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Episode 2: Gideon, Guilt, and Grace
138 Plays6 years ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to the Goblin Lore Podcast!
TW: trauma, PTSD, sexual violence, rape, combat violence, child abuse, death, suicide, social anxiety, depression.
In our second episode, Hobbes Q. explains what trauma is and how it differs from – but relates to – post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD), and describes the resilience people find to work through a traumatic experience.
Joe Redemann explains how this relates to our understandings of Nicol Bolas's birth and first experience in Core 2019's "Chronicles of Bolas: The Twins" as well as Gideon Jura's Magic Origins story. The guys discuss Michelle Rapp's (@ninox_morpork on Twitter) article for Card Kingdom on trauma in Magic: the Gathering, and do a little self-processing of their own.
You can find the hosts on Twitter: Joe Redemann at @Fyndhorn, Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at @AlexanderNewm.
Send questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to @GoblinLorePod on Twitter or GoblinLorePodcast@gmail.com.
Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art courtesy of Greg Staples, design by JDR.
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Transcript
Introduction to Sensitive Topics
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello, and thanks for listening to the Goblin Lore podcast.
00:00:10
Speaker
Just a couple of brief notes before we begin the episode. This is a discussion about a couple of very sensitive topics. We do discuss sexual violence, combat violence, triggers themselves, child abuse, death, and suicide to some degree, as does Michelle Rapp of Card Kingdom's article that we mentioned later in the episode. If any of those issues cause you to be uncomfortable, there is no shame in pausing this, turning it off,
00:00:36
Speaker
or listening to something else. We understand it and are sensitive to that. But we do try to be very sensitive about it and bring a healthy and health perspective to those issues.
Focus on Trauma in Magic
00:00:50
Speaker
You'll also notice that the discussion isn't quite over by the time the episode gets done. That's because we had such a great discussion that it lasted for about two hours. So we split this into two episodes. So episode two that you'll be listening to is the first part of our discussion on trauma. Episode three next week, we'll be continuing that
Sound Quality Note
00:01:11
Speaker
discussion. You'll also notice that we're having a little bit of an issue with sound quality and some echoes in the first couple of minutes.
00:01:18
Speaker
We just got new recording software, so please bear with us. On the next episodes, it will be much, much better, and I'll have my air conditioning unit turned off. Thanks for listening to the show, and have a safe walk, Podwalkers. Oh my gosh. That was terrifying. Phew. Yeah. Yeah, that was the worst count, and I think I've ever heard.
00:01:47
Speaker
Well, I try really hard. So, that's the part of the show that we focus on the most, is the count-in. I was gonna say, I thought you were gonna say we focus on trying really hard. Oh yeah, that too. This doesn't come naturally. Think about how good we sound. That's a lot of work.
Trauma in Magic and Reality
00:02:04
Speaker
Well, Podwalkers, you're joining us on episode two and we are digging in further into our conversation about a little bit of a continuation of last episode where we talked about Bolas. But more so, our big theme of the week is trauma in magic and how that relates to us in the real world.
00:02:28
Speaker
So, we're going to run down the show in just a minute, but first I want to introduce you to my lovely co-hosts, and let's start with you first, Alex.
Hosts' Introduction and Favorite Magic Colors
00:02:40
Speaker
I'm Alex. I'm the founder of Twitter, Alexander, and EWM. And what's your favorite color in magic? I really like playing green.
00:02:51
Speaker
I kind of resisted admitting that for a while because it's, I believe, a lot of Commander, and it's pretty much the best color in Commander, but I love land shenanigans. I love having three or four land drops a turn and running out of basics like I did yesterday at Commander League. Two games in a row with two different decks. So I'd have to say green. I didn't realize I was on a cast with this many green mages. Well, I'm HobSkew. I can be found on Twitter at HobSkew.
00:03:19
Speaker
I mean, if we're choosing just a single color, then it's most likely blue. I mean, I think that most people that know me would say that I identify with the knowledge aspect, the knowledge gaining. I don't mind countering spells. I want card advantage. And I don't want you to be able to play magic. Unless it's how I want you to play magic. This is my shocked voice.
00:03:48
Speaker
Well, I am Joe Retteman. You can find me on Twitter at Fyndhorn, and that's F-Y-N-D horn, like the elves or the brownie or the elder or the forest. And I think it's pretty obvious by my handle that I'm a green mage.
00:04:06
Speaker
But since we've already got somebody advocating for green, I actually, in my personal life, I'm a lot more red. I like going for things, I get passionate about things, I'm kind of a do first
00:04:23
Speaker
think after sort of person in a lot of ways and really when it comes down to it, it's a lot about what I care about and what I love. And so that's a lot of how I play decks too is go fast, go hard, do the things you want to do and hope that nobody stops you before you can get there.
00:04:45
Speaker
So, with our introductions there, hopefully you've learned a little bit more about us listeners, and maybe we've learned a little bit more about ourselves. Yeah, we're starting good. We're starting good. It's gonna be a long cast. Well, let's talk about exactly how long it's gonna be.
Understanding Trauma: Real World vs. Clinical Definitions
00:05:05
Speaker
So, we are gonna be talking today about trauma in the real world, what it is, how it works, and what we need to know about it.
00:05:14
Speaker
We're gonna talk about how that trauma is reflected in Magic's story. We have a couple of articles that we're gonna bring up, specifically a really great article by Michelle Rapp on Card Kingdom blog. And then we're gonna talk a little bit about the trope of trauma in stories in general. Why is it that we see these so often? Why do they keep coming up? And how also the planeswalker spark is tied to trauma.
00:05:41
Speaker
Finally, we're gonna wrap it up with what does that mean for you? What does it mean for us? You know, what should we be thinking about as it relates to these events and stories? And then a little bit of a mailbag for some of our listener questions that we've got. So Hobbs, why don't you kick us off? You are our resident psychologist. You are specifically experienced in this area. What is trauma in the real world as we know it, what is trauma?
00:06:10
Speaker
Yeah, I'm really glad that we're kind of doing this cast because one of my goals here is to kind of, I'm always a big fan, I'm kind of trying to clear up misconceptions, dealing with stigma, learning more about mental health and kind of how we talk, how language is important. And I think that the word trauma is something that kind of gets
00:06:32
Speaker
tossed around in a way in the English language and in the vernacular that is very different than kind of what it means to us as in psychology and in mental health. So, I mean, I'll just ask both of you, you know, what is your conception of trauma? What is a trauma? Yeah, I mean, like the first impression of the word, not saying too much, but the first impression is something large, something big, something dramatic.
00:07:00
Speaker
be it emotional thing or something physical that happens.
00:07:07
Speaker
Yeah, when I think of trauma, a lot of what I think about is, I mean, I'm a teacher in my day-to-day life, and so I think about some of my students who've come from situations of trauma, which is how they describe it in the field at least, but, you know, situations where there's not enough food to eat at home, or you're not exactly sure how you're gonna get to school the next day, or even sometimes where you're gonna be sleeping the next night.
00:07:34
Speaker
Right. And there is kind of what we talk about with this idea of complex trauma, which we will get into a little bit. It is probably a little bit too deep for kind of what we're going to be really discussing here. But very specifically, when we are talking about trauma, especially as it relates to what people would think of as PTSD, this post-traumatic stress disorder, basically the idea that you had a traumatic event and it really kind of impacted your functioning and kind of your ability to kind of
00:08:03
Speaker
from kind of work in the real world. Well, that type of trauma, it actually refers to something very specific. So I think last time we brought up the DSM and we talked about this diagnostic manual that psychologists use and PTSD has criteria. You know, it's kind of like that similar idea behind depression. You know, you could be depressed without having a major depressive episode. So when we're talking about it in kind of a clinical sense,
00:08:30
Speaker
You don't just get to PTSD or depression or bipolar disorder by having one or two symptoms. The symptoms kind of need to hold together as a cluster, right? There has to be more than just, I have a sad mood. That's not really enough. Well, the same is true when we're coming to talk about PTSD.
PTSD and Trauma Exposure
00:08:50
Speaker
So the first criteria for PTSD is trauma.
00:08:55
Speaker
In the DSM, that trauma actually means that you need to be exposed to an event or to something. Basically, you are exposed to
00:09:07
Speaker
And I'm going to just pull up a definition right here that really looks at what liquid the DSM says. It's got to be a personal, direct experience of an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury, threats to one's physical integrity, witnessing an event that involves that or learning about an unexpected or violent death, serious harm or threat of death. So when we're talking PTSD, you have to have that definition of trauma
00:09:36
Speaker
first off. So if I was to ask you guys, kind of like, oh, well, let's look at this. Having that type of trauma in your life, how common do you think that is? I mean, it seems like it would be something super far outside the norm. It feels to me that that's more of a
00:09:56
Speaker
You know, at least from my, again, I mean, a lot of this is going to be based on personal experience, but from my experience personally, I would think of that as a cataclysmic event that is in common. That would be my first impression, too. It seems like it would be something that shouldn't happen a lot. I suspect that may not be the case.
00:10:20
Speaker
So, yeah, actually, it turns out that it is not really the case. The fact is that, you know, looking at some of the research studies, it can be as high as basically 70 to 75% of people have experienced exposure to one of these traumas. Like, it's actually much more common to have kind of that happen in your life, whether it's finding out about something or we're finding out about
00:10:46
Speaker
a friend being killed or a suicide or you know I mean but even did this and I'll give you guys kind of a personal example when I went to Vegas when I was 21 and again when I was 22 and I bungee jumped the second time that I went bungee jumping as I was coming back up the bungee actually started to wrap around my body and it hit me right across like my neck in a way that
00:11:14
Speaker
you know, theoretically, could have tightened around it, okay? So that right there would be an experience that I had that would qualify for like a criterion A event. Car accidents. I mean, the rates are really high. Now, what isn't high is actually developing PTSD. So basically, even though I experienced that, I would say I have not developed PTSD. And it actually is the case that most
00:11:41
Speaker
people who have experienced one of those traumas do not actually develop PTSD. The rate overall for adults around the country, kind of if you just did a random population that had experienced one of those in a developed country, the rates are going to be maybe one to three percent. Now, they are higher for very specific types of trauma. So combat is a higher rate.
00:12:08
Speaker
um, sexual violence, particularly rape. And those were actually the highest. Right. That's, there's a violent thing done to your body and your person. Yeah. And, and with PTSD, when it comes to combat, it's also could be having done those kinds of traumatic things or, you know, not only that you were the one who were at the risk of death, but you also perpetrated and
00:12:35
Speaker
There's a whole field that's emerging that's kind of talking about moral injury. And I do think that while that is separate from our initial discussion, it does come into play potentially with some of what we may see with planeswalkers. Yeah. Where there is a sense of moral injury.
00:12:51
Speaker
So can I ask really quick as an admittedly pretty ignorant listener on this topic, not ignorant as in trying to be insensitive, but ignorant as in I'm learning a lot right now. So what is it about the events of rape or sexual violence or combat or survivor's guilt is something that's going to come up later for us?
00:13:22
Speaker
But what is it about those things that causes the long lasting effects like PTSD versus something like a car crash? I mean, I do think it is kind of the severity and kind of the very personal and intimate nature of those events. I mean, there's, there's been a lot of research into kind of what puts you more at risk and it is tend to be, you know,
00:13:48
Speaker
physical interpersonal violence are where you're having the highest kind of rates. And I would say that there probably is something about the nature of that that to me would make sense. And we do also know that even when those rates are higher, I mean, what's interesting is let's take rate, right?
00:14:10
Speaker
The rates are going to vary. It may be higher due to diagnostic problems. I mean, there's a lot going on. But even if we're conservative at the 19 to 20 percent, going a little bit higher, we're still not talking about the majority of people. And that's kind of actually something that's because in some ways, and this is where it's going to really come in, and I think tie in nicely when we start talking about Michelle's article a little bit, is on the flip side of trauma, we actually have psychological resilience.
00:14:39
Speaker
there's a movement I mean a lot in psychology to talk more about positive psychology and to talk about well what makes people resilient you know because resiliency actually is the norm and I kind of brought a couple of examples that I thought that would highlight how this
Resilience: Darkest Dungeon Analogy
00:14:56
Speaker
for people maybe to kind of wrap their head over and see in a different way but have either of you guys played Darkest Dungeon? No. Or know what it is? No I've never heard of it.
00:15:07
Speaker
Okay, so it's a turn-based RPG that had been recommended me to apply a bunch of people and I started playing it where not only do you have hit points, but you also have basically like a stress meter, which is kind of like an anxiety. So if you're fighting in the dark and you take damage, you're more likely to experience higher levels of stress. And when that stress meter hits a certain level, you actually, your character basically has the situation where they either respond in kind of a
00:15:37
Speaker
very negative way or they respond in a resilient way and they're actually buffed by reaching that high level of stress. Now this game is interesting because in between kind of your battles you actually need to return to your village that you live in this like very eldritch horror village and like rest people and you have to know because if they remain stressed for too long they develop quirks or they develop personality characteristics that are unhealthy.
00:16:05
Speaker
And the game's actually interesting in this sense, too, that if your character dies in the game, you can build up this entire character, they're dead. It's not like they're dead for a battle, you go back to a save point. You actually just, they are no longer available in the game. So...
00:16:19
Speaker
you're constantly kind of having to balance that and I kind of think of that being the real world kind of resiliency versus trauma and that you do have and we don't always predict well about who's going to develop which we do know there's different risk factors you know childhood trauma puts you at a higher risk factor for developing it later on that like there may be if you're more likely to have familial stressors I mean it's it's like most things things that happen in childhood are going to put you at a higher risk later on but
00:16:49
Speaker
the norm actually is resiliency. And I just, before we kind of start the rest of it, I want to kind of highlight that and really play up this idea that most people are resilient. Now, when people do develop PTSD, it is because there is a whole host of symptoms that kind of come along with it. There's different categories, you know, there's things like flashbacks, re-experiencing symptoms, avoidance of certain places or situations. So, you know,
00:17:18
Speaker
If you, you know, you can think of this in a certain way of like, if you were sexually assaulted at a certain place, you now, or we'll even just start with a car accident, you start driving a different route. So you won't drive near where you had gotten into that car accident, for instance. Right. You start associating that with the fear that the event, the somewhat irrational fear, right, that that event would re replay.
00:17:44
Speaker
Right. And this is where, okay, so another thing that this comes about is what you're trying to avoid at that point is literally what is considered in the field a trigger. And this is where we get the idea of trigger warnings or the idea of triggers that people will sometimes, I think, make fun of. But it always really does frustrate people in the mental health field because triggers are actually a real thing. And unfortunately,
00:18:11
Speaker
The reason that trigger warnings actually have been controversial at times within the mental health field is the actual way to be able to overcome the effects of a traumatic event are to engage with basically feeling uncomfortable or being back in situations that make you feel like that you're going to re-experience the trauma.
00:18:35
Speaker
You have to kind of deal with those triggers. You have to deal with the situations that are reminders because avoidance of them just teaches you that they are bad and you need to avoid them, which reinforces the negative effects of the trauma. That sounds similar to, I don't know, I'm not sure if I've ever actually talked to you about this, but I have social anxiety.
00:18:58
Speaker
That's a thing that I found after getting some therapy that I needed to go out of my comfort zone because having it for years without it being diagnosed, I was avoiding things and then avoiding things that were like those things and avoiding things that were like those things and it was this narrowing of my life. And by going out, I was able to kind of start to stretch that back out again. And I mean, in kind of how the DSM was organized, you know, trauma disorders kind of felt very similarly under anxiety disorders.
00:19:28
Speaker
And it's a generalization of kind of that idea that things need to be feared. And like Alex kind of talked about with like it generalizes. So avoidance works incredibly well at keeping you from, you know, being afraid. So if you have panic attacks, for instance, and you know that you have panic attacks when you go to certain like the Mall of America. So you never go to the Mall of America. Well, the great thing is you don't feel that panic, right? But then now it's not just the Mall of America. It's
00:19:55
Speaker
you associate it with something else that's kind of similar and pretty soon you can see that this is kind of narrowing down your world. And really like when if we're thinking about this in its sort of evolutionary function and listeners stick with me we're bringing this right back to right back to what is important in this story but it's important to know what all this is but if we're talking about its evolution evolutionary function that's designed to keep you safe though right those fears are
00:20:25
Speaker
even though they're irrational, it's just that the Miss Association almost, right? So, actually, Joe, this is why I'm so glad to do a cast with such, I mean, seriously, such thoughtful co-hosts, because that's exactly kind of what we teach people. We teach this idea of, like, fight or flight. It is still very much NS, and the idea is that when you have some of this trauma, and especially if you start developing PTSD,
00:20:53
Speaker
you start responding to more and more things as if they are something that needs to be feared. And even if they're not, your body is treating them that way and so you react in kind of that, you react in a way that then treats that thing as a feared thing so you don't engage with it, you don't deal with it, and it continues to be that for you because you don't have a corrective experience
00:21:20
Speaker
where you experience something and what you fear, that irrational fear doesn't happen. So can you, you just said a term that I really like and we talked a little bit about resilience and we're going to get into that in regards to Gideon especially in the stories. But I like the term corrective experience. Can you just give us like a quick definition of what that is or an example of what it might be?
00:21:47
Speaker
Yeah, so a corrective experience would be, let's say that I have, you know,
00:21:55
Speaker
I would use the Mall of America because it is a place that has tons of people there, and it is a place that you can easily become overwhelmed, even if you're the most psychologically well-minded person in the world. It still is an overwhelming place, right? So I go to the Mall of America, and let's say I've had a history of panic attacks, or I've had them in the past, and I have one when I'm at the Mall of America, right? So now I never go back there.
00:22:23
Speaker
A corrective experience would be me going back. And it may be that I go and I stay for five minutes. And then the key thing is if I start to feel anxious or kind of a panic attack, I don't necessarily leave. I learned to use coping strategies. I used to learn to use deep breathing. And I try to basically what we call wait it out. I try to let myself have that heightened anxiety return to kind of a normal level.
00:22:53
Speaker
And it kind of, eventually over time, it's kind of that, it's exposure. You're exposing yourself. And I mean, you may have heard of this with phobia work. You know, theoretically, if you have a phobia,
00:23:02
Speaker
that you would do gradual kind of exposure to something so let's say you had a phobia spiders are not actually a phobia because it's supposed to be an irrational fear and it's rational to be afraid of spiders um no but i mean your height example or even spiders honestly like for me if i was to do it i shouldn't
00:23:23
Speaker
look at a spider in a magazine and then sit there and look at it until I'm able to bring my anxiety back down and then I would be able to be in the same room with the dead spider. I mean then I moved to a live spider. I mean you would kind of just move along and the idea is that each of those stages I'm correcting what was an unpleasant experience.
00:23:43
Speaker
That's awesome. That's a really cool thing to think about. Just one last point. The main thing that I think is important to realize when it comes to if people are talking about diagnosing and stuff like that is that there actually is kind of the hallmark point whenever it comes to any mental health disorder, all of them have this thing that they have to impact your life
Magic vs. Superhero Narratives
00:24:06
Speaker
in some way. They have to impact your real world functioning. Theoretically,
00:24:12
Speaker
you have symptoms but they don't impact your ability to kind of live your life the way you want to. It is never considered a disorder and I just think that's something that people I really want to put out there. With all of that there's a lot of great information to ground our stories in in life because this is stuff that we see in magic that I think often is kind of considered just
00:24:38
Speaker
traditional superhero fare and we're you're gonna dig into that in a little bit Alex but this is this is sort of the stuff that seems like oh it always happens it's you know it's just there it's throwaway backstory for our characters before they get to punching the bad guy in the face but there's some really
00:24:58
Speaker
real raw and personal stuff that especially has been going into the magic story of late. And so I wanna, where I started thinking about this for this week is I reread the episode, the issue of The Chronicles of Bolas, The Twins, the first one that we got last week. I reread it and I noticed a really
00:25:25
Speaker
actually heart-wrenching Moment in that story gut-wrenching moment in that story And so I want to I want to read just a little bit of this here so this is this is just after Moravia Sal is being attacked by the hunters and Nicole and Ugin have hatched and nickel is trapped under a tree or a log and can't free himself and
00:25:52
Speaker
This paragraph right here. And then it carries on with
00:26:11
Speaker
nickel hisses it's true they can do nothing as long as he's trapped it's maddening and it's wrong and so i wanted to bring that up because we talked a little bit last week about whether or not we would get any sort of sympathetic or empathetic moments for nickel bolus in this core 19 story arc and i think right here we already get sort of a a tragic moment for him in that
00:26:38
Speaker
His first memory of life is he is trapped under a log, under a tree, and needing to be freed, unable to do it himself. You know, there's blood after he hit his head on the ground. His wings are trapped by branches and fallen like a net over him. And what he hears and sees is literally his sister with a net over her being killed.
00:27:06
Speaker
And that is a horrible way to come into the world, if you think about it that way. We know that Nicol Bolas is the big bad, is cruel, is awful, but really his first memory, his first real world experience is this.
00:27:26
Speaker
And that's horrifying. It seems to me that there's a pretty clear comparison there between Moravia Sal and Bolas' situation. She has literally a net over her. It says, trapped by branches, fallen like a net over him, you know? And like you said, you know, like, so we're getting this story and this, the way that it's being presented to us is interesting because it would be, I would love to see if we were seeing this kind of
00:27:56
Speaker
You know, is this something that Nicol Bolas re-experiences? Is this something that, like, he gets transported back to this time? You know, like, I think it would tell us a lot more about him if we do that. Yeah, how often, yeah, how often is it that he thinks about these things or particularly, you know, has, and I was wondering this too, is how often has he been on Dominaria since this moment?
00:28:25
Speaker
You know, I think his appearance at the end of the Dominaria story arc might be one of the first times we've actually seen him on the plane. And part of that is, I'm sure, you know, the issue of, like, we just haven't been on Dominaria for 10 years.
00:28:45
Speaker
I wonder if that's part of it too. Does he need 500 years to a millennium in between visits? Like, you know, does he avoid wherever this is, the Palladia, the Moores Ridge in Dominaria? Yeah, I mean, that could even be an interesting thing to talk about is, you know, is if you were turning to Dominaria but avoiding specific areas of the plane.
00:29:11
Speaker
yeah I think it's a fascinating thing and it's one that I don't know if it makes it empathetic but it's it's a little bit it's it's a compelling part of the story to me and it really lines up for me his perspective on you know immediately he experiences that the world is cruel the world is vicious and the world
00:29:31
Speaker
and everything in it is trying to kill you. And that, to me, that seems like it would shape a lot of worldview. You talked a bit, Hobbs, about how
00:29:45
Speaker
trauma and PTSD have to have an impact on your life in order to be categorized as, you know, an actual disorder. So if that was the case, I mean, that affects your worldview right from the get-go. And that's certainly, you know, what I don't think any of us would consider a healthy way of perceiving the world. And like Seth, so this comes back to them, us needed to know a lot more about
00:30:13
Speaker
you know, how he is acting now at this point and what the impact has been. So I'll give another quick example, kind of bringing this just real quick back to the real world. I gave my example of kind of my bungee jumping, right? So what's interesting is I did experience some of the symptoms of PTSD because most of us will in response to a trauma.
Personal PTSD Experience: Bungee Jumping
00:30:37
Speaker
It's a matter of they didn't, my normal kind of healing process or the resiliency piece, you know, it helped. But I did have that, the day that it happened, every time I closed my eyes, I could, I felt like I was back there. I could picture it, you know. So I had that. I know what that feels like. I know what that was. Now it went away. You know, it kind of naturally did what most of us do. And I don't know
00:31:08
Speaker
We don't know what both his experiences are. This is where I think it's going to be interesting to see what the story comes out with this week. And, you know, we're recording this before Wednesday, so the news story hasn't dropped.
00:31:23
Speaker
But I think this arc could really line up a lot of that backstory where we do start to know what the motivations are and what his mental processes are because he's, you know, he's a mystery to us still. We've talked about that a bit already.
00:31:41
Speaker
Hope is that we're totally Calling the story like the day before it and we're gonna get accused of having insider information with that I want to pivot to Michelle Raps article because this is a really great way of talking about a really great personal encapsulation of This idea of trauma and magic and Gideon is the centerpiece of this story Michelle
00:32:10
Speaker
Talks in this article on card Kingdom again a lot about her own personal experiences with trauma You know issues that she had with
00:32:24
Speaker
you know, not being respected and not being valued as much as she should by her parents, you know, trying, but while still having that urge, that desire to try to do what was morally right, you know, but instead seeing that shift as she was trying to do what was right to please her parents.
Michelle Rapp on Trauma in Magic
00:32:46
Speaker
And so those are two very different things. The do what is right, you know, I don't,
00:32:53
Speaker
I don't know where you guys fall on the idea of sort of universal goodness and rightness, but I think we all have, most of us have that innate sense of goodness in us. And we know when we're doing things that don't follow that, even if they placate a situation. And Michelle talks a lot about that in the first chapter of her story. And this is where we get into the story of
00:33:19
Speaker
Gideon, who really is a street rat in Theros. He lives in Acros, and he and the Irregulars, his band of kids, this gang of kids, stole from the rich, fed on what they needed, took the gold that they needed, and then gave the rest to the poor. Really, we have this classic Robin Hood type of story.
00:33:43
Speaker
But the means are not necessarily right, you know? He is a thief at that point in time, morally not doing what's right, even though it is trying to solve the situation, not only of his own hunger, but also helping the poor out in the city and sort of spreading wealth. You know, he eventually starts learning his magic after he goes to prison and is taught by the warden Hixus, that's Hiramancy, that's where Gideon starts picking up that.
00:34:12
Speaker
And then, you know, he gathers up the irregulars again and they start to become a little more of like a super friends type of thing. They're defending Acros from cyclopses and harpies and even the death god Erebos is Titan.
00:34:29
Speaker
but this is where everything goes completely upside down for Gideon because uh a spear that the sun god Helios loaned to him he hurls that at Erebos only to have Erebos turn that same you know turn the spear reverse it on him and Gideon uses some of his higher mancy magic to try to shield his friends but it fails and so this is this is the
00:34:58
Speaker
This is that traumatic event for Gideon here.
Gideon's Survivor's Guilt
00:35:01
Speaker
This is the story.
00:35:13
Speaker
his eyes passed over four lifeless bodies. And so that's where we get the flavor text, too, on the card for Magic Origins, tragic arrogance. The spear thrown by Kythian's own hand was the weapon that felled his friends. And so you have in that traumatic event that, you know, experience, that survivor guilt comes right here and his whole world collapses.
00:35:37
Speaker
Well, so, and remember, you know, so the survivor guilt is a huge part and that is the part that tends to come up in, I mean, that is a big part of PTSD. It also is he did not get hurt physically. He did not die like his friends did, but he had the chance to. It was an experience where he could have had, you know, a real threat of death.
00:36:01
Speaker
Well, and even more traumatically, Kythian was one of the most faithful believers in the gods. And in this moment, not only did his patron, the sun god, Heliod, know the weapon that he was given to him, not only was that the weapon that killed his friends,
00:36:19
Speaker
You know, Erebos, the death god, was the god that contributed to their deaths and his own trauma. And so for him, not only is it the realization that he was the one that got his friends into this gang, that he brought them to this battle, that he threw the spear that killed them, but the gods that he believed in
00:36:43
Speaker
were also partly responsible. And so not only does his whole sort of world around him in the immediate physical world collapse, that belief system collapses. And that's doubly harmful. You know, that's a whole existential crisis all in one. Gideon, as a result of this, sparks. And we're going to get into a bit more about the planeswalker spark in a bit. The way that Gideon does
00:37:09
Speaker
it up until the Dominaria's story block is really literally running himself as ragged as possible.
Gideon's Self-Destructive Struggle
00:37:16
Speaker
It's almost like he could, you know, die. I think the fight against Bolas on Amonkhet is probably the best example of this moment. Gideon keeps battering himself against Bolas, keeps, you know, essentially using himself as a human battering ram with his shield magic up.
00:37:33
Speaker
But he keeps getting knocked back like a bouncy ball, you know, time and time again, almost like, you know, he's just gonna get crushed. And this is that moment where Gideon does, we see that reliving, that replaying it. Only once before in his life had Gideon felt so helpless. He had resolved never again to watch his friends die as he had when Erebos had killed all he held dear. This entire battle had been a nightmare from the beginning as Bolas had kept him out of the fight.
00:38:02
Speaker
So again, Gideon is helpless to stop what's happening. Again, his friends are involved in a battle. This time it's the Gatewatch. Again, he's being kept out of it and protected at the same time. And so not only can he not be touched while he's got his shield magic up, his friends are getting beat down. And so then this is what Nicol Bolas says to him.
00:38:26
Speaker
I could kill you Gideon anytime I want, but I suspect you would not mind dying the way you play so carelessly with your life and the lives of others. No, far better for you to live today, to know how pathetic you were, how useless you were. Even better, how little I care. I give you the choice, stay and die or leave and live.
00:38:51
Speaker
And for a moment, Gideon actually considers staying on Amaket and letting Bullis kill him. It's that moment of he could let it all go. He could be free of the guilt. He could be free of the burdens of his conscience.
00:39:07
Speaker
It's that moment to where Bolas becomes that voice in his head that he gives his words to the voice that had been in his head and says exactly what he's been doing. Because Gideon literally was bouncing between trying to maintain order on Ravnica in like eight to 12 hour chunks.
00:39:30
Speaker
to planes walking back to Zendikar and fighting Yaldrazi, and he literally was not sleeping. So, you know, it's that moment where all of that is built up, and we see Gideon truly consider, you know, letting it go, letting, you know, it's not exactly suicide, but it's self-destructive tendencies, you know, to the point where he's willing to let somebody else end him.
00:39:59
Speaker
But after that moment, he does leave. He does walk away, and he does regroup.
Gideon's Resilience Journey
00:40:06
Speaker
And over the course of the Dominaria arc, we do see him realize that he can process those events. He can come to grips with those emotions.
00:40:18
Speaker
You know, he doesn't surrender to his pain, to his feelings of inadequacy. Instead, he finds a way to try to help his friend, in this case Liliana, break her pact and, you know, become free and let her life become something bigger and greater. He truly takes on that ability to, you know, and this comes from the conversation with Teferi too, I might add, who,
00:40:46
Speaker
you know, saw his whole homeland disappear. He was the cause of his homeland disappearing. But he sees that Teferi has kept his life going and has found a purpose for himself. And so Gideon in that way does the same thing and sets his mind to, you know what, maybe this can be something, you know, I can find a way to persevere through this. And there's that resilience piece that comes in.
00:41:10
Speaker
And I would say even that conversation with Teferi might be the corrective experience. Right. I mean, it is. It could be that, you know, he saw somebody else that had experienced a horrific traumatic event.
00:41:23
Speaker
and had found a way to cope with it. And, you know, whether it's just that the ferry found a way to live kind of a value driven life that he at least was like, well, yes, that happened. And I can also try to make things better. I can keep working. Absolutely. And I and that's to me, that's the lesson of
00:41:42
Speaker
And I'm not doing Michelle's article nearly enough justice. We don't have enough time to do the article justice. It is beautifully written. It is very personal. It is very
00:41:54
Speaker
thoughtful, and she truly helps us understand those moments of trauma in Gideon's life and how they can sometimes be mirrors to our own life, but also those moments of resilience, those times where he does say, no,
00:42:16
Speaker
I won't give in to the easy thing because it is easy to surrender. It is easy to sacrifice yourself. And we know that from the color pie, white is so often the color of self-sacrifice, you know, for the greater good. And that's what it tells itself all the time, for the greater good.
00:42:32
Speaker
But I think, you know, so I just want to chime in a little bit that she says right at the end of that article, though trauma is a common occurrence for many people.
Understanding Trauma and Resilience
00:42:41
Speaker
And she cites some of the stats that are, you know, similar to kind of what I was talking about earlier, that it's a minimum 50 percent, let's say, that's had one of these traumatic events.
00:42:51
Speaker
many people the grace and will to move forward is incredible and precious and I will say that you know like so Michelle actually insulted with me on this article before writing it kind of wanting to get to know a little bit more about
00:43:05
Speaker
trauma and what that means and what is the likely course and the way she incorporated it here is just absolutely beautiful. The grace and will and those are two qualities of white also on the color pie that I think we do need to think about and carry forward in our own lives.
Conclusion and Resources
00:43:26
Speaker
That's our show. Thanks for listening, Podwalkers. I know it was serious, but we do get to some fun stuff, including some mailbag questions, at the end of episode three. Remember, as always, you can find Hobbs Q at Hobbs Q on Twitter. You can find Alex Newman at Alexander New M. And you can find Joe Retteman at Findhorn. You can find this podcast at Goblin Lore Pod on Twitter.
00:43:53
Speaker
Or you can email us at goblinmoorpodcast at gmail.com. Links to both Michelle Rapp's article on Card Kingdom and The Magic Story Chronicles of Bolas the Twins are linked in the show notes. Thank you all for listening, and remember, the trick is, once you get moving, don't stop.