Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 3: Trippin' on Tropes
128 Plays7 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 third episode, we continue our discussion of trauma in the Magic Multiverse. Alex Newman explains where Magic: the Gathering – like a lot of media – both succeeds and fails in using trauma as a "superhero origin story".
The guys then discuss how that functions in relation to the neo-walkers sparking in Magic Origins.
Finally, the guys offer a little "goblin guid-ance", as we have the first show mailbag and things get goofy.
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.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello there Podwalkers, and thanks for listening to the show. You're listening to episode three of the Goblin Lore podcast, the second of our two-part episode, originally intended to be one episode, on the discussion of trauma in the multiverse.
Real Life and Fictional Trauma
00:00:17
Speaker
In the previous episode, we discussed the effects of trauma on people in real life,
00:00:22
Speaker
on some of the differences in the actual medical diagnoses of trauma and some of the characters' backstories and how these planeswalkers have started to spark because of trauma. We also discussed Michelle Rapp's article on
00:00:39
Speaker
trauma as seen through the lens of Gideon when he sparked himself. We continue this episode by breaking down the trope of heroes being born or forged through trauma and traumatic experiences and what that means for us as consumers of media, for us as players and readers of Magic Story. And then we wrap up with a little bit of light-hearted banter as we get to our mailbag questions and some general nonsense.
00:01:09
Speaker
We think this is an important conversation, which is why we've talked so much about it, though. Not enough weight is given to mental health, and there's still a stigma in the
Addressing Mental Health and Social Issues
00:01:19
Speaker
world. We see it as one of the things we're trying to do as approach conversations like this in a safe, interesting, and fun way. And we think magic can be a vehicle for that.
00:01:30
Speaker
It's our genuine desire to help make even one person's world a slightly better place through this podcast. That's truly what we are trying to do. It's for that reason that I'm really sad today. As I'm recording this intro, it is Friday, June 29th. The past two days have been really awful on magic Twitter.
00:01:55
Speaker
A couple days ago, we had somebody, a prominent writer for a major Magic the Gathering website, use a derogatory slur about women when confronted about it. There wasn't as much an apology as there was a deflection. It's something that we want to talk about in the future on this show. But on top of that,
00:02:17
Speaker
It hits kind of home to us here on Goblin Lore that yesterday Michelle Rapp was suspended, possibly permanently from Twitter, for refusing to just deal with
00:02:32
Speaker
the Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, or TERFs, on Twitter, and a bunch of angry and hateful people mass-reported her and got her banned. For those of you that don't know Michelle or her content or her work, just tune back into the second episode and hear it. It is not the work of somebody who breeds hate, who espouses violence, who is unnecessarily
00:03:02
Speaker
decrying somebody or trying to just make a stink. She's not a whining snowflake. She's not a bad person by any means. She's not worthy of a ban on Twitter. Her voice needs to be amplified and needs to get to as many people as possible. And it is a huge, huge shame and a huge shadow over today for me personally and for the content of this show for sure that she's not on Twitter right now.
00:03:33
Speaker
and the kind of hateful things that are said to her, that she was resisting, that she was pushing back against and defending people, that those things are allowed to still exist.
Light-hearted Content Amid Serious Themes
00:03:43
Speaker
So I'll end this intro by just saying it's been a rough couple of days, but hopefully this episode can provide a little bit of light for you. We still talk about a serious issue, but maybe we do it in a little bit more of a enjoyable and goofy way this time around. So kick back, dig in,
00:04:04
Speaker
And I hope you enjoy, and please remember, you're out there to make the world a better place. So with that, I want to toss it over to you, Alex, and have you talk a little bit about the trope of
00:04:23
Speaker
of trauma as it relates to heroes and stories and specifically, you know, why do we see so many of our neo walkers, so many of our planes walkers in the current magic multiverse, sparking through trauma? Real quick, before we move on to a different topic, and you can move this around or anything, I just got to bring a lighthearted moment to this kind of or just, I don't know, bringing it back to the interesting part where I see how
00:04:53
Speaker
real world fiction can come into wizards, especially. The fact that the irregulars are a group of street urchins is a direct harkening back to Sherlock Holmes. Oh, really? I see. I thought it was Oliver Twist. So Sherlock Holmes and the it may go back. So I guess theoretically, I don't know the way I remember it is there were the Baker Street irregulars who were a group of street urchins, urchins.
00:05:20
Speaker
that Holmes used as basically intelligence agents. They're in at least four or five different of the books where he gives them a prize and pays them to get clues for his investigations. That's incredible. Because they can blend in and they can be kind of not seen. And so just seeing that that was, and like I said, it may go back to Oliver Twist too, but the idea of these irregulars and then bringing that exact terminology into
00:05:50
Speaker
the, what was that origins? I just remember seeing it on cards and not really kind of thinking about it until now. That's awesome. I think that shows how Wizards is, they really pay attention to kind of the storytelling things around them and that they know how to incorporate elements from other stories to help tell their stories and to make them stronger, which I think segues
00:06:18
Speaker
nicely into a conversation about tropes because that's kind of what those are.
Understanding Tropes in Storytelling
00:06:24
Speaker
It's a term that I believe, well, it became popular at least that I knew from the website TV Tropes. Are you guys familiar with TV Tropes? Yes. Love it. Joe, is that a site that you've spent far too many hours on like me? A hundred percent. I love looking up old Looney Tunes TV Tropes actually. Nice.
00:06:49
Speaker
So yeah, it's it's it's what I think wonderful website it's it's a wiki that I like to describe it as a catalog of storytelling devices. That's kind of the best way I've come up with to describe what a trope is to someone who hasn't heard the term. It's
00:07:10
Speaker
all sorts of character devices and story devices, and they break down all manner of media, your movies, your TV shows, anime, comics. And you find these common elements sometimes used very differently from each other, but these are still some similar elements of storytelling across many different media, across many different nations of humans telling different stories. And this particular trope, as TV tropes describes it, traumatic superpower awakening
00:07:40
Speaker
It's a trope we see a lot. It's it's fairly common like I don't know fairly common but it shows up a lot in stories where there is otherworldly powers like a planeswalker spark or for instance X-Men. Jean Grey as a character that had according to TV tropes I'm not that familiar with comic books so I'm speaking just from what they have here but they said that Jean Grey first used her powers when her friend Annie got hit by a car and died in her arms.
00:08:10
Speaker
that is a very good example of a traumatic event happening. And I think one of the reasons we see this show up a lot, stories in all sorts of stories are ways for us to understand ourselves and our experiences and the world around us.
00:08:32
Speaker
they in a way that is separate from us in a way that feels safer because they can be removed from us as individuals and placed in a different context that is why a lot of a lot of people will defend like fantasy writing there's there's some literary people who think that that's a little uh reductivist it's it doesn't capture real things but often fantasy and science fiction and other
00:09:00
Speaker
fantastical elements and stories are good ways to talk about very dense, very difficult political conversations or traumatic events in a way that's separate from the individuals involved so that we can examine these events without feeling too close and without it becoming too painful, potentially.
Personal Narratives vs Universal Stories
00:09:22
Speaker
This could be a much longer story than I'll make it, but my senior year, we did a performance of the play Spring Awakening.
00:09:30
Speaker
And for those of you that don't know the play, essentially what it is is an exploration of coming of age for children in turn of the century Germany. And they deal with a lot of taboo issues in it. They deal with sexuality and sexual awakening. That's really where the title comes from. They deal with violence. They deal with death. They deal with suicide.
00:09:57
Speaker
there's a lot of severe topics in there and we were high schoolers you know doing this play and at the end of every play we had to talk back about you know the issues if the audience wanted to ask any questions or say anything about it and discuss we would we would discuss because we wanted it to be unpacked and one woman that stood up after the opening night performance
00:10:22
Speaker
and proceeded to tell us like a 45 minute long story actually about her life and it probably wasn't 45 minutes but like a 10 minute long story about her life and how she had gotten involved with drugs and she had had a child as a
00:10:40
Speaker
know, a teen, how she had an abusive relationship, how she had been left and abandoned by her family and, you know, disowned, and she goes to this whole thing and we were all in tears. But she said at the end of that,
00:10:56
Speaker
She's like, I just saw a sign for this outside. I don't have a kid in this play. I've never been in this school before. I just came in because it seemed like the right thing to do. And I've never told this story to anybody before in my life. I've never said anything about it to anyone. And for me, that moment where she opened up to a crowd of 150 strangers,
00:11:21
Speaker
is exactly the reason why art and specifically stories are so amazing. And so that's why we have these tropes because she felt able to deal with all the issues from the play that she'd experienced because they were characters in a play dealing with those issues. It wasn't her reliving those experiences.
00:11:45
Speaker
That as a very quick aside, I hope, goes to something that I've always found interesting and kind of paradoxical that it's a writing thing. You would think that if you're writing a story, you want it to be as universal as possible to appeal to as many people as possible. But really, the stories that appeal and people are able to connect to are personal stories. So if you can read a story that's very personal to yourself, more people will engage with that.
00:12:14
Speaker
even if their experiences are different than yours, because I think they're feeling the personal and they can see the real things happening in your story and make connections to theirs, even if they're very different, as opposed to when you're trying to sanitize it to make it universal, you lose a lot of that character and you lose a lot of the things people can actually engage with. They don't have a handhold to get a hold of that story.
Tropes: Effective or Not?
00:12:40
Speaker
I mean, just, yeah, in general, the whole concept of tropes, they generally has that idea that this at this point, it's something that's overused, right? I mean, that's why it becomes a trope is because we see it as overused. But when you speak to kind of the fact that there's a universality to it, all of these things are things that that work in some ways for what they're trying to do. It's the execution of them that becomes
00:13:06
Speaker
where it either falls flat or it doesn't feel realistic. It just feels like it was done for the purpose of doing it. Yep. Which I think brings us back just as a decide to like the whole concept of Gail Simone talking about fridging, which I don't know if you if people know what that is. Basically killing off a character just for the sake of
00:13:34
Speaker
It's like violence against a character or killing off a character for the sake of making the hero become the hero or have a reason. And where that term comes from is like actually kind of horrific. Yeah. It refers to usually women characters being put into like refrigerators, right? Yeah. I can't remember the first example, but from what I heard, it was a comic book character.
00:14:00
Speaker
whose significant other, who was a woman, he literally found her in a fridge, killed and put in a fridge. And the character, the female character in the story had never been developed as anything other than to be there as basically a prop for the person's development. Which is yet another trope in a lot of stories. And thank goodness we have seen a lot of walking away from that consciously, I think, in Magic Story of Late.
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah, and it's, the tropes are things to be aware of. That's why I like to call them tools, because you can misuse a tool, or you can use a tool properly. And both times you use the same tool, but once it was used right, once it was used wrong, and didn't work as well. My favorite show, which I'll give, I don't want to go on too long about, but is the show community. And the creator, the writers of the show talk about how they literally would go to TV tropes.
00:15:00
Speaker
and read about these tropes because then they're like, well, we're going to tell this story of a zombie episode. We want to make sure we understand how the story has been told so that we know if we want to use those same story beats ourselves or if we want to subvert those story beats. But they walked in very intentionally knowing how those stories work so that they can break it where they want to break it for themselves or follow it where they want to follow it.
00:15:30
Speaker
And I think that's one of the reasons I love that show so much. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I did not know the history behind that, but it was always fun to me watching that show where they basically, each episode almost was a play on a trope. And I think one of my favorite ones to kind of deal with that is kind of the like, it's like they do a horror movie one and basically they still are following the idea of horror movies.
00:16:00
Speaker
while spinning it or doing it in a new way. This is actually a topic I could talk about for hours, so I'm just gonna. Yeah, so let's say this back to
Planeswalkers and Trauma
00:16:11
Speaker
magic. So in reading this, I found we've talked about Gideon, who sparked through a traumatic experience. I actually have a list of at least four other planeswalkers who also sparked through traumatic experiences.
00:16:25
Speaker
Two of these are fairly recent in the story and I think you guys will know them. So Liliana's backstory, you guys familiar with hers?
00:16:35
Speaker
Yeah, let's break it down a little bit for the listeners though too. So Liliana's backstory is that her brother became very ill. This was a long time ago on Dominaria in the Caligo Forest. And her brother became very ill and so Liliana was a healer and she went out looking for a remedy and couldn't find anything until one day,
00:17:01
Speaker
The Raven Man appeared to her, this apparition, who we've now seen has continued to appear to her over time, promising her this cure. So she tried this cure, tried the spell that he taught her, and instead what it did is it
00:17:19
Speaker
consumed her brother, Josu, and turned him into a zombie. And that moment where she became responsible, not only for her brother's death, but her brother's conversion into a, oop, I gotta echo. Where she became not only responsible for her brother's death, but her brother's conversion into a monster, that is where she sparked and planes walked away.
00:17:51
Speaker
And then another actually, so that also was told like idioms during the origins. Chandra was another one that also was told during origins. She is a pyromancer on Kaladesh where that's frowned upon. Just being a pyromancer was kind of illegal. So her family and her parents were also involved in the illegal trade of aether, but they,
00:18:20
Speaker
They were on the run. They were in a village, I don't have the name of the village here, but where eventually some people caught up with them and captured Chandra and brought her to be executed as a criminal, as a pyromancer. They burned the village and blamed it on her. And during the execution was right when they were about to execute her was when her spark ignited. She burst with flames in the arena and then she showed up on
00:18:49
Speaker
at Rigolfa the world where she eventually she joined this monastery of other pyromancers doesn't which to be fair is the most hilarious concept in the world to me so monastery of pyromancers come on yeah like there's yeah come on they're burning stuff down every single night the most the most peaceful bonfires you've ever had yeah it's a mindful experience of bonfires
00:19:19
Speaker
And going back and actually reading her story, because it came out a couple of years ago, according to this date stamp, June 10th, 2015, I'd forgotten. So she plans to walk there and ran into these monks. Then in her panic, she tried to set them on fire. And apparently, because they're pyromancers, they just kind of stood there for a second, weren't really hurt by it. And they're like, all right, come on, we got the temple this way. Sorry, it's just like the hilarity of that is like,
00:19:48
Speaker
You just try to set some people on fire and they happen to be monks who set things on fire. I mean, that's good timing. No kidding. That's that is exactly the kind of people you want in your corner. Yeah. Powerful and forgiving. So she was had a very traumatic event that led to her sparking. But luckily, she didn't planeswalk to, you know, a merfolk place where she at least ended up with pyromancers that were monks. Yeah, which
00:20:14
Speaker
might be something to go down into a new episode, but they have talked about, especially during Origins, it was talked about that a planeswalker's first planeswalk is often to a plane that fits them or somehow fits with where they're at. That's why Liliana went to Innistrad for her first planeswalk.
00:20:35
Speaker
wow i didn't i actually didn't know that bit of lore there that so something in the way that their their psyche is attuned sends them to that that plane i think yeah in a way to poeticize it a little bit maybe that that world calls to them because there's some something there that fits with where they're at
00:20:58
Speaker
Well, and there is another Neo Walker, too, who does have a traumatic experience that causes his spark. And that's Jace. And Jace, for the listeners, if you don't know, Jace's whole backstory is that he was trained as a telepath by the Sphinx Alhamarat on his home plane of Wrynn. And the thing is, though,
00:21:27
Speaker
Ohamarat saw the power that Jace had.
00:21:31
Speaker
and saw the potential that he had and continually kept wiping Jace's memory and fracturing Jace's memory and burying his memories. And so literally, you know, we had, I mean, we had specifically intentional trauma done to Jace's psyche in that story, until the point where Jace's, I don't remember exactly how it panned out, but
00:21:59
Speaker
Jace's mind, but Jace's mind rebelled against Alhamarat's intrusion at one point and fought back and forced the mental fracturing spell back on him and broke Alhamarat's mind. And so that moment where he, in essence, killed Alhamarat is where he sparked and planes walked away.
00:22:28
Speaker
And what's bringing this back to the PTSD or just talking about PTSD here, what is kind of interesting about this is the mind wiping aspect of this.
Processing Trauma Through Writing
00:22:40
Speaker
One of the things that is common with PTSD is actually a difficulty with being able to remember key parts of the traumatic experience. So you actually have gaps kind of in your memory for the experience or the event itself.
00:22:57
Speaker
one form of the kind of therapy for PTSD actually is kind of almost writing out a narrative of what your trauma was over and over again, and kind of noticing the increased details that kind of come about by doing that. Most using writing again to sort of take ownership of, of that experience, right? You know, it's it's that moment of, you know, again, we, you know, like you said, Alex about the tropes,
00:23:25
Speaker
You know, it's some way to understand and process and take ownership back of the narrative that happened in your life. Is that kind of on track there, Hobbs? That's actually I'm telling you, man, you may have a different career in mind if this teaching thing doesn't work out. So you're very psychologically minded. It's actually we talk about re scripting or rewriting the narrative. And if I recall, I think Jace did that literally.
00:23:54
Speaker
That was part of how he came that was part of how he realized what was happening is he started to record his memories and he came upon them somehow. It's been a couple years. I haven't read the story since then. But I believe that is what led to the the actual altercation with Al Hamra was that he kind of he'd found his own memories that he was kind of keeping track in between all these events.
00:24:20
Speaker
Because he probably was having gaps in them. Yeah, no, I remember it was because he was having gaps. But he realized that because he went to he was being used as like a diplomat. And he went to talk to a group that he had talked to previously that he had no memory of talking to them. And I think that's when he realized something was going on. And he started to use that technique to figure out what was happening.
00:24:46
Speaker
So Alex, I'm curious because, you know, you're taking us through this trope and with the Neil Walker's and I mean, maybe this is my gaps in knowledge. Do we even have examples of Neil Walker's who did not spark that we know the spark story for that did not involve trauma?
00:25:07
Speaker
I'm I'm not sure actually because now I didn't have Jace on my list, but as you're talking about it, I realized not only Jace, but also Nissa. It's all five of the origins walkers. That's what's happened because Nissa had a encounter with. Oh my God, I'm blanking the Eldrazi, Emrakul. And that I believe some encounter with Emrakul is what caused her to spark and go to Lorwyn.
00:25:34
Speaker
And part of the story too is the being exiled from our community, you know, in addition. So sort of again, that, that thing, that event causing a situational shift, something that actually affects your life. I mean, we kind of had a joke about, we were kind of, we're joking about this on Twitter a couple of weeks ago. I don't, um, we're, we're, we're giving like really just people were talking about generic names for a planeswalker.
00:26:02
Speaker
And so we like joked about like planeswalker Steve and I said he basically sparked when he dropped his iPhone and the screen shattered. But I mean, I guess the question becomes like I want to know at this point what sparking could look like not coming from trauma.
Planeswalkers: Trauma-Free Sparks?
00:26:23
Speaker
Because I think it can get very boring if it's basically this idea that something really, really bad
00:26:29
Speaker
and traumatic has to happen to you or you can't spark. Yeah, no, that's worth looking into because I don't have anyone offhand that I know their story of. I do have a pre-Mending Walker who sparked because of trauma as well, Soren Markov. Apparently his backstory, which I didn't realize before I started doing some research earlier today, was that Edgar Markov,
00:26:56
Speaker
turned him into one of the first vampires on Enestrad and that's how he sparked. Edgar used the technique on himself and then turned Soren into the second vampire on Enestrad and it was such a traumatic experience that Soren sparked. And then he kept trying to recreate things by creating new things in his image that he had to unmake. Which is definitely a topic for a later episode.
00:27:20
Speaker
Yeah, as I'm thinking about it too, I'm not sure that there are, at least of the Neowalkers, I'm not sure that there's anybody that sparked without trauma. You know, we have, I mean, even Venser and, you know, Kiura was, I mean, Karn.
00:27:47
Speaker
Karne's an old walker too, but Karne was- Well, he's not. He's not an old walker, right? Technically speaking, both Karne and Erza are not exactly planeswalkers. They both were borrowing- Karne was borrowing Erza's spark. Erza, the spark he had, was being borrowed from- Glaceon. Yes, Glaceon. So technically, both of them have a spark of an old walker.
00:28:17
Speaker
And also, both of them sparked from trauma, like Karan and Erza. Didn't Karan end up getting, like, didn't somebody in the Mirrodin storyline then give up their spark, though, Fencer? Yes. So Karan has been a plain old walker and a Neowalker with two different people's sparks. Right.
00:28:39
Speaker
And Venser gave up his spark, including his life force, in order to purge Karn of Phyrexian corruption during the whole quest for Karn's Scars of Mirrodin cycle. Garbage novel, by the way. So also in this moment, even in his rebirth and his re-sparking, Karn got his spark through trauma.
00:29:06
Speaker
Wow, this is depressing me. Yeah, this is really bumming me out. I really need a planeswalker like Steve now, at this point in my life. Or I need, I need Fibleth to spark. But like, just because he got lost, but it wasn't really a trauma, like he didn't think he was gonna die, but he was just a little scared, maybe.
Humorous Takes on Planeswalker Stories
00:29:24
Speaker
Yeah, and he sparks. He's just lost, he's wandered down alleys, and he finally thinks he has the way home, realizes he's at a dead end, and he just sparks planeswalks home.
00:29:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's not like it wasn't like it like said it didn't raise to the level of him thinking he was gonna die, but I need that in my life right now. Are you guys okay, I'm gonna this is a tangent, but I think it's it's a relevant story. Love it. Are you guys familiar with David eddings author wrote fantasy novels? Not at all. I've heard the name. Okay, in his novels, not to go too far, but there are characters that are sorcerers.
00:29:59
Speaker
or sorceresses, depending on, but they have a lot of power, not quite like early planeswalkers, but they are very powerful and most of them
00:30:09
Speaker
gain their powers through trauma, something big happens. But there's one character in the second series, because he wrote five books, and he wrote a second set of five, who's like this old scholar who didn't realize he was a sorcerer. He just kept working the books, and then one day just didn't die and realized, hey, I'm 500 years old, and this isn't right. See? We need that. That guy is the everyman planeswalker that we all need.
00:30:39
Speaker
Do you know who that sounds like to me? Just sitting around reading books for 500 years? Oh no. Oh, I'm sorry. Can I take that story back?
00:30:49
Speaker
I think that's a perfect pivot to our last segment of this show.
Listener Questions and MTG Mechanics
00:30:56
Speaker
And like we said, we might be splitting this up into two episodes. So bear with us, those of you that are listening for your questions. But I think we moved to the mailbag. Oh, before we do that, Hobbs, you did have a card that you wanted to talk about from Core 19 that got spoiled.
00:31:15
Speaker
a super un-Vorthos apparently, and I'm not sure what this is, because I haven't seen it yet. So this card is actually offensive to me from both a Vorthos and a personal play level. Oh my gosh. So Amulet of Safekeeping was printed today, and actually it's really interesting, or not printed today, but our friends MTG, the amateur, and some other local Minneapolis people,
00:31:42
Speaker
Maria and Megan kind of spoiled this card. And it is an artifact. It is a two-mana artifact that basically is a storm hose for no real reason that could possibly make sense to me. And Matthias Hunt actually has a really funny or just a good point about like what's with these ham-fisted answers being printed. We need answers within
00:32:08
Speaker
magic and it kind of talks about it. It's completely incoherent outside if we wanted to cover both of the modern storm and by extension, leglessly storm game plan. Because what this card does is it makes a spell that targets you or an ability that targets you cost one more to cast. It also gives creature tokens negative one, zero.
00:32:35
Speaker
So basically, it's an anti-Empty the Warrens and an anti-Grapeshot or Tendles of Agony if we're playing Legacy, because even each instance of Storm is going to cost me or someone one more. And then your goblins, if you go that route now, get less. And the thing is, it looks like two abilities stapled onto a two-man artifact. It's an amulet of safekeeping. From tokens,
00:33:05
Speaker
and for being targeted. When I saw this card actually, what I thought of first and our good friend LilyVest tweets did tweet at us about this. I saw it and I thought it was a hose for Jund. I thought it was an anti-Lily of the Veil and Lily the Last Hope card. No, no, she was talking the hosing of her precious zombies.
00:33:31
Speaker
Well, see, it does hose the zombie horde, the zombie tokens she brings out, but it does also make those sacrifice targets from the Planeswalker, I think, and maybe not, maybe with the way that they changed how Planeswalkers function, maybe it doesn't work with that, but I thought it was, I thought it was a hose on the sacrifice trigger for Lily of the Veil. Well, it would make it cost one more, because it still has a spell or ability, it says it's targeting, it would cost one more.
00:33:58
Speaker
I mean, it breaks storm, but it... Yeah. See, I think Lily of the Veil just has players, because everybody has a second one, right? Nope. No, it is target. Lily of the Veil is target. Everybody has to discard. Oh, yep, yep. So it wouldn't turn off that. But this is just a very... This is just being that we were talking last time at the end of our cast about cards that don't feel worth those. I mean, maybe they're going to spin this in some story way, but it...
00:34:27
Speaker
It just feels like a modern answer. And the thing is, I think what it's juxtaposed against is we had a new-ish blood moon spoiled, this alpine of the one red. Yeah. But at least that is like, it's an alpine moon. It targets one land that you can name. It kind of turns off the abilities from it. We already have moons as kind of a thing that could fit into a story.
00:34:56
Speaker
These are two separate abilities that don't tend to go together in any way, shape, or form within a story. So as our resident Mel Alex yet, does this work? Does this fit? That also doesn't really fit there. I mean, it's like Damping Sphere from Dominaria did the same thing. It was...
00:35:19
Speaker
player was at spells cost one more for each spell that players cast this turn and uh if a land would produce more than one mana it produces a single colorless instead so anti-storm and anti-aldrazi tacked right on and anti-tron yeah and it's a similar thing where they're just like we're just gonna staple answers to an artifact and mechanically they have nothing to do with each other there's so i think not only is it kind of
00:35:48
Speaker
offensive for the vorthos it's it's kind of nonsensical at least on the male scales too. With that we've got a couple great questions that have come to us from Twitter and some have already been sitting for about a week or so so thank you for your patience folks. We just you know we needed to start up the pod and sort of get all that information out of the way first but now we can get to the real nonsense which is what exactly we want to talk about so
00:36:17
Speaker
this is our first one and this comes to us from at lily vest tweets and it is why is bolus the multiverse's donald trump and i will say that we just say we are not in good standing with miss lily vest currently due to a episode one of our cast so we've kind of have made a pact with a planeswalker already i do not think
00:36:41
Speaker
I would say that's not something I expected to be saying on episode two of our cast. Or three, whatever this ends up being. But we are going to be having her as a guest in a future episode.
Political Analogies in MTG
00:36:53
Speaker
To discuss the besmirching and especially somebody's use of her described as a slave of Bolas. Yeah, I'm not sure where that could have been. Points to whoever came up with that great pun, because it's a card name, too.
00:37:13
Speaker
In order to answer this question, actually, I, I'm going to say I'm going to pivot it a little bit. I don't think Bolas is the Donald Trump or the multiverse because I really think actually bells and lock was our analog that we got in, in the multiverse recently bells and lock was the final demon of Liliana's packed and, um, you know, he's, he was on Dominaria and took over the cabal.
00:37:35
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah. So.
00:37:41
Speaker
you know, the CD organization of Black mages, you know, death cult sort of thing. And what we saw with him is that he started to, over the course of a couple millennia, or at least a couple hundred years, started to warp history and take a bunch of names for himself and just lie his face off and become this idea of something that he wasn't. And basically everybody outside of the cabal on Dominaria knew
00:38:09
Speaker
but they were all getting to the point where they're all a little bit like, but, but was he actually maybe Lord of the Wastes? Like maybe that one was actually his name first. And so he started corrupting, you know, people's thoughts, you know, and history so much that they became uncertain of what the truth was. I would say that that, if anything, is the best analogy that magic has given us so far. I mean, I understand what Lily West is joking, and I hopefully tongue in cheek with us
00:38:37
Speaker
But we'll just flat out admit when it comes to Bolas. But I would say if we're going to be going down this road, everything we've talked about, his plans, I think, have a depth to them that we probably are not seeing from Donald Trump. And I love that Belzenac example. That is a really good point. Yeah. We can get into politics analogues in a later episode, too. I think that would be an interesting topic.
00:39:08
Speaker
But you are keeping track of all these, right? Oh, yeah, I've got to. OK, I've got a crazy long note in my iPhone right now. Good. Good. That's what I like to hear. Moving on to a tweet from at G Babelmaster. What is the story behind Squeeze Toy? So does do any of you older folks remember Squeeze Toy? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Aren't we using that as a logo like standing kind of logo for now?
00:39:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Squeeze our logo. Yeah. So Squeeze's toy. And his toy. Yeah, he's hugging his toy in that one. From what I remember, Squeeze's toy is not only a pun, but it was also an actual card. Oh my God, I didn't. I never got that. Wow. Yeah, Squeeze's toy. So it's a card from the
00:40:05
Speaker
in that era from the Weatherlight storyline. It's actually a part of the legacy weapon. Thank you. Yeah, it's part of the whole legacy weapon thing that was basically just this bunch of random stuff that Urza put on a boat from all these different places. That is maybe another thing we should talk about Urza's. Oh God, his plans.
00:40:30
Speaker
Yeah, his weird plans and his hoarding and all of that. Yeah, this episode of Hoarders Dominaria edition, we talked about Urza. I mean, literally. I'm sold. It's writing itself. I already have like five ideas in my head. Yeah. So anyway, Squeeze Toy was a thing that Squee actually got. It's a toy that he hung on to because
00:41:00
Speaker
I think with all of the trauma of his life to tie into this episode, he needed something that was nice and fluffy and didn't demand anything of him. Did we talk about his story in the last episode? We touched on it. Yeah, we touched on it a little bit. Actually, it was the toy itself that gave Squee his immortality.
Goblin Lore and Future Topics
00:41:28
Speaker
partially what led to his trauma too, which is a whole other thing that we need to, that we can unpack at a later date. Maybe if we've got time, we need to do a squeak cast. How is he not a, how is he not a planeswalker? Yeah. He would have sparked by now. Let's say that in the story. Yeah.
00:41:49
Speaker
Maybe he's the one that's waiting for something really good to happen in this park. Oh, I like that. That's my favorite head cannon. That's now head cannon for me. Squeeze our average every guy. Yeah. Poor little buddy.
00:42:11
Speaker
Um, yeah, so that's, yeah, that's Squeeze toy. And I also didn't realize it was a pun until you said that. That's fantastic. I'm so happy now. Squeeze my favorite. Also amazing flavor text. Yes. Do you want to read it? Yeah. So, um, it's, as the horrors closed in on Gerard, Squeeze trembled and clutched his toy for comfort. He didn't know where it came from.
00:42:33
Speaker
or why it was so warm, but he was glad to keep Kept it near. I mean, like there's these horrors closing around and Squeeze just like clutching a toy. I mean, it is every man. He's so freaking cute. Squeeze is basically the Arthur Dent of the magic universe. Oh my gosh, Dent Arthur Dent. Yes, please.
00:42:54
Speaker
Let's move on then to liberatedcarn, at liberatedcarn on Twitter's question. Why is slow bad actually slow awesome? Also bonus points for a pun, love it.
00:43:08
Speaker
So Slopad was a goblin artificer from Mirrodin and he was one of Glyssa and Bosch, the iron golems, accomplices golems, excuse me, I always mispronounce that, stupid Pokemon. But he was one of their associates and he was a goblin who was exiled from his community legitimately for being too smart and being
00:43:35
Speaker
a little bit like dangerously experimental. And that's saying a lot coming from goblins. And coming from goblins on Mirrodin too. Have you seen that place? Holy crap. So, okay, so slow bad too. There is something that I am just like my mind is going back to Mirrodin's story. I'm trying to look up because I just cannot these are like this is me
00:44:05
Speaker
Having always gotten glimpses of things, but he There's something related to Glyssa and his inner and the sparking and him right mm-hmm. Do you know this one Alex? No, okay, so slow bad was a planeswalker. Yeah, baby. He had the spark yeah
00:44:23
Speaker
Because when Golisa died, trying to, when Golisa died in order to bring down Memnarch, again, trauma, and the green sun emerged, the fifth son of Myrdon,
00:44:39
Speaker
and also Slobad sparked and so you know then finally the the force field or whatever we'll talk about Mirrodin's a whole ball of wax but the force field that was keeping planeswalkers out that Memnarch the evil
00:44:58
Speaker
genius ruling Mirrodin had put up to keep Karn out, who created Mirrodin. That evaporated. Karn came in, was like, whoa, stuff completely went upside down since I've last been here. And then he noticed Slobad and he was like, dude, you're alive and you're a planeswalker. Come be my apprentice and like, let's hop around the planes together.
00:45:20
Speaker
And Slobad was like, but I lost my best friend. And that screwed up because Glyssa died. And so many other people passed away too. And, uh, Karn was like, well, you know, you can give up your spark to pull off this really big spell if you want, but why would you do that when you have this much power? And Slobad was like, hmm. Nope. You know what? I think I am going to do that. And he passed a spark.
00:45:49
Speaker
and, you know, essentially a part of life force into Glyssa to revive her, and in doing so also revived all the people who had passed away from, you know, the battle on Mirrodin, and all of the people that had been brought there got sent back to their home planes, too. I mean, again, we have this crazy trauma thing, and Slobad is the coolest, because he was like, yeah, what am I gonna do with power if I don't have my best friend? And then he dies.
00:46:19
Speaker
well then eventually does yet shortly after i i think it's like it's not it's not even that lot like it's he just killed so it doesn't look amazing like uh... like self-sacrifice thing but in a way that he's not going to die he's not dying when that happened gets killed like after that uh... that's it that's right i forgot about that but and i think that
00:46:48
Speaker
I mean, this is one of those things it was when we ended up getting to ready There was some uproar because people had wanted slow bad to be the first like Goblin Walker that we got a card for Yeah, and dirty was also an artifact, you know an artifact friendly character on the right so and it was also done when we got a
00:47:13
Speaker
people that were since dead. I mean, we thought that we got earlier versions, right? Like, that's when we got the planes walkers as, as commanders. So we had like to ferry and free elites. And they had these older characters. And yet, our goblin that we finally get as a planes walker wasn't slow bat.
00:47:34
Speaker
and one of the most caring and kind and actually intelligent goblins that we'd ever seen in the story, too. Because while Squee is awesome, he's not smart. He's a very good boy, but he is not smart. Yeah, if I'm looking into my living room right now, Watson, who is my lovely pit lab mix, he's Squee. Duncan is more likely to be slow bad. Right.
00:48:05
Speaker
There's a difference between these dogs. I love them both. They're great. One is slightly more intelligent than the other. But they're both our favorites, and that's for darn sure.
Closing Remarks and Contact Info
00:48:19
Speaker
They are the unofficial mascots of our podcast. That's true. That's true. Squeeze the official mascot. Exactly. How could you have anything else? Wait, Bolas isn't sponsoring this? Nevermind. I don't want to get us in trouble.
00:48:35
Speaker
brought to you by Tormund of Hailfire.
00:48:39
Speaker
Let's move on to our final. We have one other question thought here from AgentMLP412 and he asks for some lore about Cranko. I think we need to do a big goblin cast later on. I mean we are the goblin lore podcast and specifically about Cranko and you know what's going down on some of these supplemental sets and the flavor and lore of those
00:49:07
Speaker
I think that is a really good idea for later, but it's it's just such an in-depth story. We're not prepared for right now. So we did get it. We are going to do it, but we just can't. We're not prepared at the moment. I mean, we're going to talk a lot about goblins. I just feel like there may not be a show where they don't come up because I think as much as we had a green mage, a red mage who really is green, but just wanted to be different and me a blue mage.
00:49:35
Speaker
We all have love of goblins, I would say. I do love goblins. Yeah. They are my win condition. When in doubt, goblin it out.
00:49:48
Speaker
Yep. Wow. And the last, the last question our mailbag comes to us from at fishcast MTG and that's fishing the merfolk podcast. Love those guys. That's what happened to the vodalian merfolk that didn't make it through the portal with Empress Galina. And so this is a reference to the end of the fallen empire's story. And this is also a really in depth thing. It involves time travel, it involves
00:50:17
Speaker
merfolk, it involves a really lore heavy set that's terrible for cards and development. So that's one that we're gonna have to do at a later time. But man, Sarpadia is awesome. I'll say that right now, at least. Yeah, I mean, you've got creations turning against their creators in two different places in that story. Yeah, there's, there's some interesting stuff going on.
00:50:43
Speaker
So Fallen Empires the set I mean I think I barely have ever seen and I mean the only thing that I remember ever seen from it is him to Torak so I just assumed that the set is amazing right? Well I mean you've got multiple arts. I remember back in the day Scry magazine I know how many people listening to this are familiar with print magazines but back in the day there was a couple for Magic. One of them was called Scry.
00:51:10
Speaker
And they always, and one of the things they like to do is players would, you know, send in their like favorite combos, favorite combos for cards. And they'd print some of those in the back and talk about what they did. And I just remember, uh, one that I saw was any card from someone sent this in and said, you know, my favorite combo for any card from fallen empires is card from fallen empires and a garbage can. Oh,
00:51:36
Speaker
I just happened to because I was remembering because I would say that that is being unfair. Homelands is more garbage than fallen empires when it comes to cards. Oh, yeah. And I at least looked at the notable cards from fallen empires and there are at least four. So well, and I'll tell you as a very casual we played in large group game player back then the the stack lands as we like to call them, but the lands that would accumulate counters. Yeah.
00:52:06
Speaker
were actually legitimately powerful because games went so long, you just throw one of those in, you leave it in play, and then you tap it for 15 mana at some point. You have one more thing? I was just going to say that I just want everybody to remember that this podcast has been brought to you by Blue Blue, Black Black Black, Red Red. Is that a law firm?
00:52:29
Speaker
That is cruel ultimatum. And on that bombshell. That's our show.
00:52:47
Speaker
Thanks again for listening to the Goblin Lore Podcast, which you can find on Twitter, at goblinlorepod. You can email us any questions, comments, or concerns you have at goblinlorepodcastatgmail.com. Joe Redemann can be found at Findhorn, that's F-Y-N-D horn on Twitter. HobbsQ can be found at HobbsQ. And Alex can be found at AlexanderNewM.
00:53:15
Speaker
You can subscribe and rate our podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Podbean, basically anywhere that podcast can be found. Again, thank you all for listening, and we'll catch you next week. Travel safe, Podwalkers.