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Episode 94: Karn in the Time of Cholera (Pt 2ish?)
103 Plays4 years ago
Hello Podwalkers,
Welcome back to the Goblin Lore Podcast! For today's episode Alex and Hobbes were joined by the now officially sometimes hose of the cast Chase (aka ManaCurves) to discuss what Depression using the story of Karn as the jumping off point. This is part 2 of our discussion on this topic though it has been 9 episodes since part 1! There is a joke among the cast that time has no meaning and we had to re-record a large chunk of what was done previously as the prior recording had all sorts of audio issues. Today focuses a lot more on the real world implications and needed a fair amount of time devoted to it. So enjoy!
Again we would like to state that Black Lives Matter (with a link to where you can offer support both monetary and not).
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As promised, we plan to keep these Mental Health Links available moving forward too. For general Mental Health the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has great resources for people struggling with mental health concerns as well as their families. We also want to draw attention to this article on stigma from NAMI's site.
If you’re thinking about suicide or just need someone to talk to right now, you can get support from any of the resources below.
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
- Veteran's can Press 1 at anytime to be taken to the Veteran's Line
- Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741-741
- International suicide hotlines: A comprehensive resource list for people outside the US.
- IMAlive: Click Chat Now to access a live online network of volunteers through instant messaging.
- TrevorLifeline, TrevorChat, and TrevorText (LGBTQ+ crisis support): 1-866-488-7386, or text “Trevor” to 1-202-304-1200
- Trans Lifeline (US): (877) 565-8860
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You can find the hosts on Twitter: Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at @Mel_Chronicler. Send questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to @GoblinLorePod on Twitter or GoblinLorePodcast@gmail.com.
Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle).
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast, and a part of their growing Vorthos content – as well as Magic content of all kinds. Check them out at hipstersofthecoast.com.
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Theme
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. Today, we are getting back to an episode that we had to stop halfway through due to storms, and then due to life, COVID and other various factors have been trying for a while
Chase's Connection to Karn
00:00:50
Speaker
to get back to. So we are going to talk about Karn, we're going to talk about depression, and we are joined by the wonderful Chase. Would you like to introduce yourself?
00:00:58
Speaker
Hi, I'm Chase, also known as Manicurves. I have a fascination with Karn that literally started in college. When I was inebriated one night and I told my boyfriend at the time to tell me the history of magic, he told me everything and a lot about Karn. The next day I woke up hungover with my wallpaper on my computer of Karn.
00:01:23
Speaker
So, um, really have a strong story. I just love that story. I love that story too because I woke up and I was just like, what? And my boyfriend was like, you were really into the lore the other night. I'm just glad that is the direction you go and it didn't go to like, you got really obsessed with Urza. No, I just really, I don't know. There was just something really cool about a big metal man who felt things.
Challenges in Recording
00:01:49
Speaker
I just really liked it. If you really think about it, and this is another idea for video I might do in the future. The Wizard of Oz, but have it relate and parallel to Magic the Gathering. Karn is obviously the Tin Man.
00:02:08
Speaker
That's all I have, but it's a work in progress. Well, nor in the, nor in the wary is obviously the cowardly lion. I mean, I was going to say the wizard has to be ursa because he just has a random garbage in a box that he gives you. I have a heart. I have a kidney. I have a lung. I got the ability to send you home. Yeah, so we have nor in the wary is the cowardly lion. I mean, we're only really missing from the main players. Somebody without a brain.
00:02:39
Speaker
Gideon? That was just me naming something randomly. I really haven't dug deep into Gideon's lore. I'm sorry. Gideon the himbo? I just really think that like, honestly, the Kowloo Lion would be a Johnny, and he didn't get courage until he got Elspeth's cape.
00:03:00
Speaker
Okay. That's fine. You that that's cute. I like it. Thank you. Well, someone had to die for it to happen. He got that courage.
Podcast's Mission: Magic and Mental Health
00:03:12
Speaker
No, I guess I should. We should introduce ourselves too. Yeah. Alex Newman, found on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler. And I am Hobbs Q pronouns he him and I can be found on Twitter at Hobbs Q.
00:03:28
Speaker
And we started this episode and we had some weird recording issues.
00:03:34
Speaker
We sound very slowed down times and then we got interrupted by a tornado warning and Alex at one point was kind of joking that we don't even know this is supposed to be part two but for it feels like it could be part three or four because we've tried to record this has been like a cursed episode in some ways to return to this topic and we basically had just gotten through the lore of
00:03:59
Speaker
Carne and starting to talk about the main topic of depression. Something that we really wanted to kind of hit on because there were some great story beats that Alex found when it came to Carne.
00:04:10
Speaker
Yeah, and that's what we'd like to do with the show. We like to talk about story and lore and fit characters to other characters and other properties.
Karn's Story and Depression
00:04:18
Speaker
That's all a lot of fun, but we also want to try to bring stuff to the real world's topics, to bring stuff to mental health and kind of help make those topics more relatable and just to have conversation around some of these topics that we just don't talk about in society enough.
00:04:33
Speaker
So in that regard, because we covered the story pretty heavily in the last episode, we're going to just pare this down to two particular story beats that I found that specifically talk about Carne being depressed.
00:04:49
Speaker
So I think we're going to start with the first one. We're going to kind of talk about that, and then we'll get to the second one and then continue to kind of stir that into the topic here. So Karn was, Erza created Karn for various Erza-related reasons. Erza's the worst. We'll talk about that more in the last episode.
00:05:13
Speaker
Ultimately, the plan that Urza had didn't work out for Karn, so he kind of just left him kicking around while he was working on his academy, Urza's Academy, to do research and do different things.
00:05:26
Speaker
Well, at the Academy, Karn became good friends with Joyra. Eventually, she left and went back to the Mana Rig in Shiv. Now, Karn having nothing to do and no friends, his mental health got really bad. Baron, who was the head of the Academy, showed some concern and went to Urza and said, you have to do something. He's in a bad place.
00:05:51
Speaker
Urza's solution, because Urza is the worst, was to put a cap on Karn's memories so that he can only remember 20 years of his life. And here's a quote that I got straight from the wiki that, there was only one thing that Karn never wished to forget. Every night he would hold a picture of Joyra and repeat the mantra, Joyra is my friend.
00:06:15
Speaker
I have another note too in our notes that she was the one who gave him his name because apparently Ursa couldn't be bothered. It wasn't worth his time. No, and the final bullet point there is, of course, Ursa is terrible. Yeah. We talked about this last time with the idea that he had a friend, and that was the only thing that he really wanted to hold on to.
00:06:38
Speaker
after she leaves in order to kind of circumvent this, Urza's suggestion is to kind of just almost like eternal sunshine of the spotless mind him and just try to like excise this, like kind of keep him from being able to form memories, to be able to kind of—it wasn't a matter of like dealing with the loss or speaking of the loss. It was like, no, just forget it.
The Depths of Karn's Isolation
00:07:01
Speaker
except carne like can't do that and so he like sadly like every night is just like chanting to himself basically a mantra about not forgetting a friend i was like that's some prolonged silence my guy
00:07:23
Speaker
That one, that just makes me really upset. Do you want to go to the other one? Or do we have more that we want to talk about depression? Well, no, we might come back to it. But yeah, the other one is the bigger one, I think. Yeah, the other one was much, much later after the invasion. And Karn is a planeswalker. He creates his own plane, Argentum.
00:07:49
Speaker
And there he sent out probes to many worlds to just see what was going on in the multiverse. And at this point, Karn has once again kind of lost everyone he knows. Gerard and the other, you know, has died. Gerard died during the invasion. And this may have been long enough after the invasion itself that most of the other folk that Karn knew were dead at that point too, being mortals.
00:08:14
Speaker
Him being both silver and a planeswalker, he wasn't. So he is on his own world by himself, sends out these probes to go to see what's going on in the multiverse. And then here's another quote. Looking out upon the worlds, he found nothing but greed and death, blind as he was to the beauty of the worlds he found. Once again, Karn fell into depression and stagnated upon his plane.
00:08:43
Speaker
Yeah, so this is kind of where I think we had left off, was talking about this idea that in this situation, Karna's literally unable to even see beauty, but we also talked about this idea that he's just kind of mindlessly sending out these drones, or these probes.
00:09:01
Speaker
There's no real indication that he is even invested in it. It's more, it's something to kind of try to do to pass the time. And it's
Parallels Between Karn and Depression Symptoms
00:09:11
Speaker
not even serving that purpose because it's doing nothing to pull him out of this depression. He can't see beauty when he's sending out probes to other worlds. If you hear a purring, that's my cat, but I also want to make a comment. She's really liking my microphone. But I really think that kind of like,
00:09:31
Speaker
I really like how it says that he focused on the negatives rather than looking at the beauty. And I think that also really ties in heavily to that depression. It's that he's self-isolating. He is looking at these vast majority of this beautiful thing, and yet all he can seem to do is focus on the negative. And that's something that I think a lot of us can
00:09:57
Speaker
see within ourselves that there are many times where we see this beauty around us and instead we tend to just sort of tunnel vision on, you know, the negativity. And I think that's what Karn is doing and I think it's kind of interesting to find that parallel there.
00:10:14
Speaker
Yeah, it'd be kind of like thinking of this idea, you know, we've talked about cognitive distortions on the show in the past. So we talked about kind of some of the common ones being this idea that you disqualify the positive or you kind of have that tunnel vision where everything gets affected by one bad thing. So, you know, if somebody we, you know, we get five comments on the show and one of them even has a hint of negative negativity, you know,
00:10:41
Speaker
a depressive brain is going to be more likely to remember the one instead of the four. And that is actually there's research into kind of how we're able, you're able to process that information better. If you're more prone to depression, you can process that negative information and you're not even aware of the positive things that are out there. Even if people remind you of them, it's not like you're going to just believe them.
00:11:06
Speaker
And I like what you said too, Chase, talking about the isolation, because what actually brought Carne out of that depressive episode was meeting Corona.
00:11:19
Speaker
I think that'd be how you pronounce it. Um, there's a whole thing with the story of, of Corona in that, that I don't really want to go into, but that, that meeting helped pull him out of this because now he had someone to talk to. And there were some issues caused by one of the probes that he had sent out. So I think he had felt some responsibility there and that gave him something to go do and to help and to take care of.
00:11:45
Speaker
Yeah, he had to get up. I mean, he had to he actually had to physically leave where he was at. You know, we kind of talk about this idea of, you know, behavioral activation. He had to physically just do anything at all to kind of get himself kind of the opposite action where he wanted to just continue to isolate. But once he had a purpose or something to kind of drag him, he starts making those those steps. Now, unfortunately, what that means is he leaves our gentum kind of
00:12:14
Speaker
unguarded, alone, a plane that he created. But well, let's talk about depression. And for the purpose of this, we really want to talk about kind of this idea of what major depressive disorder is. So not just feeling blue or having some bad days or even having a depressed mood, it really is
00:12:40
Speaker
a diagnostic category within the DSM, major depressive disorder. And just like with everything that we talk about on the show, you know, the purpose of this is we're not trying to help people diagnose, it is to just be informative, to realize that a real diagnosis needs to be made by somebody who has the chance to sit down and actually look at your history and pull these things together. Because a lot of this is stuff that
00:13:06
Speaker
is probably going to resonate with people. And it's not a matter of having it once or twice. It's a matter of this pattern or this cluster. And so we just always want to kind of remind people that as we're looking at this stuff, if you really do, you're thinking that you might, there might be something more to this or something going
Understanding Depression Beyond Sadness
00:13:22
Speaker
on. Please, please, please seek out, ask for help because we are not going to be able to do that for you. We are kind of providing you a framework to maybe understand how this disorder can come about.
00:13:35
Speaker
I feel like it's also important to note that a lot of symptoms within the DSM are synonymous with other symptoms of other disorders. So there could be some things that you see that could be represented in something completely different.
00:13:54
Speaker
So it's always really important to keep that in mind too, because a lot of times you can look at fatigue as, okay, well, that's a symptom of depression is like fatigue or loss of energy, but that could also be related to something else, either something else regarding mental health or something regarding your physical health.
00:14:16
Speaker
That's one of the things I don't like about the symptoms. The symptom checklist is that a lot of this can be physically related as well. It's such a very awkward thin line to navigate.
00:14:33
Speaker
And that is why we always say that this is why it is important if you are concerned about the stuff that you do actually see somebody that has a little bit more knowledge or expertise in that area who's actually been trained in how to tease out some of that. Because we know that there's a mind-body connection. We know there's a big overlap. But yeah, I think I've told this before. When I was first diagnosed with depression, I was 18 years old. I was a senior in high school. I was a runner.
00:15:03
Speaker
my biggest symptom was fatigue. And I just was like, fatigued, I was running inconsistently, I'd have a good run, I'd have a bad run, I didn't really know what was going on. And, you know, I went to my primary care doctor because I was like, man, I must have low iron, I must have a vitamin deficiency, you know, there must be something physically wrong. And they gave me a screening measure for depression. And I started checking off all these questions like, this is really weird, I have no clue what they're asking me. And then like,
00:15:33
Speaker
by the end of it started kind of noticing the pattern and learned that a lot of these physical symptoms or at least how I was presenting were really related to kind of a depressive episode that I was not really aware of because I didn't think of myself as necessarily a sad person and I think that that's why we want to talk about
00:15:54
Speaker
what some of the hallmark symptoms are of depression because it isn't just sadness. That can be a big part of it and there's been times in my life where it has been, but I will say when I was a young teenager it really wasn't sadness as much as it was some of those other stuff.
00:16:09
Speaker
And that's why there's actually, there's two symptoms. So the two symptoms that you have to have one of these two present. So if you've ever looked at a diagnostic standpoint, there's like clusters of symptoms. So it's like they give a laundry list of seven or eight, and you have to have X number of them for a certain period of time. But for depression, there actually is two that you have to have one or the other. Now, the first is depressed mood.
00:16:39
Speaker
Depress mode is kind of an interesting one because that may not necessarily be related to the concept of feeling blue. For example, some of it could be, yes, you could feel sad. Feelings of hopelessness or emptiness, being tearful, or even
00:16:57
Speaker
Being irritable kind of relates to that depressed mood and ten we think of like that irritability We tend to not really associate that with depressed food But when we kind of look at it from a broad standpoint, there's like um Sort of like this like up regulating and like down regulating emotions And I feel like irritability is one of those weird ones that can That can also be both up regulating and down regulating
00:17:27
Speaker
Like you can be so irritable that you're really angry and that you feel like you're heart racing, but there are sometimes where you just like quick snap, you know? It's very weird to kind of like look at this and realize that depressed mood isn't just, oh, I'm feeling sad. It can be a lot of different things. Right, and I would say that too, you know, the emptiness, the hopelessness, that irritability, these are important to recognize because especially if you have trouble with labeling your emotions, a lot of times with irritability,
00:17:56
Speaker
It can tend to be developed when we don't really know how to express ourselves or we're not really sure what we're feeling and so it ends up being like you said kind of that upregulation or downregulation because You're just trying to find a way to express it and it ends up being just kind of annoyance is what ends up coming out now this has to be present nearly every day for a period of at least two weeks and we kind of say that is the key is this is not a
00:18:25
Speaker
just related to you had a bad day and yet even persisted for two days you had a tough time and then you kind of were feeling pretty good. This is kind of a prolonged period of depression. Now the other symptom is one that I think we see more incarn and to me is the one that I think people ignore which is diminished interest or pleasure in activities that you used to find enjoyable.
00:18:52
Speaker
That is the one that in years past I've had some seasonal depression type thing and that's the big clue for me is that or I'm sleeping a lot. That actually relates to one of the other symptoms which is either
00:19:13
Speaker
You either have a really hard time getting sleep or you sleep a lot. Which again kind of goes in that weird sort of like fine line of like it's either or. Which can also kind of tie into fatigue is like another kind of way to like tie that in together is like you may be sleeping a lot but you're still feeling that loss of energy.
00:19:37
Speaker
Yeah, it kind of usually is described as kind of that, you know, sleeping 10 to 12 hours a day and still feeling just low energy, low motivation, unable to get going.
00:19:49
Speaker
And we're actually gonna hit on a couple of these that depression I think is interesting because there's a lot of these physical symptoms or at least what appear to be physical symptoms as you're saying, that are related to depression, I think more than a lot of other disorders. And they tend to be flip sides of each other a lot of times. That it's either too much or too little. And this is one disorder where we really see that. So another one would be,
00:20:16
Speaker
appetite. So some people, you know, it's kind of that noticing the difference of kind of either significant weight loss when you're not really intending to, you're just kind of just you don't have the energy, you don't eat, you don't bother, you don't think about it. Or you have kind of that opposite where you're kind of eating your feelings where you're just kind of your appetite is really greatly increasing. I know that's for me, I tend to eat a lot because I feel bored and I feel like I don't have a lot to do and then I do that too.
00:20:44
Speaker
tends to be easy to grab food. But it is kind of either end of that spectrum and then the same thing with insomnia or hypersomnia. I will say that the insomnia that I tend to associate with depression is usually that kind of not being able to fall asleep because you can't shut your mind off.
00:21:06
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I kind of like to think of it as, um, and it can also kind of tie in, I think with like intrusive thoughts to, um, you know, like, you're like lying down and you're like, Hey, you remember that thing that you did that you're really embarrassed about? Let's bring it back up. And then you bring it back up. And then you kind of were like, Oh, no. And then you go back into the cycle of things. Um, which also
00:21:30
Speaker
In truth, the thoughts aren't necessarily a symptom of major depressive disorder, but I think that when they sort of tie into one of the other symptoms, which is thoughts of death can also kind of tie into that.
Excessive Guilt and Environmental Impact
00:21:47
Speaker
Yeah, can you say a little bit more about the thoughts of death? Because I think we covered this a little bit on the suicide ideation episode when we talked about Gideon. But thoughts of death is actually a very interesting kind of
00:21:59
Speaker
symptom cluster because it is not necessarily just that you want to kill yourself.
00:22:07
Speaker
thoughts of thoughts of death are very, it's very weird, you have like, it's sort of separated into two sub topics, you have a passive idea idealization, or active. And so you can have these thoughts, but you don't necessarily have to act on them. And that's a very important, like distinction to make sort of the passive thoughts are, you know, I wish that a car would
00:22:35
Speaker
Hit me I wish that you know this thing would happen to me whereas the active thoughts are sort of you were thinking about doing this yourself and There may not be any intent because it's separated into sort of like you may be having like these Ideations, but you don't have the intent behind it or you do have intent behind it which also leads into different
00:23:03
Speaker
categorizations and treatment plans and things that all desperately need to be talked about with the therapist or mental health professional. Yeah, those. Yeah, go ahead. It really is this idea that, you know, there's kind of, for some people, they just have thoughts of dying, like, it would be better if I were to die.
00:23:21
Speaker
I wonder what it would be like if I were dead, who would come to my funeral? Nobody would be there or like you said, yes, I wish I would get hit by a car. I don't want to do anything actively to kill myself, but I kind of don't like being here. And there's a distinction really between that and then.
00:23:41
Speaker
starting to make a plan starting to have like preparatory behavior where you're Seeking out items or your you have a plan you're starting to have a date in time Both of those are encompassed by this. I know that when I was You know the worst I kind of have been I never really had kind of the active where I wanted to do something to myself But I definitely had periods of time where it was just kind of like I just wish something would stop
00:24:09
Speaker
It's just like blah and this feelings of depression. I just wish that something would change and that I could wake up and it would be, I'd just be gone.
00:24:19
Speaker
and thoughts of, I mean, sort of the passive thoughts don't necessarily even have to be related to death, which kind of gets into that weird sort of area, but I wish I wasn't here, or I wish I could just sleep for a really long time. I wish that I could just blink out of existence for a couple of hours, or also kind of in that field of passivity.
00:24:48
Speaker
And I will say too, the last couple of symptoms here, so we have, once again,
00:24:54
Speaker
what is called either psychomotor agitation or psychomotor retardation, which basically means either kind of if you think of it, like the bounciness that you might see like somebody who can't sit still. And it's not like anxiety, but they're just there. For me, I can't sit still like my my legs are bouncing. When I am feeling down, I just I feel like I can't sit still in my legs are bouncing enough that it is observable by others. And I mean, this is one that
00:25:21
Speaker
like there's a joke in my family, like they call that Hobzine, well, Thomasine, because I can't sit still. And like if anybody else starts doing it, they'll just, it's really noticeable.
00:25:31
Speaker
But I'd actually like to ask a question about that. And would you say that's sort of like that? Because this is where I would like to kind of further my own education on. This is sort of like that restlessness, the bouncing of the leg, or maybe the fiddling with things nearby you. Because I also can't really sit still. Would that be categorized here as sort of a self-soothe? Or is that more just the actual psychomotor agitation?
00:25:58
Speaker
Um, so some people that, you know, it's, it's believed like they, they, they don't even wear that they're doing it because they're, they are trying to kind of sell suit or they're trying to get the agitation or the irritation kind of out, you know, um, because they're not usually aware of it. It even says here in the DSM, it's not like a just subjective feeling of restlessness. It's not just that you can't sit still. Like I won't even notice that I'm doing it. It's not uncomfortable to me. It doesn't necessarily feel restless. It's just, it's something that my body is just doing.
00:26:28
Speaker
So yeah, I would say that that is kind of figure fill under fit under that same idea of like kind of cell soothing where your body is trying to like regulate itself. Yeah. And the other side of this is then psychomotor retardation, which is just really like subjectively slowed down, like your movements are slowed, you're just kind of, you know, enough that people will notice it, you know, that you're just kind of doing everything in an almost slow motion.
00:26:52
Speaker
And then feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt. And this is kind of not just guilt about being sick or self-repoach. This is really kind of inappropriate guilt or an excessive guilt, you know, like feeling guilty for things that are well beyond kind of your contribution to them.
Narrative Power in Mental Health Representation
00:27:14
Speaker
Um, these feelings of guilt, I think is where we can come back to Karn actually.
00:27:19
Speaker
I would like to highlight though the DSM's use of the word inappropriate, as in my opinion, I don't really like that wording there. I definitely think like excessive guilt because you know, it's all about everyone's lived perspectives. Yeah. But I'm just noticing that because I'm looking at my DSM right here and I'm reading through that in the concept of like inappropriate guilt. I don't know for some reason that just
00:27:43
Speaker
It's weird. It kind of gets to, you know, like I found myself saying I was sorry for things that I definitely had no reason to be sorry for or not even anything. You know, so I think it talks about it in that like idea that can be delusional. But but it is really this inappropriate. I think what they mean is kind of bad.
00:28:05
Speaker
you're apologizing for apologizing. Yeah, maybe for like inappropriate in terms of like, it's not appropriate for the situation that it's happening in. Yeah. Like I, for instance, if my friend is taking a little too long to message me back, this is going to be a self call out here. If my friend is taking a little bit too long to message me back, I start to get very anxious and very nervous, very sad. So I'll just text them. I'm sorry. Yeah. After they haven't texted me and I'm like, Oh, God,
00:28:34
Speaker
Yeah, like you're so you're feeling guilt over something that yes, there's like, yeah, but I mean, I think that's what it is kind of referring to, because I do agree that inappropriate does sound a bit weird here. But I think it's referring to, I always think of it as kind of those situations where you just start like apologizing for apologizing, and then you're down a rabbit hole.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I wanted to highlight that even though this is the most current up-to-date form of the DSM, I think that there are still pieces of language across the entire board that need to be worked on and changed. Because I think it's very important that the professional language should be less, I would say, judgmental, yes.
00:29:21
Speaker
So, Alex, I think that when we had talked before, there was an element of guilt to Karn's story. I mean, even coming in place with like where his card to do with pacifism to do with this idea that he was never going to kill again. And then that like even gets used against him, which I think is like such a horrible thing.
00:29:43
Speaker
Yeah, that is part of his backstory. So after the Academy and after all of this, Erza decided to close down the yard sale, stop trying to sell things, and turn that collection into what is later called the legacy.
00:30:01
Speaker
And Karn, being one of Ursa's random bits and bobs, became also part of the legacy. And that whole thing kind of was given to Gerard. This was part of Ursa's myriad of plans to stop the Phyrexians. Well, so Karn ended up spending a lot of time with Gerard.
00:30:20
Speaker
And at some point, and I can't remember the actual story, the specifics of it, but at some point, Karn in defense, I believe it was in defense of Gerard, ended up killing somebody. And Karn being made out of silver is at a very significant physical advantage over just normal random people.
00:30:47
Speaker
And I think the ease with which he killed someone that just became such a terrible thing to him, like the original art for the card Pacifism, is darn.
00:31:00
Speaker
I like I have an intrusive thought here about car and I just popped up in my head. Do you think that he is? No. Do you think that he is solid silver or do you think he is kind of like hollow a little on the inside like those like chocolate bunnies? And the reason why I ask is because I feel like Ursa would not want to spend the money or the time to get that much silver to like completely feel like a full thing.
00:31:27
Speaker
Do you? I really thought you were going with like some analogy of like he's hollow and he's empty and dead. No, I was literally just thinking about like Karn as a person and then and then we're talking about him like you know fighting somebody and how he has an advantage and I'm like well if he's hollow um
00:31:48
Speaker
maybe I don't know I don't know why I thought that I just really needed to express that like he is solid is there anywhere in the Lord that says the word solid otherwise I feel like
00:32:02
Speaker
I'm not sure. I'm sorry. The fact that he was supposed to go back into... So this is the plot. This is Ursa's stupid plot. That Karn was supposed to go back in time and destroy the Phyrexians before they got started. So he is supposed to be physically capable of a lot of damage.
00:32:25
Speaker
And I do need to correct myself. It was not the original art of pacifism. It was originally printed in Mirage, but they reprinted it in Tempest with Karn in the art. Yeah. And that was part of the story there that because of his oath of pacifism, he didn't resist as he was just carried right off. Yeah, he actually, that was the whole thing. He had been tricked into killing an innocent bystander.
00:32:51
Speaker
And that was when he was, so he would rescue Gerard from the Phyrexian raids. And then Kondo's son basically turned against his tribe and stole the legacy, and Kondo went to retrieve it. During this, he was tricked into killing somebody. And so he took this vow of, so basically he gets deactivated, and then when he's reactivated, it's basically this memory of killing is the first thing. It's like the fresh in his mind.
00:33:17
Speaker
And I think, oh, sorry, Habs, go ahead. Oh, it's great. Now, this is an example of kind of, I think that we see Karn carry with him.
00:33:27
Speaker
this guilt. And I do think that, yes, he did kill somebody. It was an innocent. He was tricked into it. He takes a vow of pacifism to a point where he won't even act to save himself. And I think it is an example of kind of how you might see excessive guilt, you know, to the point where he might not even think that it's he's worth saving at that point, or he's worth. Yeah.
00:33:49
Speaker
And I also feel like this is kind of a really sort of great way to explain that, you know, a lot of individuals who seek out treatment for mental health often have sort of like the stigmatized reaction of there's something wrong with me. You know, this is my fault that I feel this way. You know, there's something wrong. I'm broken.
00:34:13
Speaker
But I think that Karn's story is a really great way to kind of emphasize that sometimes, you know, mental health is a result of one's environment. And Karn was in a very difficult environment and put him through a lot. I mean, you had Erza for a dad.
00:34:30
Speaker
that just really puts a lot on him. I mean, I'm being serious. I'm not trying to make it go. No, it isn't. It's like, it is very serious. To Ferry was to Ferry called him Artie Shovelhead and like was not nice to him. You know, that was the whole thing of his friendship with Joyra. Like he, he had kind of a really bad upbringing. And then he's basically just tossed to the side.
00:34:53
Speaker
And it's, it affects you. It affects the way that your brain develops. And that leads down to sort of, I mean, this manifesting later down the road and, you know, struggling with it. It can be very difficult. So Carn was really put through a lot. So it makes, it makes sense that this was a result of that. And it's really nice to have that sort of like representation, whether it was meant to or not.
00:35:21
Speaker
kind of that have that representation within like magic lore. Well yeah and then taking him to the the storyline of kind of I mean I think to me the the image of him basically on it wanting to create a perfect world like a mathematical perfect mechanical world and it's just even then he just feels isolated yeah like he's just sitting there and then I think
00:35:49
Speaker
The imagery of him sending out the probes and that line of just not being able to see the beauty in the world. Yeah, because he came back because all he's seeing is the greed and the death. I feel like this ties into with like maybe Karn's desire for a need for control. He didn't really have much control in his earlier years. He didn't have much control.
00:36:10
Speaker
With this experience. I mean he was literally like tricked into killing somebody so the fact that he wanted to make a perfect world It's like this is my place. I can control what happens here This is within my control and even setting out probes is like okay. I can see if I can help other people but instead it just sort of turned into Even I even though I can control this one thing I cannot control all the pain that everyone else is feeling
00:36:40
Speaker
which just fuels into this feeling of helplessness. Yeah, and starts reinforcing for him, you know, we talked about these cognitive distortions and kind of, you know, we've talked about CBT and hear a lot that how our thoughts affect our feelings, infect our behavior and how that can spiral. And, you know, we just see how well Karn's basic schemas that he has about himself are kind of
00:37:05
Speaker
there's a lot of kind of probably feelings of worklessness and kind of this idea of like hopelessness, guilt, and then it leads to where he just he can get probes and you know I just think of it as that thing that you know there could be
00:37:19
Speaker
so much beauty and he cannot see it.
Karn's Journey Towards Engagement
00:37:23
Speaker
Yeah, it just doesn't even process it doesn't even register. The stuff that does is all the negative. It's all the Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry to jump in here. But just thinking about what you what you two are talking about his entire life. He he was he was powerless until he became a planeswalker and in the old and an old school planeswalker with the nearly unlimited godlike power
00:37:48
Speaker
And then what does he do? He goes and builds a plane without anyone on it to build his plane of mathematical perfection completely by himself with no one else. It's a plane without conflict because it's a plane without life.
00:38:09
Speaker
And then when he goes and now on this plane by himself, he decides to look out upon the multiverse. All he's seeing through his filters are the greed and the death on all these worlds.
00:38:27
Speaker
Now, we could say that since then, we've seen Karn kind of rejoin, and he was there for War of the Spark. He was very involved. He was very much engaged with these new people, to fairies still around. But other than that, there's a lot of people that he doesn't know that he's now connected with.
00:38:50
Speaker
we've seen him engaged and he's reached back out to the world. But my image of him is just in isolation. And just I just that is how I picture car I think is trying to do what he can and it and it not going well, you know, he's, he's almost trying to seek out ways to activate himself and to get these behavioral things going and he's just, it's not working. So he ends up just isolating and the longer that happens,
00:39:21
Speaker
It just reinforces so much of his suffering. And to go back on schemas, it's very hard to create these new pathways, these new positive pathways when all you've known are these negative associations and having like those negative schemas in your mind. It's very difficult to
00:39:40
Speaker
to change that. And while Karn was able to sort of perform his behavioral activation, it's not an instantaneous thing. It's something that takes a lot of time and a lot of work. And I feel like that should be noted, is that Karn was able to kind of get out there and help when he needed to. But it's not at all like an instantaneous sort of click into place thing. Yeah. And that's something that
00:40:10
Speaker
narrative often doesn't get right. Not to get too far off of track, but Iron Man 3 had that sort of thing with Tony Stark where there was definitely a PTSD storyline that kind of just stops at a point when it was convenient for the plot.
00:40:32
Speaker
So we'll see what happens with Karn. I mean at this point we've seen him in War of the Spark because I kind of brought everybody in but saw him in Dominaria a little bit. We know his plan is to take a nuke that Urza buried and just left there and go see what he can do about the Phyrexians. So who knows what'll happen with that storyline. I'm excited for Phyrexia. I'm sorry. I know many people aren't but I love it.
00:40:58
Speaker
I am for for this chance of seeing car now having to go back to a world that we don't know what the implications are. I mean, he left it at the height of the phyrexians basically.
00:41:10
Speaker
taking it over, right? Yeah, that's when he he, he has left and he feels, I think, incredible guilt over Yeah, having to leave the plane again. I definitely Yeah, sorry. No, no, this is an area for story that I really want to see. Yeah.
00:41:29
Speaker
I think we're going to get a lot of more insight into Karn's growth and also his reaction to returning back to such a plane that's momentous in magic history and momentous in his history. When he was tainted with freksian oil and I just think that this is going to hit him very hard and I think it's going to be
00:41:51
Speaker
I think a really good opportunity to have more of this representation in Magic Lore now that we have stories coming back in the return of those stories. I think this is going to be pretty big.
00:42:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and he actually, during the time spiral block, when he gave up his spark to fix one of the time rifts, his last act was he realized something was going on and mirrored in, and was to just send himself back there.
00:42:23
Speaker
And then he was unable to fix it. And in fact, almost made it worse by being assimilated until a friend of his that he made during the time spiral block, sacrificed himself, gave up his spark and purified a car of the phyrexian influence. Right. And how he has dealt with, I mean, we really haven't seen him deal with the fallout event, sir. Yeah, that's being the friend that sacrificed himself and hasn't really seen
00:42:53
Speaker
what we've gotten for Karn since then has more been cards and kind of him being there more than it has been kind of, you know, like his role in Return to Dominaria, which is like a great place.
Karn's Rich Backstory
00:43:07
Speaker
I mean, he wanted to get the Sylex, right? I mean, yeah, I mean, in a lot of ways, both stories that we've seen him in were other people's stories. Yeah, he was on more on the periphery of
00:43:18
Speaker
I really think that car, one of the things that interested in me in car and so much to make him my laptop background that lovely evening.
00:43:27
Speaker
three years ago, um, three to four years ago, was, um, his, his story is just so, like, rich, um, that it just really drew me to the character. All I knew about Karn was his original, like, creature card. You know, the one with the orange background, he's, like, kind of like, lunging for you a little bit. That's all I knew of him. And to have, like, that really rich backstory and to learn about his, um,
00:43:55
Speaker
His issues his his friendships what it all meant to him and even learning more about carne here just by talking with you guys i think he's probably one of the most. In-depth magic characters and i think that as of late.
00:44:08
Speaker
we're not getting that anymore. And so I'm really hoping for that return to Phyrexia that we get to see the return of like, okay, because I remember time has no meaning anymore. But a while ago, I remember Wizards was saying, hey, we're going to have the Gatewatch take a little bit of a backseat.
00:44:28
Speaker
Yeah i think that this is where i think we're about to stumble into the air and now we really get carne to get to kind of get that little that spotlight again is you know we're gonna stop talking about getting in and jace and we're gonna start focusing on you know.
00:44:46
Speaker
the man that started at all really is like, we're really going back to like one of magic's oldest, richest storylines.
Evolution of Magic's Storytelling
00:44:55
Speaker
And that's going to be incredibly big. Yeah, I mean, I just I really hope that they continue to with this growth that we've seen. I mean, it's just when Alex came with this episode, it was just kind of the research that he had done into Karn.
00:45:12
Speaker
just finding these situations too where on the wiki and in some of the stories it literally talks about Karn's depression. I mean it literally names it.
00:45:23
Speaker
And we're talking about a golem. We're talking about something that was not seen as fully, you know, its own, I mean, living. It's a man made of metal. I mean, it's metal come alive. He's now had multiple sparks. You know, like, there's the car is such a rich character. And he's also this. I mean, he is like the sad robot. It's always there. We know that's not solemn simulacrum, but he is. He is. I mean, that's.
00:45:51
Speaker
Well, he's been giving narrative space to emote in ways that we don't see in a lot of characters. Come back to this a lot when we talk about emotions and magic, because at its central core, the card game is a game about conflict between two planeswalkers, two wizards throwing spells and summoning creatures at each other.
00:46:13
Speaker
Um, so there isn't a lot of, it's a, it's a narrow band of human experience. It's a narrow band of emotion that's relevant to that, but we're starting to see like corn has been given this narrative space going back a long time, much longer than most characters in recent years. And because I've been playing magic for over 20 years, when I say recent years, I mean like five or six.
00:46:35
Speaker
I need to be specific there. We've started to see some of these characters as we talked to Michelle about Jace. They had some of that exploration on Ixalan in a way that a lot of other characters haven't gotten that opportunity. So hopefully we get back to Storyline where they can bring Karn back in, give him some more space, but also kind of use that
00:47:02
Speaker
to give that type of characterization to other characters. Yeah. I think that the Gatewatch is, it was a very beautiful concept, but it really sort of took over the narrative for a while. And when I first started playing, I had no concept
00:47:22
Speaker
at all about Phyrexia or Urza. I didn't even know who Teferi was when I first started playing. Only when I really sat down and asked my ex, hey, I really want to know the beginning story. And he sat me down and he was like, I don't like Phyrexia. And I was like, why? They look really cool on my old card shop. I had this big old poster from years and years ago of Phyrexia versus Mirdon.
00:47:49
Speaker
And he was like, I don't like first, I'm like, well, why? He sent me down and told me all the story. I was like, I had no idea. All I knew was, you know, Jason and Chandra and Nissa and Gideon just hopping around in the mystery machine. So for me, it was very interesting to hear about this insane untold lore that was told, but it just kind of got eclipsed for a while.
00:48:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think we're now slowly like with bolus kind of defeated in like the little Superman glass shadow realm, whatever you want to call it. We're going to re we're in Rome. Yeah, I don't know why there's used to be the name of a car realm until his asshole of an older brother came to town. Really, if we think about it, magic is just a game about two brothers.
00:48:42
Speaker
It's just two brothers. There's a Mishra. The Brothers War was one of the first storylines in the game. Exactly. At the end of the day, I think like the next time like we go, like I know we're going to another, well, we just went back to Zendegar. The next time we go back to a plane, we're gonna find out like Jace is a twin brother and his name is like Pace. And we find out like he has been like,
00:49:07
Speaker
Hopping in the gate watch every now and then and switching places and it turns out that this is just a big elaborate plot for um Oh, oh god. Uh, what's the what's the movie with the twin Lindsay low hands?
00:49:21
Speaker
parent trap. It's an elaborate parent trap, but to get the gate watch back together. That's good. You know what, I had something and I almost, you almost made me lose it, Chase, with that wonderful
00:49:41
Speaker
exploration of possibilities within magic lore. I was just thinking kind of in this time, in this gap since the last kind of Gatewatch thing, I realized that we actually have had some of this characterization with Teferi, a character who also has been around for a long time and hasn't had a lot of deep exploration. And so was that the most recent course set? Yes, yes.
00:50:07
Speaker
Yeah, like you said, time has no meaning at this point. But yeah, so we are starting to get some of that. I am really, I'm really happy. I'm hoping more of that like they've given us a little bit as like this is good. Can you just like do that as a thing as opposed to like little pieces?
00:50:25
Speaker
I think that magic back in the day really relied heavily on flavor text to kind of carry the weight of certain pieces of story. And then it kind of stopped being that, which that's not an issue. I don't really think that's an issue because there's some flavor texts that are out now that I absolutely adore. I mean, I think they're amazing. But I think now we have so much opportunity
00:50:50
Speaker
to explore that magic didn't have previously. And just from those bits of flavor text alone, I sometimes just get bored and Google little tidbits of lore about certain characters. Just today, I was looking at Quain, who's one of the new cards from Commander Legends. And I found out he's a little rabbit wizard who is super fast paced.
00:51:16
Speaker
and hates Arkelos, who is like the turtle shaman to play off the tortoise and the hare. The cards are pretty like dependent on themselves to kind of give give lore about themselves. But, you know, whole blocks were just dedicated to have little bits and pieces of lair about like Urza and Teferi and Karn. And I think what's really interesting is like,
00:51:40
Speaker
You used to rely like on the whole set to kind of story tell and now it's just like bits and pieces of lore on the cards I don't really kind of connect go to tempest block actually I think weather light as well which was before but
00:51:55
Speaker
Tempest block, you literally could just storyboard the story of the set with the cards, the art and the flavor text to tell the entire story of the
Role of Content Creators
00:52:03
Speaker
set. And I'm sure if you Google it, you can find people who've ordered the thing in order and you can just read the entire set. And to be honest, this kind of reminds me of something Spice 8 Rack recently did on one of their videos. They did a video about
00:52:24
Speaker
if all the Magic Planeswalkers is furries. And what's the Red Planeswalker from Aquarium? Luca. Luca? He was talking about Luca. And he was explaining, like, you know, like, I think you want me to, like, make Luca's fursona, you know, the big cat that he has, you know, because, like, in
00:52:49
Speaker
a lot of card arts he's depicted by the cat's side and being lovingly towards it. And then Spice Acreac says, um, no, like that's not the case. All you need to do is look at this one uncommon, this one uncommon and read the flavor text to realize that Luca is supposed to be the bad guy at this set. And I didn't know that until I watched that video.
00:53:11
Speaker
Because on an uncommon, out of the entire set of Ikoria, it said that Luca was using the beasts of Ikoria as weapons for revenge. And I did not get that from any of the other depictions of Luca with his cat. And I learned that from Spice8Rack's fursona video. Thank you, Spice8Rack. I am very appreciative of your content.
00:53:33
Speaker
Yes, that was in the novel. And we actually talked to Michelle about that in our toxic masculinity. Yeah, yeah, it was an example of toxic masculinity that a lot of people think of as kind of the hero similar to how a lot of people see Urza.
00:53:49
Speaker
Yeah, well, and in fairness to a lot of the ways that he has portrayed a lot of the cards portray that, but they don't, they portray that piece of his arc, but not the entirety of his arc and in the novel, like there, there is a whole arc that ends up with, with Luca like kind of declaring war on just about everybody.
00:54:09
Speaker
Exactly, and it's just it's weird that I did not know that. I feel like it's weird that I'm this ingrained in like magic content and I just didn't know that. Thanks Spice8Rack for doing your furry episode. That episode is just phenomenal. If you have not watched Planeswalkers for Sonas, I highly recommend it because I was in tears because
00:54:34
Speaker
each fursona fits the planeswalker so well i think my favorite ever was um was a titania right she's the elf planeswalker or am i just getting that wrong um spice8reg said that her fursona was a deer with an eye patch
00:54:52
Speaker
And that made a lot of sense to me, and I really couldn't pick out why. Because dude with an eyepatch. Relatedly, he has a video coming out on Commander of Legends, and he posted that the thumbnail is basically he just used goblin art in the thumbnail. I really recommend Spicy Rex content. Not only do you have a fun time and laugh, but you also get some really good insight into real world topics and lore, which I also think is important
00:55:21
Speaker
We are working on coordinating with him because I think there's an overlap between what this cast does in cast form and what he does in video form. I think that there is a kinship there.
Final Reflections on Karn's Metaphor for Depression
00:55:37
Speaker
But thank you all for joining us for this long awaited part two that we have
00:55:43
Speaker
teased was coming out forever and I mean you might need to go back at this point well I guess we should have said that at the beginning to go back and listen to part one again because it has been quite a while but it really is just recognizing that depression is something that
00:56:02
Speaker
takes over it is something that you know is like we said it's it's a matter of when we're talking about depression especially from a clinical standpoint is is not just feeling sad it's not just a period of being down it is that
00:56:16
Speaker
pervading to the point where it really kind of shuts you down and kind of makes it difficult to move. And I do think that Karn is just a beautiful metaphor for this exploration. And I like Chase said, I hope we get more of this in the story moving forward. I really would love to see this element in particular of Karn really brought to the forefront. I think Alex mentioned
00:56:40
Speaker
Planeswalkers or wizards fighting versus each other versus something like Karn fighting with himself in a lot of ways.
00:57:08
Speaker
If you want to support your friendly neighborhood gospel, the cast can be found at patreon.com. Opening and closing music by Vindergarten, who can be found on twitter at Vindergarten, or online at vindergarten.bandcamp.com. Logo art by Steven Raffaeo, who can be found on twitter at steve raffle.
00:57:31
Speaker
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing Vortos content as well as magic content of all kinds. Check them out on Twitter at hipstersmtg or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you all for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.