there is a lot of opportunity coming forward, I think, where we might see more of those interactions in the canon story. Are we not a Phyrexia fan?
00:22:20
Speaker
Well, the number of times I've explained this, you'd think I'd have a better way of explaining it. But ultimately, for me, there's something about the story type, the archetype of basically what happened to Tamio and I know others that is really, viscerally repellent to me. I get a very strong negative reaction that is not comfortable to feel.
00:22:45
Speaker
And I have mostly checked out of the story and then also there's the whole sort of Damocles thing hanging over the rest of the story of this. And I want to be very clear when I talk about this too that I'm not saying it's bad. Obviously the story has done its job. I'd gotten a reaction out of me and people are engaging with it. I'm so glad that people are engaging with it, but I just can't right now.
00:23:10
Speaker
That is completely reasonable. I mean, to be quite honest, I am not a big fan of Phyrexia either. I don't like mutative body horror that doesn't involve an opt-in on the part of the characters experiencing it.
00:23:26
Speaker
You know, Seth Brundle becoming a fly because he decided to get drunk and use his telepod. That's a hubristic opt-in. I touched a rock and now I have 17 arms and I'm eating my baby is not an opt-in. It's just unpleasant. Like, I don't want infectious space Nazis, but... Yeah. Yeah. And it's like the inversion of people's wills. Yeah. Is what really, I think is what really bothers me the most.
00:23:54
Speaker
So we'll see. I have unfortunately gotten more of the story than I've meant to, but in the next, you know, however long as things start to progress and it's things start to push back, I'm going to go through and catch up at some point. But I have one story starts on January 12th. Okay. That's good to know. Um, and then we've got March of the machines after, which is going to be.
00:24:21
Speaker
If we still did the block format, this would actually be a block. Phyrexia all will be one, March of the Machines and March of the Machines Evelogue would be the three-set block. And then they started announcing stuff after that, and it's on planes like Eldraine and Ixalan, and the logos are not Phyrexian, so I think we still have some hope. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for me, weird.
00:24:50
Speaker
more callous, capitalistic looking at it, the story has to get back to a point at some point where they can continue to move forward. I so I'm not concerned about that. But yeah, so the last couple of years, I was really engaging, like I was really they're getting back to stories that I could really engage with and stuff. And then this happened. It's like, well, people who are talented are working on stories that people like, but this is a story I can't deal with. So
00:25:20
Speaker
Yeah, which is great that we get these side stories, even if they're not canon, we get something completely out there.
00:25:27
Speaker
You know, the Ajani comic was a very refreshing when it came out. Mm hmm. The reason I love hearing comic as much is like this is some great magic story that I can engage with right now. No phyrexia in the comics right now. The Ajani comic, they did not tell me that they would be releasing with cinematic revealing that Ajani had been phyrexianized on the same day the comic came out. And that that was great. Yeah, that was.
00:25:57
Speaker
Um, and it's kind of sorry that I started this detour. It's just bringing up the, like, Naharian Arling having to getting along is kind of just a sort of on topic thing that, um,
00:26:12
Speaker
Yeah, I kind of don't want to see them getting along because I push back very enthusiastically. Well, enthusiastic is probably the wrong word, but very firmly against the idea of Soren and Nahiri making amends. I don't think that what he did can be forgiven. And I don't think that what she did can be forgiven. Yeah, I would I would not like to see that. I am not a big fan of redemption arcs in general.
00:26:42
Speaker
I just have a serious issue in a lot of cases of that we were just trying to kill each other, but now we're going to be best friends trope unless it involves lesbians and swords, but that's a whole different topic. I can see that.
00:27:04
Speaker
I don't know where I'm at exactly on redemption arcs, but I do know, I like the idea that someone who's done something horrible now has to live with that and start to move forward from that. Yeah, and that's why I really like what they've done with Liliana in that record. They have not redeemed Liliana, but she is living with the outcome of what has happened. Yes.
00:27:27
Speaker
that I'm much better on. So the next question is, how does your writing process change when writing for a visual medium in collaboration with artists compared to writing your own stories that are just text? So the thing I really had to learn to start doing comics, like the hard part, was that not every panel actually matters as much as you think it does.
00:27:56
Speaker
So if you're going to describe something, like really describe it, you have to focus on the things that actually matter. You can't just go, this is the desk and here are the 90 things on the desk. That is unfair to your artist. You have to go, here is the desk. There is a pin shaped like a cat on the desk. This is going to be important in three panels.
00:28:22
Speaker
And so you have to basically strip out your visual clutter in a big way. You know, big chunks of this comic are Nahiri having a conversation with a mountain. This is not the most visually exciting thing anyone has ever done and finding ways to vary the angle and change the descriptive angle so that the artist would have new things to do and wouldn't just be doing talking heads in a brick wall was
00:28:51
Speaker
really a fascinating challenge. But also sometimes your artist will not read your intent correctly. And unfortunately, because art takes longer than text in almost all cases, it's very unlikely that you'll get the chance to have that to have that fixed or amended. There is exactly one panel in the whole comic that was not drawn according to the script.
00:29:18
Speaker
And that is, as you get toward the end of the book, you will find that there's a point where Teferi has to explain the mending to Nahiri. And that is because I went back over absolutely everything that had been written involving Nahiri after she came out of the halavald. No one ever explained to her. There is no point, even during War for the Spark, where somebody's like, hey, Nahiri,
00:29:44
Speaker
Maybe you should know this is gonna happen now. No, they're just like, nope, it's fine. She'll be fine. She doesn't need to know. So she has no idea what the mending is. And when Teferi's like, the mending did this thing, and she goes, the what? There was supposed to be a panel of just Teferi's face with this oh crap expression as he realizes that he is locked in a mountain with a lethal answer and is about to tell her that her power has been permanently reduced.
00:30:14
Speaker
And the artist thought that it was just a way to move the line across. And so drew Nahiri again, thinking that it was no big deal. And that actually made me really sad because I wanted to see Porter Ferry's, oh, crap face. Yeah, that would have been that would have been great. I can see the expression right now, which is that that grandfatherly face, you just know, how do I explain this? And this is a
00:30:44
Speaker
tie into just how the story wraps up. I didn't mean to bring it to this place, but the, Teferi explains it to her and she's actually, she's, you know, a lot of the walkers said, oh, we used to be gods once, but she was excited for this change because it meant she could change again. It means she gets to get old.
00:31:08
Speaker
which I think that in perfect opposition to Liliana, someone who has been on her plane for this long and watched her entire empire fall, watched everyone she's ever known or loved get old and die, the idea that she would get to do the same thing is gonna be really exciting. Yeah.
00:31:28
Speaker
And this is, it's just hit me now as we're talking about it, but this is a great sort of different framing of the whole immortality conversation that happens in fiction a lot, usually ironically around vampires. But like by comparing, like Nahiri, no, her closest peer is this mountain. It kind of helps you understand this is a very different thing that most people don't have to deal with that she's now having to reckon with.
00:31:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's just the end of the story in general and bringing it back to present day. Keld was fantastic. Yes. I really loved how you wrapped that. I love seeing Rada in the comics. She's one of my favorite planesbound characters. You know, her showing up and becoming buddy buddy with Nahiri is something I want to see more of. I just kind of love buff, gray skinned girls chilling with each other.
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah. And Rada is definitely buff. A lot of people don't like her body style, but I am all there for it. I don't understand why you wouldn't. She looks fantastic. Also, Rada doesn't care what you think about her body style, so there's also that. Yeah. Your skull will crush no matter what.
00:32:54
Speaker
But that was actually part of how we settled on Dominaria was because the mountain in Keld went through that transformation already in the canon. And especially when writing about villainous characters or characters that have usually been presented in a villainous way, it's very important to try to find as much already written in the canon as possible.
00:33:16
Speaker
because that way you have something to kind of back up your thesis a little bit. I'm saying Nahiri is not innately a complete monster. Well, clearly I'm just biased. No, look, here are these other six things that support the idea that maybe Nahiri was not born eating puppies. Yeah. It's...
00:33:40
Speaker
She got there through a long process of being terribly traumatized repeatedly and then being tossed in a timeless void of, you know, with a bunch of demons for 1,100 years. Yeah. And finding out that the dude who did a lot of the things that she has valid reason to be mad about went home and made an angelic OC who looks like their kid. Like, Nahiri has some real good reasons to be in a real bad mood. Yeah.
00:34:09
Speaker
And I do hope we get to see her continue to fight with Soren with a little less collateral damage in the future. But it is one of the rivalries in magic that I am most excited to see continue. That would be nice. Yeah. So
00:34:35
Speaker
You know, one of the things we do in this podcast, we talk about the story. We also talk about the real life. And there was a lot in this comic that we can bring into real life. And I think one of the first things is just, you know, how do you deal with, you know, the trauma that you have when you have a lack of friends or a lack of support network and you're going through these big problems and, um,
00:35:00
Speaker
I think you nailed this feeling with Nahiri is she's going through all these things, but doesn't have anyone to really talk to about it until she meets the mountain. And, you know, don't use your friends for therapy. But in her case, you know, I think the mountain was just there to listen to her. And that's what she needed a lot of at the time.
00:35:22
Speaker
And we didn't have the page count for it necessarily, but Nahiri is also listening to the mountain. The mountain is just as lonely as she is. It is. It's just as lonely. And none of the other mountains she ever finds talk back to her the way this one does. And it's like a unique existence in the multiverse.
00:35:46
Speaker
So yeah, they become each other's first friends and have a lot to talk about. I felt sad for the mountain when Nahiri was gone for 6,000 years when she was occupied and imprisoned. You did a really good job of making me feel sad for a mountain. Thank you.
00:36:09
Speaker
I felt so terrible for it when it became very clear, as I'm running these timelines, that because of the timing on the Helavolt, she wouldn't have been able to be there anyway because Dominario was cut off after the Sylex explosion for so long. So even if she had been able to be pounding her fists against the gate, she couldn't have gotten onto the plane as the eruption was coming.
00:36:35
Speaker
Yeah. There is no timeline where they could have discussed that. But for the mountain, it must have been so scared. Yeah. And also feeling like it was letting Nahiri down because she had been gone for a long time before and came back. And it had promised her that it would still be there. Yeah. And I loved how you left a message with the Keldins for her. Thank you. Yeah, that provides some kind of closure.
00:37:06
Speaker
It really is how do people handle this loneliness and what it takes and how to deal with this. And I can say from prior to transitioning, I was kind of in a continual state of loneliness. I didn't have any friends. I didn't have a lot going on in my life. And that's changed significantly in the last few years. And I'm thankful for that.
00:37:35
Speaker
You know, it's kind of the way I put it in the show notes is, you know, find your mountain. Yeah. And speaking to my own, my own experiences, I have social anxiety and, and about 10 years ago or so, I was undiagnosed at the time and I had a panic attack and then went started to see a therapist and started to work through things and really get my diagnosis and start to realize, well, this was, uh,
00:38:02
Speaker
Fortunate timing for me because it was when Gatecrash came out and I loved the original Ravnica block. So not really thinking that this is what I was doing, I went back to magic. I started playing at a local store, and I learned very quickly that this was a good environment for me to learn how to talk to people again. Because there wasn't any pressure in the conversations. I could sit down, play a game with someone, and if I wasn't in a mood where I could sit and talk, I could just say, good game, we're done, I leave, and it's fine.
00:38:30
Speaker
And so that's where the magic community, that's kind of where I became a part of the magic community. And that became so important for me, kind of my mountain in that way, you know, led to finding other friends, led to this podcast eventually, finding friends through some local friends and going to Grand Prix's and stuff. And it's been a big part, magic is a big part of my life now, even if I don't play very often. That kind of all came from going to Friday Night Magic, because I wanted to see what was going on with Ravnica.
00:39:00
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, magic has been that for I think a lot of people. It doesn't matter if you're good at it or whatever. It gives you a shared community and it gives you a language in common, which is so important. Yeah, that's definitely true for me.
00:39:18
Speaker
I am very thankful that I get to play with Sean on a regular basis and the rest of our local play group. Is there just a fun group of people to be around and a fun group of people to get killed by on a regular basis? You know, get my face eaten by Eldrazi. You are helping me become a less terrible player.
00:39:41
Speaker
Yeah, I try. I got to remind the blue player to keep their blue mana open. I got out for a long time. I'm not natively a blue player either, so I try to bring my lessons to you. But I mean, I got out of magic just the whole thing. Long time.
00:40:05
Speaker
And then they asked if I wanted to write for it and then my cards became tax deductible and oh dear God I'm so glad you're here writing for the story though. I can't wait to see what's in the future. It's been an absolute pleasure I'm really having a truly wonderful time Yeah
00:40:28
Speaker
Thank you for adding to this world that we really love and I look forward to what's coming in the future. Thank you for trusting me. I mean, the biggest problem with doing any IP work isn't the licensors, though sometimes I want to hit people with sticks. And it isn't the people that aren't going to like whatever you do because they'll never like what you do. It's the people who really, really care.
00:40:54
Speaker
and the fact that those people are trusting me and you're trusting Kira and you're trusting this whole new generation of magic writers to play with things that are incredibly important to you and that matter to you so much more than we do as people, it really does mean a huge amount to us, to like all of us. When I got to write for Liliana in Dominaria,
00:41:20
Speaker
The whole time I was doing it, I was just thinking, well, if I get this wrong, Kira's going to kill me with a hammer. You nailed it, though. You brought a 10-year plus fan theory into the canon in a way that really everybody loved, I think. I didn't see any real negative reaction to that story. And I thought it was great.
00:41:46
Speaker
The idea of burying the ring deeper and giving her some power over the situation was... I just had a great time asking them about different ways that I could kill Phyrexians. They're just like, can you do what to them? We never said you couldn't, so sure you can rot Phyrexians to death. Are you okay?
00:42:17
Speaker
Oh, I yeah, it's it's great. Thank you for being part of the story. Alex, do you have anything you want to add before we go to closing thoughts here? No, that covers the questions I had. We'd love to have you back in the future to discuss
00:42:38
Speaker
some of your other story work. Hopefully we'll have some more coming up and then just wider. You're very open about talking about mental health issues and your life on your Twitter. And we would love to talk to you more in the future. I would be more than happy to.
00:42:54
Speaker
Thank you, Sean. Is there anything you want to plug? I know you always have a new book coming out. You're so prolific. My next book comes out in January. And that is Lost in the Moment and Found. And that is the next of the Wayward Children books, which is my series of novellas.
00:43:12
Speaker
about children that have gone through strange portals or fallen through doors and gone to their own perfectly tailored fantasy lands. And then Lost in the Moment and Found is the first of those to come with a content warning, and it's not a joke. So please, if you decide to pick up the book, which I would really like because that is how I feed my cats and buy more magic cards, do read the content warning at the start of the book first. I don't want to hurt you or make you mad at me.
00:43:44
Speaker
Thank you. We appreciate this so much. And that's our show for today.
00:44:09
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood gobsugs, our link tree can be found on our Twitter account and in the description of today's show. This has everything from various discount codes to the link from our Patreon. The music for today's show was by Wintergotten, who can be found at vintergotten at bandcamp.com. The art was done by Steven Raff Hale, who can be found at Steve Ruffle on Twitter. Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing Vorthos content.
00:44:36
Speaker
Check them out on Twitter at Hipsters MTG or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.