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Episode 157: Let the Spice8Rack Flow!
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Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! Here it is y'all!! The collaboration the Ravnica Post called "The Worst Idea in the Multiverse" and the Shivan Times proclaimed "Oh God, no... we're all going to die!! That's right The Worlds of Goblins collide when we pair up with Spice8Rack and talk Goblin things... kind of... This is only part 1 as we could not be contained! Not much else to say but go throw money at Spice so it can continue to produce the Lore Content that makes the rest of us feel like Impostors... delicious, tasty Impostors!
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 including the fact that Hobbes is now a Brand Amabassador for Quiver
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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.
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- TrevorLifeline, TrevorChat, and TrevorText (LGBTQ+ crisis support): 1-866-488-7386, or text “Trevor” to 1-202-304-1200
- Trans Lifeline (US): (877) 565-8860
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You can find the hosts on Twitter: Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at @Mel_Chronicler. Send questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to @GoblinLorePod on Twitter
Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast, and a part of their growing Vorthos content – as well as Magic content of all kinds. Check them out at hipstersofthecoast.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsors
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. I am one of your hosts, HobbsQ. I can be found on Twitter, at HobbsQ. My pronouns are he, him. So before we get into today's episode, I really quick wanted to just let introduce two of our sponsors, or people that we work with. So the first one is going to be Grinding Coffee Company. If people do not know at this point, as we say it every week, Grinding Coffee is an LGBT minority ran coffee company for gamers.
00:01:00
Speaker
Specifically, they partner with gamers to promote brands, to promote inclusivity. They have been so great for us. Every charity event that we've done, and we're now, we've done charity events three months in a row that we have been a part of. We actually finished one just yesterday, which I will mention briefly. They have offered us giveaways, everything. So we just want to thank the Grinding Coffee Company.
00:01:23
Speaker
The other one that's new. So Alex, I know I've told you on Twitter, but I personally have become a brand ambassador for Quiver, which is kind of a funny thing to think of. So I have been hyping Quivers for a very long time. It takes me back to my high school days or middle school days of slapping stickers on things. And they're just a great way to carry things around a convention. So if you use Goblin Lore at checkout for them, you will get a 10 percent discount.
00:01:53
Speaker
And we also get a little bit of commission off of that. So we just wanted to acknowledge that I have become that. And one of the first roles that I had as an ambassador was really hyping them to bring back the pink quiver. And enough people signed up for the wait list that we now have pink quivers coming back out.
Fireside Alliance Charity Stream
00:02:12
Speaker
So Alex, do you want to talk a little bit about the Fireside Alliance?
00:02:15
Speaker
Sure. So I'm Alex Newman found on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler. My pronouns are he, him. And so the fireside alliances is a group of content creators that kind of just decided they have, they all had their own little communities on the internet and they decided, you know, they want to try to build a bigger place for people to, to come together on the internet, a place that can be dark and scary at times and like have a good community, a good place for folks to hang out. So like,
00:02:41
Speaker
We have asked to join the community and they graciously allowed us to accept us and we are now a part of that. Described as a progressive community of progressive communities. We've got a Discord and a website that lists all the different content creators. We're actually the only magic content creators in the group, but there's all sorts of
00:03:03
Speaker
of great sort of nerd movies and TV and all sorts of books and things. So there's a lot of great folks over there at the Fireside Discord if you're looking for a place to come hang out and chat about nerd stuff. Yeah, so the other thing, like I said, I want to mention was we just finished a two day charity stream for the National Abortion Federation. So reproductive rights are under attack here in the US. I mean, they always have been, this isn't something new, but the
00:03:32
Speaker
The decision that basically overturned Roe versus Wade really kicked it up a notch and made things where abortion access needs to be protected as much as it can right now. It was an amazing two days. They actually did. We didn't just play games. We had a panel of some women in magic and my wife was a part of that. So she's a OBGYN and she got to step in and really be kind of a part of
00:03:57
Speaker
that event which was awesome for her because she doesn't play magic but she loves the magic community and you know we tend to when we have events in minnesota and minneapolis host like a giant cookout at my place and she remembers every magic player she's met she just loves interacting with the community even though it's not a game she plays
00:04:16
Speaker
And so I just want to say that we were able to raise $6,000 over a two-day span with also some auctions that we auctioned off some cards. And that was actually matched by a charitable foundation. So we'll be sending $12,000 out. And I'm just excited because one of the things that this podcast has really done, and I said this in every piece I was involved in yesterday, was
00:04:38
Speaker
This is part of our big mission is Alex and I talk a lot about inclusivity. We talk a lot about social issues and we want to use our platform however we can. And one of those ways is to help put together and organize these events. Uh, I will say doing three and three months was not smart. Um, we, we likely will not be doing one for the month of August or if so, I am very, I'm going to be very tangentially involved, but we, these will be coming down the road. We will have more coming.
Goblin Tropes Discussion
00:05:10
Speaker
So today we have with us a preeminent scholar of goblin and their ties to the greater good. This is somebody that is long overdue for coming on the show. Somebody whose videos really, I mean, we've talked about it before, so I'm just gonna introduce. It's Spice 8 Rack.
00:05:27
Speaker
and give a warm goblin welcome, which just basically means throw some rocks at it to spice and spice. I will let you introduce yourself. Say whatever you want about your content. Uh, just, just take it away. It's yours. Help, help. They kidnapped me. I'm here against my, no, I'm so glad to be here. Thank you so much for, uh, for inviting me on. It has been a long time coming long time listener. Um, yes, my name is spice it rack. My, uh, pronouns are it and him.
00:05:54
Speaker
And yeah, I love me at Goblin. I love me looking at how they get represented in various iterations throughout magic's various different planes. I love the different ways that magic explores Goblin, as well as generally loving exploring hula narrative within Magic the Gathering. That's what my stuff's all about. I make YouTube videos about it. And I've been tasked with introducing this
00:06:24
Speaker
podcast. Normally I'm told that the guest is asked a question, but this time I've been asked to ask a question to the forum, as it were. And I think the question that I would like to ask, we talk a lot about what we love about goblin, but what are some of the elements or a single element of general goblin presentation that we think maybe is a bit overplayed at this point? What is a tired
00:06:53
Speaker
Goblin trope? That would be my question to the host and to myself. So do you want to answer first? Do you want to start off because you already have an answer? Or do you need us to stall? Well, I do already have my answer. From from my perspective, I feel that one of the and this is something that I've, having looked at a lot of goblins within Magic the Gathering, and I mainly talk about goblins within magic, because generally, we don't see a lot of sort of
00:07:21
Speaker
diversity when it comes to goblins outside of, weirdly, outside of Wizards of the Coast properties, either D&D or magic. But I would say the main thing that I think often gets overlooked with goblins is motivation, as in why do they do the things that they do? More often than not, goblins are, you know, little chaos grandmas, which is lovely, and we love our goofy little weirdos, we're a big fan of that, but there's
00:07:49
Speaker
oftentimes a lack of material or even ideological reason for why they get up to the chicanery and shenanigans that they do, and I think that's probably for me the most tired aspect of goblin presentation in magic. More often than not, they just seem to be doing things because they're goblins, as opposed to doing things because goblins want a specific thing to happen.
Goblins and Stereotypes
00:08:14
Speaker
Ooh, I really like that because, and I think this is something that we may come back to. I have some thoughts. So, Alex, do you want to go next as I continue to stall?
00:08:24
Speaker
Yes, because that's what I was trying to do while you were talking, and I thought, great. So I think maybe I'll take a slight step back, and since Hobbes was giving me this opportunity to maybe steal one right out of his list. So one of my issues, and it's less about exactly how they're portrayed and more just about the story thing,
00:08:45
Speaker
Um, we, so one of the things we like to do or goblin lore podcasts. So we've done like goblin profiles. It's, it's a thing that we try to do. We want to talk about goblin legends and talk about specific characters, but so many goblins have basically nothing for story. Um.
00:09:00
Speaker
And it's, there are, I would say on average, probably more now as opposed to 20 years ago in magic, but it's still a thing where we'll get a bunch of legendary goblins. And then there's like, if we're lucky, a paragraph of story that, you know, applied to maybe one short story that pulled up on the website and that's, that's all we have to go off of.
00:09:22
Speaker
So I would really like to see goblin characters, goblin legends, get more development in the lore.
00:09:32
Speaker
I do appreciate it. I lied. I actually had my answer completely ready to go as Spice was talking for this one finally, because this is a full topic idea that we have had that keeps getting put off for just various reasons. It is the trope of the in fantasy, but even in D&D and magic until recently.
00:10:02
Speaker
and still has a lot of work to be done. The representation that is related to Judaism and representation of goblins in kind of these Jewish stereotypes, the hoarding, the gold, the big noses, kind of the elements that we saw even with
00:10:20
Speaker
Cranko Kingpin where he's basically a looter and he's just standing there like with the gold and he's talking about pillaging and there's a you know there was the whole thing with the dockside extortionist and we were kind of glad to see goblins have jobs but we then had a representation for that that was supposed to be on Ixalan and this is something that you know there was a lot of discussion about why this was changed and I will admit I hadn't looked at the goblins on Ixalan very well and in
00:10:43
Speaker
thinking of breaches in that did not know that they were closer to kind of monkeys with the hair and stuff. But when Dockside was presented, and then we then found out should basically be on Ixalan was a very like a banker looking extortion is the kind of thinking the merchant of Venice style role. And there's a lot there. And this is something that we've talked about having Adrian on
00:11:08
Speaker
for years. And it's just preparing for that article is very difficult because there is a lot, especially for the Jewish community, with goblins that can make them, and Adrienne is a good example of this, so Dreamtime Dren, that she has this weird relationship with goblins. So that just has always been my number one, would love to see how we move on from that. And I think, as Alex said, story is a good way that we can do that.
00:11:36
Speaker
No, I think that's very correct. I mean, looking at the two different prints of Docksiders Extortionist from Double Masters, and you've got one, which is pilfering stuff from, obviously, hanging down from ropes on a pirate ship, and there's no connotations there. And then you've got, yeah, very much like standing behind a bunch of treasure chests, like a quill in hand, all that kind of stuff. It's not ideal in any capacity to put it very lightly.
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, even that is still probably an upgrade from the forest. Mel art and I don't blame the artist right I think the original art on it is is what we tend to expect from goblins. I also think there's a reason that that art wasn't reused and
00:12:19
Speaker
And that's fine. I think it's good to take that area and that stance. One of the things that I can say, knowing a little bit of the art world, that even changing them to a different color, to that more bluish color that we see in Dockside, especially from Ixalan, was a decision made by Wizards. That was actually something that was asked of by the artist.
00:12:45
Speaker
Oh, that's excellent. I didn't know that. Yeah, so and I think that there's been movement. We've discussed kind of some of the more recent goblins that we've gotten, you know, even if it's just like the story background finally on Kark and stuff like that, that really does add some whimsy, add some more detail of goblins, takes them in a different direction. We've talked about Ixalan, the idea that goblins have jobs and are part of the ship and part of the crew is kind of a cool element. Part of the ship, part of the crew.
00:13:13
Speaker
See, there's where we get our call back to Squeak, who somehow didn't make it under the weather light the second time the weather light was around. Ah, Squeak was busy. It's fun.
00:13:22
Speaker
doing what? Like not dying? I think that, you know, we can give them a little more than that.
Ravnica Storyline Shift
00:13:28
Speaker
I'm already starting to rant, aren't I? So I did kind of come up with some small just topics to get us kicking off with. And one of them actually is, you know, I kind of mentioned some story pieces that have been we're already kind of talking a little bit around it. And
00:13:46
Speaker
I want to talk about Krenko and I want to talk about kind of the evolution of Krenko if that's something that you feel comfortable with. Yeah, I feel absolutely. I don't, I must admit I am not as versed as into the ins and outs of Krenko. I know obviously that Krenko and the Shatigang brothers were bashing against one another during the events of Return to Ravica, but I don't actually know what happened to Krenko during War of the Spark because
00:14:12
Speaker
It's almost like the whole narrative of that set was pretty ill-conceived and not great. This is what we're going to talk about. That is exactly it. We did an episode about Cranko. It was our first Goblin profile. We talked about him as a mob boss. And at that point, we talked to him about, is he the mob boss, kind of like our stereotypical gangster, or is he a mob boss like the Joker? But the whole point
00:14:38
Speaker
was he was a mob boss. He was also a character that was like the only one to basically drew blood off of Gideon. You know, when Jay and Ellie was on the show, he used that as evidence that Krenko is the most powerful being in the multiverse, right? He's like he did something that most people can't do to Gideon. But he had a whole story behind like, with feather and kind of this whole thing. And then we get to War of the Spark. And this is where I thought this was a perfect topic for you. Because
00:15:08
Speaker
We talk about the direction of War of the Spark a lot, and even if we just want to look at cards and look at where that story was headed, we basically were setting up, in my opinion, for a revolution. I think there was a lot of War of the Spark. Pre-War of the Spark. Pre-War of the Spark, because we're going to do that for a second.
00:15:25
Speaker
Just yeah, with with the gate lists in the return to Ravnica block, there was a lot of there was a lot of talk about the guilds and but then also the people who are disenfranchised with the guilds, the power structure, the guilds and the people outside of it, who had no power. Yeah. And Cranko being one of the most prominent maybe more, you know, people among the guild lists, movement almost within Ravnica. Yeah, yeah.
00:15:53
Speaker
And I thought that it really was setting up for this idea that we've now had three blocks of kind of a city-state where the guilds rule. And we're seeing how it was breaking down, right? We were seeing kind of the breakdown of it. It looked like we were headed for that. And then just planeswalkers just dropping out of nowhere and we're fighting Nicol Bolas, and the whole narrative was lost.
00:16:16
Speaker
My fanfic has always been that Krenko was well positioned to lead the revolution, to really rise up against, and I know this is why I brought you on. This was the only reason, was to make you talk about rising up against an unjust, oppressed system.
00:16:35
Speaker
They just said, screw that. And they give us a card with no story. I mean, he doesn't show up in the World Spark stories that we ignore anyway. He's on a card where he, the flavor text is basically, you know, like while the fighting is going on, we loot. And they call him a kingpin, but is a kingpin ever going to be like hands on in the street looting the jewelry store?
00:16:57
Speaker
Yeah, so I don't know what your thoughts are if you've had that with with anything about Ravnica and That being primed for a revolution because I think there's a lot of analogies for America and maybe some other countries in there So one of the major issues I think when it comes to talking about having a revolution within a pre-established world within a product like magic is that a lot of these worlds are
00:17:24
Speaker
are profitable and are interesting from the player basis perspective, partially because of the structures in which they live in at the moment, but also about questioning those structures. And the moment that you provide an answer to those structures, which would be a revolution, the resolution to those structures, the as you say, sort of like overthrow of the Guild Society within Ravnica, or even the
00:17:49
Speaker
overthrow of the consulate in Kaladesh or the overthrow of the throne in Fiora, stuff like that. The moment you provide an answer to the player base, suddenly you're banking on this new society in which you have built is going to be as profitable and as interesting as the one you built previous. And one of the major issues is that people are interested in societies based on the conflicts within them.
00:18:16
Speaker
The conflict between, for example, the Gilder's movement and the guilds, or even the Grull and the guilds, or even Krenko and the guilds, is a selling point for
Challenges of Writing Revolutions
00:18:26
Speaker
Ravnica. And the moment that that question is answered, either, as Marx would say, in the revolutionary class overthrowing the previous ruling order, or the common ruin of both classes, the moment that that's answered, you've got to kind of bank on the fact that whatever world comes afterwards is going to
00:18:43
Speaker
also have this sort of conflict that people want to see and want to come and get involved in the story for. So I think that whilst there's lots of priming for revolution, and even we can see this in Kaladesh where there was a quote unquote revolution, the world that came after that wasn't particularly different to the one that came before. You know, the bad people were taken away, the really, really bad aspects of the world were sort of
00:19:13
Speaker
swept under the rug and we have a slightly different way of governing the world but the world itself hasn't faced any fundamental changes so that we can have the world sort of marched out again in three or four years time because we know that this world of Kaladesh works. The only times that we can see sort of a massive shift in a world happen within magic are things which
00:19:38
Speaker
where we have popular worlds being taken over by other popular worlds, you know, mirrored into Phyrexia for example. Magic can already bank on Phyrexia is popular. People want to see Phyrexia do Phyrexian things and so we are going to showcase Phyrexia taking over this other popular world but also leave that hint that popular world A can still come back. The only times in fact we see a society massively shift is when the world was
00:20:08
Speaker
kind of unpopular before, Kanagawa for example. And even then we don't see the revolution happening, we just see sort of the march of time and presumably we transition from feudal Japan to modern Japan through just sort of like
00:20:26
Speaker
behind the scenes, off camera as it were. So, enough time passing that you don't necessarily have to tie it to that previous Kamagawa, right? You can make some nods back to it, but you don't have to, you can get rid of problematic elements or things you didn't like, and you're probably going to be okay.
00:20:44
Speaker
And one example that that where they actually was a big shift and and I think they realized after the fact that maybe that didn't work so well was Tarkir. The Mark Rosewater that you know the head designer of magic has even said that they one of their biggest mistakes with that set was they started with the clans who were popular and then they
00:21:05
Speaker
did the whole time travel Marty McFly story with Sarkin and then ended up with the dragon clans that were less popular or less interesting at least because there are two color allies and there's like there's two color ally stuff everywhere. What was interesting were these three color wedges that we don't have anymore, we erased them in the lore. And it's like, that kind of didn't work as well for us to market these things later.
00:21:28
Speaker
And see, that's that's the interesting thing as well, because in Dragons of Tarkir, you have you do have specifically within the. Oh, God, is Dromokha is no Dromokha is the Groll one, right? Dromokha is green, white, I believe. Yeah. Oh, I'm Silungar. So you've got like within the Silungar dynasty, you have that hint of a potential switching of power with Sidisi brewing. That's like the old piece of poison in her heart to then use against Silungar.
00:21:56
Speaker
But the issue in there is that wizards were kind of banking on dragons of Tarkia being a popular world that people would be excited to go back to.
Planeswalker vs World Narratives
00:22:04
Speaker
And now that it's not necessarily, suddenly it's like, well, we have this potential for a sort of like, wouldn't necessarily be a revolution, but certainly would be a coup. That could be an interesting narrative, but we need people to be excited about the original world. So again, it's that sort of like, it's a very difficult way to
00:22:24
Speaker
create narratives where you need to hook people into an engaging world in the first place and also have the world that will come after that, that, you know, if we're talking revolution is structurally, and we're talking something from my perspective, revolution in sort of the Marxist sense, you know, the smashing of state power, the building of something completely new, that kind of stuff. And you'd have to bank on both worlds being not one being very, very engaging and one being even more engaging, which obviously, as you said,
00:22:54
Speaker
They tried with Dragons of Tarkia and they completely fumbled the bag on it. And I think for Ravnica, the hard part for me is this is a world that we've now been to more than anything besides the Dominaria basically.
00:23:08
Speaker
to me, the kind of tension that we keep getting is these skills and the structure. And to me, they, you know, I feel that as you're saying, like, I don't know what would have come after if we had followed along that storyline to finish up the set. And it's that danger, right? And I understand from a business perspective, the hard part for me is we have basically planeswalkers just that just dropped in and potentially just wait,
00:23:32
Speaker
the city state, right? Like, there's got to be a ton of damage. Like, if we're going back to Ravnica, there's got to be a ton of damage that happened during the war. I'm sorry, you go ahead. I was just gonna say that, you know, we still have this kind of tension now with the destroyed world. So it does look different than what we had before. It's just to me, it was the shift of the focus on Ravnica. And I know this is part of magic storytelling and what the direction has been to the planeswalkers versus the citizens of Ravnica. When we went there the first two times, even though the second time we did have planeswalkers,
00:24:03
Speaker
It just felt like there was much more of an emphasis on the citizenry and that being that city-state world that is very European, very kind of meant to be in that.
00:24:14
Speaker
And so we were set up for this and then we shift the story to a planeswalker base that just destroys everything yet without that tension that we had built. I fully agree. And this is something I actually talk about in, I'm working on a video about Lorwin right now, which we're currently clocking in at a cool one and a half hours of recorded audio. That's not even, that's not including any of the quotes or interviews that I'm planning on running for it. So.
00:24:42
Speaker
Oh, Jesus Christ. Let's say an hour and a half recording. Does that mean you have like 15 minutes of usable footage, hopefully? Or no? No, that's, that's already edited. The goofs are gone. The goofs are not involved. There are some goofs in them, obviously. Yeah, good goofs. Of course, the bad goofs are gone. But sorry. So like, this is one thing that I talk about, which the issue with planeswalker stories, as you've quite rightly identified, is that
00:25:13
Speaker
You have these characters that get parachuted into worlds, and those worlds act pretty much as a backdrop for a more important narrative that's going on, as opposed to being explored thoroughly. And so you have all of these narratives which are exclusively focused around planeswalkers, but at the same time as that, which I would argue is a negative, obviously you can tell cool planeswalker stories, you know, I'm still interested to find out who the bloody hell the Raven Man is.
00:25:38
Speaker
I swear, the moment that that's actually revealed, I might be then fully clocked out of magic lore, because that's kind of the last thing I care about, right?
00:25:47
Speaker
And then I can stop. Okay, I'm gonna just give a strong warning as I have to everybody lately. Do not go look at the preview for the magic art book dropping in December. Do not click on the images of the previews. Oh, okay. I will not ask why and I will hold my tongue and hold my interest. Yes, hold your interest but do not go. I will just say that. Cheers. But like the second thing about that is that
00:26:15
Speaker
by virtual focusing exclusively on planesball stories who have a multiversal implication whose stakes are so astronomically high that entire multiple planes of existence are under threat, suddenly if you try and tell any of these small-scale stories, it's very difficult to care about them because why does it matter that one of the, for example, kingpins on Yooka Pena got murdered when
00:26:44
Speaker
there's an entire Phyrexian multiversal invasion that's sort of on the doorstep.
00:26:49
Speaker
Yeah, this was about today with Mark Rosewater state. So there's work today we're recording this mark, Rosewater put out a state of design. And one of the things that was talked about was with new kapena, like, people are saying, like, we still don't know what's going on with the angels at the end of this, right? Like the world that we had, and it was built around kind of the angels, are they returning or not, doesn't really
Disengagement from Phyrexian Arc
00:27:08
Speaker
get answered. And part of that is phyrexia. Like, like, there's a bigger thing we have to worry about, which I feel that I feel that the phyrexia threat has been
00:27:17
Speaker
I think I would I would go so far as to say it's being kind of rushed into, you know, like the first time that we had the first time that we had a sort of frets in crater revealed on another plane and suddenly like, oh, wait a minute that they can planes will come out somehow. What's going on here?
00:27:34
Speaker
Like, that was in Kaladesh, which only recently stopped being standard legal if memory serves. And that's not Kaladesh. Um, uh, strict saber. Yes. We had it with, and it was like there and gone. Yeah, it was there. It was there and gone. It was like, but when that came out, I was like, Oh, so this is like, like one of the bookends to say like, and this is what the narrative for the next like couple of years is going to be. And now like less than a year later, we've seen,
00:28:04
Speaker
three out of the four praters we I think hang on I'm just going to quickly check something that if this is on scryfall or if
00:28:17
Speaker
And while you checked it real quick, we're just going to throw in. This has been something the cast has talked about. I think, Alex, you could greatly agree. Not only with the rushing, which we talked about, but the nature of those stories taking away from the planes and how that affects you in particular. So while Spike and I wanted to throw that back in again because it's something we haven't mentioned in a while.
00:28:37
Speaker
For me, it's a little bit of a different thing. I'll just say the particular storyline, particularly regarding Cameo, that is a storyline that I have a visceral revulsion to.
00:28:54
Speaker
like that type of story. So to the point where the last couple of months, I have actively muted a ridiculously large list of magic terms on Twitter, because I need to basically remove myself from
Evolution of Magic's Storytelling
00:29:08
Speaker
that sphere. I do a worth those podcasts. I'm pulling myself out of the story. Because we're buying we're gonna melt those. We're melt those cats. We're melt those cats.
00:29:18
Speaker
Yeah, so because I just, I cannot engage with that type of story and I, it's a reaction I'm still trying to work through of where exactly it is, but I just have such a bad reaction to it, which I want to be specific about because I'm not necessarily going to say that that makes it a bad storyline for Wizards to be doing.
00:29:42
Speaker
I will say it is a storyline I cannot engage with and they are using it so effectively that I need to disengage from this.
00:29:57
Speaker
things that kind of then like try to tug at your strings that I also think are bad when we have like representation of a mom in magic and a placeholder. There's some representation issues there as well where where for a lot for a while I think because the way they were sitting the planes walkers up it was supposed to be these are the people these these are our you know Marvel superheroes these are the people whose stories we follow from plane to plane
00:30:19
Speaker
So a lot of them were sort of the younger ish, you know, people who are just out doing things. And then when they started to look, Oh, we should represent everyone in this, which they've been doing a better job with. But then you have like, like Hobbs points out, you have this, you know, caring mother, who now has all of that perverted into the serving of Phyrexia, you have things like that, which are kind of probably can be problematic, potentially as well.
00:30:49
Speaker
That's fair enough. Yeah, no, I think that if there's a narrative trend that you just fully don't want to engage with, that's, yeah, completely fair and legitimate. I think the thing that I was looking up as well, just on Scripal, just on this sort of topic of it sort of being rushed, and I think that sort of links back into like Tamiya, we knew that she was motherly in running the storybook circle, but like actually being viewed as a mother was introduced in the same
00:31:19
Speaker
set, at least from my perspective, introduced in the same set as, you know, that was all as you said, sort of like converting into supporting and building Phyrexia. But on the topic of things being rushed, like we've seen three of the five Phyrexian craters at this point. And in the flavor text of Shiv and Devastator, which was previewed not too long ago, I'll just read it out. There were many reasons why Shiv was not high on Sheldred's list of places to conquer big fiery reasons. So
00:31:48
Speaker
So we're almost certainly going to see Sheldon in Dominaria United.
00:31:53
Speaker
How, like, when did Kaldheim come out? Like, 20? Time has no meaning for me. I know it because I had to ask Card Kingdom to redirect my Kaldheim stuff to my parents' place because I broke my leg and was staying with my parents for a little while. Fair. So you have a better, you have, like, I have to use my kids as time points.
00:32:19
Speaker
That had been February 2021. So a year and a half. Yeah, we've had a year and a half of this. We've had a year and a half building up to this. And if we consider, for example, how the entire Gatewatch saga and the entire sort of like Nicole Bolas is doing something, we don't know what yet, but he is doing something was started back in a Lara and culminated in War of the Spark. Yeah. Unless unless there's going to be like
00:32:49
Speaker
Six years of like a build-up to the eventual like big Forexian X planeswalker war this this arc is going to be concluded in like the next eight months and Very little room for for things like goblins or you know, I mean we have one goblin planeswalker Really? We have to ready We have the secret goblin planeswalker in squee That we can mention so if you if you if you're not
00:33:17
Speaker
If you're new to the show, I have some children's art in my room done by Tappy Toe Claws. She just does amazing work. She did two pieces for me, one for each kid. And the first one was based off a fanfic from the show, which is the Squee Nicol Bolas buddy cop movie, where basically, Squee has info that Bolas needs.
00:33:37
Speaker
But Bolas hates him and he's really annoying because it's Squee and he keeps trying to kill him and he keeps coming back. And Squee's like got the biggest smile on his face because he's just excited. So they're in the style of Calvin and Hobbs in a time machine box. Traveling together and Squee's got a giant smile and Bolas is just like, why won't this thing die? So what we did is when Bolas got sent to the prison realm, I have the fanfic of Squee's sparking.
00:34:02
Speaker
And then ending up in the meditation slash prison realm and Bolas being like, whoa, wait a second, what's going on? And try to figure out if there's a way to leave now that he has somebody else there with him. And Squee just wants a buddy. That's all he wants is a friend. That's bloody delightful.
00:34:27
Speaker
But I mean it does leave less room if we're you know, it is the planes walkers and and the fire excellence now, right? Like it's the it's Whatever you want to call it civil war endgame. It's that version of something that we went from war the spark to this in like
00:34:43
Speaker
just see it right
Future Story Directions
00:34:44
Speaker
next to me. I'm curious. I will have no way to know and maybe time will tell but maybe not. But I'm curious because I don't know two three years ago I was kind of doing a little looking at this sort of storyline of magic and how they have changed how how their storytelling has changed over the over the years and you look back as you mentioned
00:35:05
Speaker
a lot of their spice. You go back to just before that. So it's it's three sets in a row, like right when they kind of trained where they were transitioning from, let's just do a few random sets. So we go to revenue for the first time, we go to Commigal or for the first time, go to Mirrodin for the first time. They do three blocks in a row that introduce three threats. Those were bolus and Alara, the phyrexians in when they went back to Mirrodin, and then the Eldrazi in Zendikar.
00:35:35
Speaker
We've dealt with two of those three and I wonder if they're trying to just wrap that up so that they can do other things with the story with some of the other stuff that they've been building in the last few years.
00:35:49
Speaker
Because we started to see, you know, Eldraine, we started to see some of these other worlds that are kind of going back to that, let's build kind of big and small, let's have some of these overarching stories, but let's have some of these smaller time stories. And I wonder if they're trying to build into some other things. And it's like, well, the forexians are just still here, we haven't done anything with them. I think that's a very, I think that's a very interesting observation, actually, I think that it may feel, I mean,
00:36:18
Speaker
I don't know what the like, you know, fundamentally, it's about profit. It's not about it's not about telling you a good story. It's about what cell boxes are. Yeah, which is, I mean, maybe that's it. Maybe that's just my particular outlook on things. But I think that it will be interesting to see whether or not it's rushed, because they want to tell, as you say, different stories, which I would be actually now, now you're talking about that, like, actually, if that's the
00:36:47
Speaker
You know, if the cost of getting back to a kind of storytelling of magic where the world is the focus, and if there are planeswalkers, they are elements within it as opposed to big distractions from it, if the cost of that is rushing this big Phyrexian arc, I would frankly be quite chill with that. However, if the rushing of the big Phyrexian arc is just so that people can get excited for a big Phyrexian set,
00:37:17
Speaker
and then buy lots of Frexian sets and stuff like that, then that's obviously a far less ideal motive and also outcome, because after that, it's... I mean, like, the Eldrazi can come back, Nicol Bolas isn't fully dead. We're comic book continuities now, right? Like, there's always possibilities. We've got the sort of sinister six of, what you call it, Oko and...
00:37:46
Speaker
Luca and all the sort of individual evil planeswalkers that
00:37:51
Speaker
will inevitably become interconnected in some sort of way. I have to laugh because one of the things that we got to mention to you was to say, to remind you that Luca isn't really a good guy, no matter what your fanfic version is of Luca. Listen, listen, I cannot blow my own trumpet lightly. I think I engage in self-criticism on every single facet of my being, be it artist, be it philosophical, be it material.
00:38:18
Speaker
I wrote a bloody good story there, and it was better. It was better than Django Rex's whole novel. I will maintain that. I'm sorry, Django, I really enjoyed your prequel to the War of the Sparks stuff. I thought that was great. You were working amazingly with what you had to work with, but my version of the book was so much better. He could have still been evil after that, but like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:38:42
Speaker
Yeah, I love it. It's just I'm glad we get there naturally. We have we have mentioned Luke on the show, but it was to talk about him in the sense of toxic masculinity. So conversation stuff. Yeah. So so I just think it's funny we got kind of back there. And I think that is Alex is saying if we could get that from the story, it could be great. And as spice is saying, business wise, more likely thing, but well, I can I can be hopeful sometimes.
00:39:09
Speaker
I appreciate it. I appreciate the hope. But I mean, I think this is where we get to with, you know, my frustration. And I think it comes more from cards and just how things are represented where we.
Krenko's Character Shift
00:39:21
Speaker
It just keeps bringing me back to Ravnica. And that's where it just does because it just felt like a powder cake, but not for the reasons that we ended up with. And once again, my fanfic of Cranko is Cranko was like this
00:39:35
Speaker
The art is so different. And this is where it comes back to the Jewish stereotype that I think I frustrate with is that his first art is very much this lean mean. I mean, he is a mob boss, but he is a knife in hand, just killed a shatter gang. My guy is aerodynamic as hell in that first picture. And I understand that we're making him a kingpin, but we took away so much of what made it in just that cart because we get zero story. We know nothing.
00:40:04
Speaker
about characters that we love. Yeah. Well, I mean, like the sort of like, obviously, like the there was that arc, obviously, of him, you know, being able to like draw blood from Gideon, which is infinitely hilarious. But like, like that puts him at the same power level as him of Nicholas and Nicole Bolas. Those are the highest level. There we go. Our Omega level people. One of them is not a planeswalker because he hasn't sparked yet. He was supposed to spark and go to New Capena, but that's a whole nother discussion.
00:40:34
Speaker
Oh, I love to have that discussion. Um, but like, it's, it's the, like the flavor, even the flavor takes the loan on Krenko. He displays a perverse charisma fueled by avarice, highly dangerous, recommend civil sanctions from a nozoria.
Ravnica's Narrative Potential
00:40:47
Speaker
That's sort of that perverse charisma. That's, that's the only thing that we really have, obviously, you know, motivation is avarice, but he's using that in some capacity to get people on site. It's as you said, like it's hinting at a building of something. And then we jumped to Krenko, like,
00:41:04
Speaker
10th Street Kingpin, after the people flee but before the enemy arrives, that's grabbing time.
00:41:10
Speaker
That's not that's not charisma. That's just that's just good behavior. And his depiction in that artwork is very much a shift. Like, right, like we see him as now, you know, it's almost like they're trying to make him kingpin as in kingpin. I mean, and that's fine. Kingpin is a role, but we see a complete change in his body structure, and everything that we had known about him previously. So they are on they are fully unrecognizable. If you can, if you were to like,
00:41:35
Speaker
take the name off and put the two pieces of art together. Like crown's gone, the coloration on the nose and the ears is gone, and the lips as well is gone. The costume is completely different. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah. And so it's just, you know, I think it's one of those things that's hard to balance on these worlds. And like I said, I think it's just, I want to see it. I think this is a selfish thing. I wanted to see it. I wanted to see it rise up. I wanted to see, we've had a lot, Ravnica has been a good,
00:42:02
Speaker
topic for us on the show quite a bit because of the guild structure because of discussing what the guild lists mean, or, you know, what it means to not be a guild member versus be one. And frankly, I'm sorry to catch off hubs. But even if they didn't want to tell that story, you could have framed this card with cranko differently to set that up for the future, rather than kind of scale him back to now he's just a street level thug. That's what I think. Yeah, that's one of the other issues with Ratnakota. And I think
00:42:32
Speaker
Weirdly, if you compare all three sets of Ravnica, I think here, like, put them next to one another, you can see to the detriment how the introduction of Planeswalkers has affected the narrative of all of the sets. The first one, obviously, no Planeswalkers there whatsoever. And you had this, like, very complicated, sort of, like, film noir-esque, you know, cop, a Downman is Luck cop with, you know, addiction issues and, like,
00:43:02
Speaker
ghost buddy cop almost duo type thing working on some grand conspiracy that goes all the way to the top and then the second time we return to Ravnica planeswalkers are there and they're doing things obviously and there is a like a link back to sort of a larger narrative but it's very much secondary to the machinations of the guilds what's an emissive up to what is the dragon's maze stuff like that and then we get to like obviously guilds of Ravnica, Ravnica allegiance
00:43:32
Speaker
I think those were the two names of it, wasn't it? The two sets before War of the Spark? Think so. Yeah. The entire narrative of those two sets is wait for War of the Spark. And also, I want to just point out, can writers please stop using the term war when you mean battle? Because it's not a war, but it only takes place in a single city block, is it? Yeah.
00:44:02
Speaker
infinity war was like a punch up on three different planets between 12 people. And there was a large battle in Wakanda. And that's, that's it.
Critique on War Labeling
00:44:11
Speaker
It went on for like, maybe a weekend, like, was a bigger. Yeah, so like, I that's, that's a whole thing. Like the, the fact that like, war, war of the spark, war of the spark pretty much existed exclusively in
00:44:27
Speaker
that, hey, you know, obviously the heart of Ravnica, but Ravnica is an ekimepilis. It's a city-wide plane and all of the conflict was concentrated in the 10th precinct. The only time the conflict extended past that was when Nicol Bolas punched, what do you call it, punched Ugin so hard he flew across the entire plane. That's the only time that the war extended beyond that city block, you know. So anyway, but that's just a personal critique of the
00:44:54
Speaker
uses of war and again obviously the two analogues between war the spot and infinity war like it's so easy to say so i i want to kind of get us to you know we've talked a lot kind of about i think just the storytelling devices and especially as we've seen the role that goblins play within this and on a lot of different planes and as you mentioned before one of the things we talked about was the different versions of goblins across the multiverse so one of the other elements that we talked about a little bit before when you mentioned motivation uh we have kind of the situation where we have we
00:45:23
Speaker
Goblins that really either are lacking good story. I think Alex that was your main statement at the beginning the answer to the question or my personal one being ceremoniously killed Unceremoniously killed off-screen, which is slow. So basically we dropped back into the you know when we were dropped back into Meredith we basically just like had slow bad with
00:45:47
Speaker
Oh gosh, brain's going, Glyssa and our buddy, he's just been with Karn. We have them, we have Bosch. They had just stopped this squeeze sparked for, I mean, sorry. It's such a part of my board.
00:46:09
Speaker
Slobad did actually have this weird kind of like sparking element where we've talked, he was the first goblin we did two parts on where we talked about friendship being kind of this thing where he chooses to give up that. And then the aftermath of that is he gets like trampled.
00:46:26
Speaker
Yeah, it just dies. You just get killed. Right. And not even like we don't even have it. Like we have now Glyssa being two colors. She's seen as a traitor. We talked about maybe it's almost like Slobad got fridged in the sense that, you know, that that was the telling device. But
00:46:42
Speaker
We had a goblin that was intelligent, that was like potential, this weird spark thing going on, and then we just lose it, be killed off screen. And I don't know if it's for the sake of story or not, but this is something that we've seen with goblins. We get Squee as a card in Dominaria, and yet we have the weather light back and they don't have the original crew member. You know, we get like the comic relief of Slimefoot or this kind of the cutesy-ness of Slimefoot, but we lose Squee completely. We have a weather light with,
00:47:12
Speaker
like descendants of captains and everything else going on and other people who have been there forever. And the literal, like, amazing shot person who we know is has his own superpower of luck. Who gets a card because they want to make a nod to it and get nothing, right? There's just nothing flavor text. It's just like nothing.
Underutilization of Squee
00:47:32
Speaker
No, absolutely. I think the I mean, like, I, and this is like an additional thing of body. I think that the the
00:47:40
Speaker
One thing I certainly want to see a lot less of in popular media, especially at the moment, you can see it in Marvel, you can see it in Star Wars, you can see it in Magic. Sometimes the descendants of important people don't need to be as important as those important people. It's really tired to see, oh, and this was the granddaughter of so-and-so, and oh, this is the great-niece of yada-yada, and ah,
00:48:06
Speaker
that you're the 14th cousin twice removed but you've got an eighth of the power of this, blah blah blah, it's dull. I mean, I like Slime Foot and I like the fact that there are a lot of brand new characters of Arvid Cold or whatever his name was, the half vampire, which was kind of obviously like a, was it Crovax who became the vampire in the original? Yes. Yes, it was Crovax.
00:48:31
Speaker
allegory of Crovax, but very much not in any way actually related to Crovax and stuff like that. You have the, um, angel, uh, engineer. That stuff's great, but like seeing, Oh, you're the descendant of Sisay. Oh, you're the descendant of Jared Capchin. Oh, you're yada, yada, yada. Like that stuff is just dull.
00:48:48
Speaker
And that's a trend in media that I certainly want to see gone. Sorry, just real quick. I completely can be on board with that. We talked a little bit about it with Jay when he was on here because I think it's a personal one. To me, it was Squee was kind of such a
00:49:06
Speaker
not get the credit that Squee is due in the beginning. We have him voted the most popular goblins. So when Maro did like a breakdown, we have the, I understand it, right? Like, well, he's not a descendant. He's there. I mean, sorry, my brain. I just went back to that. I was thinking of the descendant piece, but I mean, we don't need people to necessarily pop up that were there before, but I think Squee was the miss if we are going to have people pop up. Yeah. Yeah. If you get, like, if you're going to have, you know, or mortal people hanging around,
00:49:36
Speaker
might as well, you know, might as well use them whilst they're there, you know. Yeah, I mean, if you're getting your quote unquote, getting the band back together, he's the only like person who was an extended member of the crew. I read like, Joyo was part of it for some amount of time, but like squeeze the only person who was on that ship through the entire invasion. Precisely. And is still alive. I want to get the band back together. Most of the band is dead, but we do have the roadie. So at least bring him along.
00:50:03
Speaker
Right. And I think for me, too, it was an interesting exploration of space of immortality, right? That we've seen that we
Daretti's Absence in Storylines
00:50:11
Speaker
haven't seen. You have somebody that isn't a planeswalker, according to whatever cannon, and yet is a mortal. So it's just, it's an interesting thing. And I think that I think it is just seeing kind of sometimes, I don't know,
00:50:32
Speaker
obviously biased, but just goblins being used, as you were saying, with his comic relief, or we're going to get into this one. The next one, the more positive elements of the communal nature, but it still is story wise. I don't know if it's hard. I don't know. It's kind of just thinking, do they not know what to do with characters that are supposed to be goblins or that are goblins? You know, the ready, we still are are lacking for a good, strong narrative. Yeah, he is an interesting one as well, because
00:51:02
Speaker
of all of the planeswalkers who weren't in War of the Spark, who didn't for whatever reason weren't sort of summoned to War of the Spark, they all have a reasonable excuse for why. Obviously, you know, the Kenrith hadn't actually had their spark ignite at that moment. Lots of people don't know if they don't pay attention to the narrative, but Battlebond was actually set in the future. So yes, it's the first set that they
00:51:25
Speaker
were printed in, but that was a glimpse into the future. Eldraine was the now where they actually had their spark. That's the reason why they weren't in the War of the Spark. What do you call it? What's his name? Garret. There we go. Garret wasn't there because the chain veil was completely messing up his planeswalker aptitude and was effectively encouraging him to hunt planeswalkers more than that pole was bringing him back to Ravnica. Ogre hadn't been introduced, yada, yada, yada.
00:51:54
Speaker
Doretti just wasn't there. Doretti was like, evidently just, I don't know, in a box. He had a nap.
00:52:03
Speaker
for the, um, for the six hours for the actual, he thought it was going to be an actual war. So he was getting ready. And by the time, you know, he was summoning his own platoon. And by the time he'd gotten around to like the first 20 people is like, Oh, it was over last week. Yeah. And we're calling it a war. Okay.
00:52:27
Speaker
See, now I just want to see Doretti show up to Ravnica late and then run into Mizzix. And I want to see that storyline, like those two just hanging out. Just like a cogwork tank, and he turns up ready for the war that he's been building for the last couple of months. And he's like, no, this is... It's so old news. We've taken apart the statue that the invaders put up.
00:52:48
Speaker
Like, I mean, that came down within the first hour, and it was formed within the first day. We had a celebration so they could go bury their dead on a different world. Literally. Yeah. It was wild. I mean, even if you look at, like, and, you know, this, you know, this is very nitpicky, but even if you look at, like, the art of War of the Spark, you've got stuff happening in, like, the early morning, I think, so, like, you've got, you know, you've got, like, radical war, like, the art of that certainly evokes, like, you know,
00:53:18
Speaker
it's happening at like 2 a.m. or something like that. Someone's just woken up, they've heard a big shout, sorry, heard a big explosion, they've got kind of like their dressing gown on, they're looking out over a parapet and they're seeing, you know, this horrifying sight early in the morning. And then fame-wide celebration obviously takes place in like the late afternoon. You know, I'm just saying, like, there's not much in a way of sort of like creating this illusion of a large-scale conflict. We needed to move on, we had to, right? Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.
00:53:48
Speaker
And that's our show for today. You can find both of the hosts on Twitter. Hobbs can be found at HobbsQ and Alex can be found at Mel underscore chronicler. Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to goblinlordpod on Twitter or email us at goblinlordpodcast at gmail.com.
00:54:09
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood gobslugs to our Linktree on our Twitter account and listed in our show notes. This has everything from our discounts for the Grinding Coffee Company to our Patreon.
00:54:22
Speaker
The music for today's show was by Vindergotten, who can be found at Vindergotten at badcamp.com. The art was done by Steven Raphael, who can be found at Steve Raffled on Twitter. Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing 4thos content. Check them out on Twitter at hipstersmpg or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you for listening. And remember, goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.