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Episode 188: Stranded in the Multiverse
396 Plays1 year ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! What happens when your freedom of movement is taken away from you? Taya and Alex discuss the spark rupture, the pandemic, and implications for mental health on isolation. What’s in store for our favorite Planeswalkers now that they’ve been demoted to legendary creatures and what does the future of magic story look like?
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As promised, we keep Mental Health Links available every episode. But 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.
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- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
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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 Acknowledgments
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. We are happy to be back in recording. And our post-con haze has ended a little bit. Unfortunately, we are missing a person.
00:00:46
Speaker
Pubs could not make it tonight, but I've got myself, I guess I'll get my intro real quick and then the other hosts can introduce themselves. So Alex found on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler. We have an opening question. We'll get to that in a moment. My pronouns are he, him. Hi, I'm Taya at Taya transcends pronouns are she, her, or they, them. And, uh, want to thank the grinding coffee company, um, OB G Q minority owned run.
00:01:15
Speaker
coffee company that provide, uh, all of the coffee needs to keep Hobbs running. Um, maybe he didn't have enough coffee today and that's why he's not here. Yeah. And thank you for jumping in with that. It's, it's been what, like two weeks since we recorded an episode and I'm already feeling like I forgotten how to do this. Just yeah. And yeah, it's.
00:01:37
Speaker
the con was definitely a different experience that's for sure yes it was it was great um the episode last week was the audio from it so hopefully folks who are interested listen to it i i thought
00:01:50
Speaker
The audio was well enough for what we had. Unfortunately, they didn't have a setup in the room to record, so we were just using an external mic. I think things, you could hear it pretty well, well enough anyway to hear the conversation, but I thought it was a really good conversation, so I'm glad we
Remote Recording Challenges
00:02:06
Speaker
were able to get it out for folks. I know there's a few video forms. I think there's one posted on, do you remember, I should have prepared this, who's Twitch streamed that during the panel?
00:02:18
Speaker
Oh, yeah. You're going to put me on the spot now. Hobbs headed set up. We can, we can figure it out. We'll talk to Hobbs and make sure that's in the show notes too. Um, cause then, so we'll, and all that stuff is, if you're interested to the podcast, Twitter, um, keeps up to date on a lot of those things. It's a good place to go for any of that stuff, but yeah, so we're back home recording in front of Mike's and not sitting at a table next to each other, which, you know, it was, it was a fun experience and, and
00:02:46
Speaker
I will see. I would be definitely interested to do it again, but kind of nice to just be sitting at home where I ascribe all the reference if I need it, because that was the whole thing that had occurred to me sitting on the panel. So let's go to the opening question. We have a
Planeswalker Debate
00:03:03
Speaker
great topic this week that Taya came up with. This could be great. This is May. Mental Health Awareness Month is still going on.
00:03:10
Speaker
And this, I think, will be a good topic that touches on that, but also a lot of recent story. And so our opening question that's going to kind of actually tie into this, sometimes our opening questions are a little more arbitrary, but this one I think will tie in real nice to our topic. So we want to, in the past, we've done an opening question of like, if you're stranded on a plane somewhere, what planeswalker would you want to come try to rescue you?
00:03:36
Speaker
tying into recent story and things we're going to talk about, we're going to do a little twist on that. And instead say, you know, what, if you were stranded on a plane, like who, you know, planeswalker would you pick to be stranded with you or maybe it's a farmer planeswalker to hopefully temporarily be stranded with. And I'm going to go with Sarkinvall actually.
00:03:59
Speaker
He's a character who, I think for a while, was kind of going in a dark way, but after his storyline in the Kanzatarkir block, I think he's in a better, seems like he's in a better, less antisocial place. And also, he seems like the kind of person who knows how to survive in a wilderness with very little.
00:04:20
Speaker
and can get by and hopefully we can find a way to get unstranded at some point. So that's who I'm going to go with. How many stories about dragons can you stand hearing before it gets old though? Yeah, that is one minus. I think early on it would be cool, but you're right. That would get tired after a while if it took too long to get rescued. That might be
00:04:45
Speaker
or find a way home. And this kind of, this goes into, I went with the other talk, talk carry planes walker. I went with Narset because I wanted someone who was going to keep me entertained. I thought, you know, who is going to keep me the, you know, have the most stories to tell me that aren't going to get boring and overlap. And since Tamio is out of the picture, you know, my next best guess was Narset. It's funny.
00:05:13
Speaker
my brain almost went the same direction. And then it was like, but it's like, you know, I think circuit, I just went to sort of the wild man sort of thing. He seems like someone who would be dropped in the middle of a forest with a knife and a roll of duct tape. And you could have just gone with Garruk at that point. That's true. Yeah, that's that's all or Vivian, one of those two. Yeah.
00:05:38
Speaker
You're just going to hear all about all these dragons, every dragon he's ever slept with and all these dragon babies. I think you're right. You'll get a wider variety of stories and conversations out of Narset.
00:05:59
Speaker
Yeah. Scholar who seems like, uh, might have interests beyond one single topic that you can talk about. Kelly, you're going to make a mess here. Okay. My cat is
Isolation Themes and Mental Health
00:06:12
Speaker
knocking everything off my desk right now. Oh no. Okay. I will, I will pick stuff up later. Okay. Thanks a lot, Kelly. Yeah. I, I, I'm.
00:06:27
Speaker
I'm surprised we both went with ones from Tarkir though, so I guess we're both stuck on Tarkir which is not the greatest place to be. It's got a really high likelihood of being eaten by dragons. Yeah, one of the highest in the multiverse probably. Yeah. Outside of, I don't know, maybe the meditation realm would have a higher likelihood depending on how annoying you are. Yeah. Depends on the meditation realm.
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, because there's not a lot of other food options, especially now that there's no DoorDash being delivered there. Yeah. And well, you know, I wouldn't see Ugin being as, I don't know, not caring about other people. I also don't see him being quite as benevolent to just random strangers. Nicole Bullis wouldn't care, like straight up. If you look tasty, sure, that's a meal. Yeah.
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah. Ugin doesn't need to eat. He's a spirit. That's true. Do I channel the spirit of Hobbes here and say that he doesn't need sustenance? He just survives on self-righteousness? I feel doing justice to our co-host who can't make it.
00:07:45
Speaker
Right. So that we want to talk about the topic of isolation. Like you said, like, Taya, this is we're getting ready for the show beforehand. It's a very timely topic in the story now with the whole desparking thing we have going on.
00:08:06
Speaker
Right, you know, they conveniently with the story stranded most of the planeswalkers on their home planes because most of them went back home to defend against the Phyrexians. So as far as we know, most of them are stranded at home. But they're still stranded after having this freedom of movement that has been taken away from them. And then you do have ones that are stranded in places that are
00:08:36
Speaker
you know, foreign to them or that they have no connection to. You know, we saw in the story, you know, Nissa being stranded on Zalfir and that was
00:08:49
Speaker
you know, a big problem for her, especially with, you know, Chandra getting up and leaving to go look for a Johnny and then that just, you know, really upset Nissa. Yeah, a source of a lot of stress beyond, you know, all the other stresses of the situation. There's a lot of that too, but it just sort of had the you're not even at home to have that sort of de-stress environment as a possibility.
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah. And then in the other serious story, we have Nahiri at home who just stressed her out even more because she got to see how much damage she did to her own house. That is fair. And in her case, it was the opposite situation leading to a very similar problem.
00:09:32
Speaker
But kind of just want to talk about the ideas around, you know, and tying back to the mental health aspect, you know, especially being Mental Health Awareness Month of just being, and also the pandemic of finding yourself suddenly stranded someplace and cut off from your, you know, your freedom of movement or your
00:09:57
Speaker
your social safety net in a lot of ways and what that does to you.
00:10:09
Speaker
That's the thing that a lot of our characters are dealing with. But that's the thing that a lot of us have recently dealt with, talking about the pandemic and a lot of that stress. And we've done some shows on that, especially around some mental health stuff. But that is, you know, and in that situation, you kind of talk about a lot of the planeswalkers are managed to be conveniently stranded at home. And that's a similar situation, a lot of us don't.
00:10:34
Speaker
during the pandemic, especially the long stretch of it early on when some things were getting canceled, some folks had some short-term issues of being stranded. And there's a lot of people that are still stranded at home because they're immunocompromised or whatever, and society has largely considered that they're just not going to care about these people and not going to take any precautions.
00:10:57
Speaker
Those people aren't being given any, you know, consideration and, you know, it's hard for them to even go out in public because nobody's masking and nobody's taking precautions to help them, you know, be able to exist in public. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a good call out for some people. It's not recent. It's ongoing and more specific. Yeah. And so that's a
00:11:24
Speaker
That's a real thing to consider. With the pandemic, at least for some folks, for myself, I can say it was a different version of that sort of thing where I'm stuck at home. It's my home situation, but suddenly because I'm stuck here,
00:11:43
Speaker
It started to become a source of stress despite it being home. It's where I have my stuff. It's where I spend my time, generally speaking, before. But now in this situation, there's a new texture to it, a new situation that kind of changes the whole thing. And so that's, yeah, that is a
00:12:08
Speaker
thing that we need to be aware of that, both for folks where it's ongoing, but even for, I remember myself, I can speak for myself here. I can be outgoing in bursts. Podcasts and conventions and things are really important to me for that reason, because it's important to kind of do that. But also, I'm a person who stays at home to recharge. I spend time by myself. And I thought that this would be fine. I could stay home.
00:12:36
Speaker
for however long it was required. And this would be okay. And it wouldn't, it would kind of suck to not see my friends and be able to go out. But I can, I can do that. But even as a, as a person who, who's pretty introverted like that, it still became a trying situation that can still be a crying situation. And so we have, we have folks that immunocompromised or whose family are immunocompromised or people that they're close to still living in this situation.
00:13:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I have, I have several friends that are still living like, you know, in the situation where they are completely isolated because, you know, if they have any exposure, they are going to catch COVID again and they have when they have had exposure and it sucks and it has caused them long COVID symptoms and other problems and
00:13:30
Speaker
you know, they're completely cut off from society at this point, because they can't even go to the doctor at this point, because even those precautions have been taken away from them. Yeah, it's kind of getting back to this. And I think it's kind of really, in a lot of ways for me, it's, you know, going back to the planeswalker kind of scenario, most people never
00:13:56
Speaker
You know, the vast majority of people don't even know there's a concept of a multiverse. I think their plane is the only plane of existence. There's nothing beyond their plane. That's it. You know, you become a planeswalker. Sometimes even when you become a planeswalker, you don't know you're on another plane. Hello, Tyvar. You know, you just think you're going for a walk somewhere else. How wobbly was the same way because of the
00:14:24
Speaker
immortal son, she was just getting a glimpse of someplace else and being snapped right back to where she was. But yeah, so you have this idea that most people never even know there is an option to go somewhere else. And then you have these special people, planeswalkers, who find out there is this option. You do have places where planeswalking is known.
00:14:52
Speaker
Ravnica got a lesson that planeswalkers are a thing during War of the Spark. Strixhaven, it's kind of a known thing. You have planeswalker teachers there.
00:15:06
Speaker
Yeah. And there's some isolated and it's like in, in, in Ravnica before war, the spark, there was some isolated knowledge of that through the, they had been keeping it, trying to keep it secret. Like the whole project lightning bug had been trying to keep it secret that there were planes walkers coming back and forth to the plane. That's your role. Yeah. Raul's Eric was actively suppressing that knowledge. Yeah.
00:15:32
Speaker
suspected with some definite justification that Niv-Mizzet would just want to dissect him. Just to see. Just out of pure curiosity. Yeah. For the most part, people don't know that there's a multiverse beyond their plane. Then you have this plane to walk. Spark ignites. They're open to this wider possibility.
00:16:02
Speaker
they're given this, you know, this wider multiverse to explore and to walk into and they're no longer confined to one place. And for me, it felt a lot like when I first transitioned and I went from having no social life to having a pretty active one. And then the pandemic hit and all of a sudden I'm told I can't go out anymore. I can't do anything.
00:16:23
Speaker
And it got, you know, felt like getting put right back into this box of you're not allowed to do anything after just having a social life for the first time in my entire adult life. And I can just imagine that in a lot of ways how it feels for a lot of these planeswalkers, they've just been de
Storytelling Opportunities with De-sparked Planeswalkers
00:16:40
Speaker
-sparks. You know, it's like they know that there's just greater multiverse out there, but now that they've lost touch with it and they can no longer experience that
00:16:50
Speaker
So even if they're home, they have no way to reach out and touch this greater, you know, hole that they have been a part of. Yeah, that I mean, much I would say probably to a smaller degree, but a very similar thing with with my social anxiety and not going to conventions and just avoiding social situations and all that stuff until I
00:17:14
Speaker
got my, until I went and saw a therapist and got my diagnosis and started to work on some of that stuff. And there was a number of years where that sort of became a big part of who, of myself was, this is a big part of my hobby. This is a big part of what I do was going to conventions.
00:17:29
Speaker
a few years of that and then now I can't. And that for me was part of that tough part of everybody, the things that they're missing, the social outlets and the social aspects and more serious and severe things that were missing too. But for me, in 2020, there's a reason. I went back to play World of Warcraft because I needed some sort of social outlet that wasn't the same thing but kind of scratched that.
00:17:56
Speaker
Going to four or five conventions a year thing that I was doing where I could have just big bursts of social miss for a weekend and then go home and wow sort of gave me that at least enough to especially when my dad started playing with me which was fun so wait for him and I to stay in contact as he lives pretty far away from us so
00:18:18
Speaker
But talking about the nasty sparking too, it's, I don't know if this is an intentional thing or just, it's just how stories work sometimes, but there, there feels like a little bit of resonance back to early, early magic story with the, um, was that the shard? I can't remember what they called that thing. Yeah. The shard of the 12 worlds or whatever. I don't think that's the exact number of worlds, but.
00:18:41
Speaker
But it was this thing that happened, an additional consequence to all of the other consequences, to Urza being the worst and setting off a magical nuclear bomb to end the brother's war, in addition to setting off a magical nuclear coal, or a magical coal world. Yeah, in addition to creating a nuclear winter in Dominaria, starting the Ice Age, that whole shebang,
00:19:08
Speaker
It also pulled Dominaria and a handful of other worlds into this shard that the planeswalkers couldn't get in or out of. And so I remember I was probably in one of the Ice Age books. I remember a planeswalker talking to someone and saying, hey, it might sound amazing to you that I can go to all these worlds. But this is a relative, this is a really small handful of worlds.
00:19:30
Speaker
compared to all of the things. And they're like, even if it was a small portion of infinity, that's still a limit. And especially at the time, old walkers were the deific god-like powers. Having those limits feels so bad and we're so constricted despite having
00:19:54
Speaker
a number of worlds that we can go to, which is way more than any random person. As Bolas continually brings up, having limitations is bad. Yeah, exactly. And that was a big motivation of Freylies to cast the world spell and end the Ice Sage, but also, hey, look, we broke this shard and now Planeswalkers can leave and subsequently also enter these worlds that they couldn't enter before.
00:20:23
Speaker
creating all sorts of story things. So we'll see these points of markers being substantially less powerful, but also the omen paths creating the opportunity for storylines to exist between worlds. Anyway, they may not go down a similar story path as this, but I just thought there were some interesting similarities to some old story there with walkers looking to find a way around the limitations that were placed on them because
00:20:53
Speaker
even with a large number of options that still felt oppressive to them or constrictive to them, perhaps is a better term. Yeah, I'm kind of bummed that we don't get more story until the fall now because we got the two aftermath stories, but we really have no idea what's going on with the
00:21:17
Speaker
you know, the spark rupture and what's changing and we won't know more until the Eldraine story comes out in August. Yeah, yeah, I agree. As someone who very recently started consuming story again. I'll be honest, I was a little disappointed to discover that there was only two stories for yeah, we won't get any stories for a summer set. So
00:21:47
Speaker
They kind of left us on this huge cliffhanger of most of the planeswalkers have been de-sparked and the fundamental nature of the multiverse has changed. And now you have all these legendary creatures for commander.
00:22:04
Speaker
Yeah, but we're not going to tell you any more about that right now. So stay tuned. Yeah, including we're not going to tell you who, which by the way, I respect that. I appreciate that. Like we're just going to go through it. This is our story for however long. So you'll find out as we go through the story, which I do appreciate. But at the same time, it's like, like you say, we got so little now. So the summer set, this is that commander legends, right? Or am I wrong? That's a auxiliary set. I don't know what our summer standard set is or if we even have
00:22:35
Speaker
Okay, because I'm hopeful and we'll see. I mean, Commander Legends, I know they've done some previews, but I think it's a little ways away still.
00:22:42
Speaker
I'm hopeful that we get similar to the previous Commander Legends. Sorry, this is Commander Masters. I'm hoping we get story similar to Commander Legends, where now this wouldn't push the storyline forward. Okay, release date August 4th. So this wouldn't push the story forward from the timeline standpoint, not giving us any answers to this whole spark rupture thing going on.
00:23:07
Speaker
But it would be cool if this did the Commander Legends thing where it went back and gave us a whole bunch of legends and gave us a bunch of story about a bunch of random characters and really helped sort of flesh out the multiverse. Here are all these very different peoples doing very different things.
00:23:23
Speaker
Yeah, we don't get an actual summer set this year for standard. We get the Lord of the Rings set in June instead. Oh, that's June. Okay. Oh, there's just so many things. It's so hard for me to keep track and it doesn't help that I've been actively avoiding stuff for a little while too. That certainly didn't help. Okay, here we go. Yeah, so we have no new story until August.
00:23:52
Speaker
Yeah. And that's if, if we're getting stuff from commander or is, or we'll get the wild in August. Cause they'll drain is September 8th. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. So a few months away, cause we're sitting in May, in May, as we're recording this now. Wow. Yeah. That is a long time to be like, here's a giant thing and peace. And then just like leave. Yeah. So we're all being stranded, you know, to,
00:24:21
Speaker
Bring that back. Yeah. The, the, the Vorthos community is, is stranded right now. And yeah. So I'm sure we will have a lot more to talk about as, as we get, as we start getting story again, which, which will be fun. I'm, I'm really honestly, I am looking forward to talking story a lot more than I was expecting after having avoided it for over a year.
Anticipation for Future Storylines
00:24:48
Speaker
you know, for some of my own mental health stuff with just some of the issues I was having with the Phyrexia storyline. And now I'm starting to go back and catch up on some of those things that I missed or skipped intentionally. But yeah, it's such a, just talking beforehand, because we're talking about planeswalkers and we had our opening question, but we have a big long list of, of kind of walkers whose sparks are big question marks right now.
00:25:15
Speaker
And, uh, and we know that we know that most of them are de-sparked, that that's what, yep. We know most of them would be de-sparked, but until they show up in storyline and, you know, to me, it feels like this whole thing has been done to, because commander is the most popular format now, it really feels like they're doing this with some of the legendary creatures and not because of story. That is interesting. That, that I,
00:25:44
Speaker
I think I had like half of that thought, but I hadn't put it together in my brain yet. And you're saying, and it's like, yup. No, that, that feels right to me, which maybe doesn't feel right, but it seems accurate to me. I don't know how I feel. I mean, I have no inside knowledge. Obviously I don't work for wizards. Um, nobody that I know.
00:26:07
Speaker
that does freelancing has told me this, so I'm not leaking any information. This is just my feeling is that they've gone all in on Commander and it really feels like they've done this so that they can sell legendary creatures. Yeah, I mean, and I'll say to maybe on a more
00:26:25
Speaker
giving them credit until they prove that they weren't deserving of it. That is such a bad way affording that. But maybe to look at it with a little more positive potential light, a little more hopeful light maybe. I can see this and as of late the story team I think has been doing really well.
00:26:46
Speaker
Story team's been nailing it lately. I can see this being a way, a good way even for them to help build more story space for themselves. Mark Rosewater talks a lot from a design standpoint about sort of mining design space and how they eventually will run out of design, new design space. He talks about it for names, two card names. And because I'm a weird nerd about weird things,
00:27:15
Speaker
That is fascinating to me. We did a whole episode a few years ago about card names and that's sort of like limited space because once a card is printed, it has that name. That name is always that card forever. But now I'm getting myself distracted. So I could see this story because you have Omen Pass now.
00:27:33
Speaker
And they made planeswalkers, they went from the old walkers to the new walkers, to help create more story space for themselves. They could use these characters who can go between worlds.
00:27:46
Speaker
as this focal points for story without them being god-like powers, which is really hard to tell stories about. That really limits your story. You can do it, but it limits the stakes and how you tell that story around those characters. Especially if you have a lot of them. If you have a lot of gods, you just have a problem. Yeah.
00:28:05
Speaker
And so that was a move to do that. This, I think they got to a point where because that was a new card type, they were putting them in every set, they were the Chase Mythics, some of that from a gameplay standpoint, some of that from a selling booster pack standpoint, it created this situation where now they just had this huge glut of planeswalkers in the story. And it's a little bit the Marvel problem where you're like, okay, so there's this big explosion in New York that Spider-Man is dealing with,
00:28:33
Speaker
Why isn't Iron Man helping? Why isn't some other random person in the universe coming over, the Eternals, the whomever, the whatevers? I think having this large, gigantic cast of planeswalkers starts to create a little bit of that problem. It also creates a focus problem, where they're like, we're going to follow Jace, and we're going to go to this world. And people are like, but I want to see more about Niko. I want to see more about Taya, Kazmina. There's so many characters. Some of who are... Yeah, where is our enemy, Niko? Anyways, we haven't seen them at all since call time.
00:29:03
Speaker
Where are they? This gives them an avenue where now, with Omen Paths from a storytelling standpoint, you can still create limitations and restrictions that allow some story, but you can also pretty much put anyone pretty much anywhere, even without them being planeswalkers.
00:29:25
Speaker
But it also means that they don't have the get out of jail free card of I can just walk away like that was part of again for me what I found so interesting about the way they set up the gate watch and I don't know that they emphasize this very much later they just became the Avengers but part of the early remit of this was they're the ones who could choose to leave they were acknowledging this we are the ones who could get away from all of these disasters and
00:29:52
Speaker
That means it's that much more important for us to choose to stay. And so you kind of remove that. Now, if they're on a world, you know, whomever, I've lost my list now. So you have, you know, Sarkin on a world where something's going on, his choice is run to the nearest omen path and just roll the dice potentially, or step up and try to help. And so I'm hopeful.
00:30:22
Speaker
that this creates an opportunity for them to sort of mine more story, create more stories and make it more maintainable without having to do, you know, giant run up. We spend 15 sets or not 15, but, you know, we do the big war of the spark storyline. We do the big, the phyrexine invasion storylines. Those can be great, huge set piece stories, but I think this will give them more opportunity to sort of create more stories in between.
00:30:52
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm not saying that making me some, you know, legendary characters is wrong because I am happy to have a Narset I can actually play now that isn't an oppressive combo commander. So I am happy that I have one I can actually play. Yeah, that's fair.
00:31:17
Speaker
so much directing that at you but maybe just kind of throwing my own thoughts out there there yeah no i was going to say that you know they did sell me on it they sold me on an r set so um i'm good there but yeah i i want to see where this goes and i'm kind of i'm kind of upset that we've got to wait another three months to see where it's going yeah it's
00:31:45
Speaker
We'll see. We'll see what happens in this way, way less of an issue for me, but it's starting to feel like two is not a pattern yet. Two is a coincidence. Three becomes a pattern, but this is like two major things in a row. Now we're just like, and wait.
00:32:00
Speaker
We're going to just sit up for you and stop and try to build that tension. And it's like, that works sometimes. And then very quickly burns out. So it's like, if every so often we just, you know, keep getting these big major things and now wait and like that chains together too closely. It's going to make it hard to, to follow story, but. Yeah. I'm interested to see what Ashiak's up to on Eldraine. No, we got that teaser at magic on.
00:32:31
Speaker
You know, they're, uh, they're, they're enjoying some nightmares and, uh, Will and Rowan are trying to, trying to keep things together. So it'll be interesting to see what exactly is going on when we get back there. Yep. And, and in my, um, sort of story blackout, current story blackout, I went back and I was reading some of the older stuff. So I did read the book from the first all drain and I'm feeling a little closer to the, to the twins. So looking forward to seeing them.
00:33:02
Speaker
to sort of step up and do some stuff and see what they have going on in the story. Yeah, no, I, uh, I would, uh, I would have liked some Battlebond story from them. Gosh, that'd be so good.
00:33:17
Speaker
That's true. All of the tragedies of this, one of the smaller ones, but if these two get cut off
Advocacy for Non-Combat Narratives
00:33:25
Speaker
from Kylen, that sucks. I can't say that's terrible with all of the other things going on, because there's terrible things happening. They separated dino bots. How dare they? Yes. See, that is a little more severe. Yeah, we finally got a...
00:33:45
Speaker
A healthy queer couple. I mean, besides Relentomic, we got a healthy lesbian couple because girlfriend's has problems. That relationship has issues. I'm happy to see that they're back, but they need a couple of therapists, bad. Going to what we were talking about last week, the multiverse needs a lot of therapists. Yeah. Various specializations as well. This and Chandra definitely need to see one. Yeah.
00:34:14
Speaker
Because they're doing some trauma bonding and that's not a good basis for starting a healthy relationship. They're working out some of their issues in the bottom of a pit while they're in the middle of drowning while being, you know, mauled by elemental.
00:34:31
Speaker
not where you want to be working out your relationship issues. No, no. And it unfortunately, to some degree, this is kind of how magic story works. A lot of the time, not all, not all of the times, as you said, like that with the Dinobot story with without them passing cute notes in a box, it was adorable. It was it was yeah, that is that's the only story I read, which I met actually when I was talking to
00:34:58
Speaker
Reinhardt and kind of catching up on the story. And that is the only story that I read during that whole blackout, that whole period where I went dark with, with current storyline. I did read that. Yeah, it was completely detached, completely detached. It was, it was tied to the, uh, to the bride secret lair. It was like, okay, this will be fine. This won't have phyrexians much at least. And I think there's like the barest illusion to things happening and like both of them having stuff going on, which could be literally anything. But that was, that was such a good story.
00:35:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's how you start a healthy relationship though, not trying to hash things out while being attacked by an elemental. Yes, and to say that magic can do stories that aren't focused around combat and apocalyptic events, which is nice to be seen. Hopefully we see more of that sort of in this
00:35:51
Speaker
in this calm between whatever disaster they start to cook up in the background. It would be nice if you know we got we got that story last summer in between sets maybe we'll get some story this summer between sets. Yeah, you know, you know, we can hope it would be nice to see some story in between I would
00:36:12
Speaker
I would really like to know what's going on with some people. Tell me what's going on with Kaya, please. I want to know what she's up to. I'm worried about I'm worried about my ghost hunter girl. Yeah, that would be that would be cool. Chicken with Kaya just a maybe a similar that doesn't necessarily have to be a romantic but a similar sort of non
00:36:33
Speaker
conflict fighting combat story. We're just checking in with some character who we haven't seen since the Frexian invasion and just this person doing their daily life or this person running into someone else who happens to be stranded on this world with them or something. Yeah. Strike up a conversation and
00:36:51
Speaker
let us know Angrath is with his daughters and everything's okay yeah there we go it's just a story of Angrath hanging out with his kids hanging out with his daughters and just that's the story i would love to read that yeah i'd even be fine just reading a story about nashi talking with his uh illusion mom
00:37:13
Speaker
Yeah. Just checking in on basically anyone. It would just be nice to get just a little bit more of an, okay, we have this whole roster of characters who are kind of giant question marks around their steps. I mean, to some degree, do we even know how many of these have survived the invasions? I guess I haven't read all of that yet, but... I mean, we don't know for sure on...
00:37:39
Speaker
Mostly on the Phyrexian side, we don't know what happened to Jason Vraska. Okay. I mean, we know Vraska obviously survived because he don't pull the whole, we didn't find a body thing if they didn't survive. Yeah. And we had no idea what Jason was sent off to do something and we still have no idea what his mission was, so. Okay. Maybe we'll find out on Ixalan what was up with those two.
00:38:08
Speaker
Yeah, that'd be a good place for them to show up again. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, I will, uh, hopefully they'll just be enjoying their life on a beach and won't have anything else going on at all. That would be a great, we have the Exilon story going on and then there's just one side story of those two like drinking fruity drinks on a beach somewhere. Yeah. Margaritas or whatever the equivalent on Exilon is. Yeah.
00:38:38
Speaker
just living out their, uh, living out their retirement. I don't think, I don't think wizards will let them retire peacefully though. No, but even just like a nice little interlude into whatever comes next would, would be nice. Yeah, there's, there's just so much unknown right now, which I think parallels nicely with, you know, with reality. It's we're in this really unknown period where.
00:39:08
Speaker
most everybody wants to pretend the pandemic is over. It's not. Yeah. You know, it's, it's, you know, we're just kind of pretending it's gone, but we're still, you know, case numbers are still really high. It's
00:39:28
Speaker
We're just pretending it's not there. And still coming to an understanding of what the long-term consequences of this thing even is to folks who get sick, especially people who are repeatedly sick. So yeah, it's a weird and not terribly comfortable parallel. Yeah.
00:39:59
Speaker
we're going to have to see where things go. And I don't see right now things aren't looking good in lower or in reality. Yeah. And that's not the greatest for the mental health. I have to say I would love to have a more upbeat story for May, but that's kind of a downer really.
Mental Health Awareness Emphasis
00:40:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And,
00:40:28
Speaker
Unfortunately, that's just the way things are sometimes. And I think we will just shout out again, it's Mental Health Awareness Month. If you're struggling or you get, especially in the United States, access to care is not always available or great, but there are resources, please reach out.
00:40:55
Speaker
We just want to make sure that those conversations are there both during, I mean, just all the time in our show notes, we have resources. They're just in every episode of the Godland Lore podcast, if you feel you need to reach out to somebody, and that includes a whole list of international sources. Obviously, being that we're all in the US, most of our stuff is centered in the US, but that's not everything that's in there, so even if you are somewhere else.
00:41:20
Speaker
Some of those are still good websites that have good resources, but also there are a number of hotlines and things that are around the world. We do have some good mutual support in our Discord too, so if you want to talk to some like-minded people that understand everybody's going through problems and show some wonderful support to each other, consider joining our Discord, which is free to everybody.
Community Engagement and Scheduling Notes
00:41:49
Speaker
And you can also join our Patreon if you'd like, which gets you the episode a little early most weeks, depending on when it gets edited. Yep. And that's one of the only channels on our Discord that is Patreon only is just the early episodes. So it's like I said, it's open to everybody if you want to just to just join the Discord. Yeah, we had a really active story discussion over the last
00:42:17
Speaker
you know, month and a half over, you know, March of the machine and then aftermath was some of the most active I've seen the server was, uh, there was a lot to discuss. And I've caught up on some of that, which I just realized literally this week, I'd forgotten to unmute that channel, hop back in that channel myself, just to start giving through some of the things I'd been missing and some of that conversation since still trying to catch up on the, the forexian storyline, but myself.
00:42:48
Speaker
All right. Well, Tam, unless you've got something else you want to say, it's a good spot to close it. Yeah, I think so. Let's just, you know, hopefully, hopefully we get to see our Planeswalker friends reunite soon. And, you know, I want to, I especially need to see, need to see Suhili and Watley get back together. I don't, I don't want to see them apart very long.
00:43:16
Speaker
Absolutely. And I will, I just thought, just I'll mention it here and we'll talk more about this as well. And we're right at the very end of an episode here, but it's possible that this month we may not hit every week. We'll see what's going on. I know there's just some stuff going on with us and we want to be.
00:43:33
Speaker
upfront about that. And again, a big part of our cast is talking about mental health and having these conversations openly because it's so important and stigmatized sometimes. And so that's part of how we want to push back against that stigma is just to have conversations. And so it's possible that just due to circumstances among the host from mental health stuff and just other things in real life. Yeah, I will specifically be traveling for work for two weeks at the end of May beginning of June. So I will definitely be
00:44:00
Speaker
I will be planes walking out for a while. Yeah, so we'll see. We'll keep things updated our Twitter if you are on that health site or want to just sort of follow our Twitter without signing up the health site. I'm not sure exactly how that works. I have unfortunately been on Twitter for a while now.
00:44:19
Speaker
like a decade or something they recently told me and like it was a it's a whole thing but so that's a good place that that is a place where we send out updates and communications frequently though try to mention things on the actual cast too because we know not everybody is present on Twitter and hopefully this reaches some folks who aren't gonna see that
00:44:39
Speaker
as well so we will be be open about that if we are going to miss a week we don't know for sure but it seems possible and i'll say i'll be honest it seems kind of likely that we'll miss a week coming up here soon but we will let everybody know and uh i think that's a show
00:44:59
Speaker
And that's our show for today.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:45:01
Speaker
You can find all of the hosts on Twitter for now. Hobbs can be found at HobbsQ, Tay can be found at Taeya Transcendence, and Alex can be found at Mel Underscore Chronicler. Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to the Goblin Lord Pod on Twitter, or email us at goblinlordpodcast at gmail.com.
00:45:20
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood Gob's Hugs, 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 for 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 Raphael, who can be found at Steve Ruffle on Twitter. Gob and Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing forthos content.
00:45:48
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.