Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 180: Pets!!
288 Plays1 year ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! The goblins want to remind you that we have a very active and open Discord and love the oppurtinity for you all to join! This week is pretty simple and amazing... We talk about Pets across the multiverse!
Again we would like to state that Black Lives Matter
We also are proud to have partnered with Grinding Coffee Co a black, LGBT+ affiliated and owned, coffee business that is aimed at providing coffee to gamers. You can read more about their mission here. You can use our partner code for discounted coffee!
We also finally have a Linktree with all of our discounts/resources
____________________________________________
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.
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: 988
- 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
____________________________________________
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
Recommended
Transcript
Why was there no episode last week?
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. We missed you all last week. We had a perfect confluence of events happen. I was in New York City presenting on the Dungeons and Dragons for Veterans group that I run. It was actually a cool conference because there were four other groups presenting, which is like the first time that this conference has more than even just one group presenting on it.
00:00:56
Speaker
So it was really cool. But it meant that I got in very, very late from travel and then kind of just there was no way to record. Taya was on the Joko cruise, which if people don't know, I am sure hopefully she will give us a mini recap when she does her introduction because it's an amazing fun cruise and also had gotten sick, unfortunately. And then Alex was also sick. It was just a perfect compliment. So we didn't have an episode for you last week.
Upcoming guests and episode teasers
00:01:23
Speaker
But we have a lot of really cool ones coming up. We have been working on scheduling with guests, including some more magic story, a magic personality coming on to talk about something completely not magic, which is nice because it meant we didn't have to go through Wizards HR this time. It's just a little spoiler if you can figure it out.
00:01:44
Speaker
Um, yeah, so, uh, I'm Hobbs Q. Before we get started, I will try to remember that the Grinding Coffee Company, just because they continue to be amazing. They, every time I've reached out to them, uh, just even recently, they check in with us, even though we're not like one of their, I feel, main, like hardcore people that I think of or that are, are, you know, we don't,
00:02:06
Speaker
It's not like we're getting tons of money from them every month, yet they still reach out to us as somebody who is invested in the show and cares about it. And I just think that that's really great. So I just want to always say thank you to them. I also want to let people know that we did put in for a panel about sparking and mental health recovery.
00:02:26
Speaker
And I've teased this a little bit, and we did put in for this panel, it is the three hosts that are on right now, myself, Alex, and Taya, with two other frequent guests and collaborators on this show. And I haven't announced who they are, like, explicitly yet. But I feel like if you listen to the show, you probably could make some good guests. So and just to clarify, that's a panel for Minneapolis, the magic culture that's happening in May.
00:02:56
Speaker
the like zero context. I was just like, we submitted a panel could have been for anything, right? Yeah, who knows? But yes.
Introduction and choosing a magic universe pet
00:03:04
Speaker
So yeah, so today to get us started, my name is Hobbs or Thomas. My pronouns are he, him, and we're going to do as a lead-in for today's topic, who would be your pet from the magic, the gathering kind of multiverse? That's at least what we're starting with as a question. We'll see where it goes from here. And I am simply, my answer may shock you because it's not Squeak.
00:03:33
Speaker
Even though I would, I'll squeeze down a pet. But anyways, you don't keep goblins as pets. Well, they are. Well, so this is the problem that I was coming up with. What I even thought of this question is because there is a lot of questions of sentiency. We had the same one with like questions about creature types that would taste good a long time ago.
00:03:53
Speaker
But I am going to go with Fiblethump. So it's still a legendary, but I think it's more acceptable because it gets really lost and probably needs to have like one of those backpacks with like the leashes attached to the parent. So I think- Or you get Fiblethump one of those like cat backpacks that has a glass dome so it can see out. Yes, that would actually be way better. Those things are amazing.
00:04:16
Speaker
Well, Alex, since you were speaking. Yeah. So I'm Alex from Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler. My pronouns are he him. And I, I started with a more conventional answer.
00:04:32
Speaker
And then I went with a less conventional answer, because it gives me an excuse to talk about something this week that's really kind of helped, because it was a rough week for me, mental health wise. But I found a fun new show that I really enjoyed that I caught up on. And it's a weird tie-in to this card and this question. So I'm going to go with Onara Wolfid Familiar, which is also a legendary creature, but specifically
00:04:58
Speaker
one of the familiar partner creatures from the Commander Legends set. I love this cycle. I love them. They're partner, legendary creatures, so that means you can use them with another
00:05:14
Speaker
commander that has partner. But then all five of them, there's one for each color, gives commanders you control something or in some way. So Anara gives your commanders indestructible. And so that fits this sort of old school D&D, even old school sort of fantasy outside of D&D concept of like wizard familiars being animal companions,
00:05:37
Speaker
to help them. We've discussed this on the show before, right? We talked about them during our Commander Legends Legends show. We did a whole bunch of shows about that. Like 12 shows on it and then had Jay on it. Yes, and then had Jay. But also if you look at the art, like this is not just a wolf. It's like a big-ass wolf with antlers and like it's an amazing looking powerful wolf.
00:06:06
Speaker
which reminds me of this anime that I've been watching. It's something along the lines of in a campfire cooking is overpowered in another world with my special skill or something like that. Yeah, love it. Long story short person from modern Japan gets summoned to a fantasy world. The people who summon him are very disappointed because he's not a mighty warrior. His only skill is called online grocery order.
00:06:36
Speaker
And so he just gets thrown out on the street. And then he realizes that in this fantasy world, he can access growth, modern food and groceries from a Japanese grocery store. That is his special power. And I love this show. I love that as a special power. That's amazing. Early on, he ends up with, let's say a very powerful wolf that looks like this as his familiar, but really the wolf is way more powerful than him.
MTG Dogs contest and pet popularity
00:07:05
Speaker
But because he can access these, these food things and knows how to cook, like he just genuinely knows how to cook too. This just kind of becomes an adventure of him and his familiar out in the countryside cooking, whatever random monsters his familiar is hunting. And he just learns how to cook a cockatrice. Like, let's try it. So I love the show. Exactly. So that'll be my long-winded answer.
00:07:29
Speaker
All right, I'm Taya, she, her, or they, them pronouns. I'm going to flip this answer. I want to be Rada's pet. I want Big Lady to just take me under her wing and I will do whatever she wants. On a more serious note though,
00:07:53
Speaker
You know, I'd have to go with one of the adorable cats from almost anywhere in Magic, but let's say, you know, maybe an adorned pouncer from Almond Cat. They're just so cute. I was playing Commander yesterday with my cats with toys deck.
00:08:15
Speaker
And had an adorned pouncer suited up with a bunch of equipment to the point where and then had a Robbo out So I was doubling its power and I had a you know, a 24 20 double striker in the air That was that was a lot of fun But a good kitty
00:08:34
Speaker
Flying kitties. Good flying kitties. Yeah, good flying kitties. But yeah, no, I will. I will be somebody's pet and magic. There's so many good legendary characters that I would just be like, yes, ma'am.
00:08:51
Speaker
So this question of or this discussion of pets is something that came up so Taya Throughout because right now as we are recording this episode We are in the midst of the final round of MTG dogs Which is a if people don't know it is a contest ran by Vortos Mike Mike Lineman Bracket style for March Madness that he started I want to say I'm gonna go with
00:09:19
Speaker
eight years ago. It's been a long time. Yeah, it's been it's been it's either seven or eight. And I know this because I have participated in it in like, half of the years. So my dog Duncan, who is no longer with
Representation of pets in Magic's storytelling
00:09:34
Speaker
us took second place during 2020 during the pandemic. And my dog Watson this year made top eight. So made it to and lost by like 10 votes to to Marty rough.
00:09:48
Speaker
quad 9s uh so stephanie's dog who actually duncan had beaten back in 2020 by like 10 votes so it was a very cool kind of thing but if people don't know it is just a bracket style competition uh it's a popularity contest um mike has put some rules in place uh if people don't know the history like the first year was like kibler and shiro um so
00:10:12
Speaker
Like there was no competition. It was from day one. We all knew who was gonna win But there was only like it was only 16 or 32 dogs even I mean Mike was having trouble getting enough people in really trying to get a following behind it Which is completely understandable for something like that
00:10:29
Speaker
I think Efro might have won, like Eric Froelich might have won the next year with his dog, which I also believe is a Pomeranian. And then Mike started putting some safeguards in place, like capping size of creators was the main one, just how big the audience was, which means some people that we know and love haven't been able to participate. I managed to stay under the threshold.
00:10:52
Speaker
But it's just kind of a fun way for me to see people post photos of their pets and their dogs in particular. You know, and I I'm the type of person who will use that as an excuse to blast photos of my dog all day long. Most people are like a retweet vote for my dog. And I'm like, here's another photo of my dog. I hope you're annoyed with me and abused me by now.
00:11:12
Speaker
because i love pets like yeah and and i appreciate that because not only does it give me a chance to see lots of pictures of your dog this year i saw snickers twice who's your people posting pictures and so i was a big fan of a big fan of that too
00:11:32
Speaker
Yeah, so that gal Carolyn, friend of the cast, Carolyn Arnold, loves Snickers. She's met her and is obsessed with my cat or our cat, Jen and I's cat and Snickers can usually be found in the back of photos of Watson, really giving him side eye.
00:11:51
Speaker
It is the perfect relationship. And you mentioned cats, Alex. I think it was a couple of years ago, somebody took the mantle MTG cats and ran a couple of brackets. I haven't seen if they're doing it this year. Yeah, I haven't seen anything about it this year. So either I've missed it or they're just not doing it, which makes me sad as a cat person.
00:12:14
Speaker
Right. And it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. I know what Mike has, you know, posting photos and polls, like basically every day. It's a lot of work, but it would be nice because like the cat ears were also fun because then we started getting retweets of cats. And I think that it just you kind of brought up to it like this is a great time. It's not a topic we've ever talked about. And we have this concept within magic. Yeah, you know, there's been pets across the multiverse for
00:12:43
Speaker
I wouldn't say it's been a long time, but as they've expanded the sets out to be more focused on the planes themselves and show some kind of semblance of regular life on those planes, we've gotten to see a lot more of actual pets in the cards or at least references to them. Adorned Pouncer being a good example of
00:13:07
Speaker
you know, showing that cats were kept as pets and, you know, revered on Amonkhet. Was Isamaru in the original Kamigawa one of the first sort of pets represented? It's the first one that comes to mind for me. Yeah. At least as a legendary creature that makes it a more notable or comes to mind easier. So maybe there was something earlier, but yeah.
00:13:34
Speaker
You're right. And that one too, Isamaru, especially being like a guard dog, fits the combat stuff a little bit, because I think there even was a card guard dogs from the pre-modern sets, I want to say. But having just like cats, I mean, and just other pets represented in both the story and the cards is a thing that took some time because like you said Tei, it kind of took them representing
00:14:02
Speaker
more of just the people and the worlds within the story, which was something that took the game a little while to kind of build itself to. But it's a really neat detail to start to see. It's one of those things we come to every so often when we talk about story that in the last, you know, eight-ish years, ten-ish, like more relatively recent history for a game that's
00:14:28
Speaker
Well, that was 25 a couple of years ago, so we're a few away from 30th anniversary this year. Oh, 30th anniversary. Yeah, that's right. 93. Yep. So 30th anniversary this year. So for a game that's been running that long.
00:14:41
Speaker
like relatively recent development that we start really looking at the people and not even in story because we got a lot of story relatively early on. In fact, we go really, really early. I guess all we got were random sort of one off stories. But cards were just combat things for a long time.
00:15:02
Speaker
And then even as they started to do more stories, those were still really more focused on bigger, archetypical fantasy sort of storylines and didn't have a lot of time to play in the smaller scope, little granular world details on the people.
00:15:22
Speaker
Well, even if you want to go with what you were kind of talking a little bit about Alex, you know, with like guard dogs or something like that. Dog wasn't actually a creature type for a very long time. They were hounds. There was this whole thing when Mike was doing this, like one of the prizes that he sent to people were like,
00:15:40
Speaker
know, every common and uncommon. And it wasn't until there had been like the redoing of the creature type that dogs were actually a separate or became the predominant creature type because it wasn't originally like they didn't fit into the fantasy world until we get storytelling. Yeah, like like you were saying with Isamoro and then, you know, more recently on
00:16:02
Speaker
Kamagawa, we got Yoshimaru, which if people don't know, is like the dog that just sits and waits for the empress to come back, which is also based in a Japanese story. If people have never heard of this, the Hachiko, it's a dog in like, I'm going to probably cheer up while just discussing this. It's a, there was a dog whose owner basically died at work.
00:16:28
Speaker
And the dog used to meet him at the train station every single day because he was just like, you know, like dogs were like 1923 dogs were just like allowed to just go wherever and every day he would like basically come and wait at the train for his owner who never came back for like nine years. He continued to do this. There's actually like statues of Hachiko in Japan. It's like.
00:16:51
Speaker
And it is kind of also the story of people don't know the like most heartbreaking episode for me ever of Futurama played off of this because it happens, right? Like, I mean, it is we have this ties to animals. I think I'm speaking mainly of dogs because I own both, but I'm more of a dog person and I just know kind of the history of domesticating of dogs a little bit more.
00:17:20
Speaker
Yeah.
Emotional bonds with fantasy animals
00:17:22
Speaker
That's a whole rabbit hole that I'm fascinated by, the parallel evolution of dogs and humans. But it's like you say, it goes beyond just dogs. In our world, we have bonds with a lot of animals beyond just dogs. But that just is a part of our life as a society, not every individual, like myself.
00:17:47
Speaker
I unfortunately am in a situation where I don't really have the ability to have a pet right now, which I did. My apartment building allows both cats and dogs, but I am gone. I live by myself and I'm gone most of the day. It's not fair to put an animal into that situation right now.
00:18:07
Speaker
But it's the thing that like growing up, I grew up with dogs. I had a cat for quite a while and it's, that has been a big part of my life while I was growing. And there's a lot of people like, a lot of other people, like I know both of yourselves have pets that are parts of your lives and that's just a part of your family.
00:18:29
Speaker
And it's great that we're getting that represented in this game to help build the texture, to make these people more realized, to make these worlds more real.
00:18:40
Speaker
It's interesting to me from a narrative perspective, too, just for how we can play an emotionality, right? I mean, we know we have a whole thing that goes along with this idea that like, you can kill whoever you can kill people throughout a movie over and over again, but you kill like an animal, there's a big difference, especially with the pen, right? I mean, we have a whole series based on like, yeah, john wick is a movie about that whole series, a whole series, right? Like, um,
00:19:07
Speaker
So like with magic story, we're even we've seen kind of, you know, like Yoshimaru is playing off of that. Isamaru does. There's even and I will. There was the like rest in peace with dog art that like very, very much implied, even though Wizards and the the person who designed the card tried to claim that it was not about a dead dog, but like
00:19:31
Speaker
The flavor text is literally something along the lines of like, he chased every ball and finished everything. And now he was ready for like his rest. I'm like, ah, the cards called rest in peace. Like he's chased all of his balls. Like, come on. Like. Yeah, especially the nature of the card. Yeah, it's. Yeah, we get a lot of that.
00:19:56
Speaker
I mean, there was a recent cardboard crack. If you didn't see it, it was cards. Yeah. And it was like, you can't kill that. It's too cute. And, you know, you can't kill my dog. It's too adorable. And it's like, how am I supposed to interact with your cute thing step? I mean, it's true. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I.
00:20:22
Speaker
You have something like spirited companion on the board. It just feels bad to even target it or, you know, when they chump block with it. How could you be that monster that chump block with the poor little dog? I mean, there's been selfless savior, which is like your you sacrifice your dog to give it everybody on the team a boost. I mean, it plays into these concepts, though, that are really tied to loyalty and and companionship.
00:20:50
Speaker
I was thinking story-wise where we have most seen that for me is like Ikoria with the concept of bonders, which I was hoping, hey, you might be able to explain a little bit more than I can. So yeah, the idea on Ikoria is just that somewhat randomly people will gain the ability to form a psychic connection with a animal or beast as they're called on Ikoria.
00:21:17
Speaker
Um, which covers more than just the beast type, obviously, uh, monsters, monsters on Ikoria. Um, there's a lot of them, but yeah, a human will just develop a ability to bond with that. And I share a psychic connection, which lets them share feelings and emotions and thoughts with each other. And then they become really close unless you're Luca and you're a complete jerk and kind of spurting that whole ability. Uh,
00:21:45
Speaker
and use it to control your animal companion and not even give it a name uh because you're a jerk um and kind of throw out this gift but i'm not i'm not quite clear if we know where you stand when it comes to luga so you don't have to mince words you know
00:22:08
Speaker
Yeah, there's there's, you know, seven episodes of the Lord going so you can get my opinion on Luke. But I mean, like the concept really is that, you know, I know it's monsters and it's supposed to be there's this.
Ikoria's bonders and magical companionship
00:22:24
Speaker
Element to that, but but it really is like this very clear bond that is sharing. And within I think this was a commander set that was.
00:22:37
Speaker
with Ikoria or around Ikoria, there was also a set of partner with Commanders. So these are two legends who have partnered, but specifically partner with these two cards. So they just partner together and they had, they were, so it was three color, like mono color plus a two color. Right. Yeah. That was the Ikoria Commander. You had the one that was like Silver and I forget the human's name, but
00:23:07
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm looking, I'm trying to find them all, but these, most of them look like, what, like this one got held in avid Arcanist, his partner with is Paco Arcane Retriever, who's an elemental hound. And so there's, there's definitely some like, potential of a pet sort of relationship, at least relative to, you know, this world, but in a similar, I mean,
00:23:32
Speaker
These are probably, if they're on Ikoria would be bonded in a similar fashion, but it's, these are really kind of the, now that I think about it in the actual Ikoria set, we didn't get a lot of representation of that specifically from what I'm recalling. So this was a nice sort of way to, to show that a little bit. I mean, one of these people had a sky shark and that's a fun, a shark bird. Yeah, because they're shark.
00:23:59
Speaker
I Korea is a creature combos and I Korea are fascinating. I really do. Yeah, love those. So this is a fun place where you can kind of represent that sort of relationship, but also have silver the devourer of the free who is a cat nightmare and clearly going to be good at combat. My friend wing has a silver deck, which is
00:24:29
Speaker
It's basically all of the food are some kind of cop or something like some kind of copper law enforcement or something. And it's just feeding copper coats to the nightmare cat.
00:24:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's like tasty, tasty copper coats. And that cat's partner is Tyrin, Champion of the Free. Yeah. It's a fun pairing. And okay, I'm sorry, this is one more distraction. I don't think I've ever really looked at the art of Akima, Stalking Shadow, but that is a wolf whale who is a very much a wolf with a very large whale.
00:25:10
Speaker
tail and it is that is a very good book and piece of art. Actually, I think Alex is way in the weeds now. We need to revisit a choreo wizard just for Alex. This is the problem with Scryfall in the middle of a recording sometimes. Right down the rabbit hole. Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:32
Speaker
But I mean, I think this we are seeing I think we have seen a lot more I mean and the fans have called for this right like dog tokens and just there was the whole m21 set Yeah cat dog commander Mm
Taya's relationship with cats and mental health
00:25:49
Speaker
-hmm, and there was a whole like and I think it was around then right like we'd had like people wanting to make these because animals are an important
00:25:57
Speaker
you know, I would say benefit. So that's what I was hoping we could talk a little bit about. Like, hey, you mentioned for you cats, and I was hoping you could talk a little bit about your cats if you're willing to, like, oh, yeah, definitely. So let's talk about pets. Like, let's do it. Yeah, I'm a I would say my pets are a big part of my mental health. And I'm
00:26:18
Speaker
One is I'm terribly allergic to cats. Even after having years of allergy shots, I still have reactions to cat dander. If they get right in my face, my eyes can swell shut. I pretty much always have tissues nearby because my nose will run no matter how many
00:26:38
Speaker
how many histamine type medicines I'm on. So cats are worth it for me, mental health wise though, it's worth the problem of dealing with the allergy side effects.
00:26:55
Speaker
So, this feels really weird to start this without our normal intro, but that has already happened for you who are listening, but not us who are recording. Unfortunately, there was some issues with our recording yesterday. Sounds like a good chunk of it is still salvageable, but Taya and I are here to finish.
00:27:12
Speaker
the to do another sort of second half and Hobbes will be has the unenviable position of trying to edit this together into a good episode so if you're listening to a great episode that's awesome and it's all on Hobbes for being amazing at this so y'all should thank him for all his hard work as Taya and I have been
00:27:33
Speaker
But so Taya, you were before the recording kind of got mixed up, you were kind of talking about your cats and a lot of the mental health there. Do you want to kind of pick up there is, you know, I was saying, I'm terribly allergic to cats, but they're just too important to my mental health to not have as part of my life. I have four cats.
00:27:56
Speaker
one of which Callie is with me in the office right now. She tends to spend the day with me every day while I'm working and is a bit of a constant companion for me. She's kind of always by my side and I'm glad that she's here. I have a couple of other cats, including one older one, which I'm thankful, you know, he's a
00:28:21
Speaker
He's 16. I'll be thankful to have him around as long as we have him at this point. Every day is kind of a blessing with that. And we'll have to see where it goes in the future. But he's just a part of my life and this is...
00:28:39
Speaker
dealing with loss of pets is kind of the flip side of what we talked about a bit on, you know, it's not easy on the mental
Impact of pet loss on mental health
00:28:48
Speaker
health. And there's a lot that goes on with morning pets as well. And hopefully, hopefully, they'll be around for a long time. But this is something that always has to be considered. Well, that's the flip side, right? I mean, we can talk about this. I mean, pet ownership is also
00:29:08
Speaker
preparation for knowing that things can, you know, that you are the lifespans that we're talking about with cats and dogs in particular is nowhere near what we're talking about for humans in our lives. And this is one of the things that I think I struggle with as somebody who my pets are such a mental health boon to me. And I have to also they are a lesson in acceptance and awareness. And even having to teach for kids. I mean, we, we've already had to for a two year old explain that, you know,
00:29:39
Speaker
The dog that she basically cuddled with, Duncan, was going to die. I mean, he was sick before she was born. He had cancer, and I had gone through that a couple of years previously with another dog. And we had made the decision when Gwen was getting ready to be born that we weren't going to aggressively treat a
00:30:01
Speaker
eight-year-old dog with arthritis for, like, bone cancer, right? Like, we're not gonna put a dog through treatment that we had no clue what it would do to extend, and then he kept living, which is awesome. But it was also always a flip side of things that, like, my anxiety was on edge about him. At the end of the day, it's worth it for me, but I think it's a conscious decision. It's something that I've had to face and be very aware of. It's something I have to be aware of as we now have,
00:30:31
Speaker
our other dog is now seven and eight and you know we have dogs which larger dogs lifespan you know like 12 13 you're doing very well and that is something that hangs over it while at the same time I cannot imagine living without dogs I mean dogs are what got me through
00:30:54
Speaker
some of the worst times in my life. When I moved here from San Diego in the year prior to moving, I ended an eight year relationship who I owned both of the dogs with.
00:31:05
Speaker
I only had one of the dogs with me at that time, Veen, and then my ex was no longer able to, like, basically couldn't, relationship dynamics, but her new partner didn't like Duncan, which anybody who's on here that knows Duncan, like, I know there's people that have spent time with that dog, it's wild to me, but I ended up with him back. But those two dogs were my, like, lifeline when I was living alone by myself in a new state where I didn't have
00:31:33
Speaker
Social connection jet, you know, I had magic players that I was starting to you know become friends with but I I had my dogs I could come home and know that I wasn't going to be alone, which is wild for me to kind of say and think and you know Alex I know you were kind of saying right like Those hours that you're away is a tough thing But like I knew that I could come home and that they were going to to be there and
00:31:58
Speaker
That, to me, at that point in my life, was just that reminder of the benefits that I was getting, the psychological benefits.
Historical evolution of dogs and human bonds
00:32:04
Speaker
I mean, the real, like you were talking about the parallel evolution stuff, Alex, and there's stuff to do with even just the production of oxytocin from petting animals, which calms us and makes us more relaxed. It's the, you know, it's a feel-good chemical.
00:32:19
Speaker
Well, and okay, I don't wanna go too far down this rabbit hole because I will, because this is a thing I find incredibly interesting. But like dogs, modern dogs are better at reading human emotions, like facial emotions and face what we're looking at, where our focus is, than like human children at a certain point, and any other animal, including animals that we are a lot more related to than dogs.
00:32:48
Speaker
And there's a lot of research into where did this come from? And a lot of it, somehow, the dogs have been evolving alongside humans, as well as other animals. We have a lot of other animals that we have relationships with. But dogs have been evolving with humans in such a way that
00:33:10
Speaker
this is just a thing that exists in modern dogs. And it's more than wolves. So it's more than chimpanzees and even other animals that are really close to humans. And so it's a really fascinating thing. And it's not just dogs. There's a lot of history of cats just culturally in different societies and things that the relationship that humans and cats have had as well.
00:33:40
Speaker
is is yeah yep also something i find really fascinating well like these these relationships that have developed you know based on need for survival and mutual benefit um
00:34:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's, it's, it's incredible to see, like, like dogs or humans or predation predators, like, or we got predation. Oh, there's no, I forgot the term. Basically, we were the terminator in the animal kingdom. Like most animals can run really fast. Humans can't run as fast.
00:34:20
Speaker
But we have a lot more endurance. So we'll just follow that pack of elk until they collapse. And then we have food now. And dogs were one of the only animals that could keep up with humans when we were doing that. And, you know, and then there's when when agriculture and stuff, I think that's where a lot of cats came in. Suddenly, you get you get pests and cats are like, hey, if I hang out next to these weird, tall, two legged things, I get to eat all the mice that I want.
00:34:51
Speaker
And humans are like, oh, these little fuzzy things are going to eat the mice. Yeah. They're like, cool. They don't care about the wheat. They'll eat the mice. All right, then we'll give them little treats and maybe some pets, little scritches if they're interested. And like suddenly this relationship sort between disparate species sort of
00:35:15
Speaker
builds and thousands of years, like literally thousands of years have developed in different ways and in different places, but fairly consistently across the planet and our species.
00:35:34
Speaker
I could tell you that our cat sucks at mice like we had we've had we've had mice in our house like she could not be bothered Jen actually there was a bat
Pets as child substitutes in society
00:35:43
Speaker
in our house this year and the cat and dog just kind of looked at it right they didn't even make an effort to go near the thing or to do anything Jen was like in the house sees a bat and like the dog and the cat are like okay like it's your job like
00:36:08
Speaker
This is becoming more and more of a like, I will say, too, it's a wild thing for me being 40 something because we had outdoor cats when I was growing up that were still hunters. I mean, they would bring home like gophers or mice or or things like that. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like it's kind of wild to just see even within 20, 30 years, just, you know, these changes in relationships.
00:36:37
Speaker
And, or just expectations, right? With like what society is. And I mean, we could get into a whole thing to do with the fact that like the way we are going in the shitter at times with society, like not having kids does lead to these situations that pets become even more so in some ways. I mean, we've seen the extreme examples. I mean, the jokes about like people that are basically replacing human offspring with like an animal, but it's not.
00:37:09
Speaker
Um, because there is conscious decisions that like, I can, I can take care of a bad, right? Like I can, I can do this. Like I can, I can, there's more certainty about it. I mean, and if you can't afford.
00:37:23
Speaker
for myself a house and there's a lot of loss of stability that it's like, okay, a cat for some number of years or a dog for some number of years who it would really suck, but I could potentially give them up for adoption, finds another home for them.
Lifestyle challenges in pet ownership
00:37:39
Speaker
You can't really, it is a much larger thing, a much larger commitment to have a human child to try to care for. And it's not a, there's not a lot of
00:37:53
Speaker
There are less folks who have that stability to be able to do that, especially in our generation right now. Yeah, and for myself, I don't have any pets right now. I'm not sure if this was on the recorder before. We've talked about it here and there. Unfortunately, my current situation, I'm living in an apartment that actually does allow. This first apartment I've been in, it allows dogs.
00:38:15
Speaker
I live by myself now. I live far enough away from work that I am gone legitimately 12 hours a day on a normal good day. And there's days where I'm gone even longer than that. I'm doing something after work, I go somewhere else and don't come straight home. And it's like that just
00:38:31
Speaker
especially with dogs that I just can't. That is just so unfair to an animal. And I wish, like I grew up with dogs. I had a cat for a while who I loved and grew very close. It was kind of a family cat who then decided that he adopted me and became kind of my cat would just hang out with me and say it's always fun to every so often while we're recording or kind of talking before the show, I get to hear a little cameo from Callie and I appreciate that.
Taya's cat Callie and attachment dynamics
00:39:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's amazing how cats do that where they'll just latch on to one person and really become attached to them, you know, almost in a bond or type relationship. Yep. Where they're just that much closer to that person than any of the other humans around. And Kelly's definitely that way with me is she'll, uh,
00:39:24
Speaker
She'll do pretty much anything to spend the day with me and she'd rather sit in my office and watch me work than spend time with any of the other humans in the house.
00:39:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that was that was my cat, Murray, despite living when I for a few years before I moved out of my parents place, I was living in their basement quite stereotypically, but it was cold down there. I mean, not like normal Minnesota things can get cold, but like there wasn't heating down there. So there were winters where I could see my breath sitting in the basement.
00:39:57
Speaker
And he would still come down and hang out. Now this was in the time when I had a CRT as my computer monitor, because that's just what we had. And so he discovered he could lay on the CRT monitor. And it was very warm. It was very annoying when he would then have his tail going across the screen. But I taught him that if he laid the other direction, I would give him head scratches every so often.
00:40:23
Speaker
And so that worked out well for a long time. I had those big, you know, 90 pound, 22 inch CRTs and the cats loved laying on those things. Yep. Yeah. They put off so much heat. Yeah. No, that, that was, that was, uh, that was fun. Yeah. So I think one thing we haven't talked about yet is the aspect of.
00:40:49
Speaker
pets and art and magic. And there's a lot of them. There's some artists that specialize in this area. Andrea Reddick being one of them. She's made a lot of really cute cat dog and other things. She had a few of the illustrations for the first cat secret lair, including Miri and the regal caracal.
00:41:20
Speaker
this is the regal care caller just looking really it's sitting on the chair looking absolutely um judgmental i think is a good way to
00:41:33
Speaker
Yes, and I love that that art that is that's one of my favorite kind of cat art of cats. And I realized after the show, because when we recorded yesterday, we were talking about these cards, and I was talking about that regal caracal. But there was a different one in that secret layer. That was what I was trying to think of, because it's actually my favorite. And I found it after the show. So I didn't mention anything. And now we've already lost it again. And I keep wanting to call it a Johnny's pride mate, but it wasn't a Johnny's pride mate. It was the
00:42:01
Speaker
The cat when it attacked, it made cats. Leonin and the war leader. Sorry, let me look this up. This is the love, the wonderful thing about podcasting when I'm sitting in front of Scryfall that yes, yes, that's the one. Leonin war leader, the secret lair from the first cat secret lair. This is probably my favorite piece of cat artwork. And it's from Jacob.
00:42:30
Speaker
Eirich, I try to pronounce last name, E-I-R-I-C-H, but I love it. It's a fun playful thing, but you've also got like one cat taking this very seriously while it seems like the rest of them are maybe not taking it quite as seriously.
00:42:52
Speaker
Yeah, that whole secret lair was just fantastic for art. My new kitty secret lair just arrived today. I haven't even gotten to open it yet, but the Lord Windgrace is going directly into my Lord Windgrace deck, the cute, fuzzy version of him. I did manage to get a copy of that. I didn't get the full secret lair, but I was able to get the Lord Windgrace from my Zyra deck.
00:43:21
Speaker
is definitely my deck that has the most sort of fun things. This was what I started doing in 2020 when I didn't have a lot of other things to spend money, like my magic card money on, because I wasn't playing, so I wasn't buying a lot of product, but it was like, I kind of want to do something with this deck I love. And I'd sold some stuff too, and so I just had a bunch of store credit. So it's fun to get some of that stuff.
00:43:49
Speaker
that deck. But yeah, I got one of those not too long ago, at least just the one card, I didn't get the full set. But the Yoshimaru, which was done by Ilse Gore, she has actually done actually sorry, I think about well, Ilse has done a bunch of like, the cats and dogs. So she's the main one I think of actually have
00:44:07
Speaker
my animals done by her on artist proofs. This is another thing that I got doing with my artist proofs. So I was off in the two people that I was thinking of. I was mixing up. Ilse did Spirited Companion. She did In Search of Greatness. And she did Pack Leader. So she's just done a lot of them. Animal Sanctuary, as I was realizing it, which I'm a little embarrassed by,
00:44:35
Speaker
is actually Elena Danner, who also does like adorable art and animals. And there are cats and stuff in her in that art, but she's on lions. And so those are my two, like front runners. Yeah, one thing, you know, one of the other ones I want to mention is Shondra's Ember Cat, which
00:44:59
Speaker
is has some adorable art of this little fiery kitty and then on top of that it has such a good flavor text it's furballs try dealing with fireballs and no thank you Chandra I do not want to deal with fireballs for my cats that would be yeah very very damaging to the house you know
00:45:22
Speaker
I just remember, at least from a Mel, like this card, I always think of from a, from a Melville standpoint, because it was one of the first that I can think of that interacted with specific planes walkers of a specific type. I mean, they printed a lot of those in the intro deck pack, where it would do something specifically with a planes walker, but this was just a card and a corset.
00:45:47
Speaker
Yeah. And, and I think this camp at Red Manor spend this only on elemental or Chandra planes, Walker spell. So, I mean, it's especially a common that you can elementals is what would happen more commonly, but it was at least for me, sort of interesting mechanic space that didn't get explored a lot. Yeah. It's, I would like to see other planes, Walker's pets. Um, we know we have, we have Mo Wu who is, uh,
00:46:17
Speaker
Yang Gu's good boy, such a good boy, travels the planes with him and then gets really large. Yeah, and we've had three, was it three signature spell books from three planeswalkers? Did any of those have permanence in them? I was gonna say, but none of them gave us pets, but maybe it's because they called it signature spell book. I don't know.
00:46:43
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, they did have permanence in them. Okay. Then they had no excuse and we should have seen. Yeah, we should have gotten pets for everybody. It was Gideon, Jason, Liliana? Chandra. Chandra. Okay, that's right. That's right. And then they kind of turned that product into the commander spell books and tripled the price of them.
00:47:08
Speaker
Yeah. And then they'd done the green and black. Maybe that's where I was thinking of Liliana's stuff. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, it would be really cool to see more pets, sort of planeswalker pets in some of that stuff. Like we could have seen, especially, it was some of them with the lives of the living wouldn't be as much, but like Jace, you know, when he was a kid on Vrin, like maybe he had a pet as a kid. That could have been.
00:47:38
Speaker
Before he was a sphinx's pet. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Maybe, uh, maybe Tezzeret had a pet rat grown up in the slums. And that, I don't know, this would, this, not completely rewrite, but it would slightly rewrite Jace's story. But like, so his whole thing with, uh, you know, he eventually realized his memories were being edited. But if he had a pet, like maybe that could have interacted with that in some way.
00:48:06
Speaker
I don't know. Maybe it just wouldn't have made the stories good. I'm just trying to rewrite some of the story now. But still, like other planeswalkers, we've got all sorts of folks that, who oddly could have a fun pet raptor or something. She does have her raptor that is sort of like a pet. Yeah. And then Sahili makes her little robot pet.
00:48:32
Speaker
Which when, when we were talking yesterday and we had to pick a card, you know, to be our pet in the opening question. So that would be, as I'm talking through, I'm like, oh yeah, that would be in the part you listener would have heard. I almost went with filigree familiar, which feels very like a Saheli sort of construction. I mean, it was fun in that world. Yeah. And that, that is exactly the sort of thing Saheli makes too, or small animals. Uh, so that would be a fantastic addition to, uh,
00:49:03
Speaker
the story. If there's any place that has a lot of pets that are mechanical, it's definitely going to be Kaladesh. I assume that the Aetherborn have their really fancy ones because they want to show off their wealth and their material. You can just tell by how big of a clockwork it is or how big of a construct is, how wealthy they are.
00:49:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's cool and fun to see some pets and things sort of.
00:49:42
Speaker
bubbling, you know, being baked, being put into the world building that we're getting, but there's so much more that can be done. And so it's fun to sit and talk about it or think about it. Things that could be done or places they could do like, I love that little detail, like that could be a lot of fun to have, you know, the aetherborn showing off their wealth through their clockwork pets in different ways.
00:50:05
Speaker
Yeah.
Magic cards depicting pets with planeswalkers
00:50:06
Speaker
And we do get a little bit of it, you know, expanding, you know, somewhat in the recent sets. Like we got a, we got our pet fish on New Capella. Um, and those are some cute cards. Uh, they had a little three card story telling of basically ending up sleeping with the fishes. Okay. Uh, but yeah, we had some tropical fish there and, um,
00:50:36
Speaker
You know, we, uh, we get a little bit of it here and there, but I would love to see more. Um, I know it's gotta be hard for planes walkers since they can't, you know, Maui aside, can't bring their pets with them when they planes. Yeah. Well, which, you know, it was a little bit to my own sort of situation where I have a hard time, like I would be away from them for so long. And so it's, it'd be a little bit scary, but some of the clockwork pets would be ideal then. And.
00:51:05
Speaker
You know, maybe we'll get more animals like Mawu going forward that can actually planeswalk with their companions. Yep. Or things like that might work well for say like Huatli, who has a pet who probably can live in the wild on its own when, you know, she's off doing other things. Yeah, it can go, you know, numb on some vampires while she's off, you know, on dates with Sahili.
00:51:36
Speaker
Sorry, now I'm just looking at the card exotic pits from Nuka Pena because I was like, I haven't, I, that was a stats kind of rate when I was starting to check out of the story a little bit. And so I, again, the, this is the dangers of scryfall. It can really help us find cards. I guess great resource for, for content creators and podcasters specifically, but they're trying to record. It's like, I, what am I doing? I'm reading this card when we're doing this stuff. Just so easy to go down that rabbit hole. There's.
00:52:05
Speaker
Okay. Once you find one card, you want to look at another and then, you know, especially if we were, you're looking through all the cat and dogs. Uh, yup. Yeah. We have so many, so many good boys to look at, uh, and then just go and build a run in theory deck from all the ones that we like. Yeah. I have, I have almost done that. I haven't run in Syria. I haven't done anything with, but it's every time I'm flipping through cards, I go, Oh, do I want to build that deck? And.
00:52:35
Speaker
with how infrequently I play magic these days. It's like, probably not, but it's not right now. It's a really fun deck. My friend has one, and so I get to play against it fairly regularly. Nice. It was one of the first decks she built when she got back into magic to play Commander. Nice. That's cool. It's probably a good sort of coming back into magic deck to build and play.
00:53:02
Speaker
Yeah, you just put in all the best docos and all the fiercest kiddies. And you play one, you get the other. It's a lot of fun. Yeah, and there's some nice little synergies there. And green, red, white are just solid colors for building commander stuff. Green, I mean, obviously, is really, really good. But I think red and white stuff tends to be a little more straightforward if you're not used to the mechanics or it's been a while. Blue can be funky.
00:53:31
Speaker
I remember avoiding blue for a long time as a player just because I was like, I don't understand these cards, just too much text on some of these things. Yeah. My son is like that with blue and there's some blue cards in his K and T deck, but he'd really rather have nothing to do with the color at all. I mean, I just realized I say, you know, I used to, and then I'm thinking about my decks and I'm like, yeah, most of my decks don't have blunum and the ones who do by and large are things like,
00:54:01
Speaker
Oh no, I can't think of it, but it's the legend that's green, blue, red. When you cascade, you can play lands from the cards you reveal. So it's just like cascade deck, so there's not a lot of blue weirdness going on there. Yeah, we're not running a lot of counterspells and stuff in a cascade deck.
00:54:20
Speaker
No. And I think I have one other that's the Hydra that is blue, black, green, that cares about things with X and the cost. And so again, like not a lot of counter magic, not a lot of what you would normally have is blue. That's just kind of a big mana deck that happens to have some blue. It's like, maybe I still play like that actually. Well, I just wanted to
00:54:44
Speaker
Thank our patrons and thank our Discord members for having a very lively conversation about the new story right now.
00:54:55
Speaker
all of my wonderful opinions on Luca. I'm not biased at all there. Yep. Absolutely. And if you're looking for a great place on the internet to come chat with, you know, talk about your opinions of Luca or just a welcoming place to hang out and talk about magic or other things, you know, our discord is open. There's a couple of channels that are patron exclusive, but most of the, most of it is open to anyone who wants to join. And I think there's a link in our show notes.
00:55:23
Speaker
There is probably in the link tree and I know Hobbs is all that stuff put together. Yeah. Thank you for listening. Yeah. And that's our show for today. You can find all of the host on Twitter for now. Hobbs can be found at HobbsQ, Tay can be found at Tayatransends, and Alex can be found at Mel underscore chronicler.
00:55:45
Speaker
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.
00:55:55
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.
00:56:23
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.