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Episode 158: It's a Spice8Rack Revolution
553 Plays2 years ago
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 is part 2 so if you missed part 1 you should go listen now...
Today the three Goblin delve a little deeper into political theory and also calling out Gavin Verhey's horrible performance on a Goblin Quiz! Honestly this episode is a little more chaotic but also talks about what makes Goblins... welll... Goblins
Not much else to say but go throw money atSpice so it can continue to produce the Lore Content that makes the rest of us feel like Impostors... delicious, tasty Impostors!
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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 & Guest Appearance
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast. I am your host, HobbsQ. My pronouns are he, him. I can be found on Twitter, at HobbsQ. So today, we actually have part two of an episode from last week, hoping that I did editing a correct and there wasn't anything that came up life-wise at least, because recording is kind of time travel, as we talk about a lot.
00:00:50
Speaker
Hopefully this episode is coming out a week after you've had an opportunity to listen to the Amazing Spice 8 Rack. And it is back with us to do part two. So we are going to, before that, just want to give our normal kind of intro pieces. So we want to thank Grinding Coffee Company for offering sponsorship and discounts on their coffee, which is my primary coffee. I still, I did their Kickstarter where I got two bags of it a month and I basically have continued buying it because I just love their coffee and
00:01:18
Speaker
as an organization, we really believe strongly in their mission. They are an LGBT minority owned and ran company that really makes copy for gamers. So we have our link tree, it has all of that information, you can find out that discount. And I recently became a Quiver brand ambassador. And as of this recording, pink is now available. So if you want a pink Quiver, they had these as only a
00:01:42
Speaker
They were like a special edition for a very long time. And people kept begging them to bring it back. And they kept saying, we need people to show enough interest because of the size of a print run that we have to do. That has happened. So you could take pre-orders. And if you use Goblin Lore at checkout,
00:01:57
Speaker
you will also get 10% off of Quivers.
Sponsorship & Community Networks
00:02:00
Speaker
So I'm going to pass it over to Alex to talk a little bit about the Fireside Alliance, and then we'll let our guests reintroduce themselves. And in the vein of last week's episode, go listen to it if you haven't, we are going to make Spice come up with another question because we're doing this on the fly. Like, we're actually still recording the previous episode or something. I don't know. And we didn't really discuss it, so we're just going to go with it because it worked so well last time.
00:02:25
Speaker
So Alex. Hello. Alex Newman, phone on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler. My pronouns are he him and yeah, fireside Alliance. Just a quick shout out for them. It's a, it's a great community that we're a part of now. I described as a, I mean, the, oh, goodness.
00:02:41
Speaker
independent media network and a progressive community of progressive communities. Basically a bunch of content creators on the internet kind of all had their own little isolated communities and they thought, wouldn't it be great if we built something together to bring our communities kind of to get together to build something on the internet for people to go hang out and chat and be part of a greater community.
00:03:02
Speaker
Discord server and, and then the website and they have invited us a goblin podcast. I mean, maybe they should rename themselves because it's very communal. We, we are the only magic content creators in there, but there's a lot of cool nerdom like movies and shows and people who do like, there's lots of fun nerd stuff. So if that's something that's interesting to you, check out the discord and check them out.
00:03:28
Speaker
So welcome back, Spice. It's been a while. I mean, it's been it just feels so long since we last talked. So it's been maybe maybe minutes and it's you know, it's a minute too long. That's what I always say famously always have said that exact phrase when prompted.
00:03:45
Speaker
It is copyrighted, so if you go and now say that phrase, royalties will come back to space. How dare you suggest that I would copyright a phrase that was so famously counter to... Are you saying that? That's what I know of your brand. That's basically what I understand.
00:04:01
Speaker
A brand? I have a brand as well! Brands and copyrights? What am I, a corporation? People could be, well in the U.S. people could be corporations. It's kind of an interesting thing. Or corporations could be people. It's one of those. It's a corporation could be people, remote systems united. What a dreadful, dreadful decision. Anyway, hello everybody. We hate it. I'm Spice 8, right with my pronouns are it and him. And I make funny little YouTube videos. I say funny little,
00:04:30
Speaker
I'm currently working on one that is potentially going to be closing in on two hours long. So we'll see how funny and or little that actually turns out to be. I hope I can get it in editing time for August. Anyway, that's me. I love talking about goblins, I love talking about Ludo and Aunty, I love talking about society and all structures and stuff. Ain't that interesting? And indeed, this is something that I as a question to pose to our to the entire panel.
00:04:59
Speaker
Last time we talked about the issues that we have with goblin representation, we talked about motivation, we talked about story, we talked about the unfortunate connotations that a lot of goblins, the way they're drawn and the sort of environments and activities they're drawn in, unfortunately link back to Jewish stereotypes, anti-Semitic stereotypes. But one thing I would like to ask is when it comes to goblins,
00:05:29
Speaker
is there anything or are there things that goblins should always have? Be it physical, be it metaphysical, be it philosophical, what are some things that a goblin would just not be a goblin in magic if it didn't have this feature?
What Defines a Goblin?
00:05:48
Speaker
Again, it could be emotional, spiritual, what have you. For me, if I like to kick things off a
00:05:55
Speaker
to give my lovely hosts a chance to think themselves. Oh, it happened again. Anyway, I would say that goblins need to be small. For me, if there's one thing, goblins can range in a whole different buffet of personality types, motivations, what have you. They've always got to be little.
00:06:23
Speaker
They can't be, even if they are bigging themselves up through other means, like, for example, director's massive robotic chair, for example, or be it in the form of a goblin crewing one of new Kamigawa's massive mechs, the goblins themselves
00:06:39
Speaker
must be little, they must be small. They can't be bigger than your average person. So I'm real quick as you're saying this because I love it. It also made me think of the fact that the flavor text for one of our only really what we'll call large goblins goblin goon. So goblin goon was first printed in Oh, that set symbol is gonna just make me forget completely what it is.
00:07:02
Speaker
um, legions, the all creature set, uh, is a six six, but the flavor text on it is goblin sized body. Sorry. Giant sized body, goblin sized brain. And it's only a six six because it's a mutant. So I kind of liked that the flavor is still there. That there's something about that. That is like, you need to have even the brain if we want to take it that way. And I, I'm not going to jump to my answer real quick, but that would be something, right? Like,
00:07:29
Speaker
I would agree. Something like Goblin Goon is very much like the exception that proves the rule. Here you have a giant goblin, but the fact that it is a giant goblin requires a comment because it is so outside the normal what a goblin is supposed to be. So I'm very much like goblins need to be smaller, but the exceptions to that can never be the norm.
00:07:52
Speaker
That has to be, as is very much said on the creature-type office card, it has to be some kind of mutation, has to be some kind of large, completely out there aspect that goblins usually would never be able to engage in, never be able to achieve. This is one of the reasons why Grenzo, for me, I've never found him to be particularly compelling in terms of goblin design. I think his only saving grace is the fact that he is so hunched over.
00:08:20
Speaker
particularly in his Grenzo Dungeon Warden art, whereas if you look at the art, should he have a fully straight spine, he would be far taller than human doors. That puts me off. I think Grenzo is not a good design for a goblin. Goblins need to be little, and I think he's right on the edge for me of being, I would
00:08:44
Speaker
I would say a bad looking government. And I'm just thinking too. So this brings in kind of the melt those piece, Alex, because I think you'll appreciate that people don't know I'm talking about archetypes of magic players or whatever the word is that we use psychographics. We've talked a lot about them on the show on past episodes, but it's good. There's one of Melvin, which is more mechanical, and then for those lore story, and they're kind of the ones that are more on the are the more on the
00:09:07
Speaker
aesthetic sides more so than your plain style. We've done a lot on this, but we did not coin the hybrid term, Malthus, but we definitely embody it, I would say. And that's one of the things, the original design for Grenzo, the red-black Grenzo,
00:09:24
Speaker
not the one that goes, but the Dungeon Master is basically that he can scale to be much bigger, right? Like that's part of the mechanical piece is you can put counters on him and make him large so that he can release larger and larger things from the dungeon, aka the bottom of your library.
00:09:39
Speaker
But I agree with you, right? It's an awkward thing. On the last episode, I talked about my art of Calvin and Hobbes with Squee and Bolas. This nicely brings up the second piece of art, which is Grenzo and Bolas as Calvin and Hobbes again.
00:09:55
Speaker
with Grenzo basically like having the keys around his like ring letting Bolas out of wherever. Wait, we were assuming it's for the dungeon, but he is much smaller than Bolas purposely because it's a Calvin Hobbes type thing. So it's kind of funny because I agree with you completely. It's a very interesting to think about from that mechanical and art perspective with with Grenzo. I think your thing does very much need to hold true.
00:10:22
Speaker
And as I did all of that, Alex, I'll let you answer first, because I'm still... You're still thinking? This time I actually... You actually are? I'm not actually teasing you. I'm going to take what might be considered low hanging fruit for our podcast. So I'm going to kind of perfectly continuing off of Spice's response, something for me that works
00:10:43
Speaker
well for goblins that I think should be present for goblins, particularly mechanically, but it works in the story too, is numerous. And this applies to a flavor text that we actually has kind of become a little bit of a motto of our show. It's at the end of every episode. This we sort of found on accident, but it's the flavor text from goblins slide. And that is goblins, like snowflakes, are only dangerous in numbers.
00:11:08
Speaker
And that really fits the, and I also think it really fits the idea of community as well as a thing that Hobbs and I both talk about a lot, but when we started this show, neither of us were big goblins. Like, eh, nothing against goblins, but it wasn't like a main creature type that I would think about using in magic, but as we've done this show, it's become more and more a part of our identity. And to found things like the community of goblins is something that's really important and is really,
00:11:36
Speaker
engaging for the both of us. That's a big thing that's important to me. I love that community aspect to so many of these goblins.
Goblins & Community in Lore
00:11:45
Speaker
well, communities and the various planes. Isn't that, you know, what they look like is different in all these different places. And that's kind of a part of our logo, Steven Raffel Beta. A logo for us that has all different types of looking goblins, but in every one of those places, community is a big element of kind of how they comport themselves in their day-to-day lives.
00:12:08
Speaker
And I will say too, that was a, that was very intentional when we designed the, um, the logo, you know, I was working with Steve to do that. We went back and forth about how we wanted all these kind of the different variants of goblins represented on it. Um, because it did have like, no matter what, it still is a group, right? We didn't want just like a singular goblin just hanging out. Right. We were very intentional about what we wanted it to be. And.
00:12:31
Speaker
me giving you the chance to talk before me meant you did end up taking the one that was kind of slowly going through my mind. So that was awkward and amazing. So you know what, I'm gonna kind of piggyback off of what we've talked about on the show before is there does need to be, and I guess this is more of a general thing that I think goblins serve the world well as. So I'm cheating a little bit because I don't think we always have to have it, but I think when we do have it, it needs to be with goblins.
00:13:00
Speaker
which is a little bit more whimsy. We need to have that place where goblins can be comic relief and be whimsical. We've talked about better representation in terms of having intelligent goblins, having legendaries, having things like a dockside extortionist that have a job that are part of a crew. These things are very important and we still need that whimsy. We finally get Tago introduced to us in Commander Legends.
00:13:24
Speaker
who he only had in flavor text and one of the greatest pieces was like his original flavor text that I fixed sticks out to me is shock which is uh it was his greatest invention since the rock and then we get kind of you know Tago is seen as like this great inventor is what he's known as in the goblin world and it's like things like lightning and rocks but his card is literally making rocks and checking them
00:13:47
Speaker
Like his art has him holding a rock to the sky triumphant with lightning behind him. It's so powerful. Yeah. Yeah. So like we need that we need jokes about like eating weird bugs or things stuffing your cousin in a canyon and shooting them out as fodder. Like if there is going to be some of those elements. I love the idea of that that space. And this has happened more and it even allows it for like the unsets for goblins to really be the whimsy.
00:14:14
Speaker
And I think that that is needed in magic. And so once again, it doesn't have to be every goblin. And if it's going to be there, I love that space being occupied by goblins.
00:14:26
Speaker
Yeah. Well, even in things like I love, like I'm just looking through some goblin legends now and you have like muxus where if you just had general, oh, it's a goblin. It's one of our, you know, first printed goblin nobles, which is great. And it's this goblin with this crown and everything, but it's like, but then you dig into the story and the whimsy is that it's just a bunch of different, it's a bunch of different goblins who just every day randomly decide who gets to be king. And like, that just kind of fits that, that space.
00:14:54
Speaker
say too like this is where we flavor text is a great place for this we've done an article fully on just goblin flavor text it's it was easy episode to review because there's so many we should put that in the schedule to do again because it's been a while we'll probably find some more so did i at least hit on did i cheat enough to to like answer your question in a goblin-like way spice yeah i'd say so i would say that that's completely legitimate
00:15:21
Speaker
You're going to give me a point so I can be ahead of Gavin in like the trivia category when it comes to goblins. I love how like this is part two of the recording we've done and we're now introducing points. So sure, go on then. That in and of itself is very goblin to do. I mean, to be fair, I am fairly certain. I watched that and it was an amazing video. If you haven't watched it, I will link it. Goblin trivia with Gavin, Bear Hey, who has been on the show to talk about goblin design and magic.
00:15:50
Speaker
You are currently... No, no, Gavin's still ahead of you. Gavin is still ahead of you in terms of points. I think he ended that video with two and a half points. Yes, but I would like to contend. I actually answered at least one that he got wrong correctly when I went through it. I already had my answer out before him, and you can't prove that I didn't. And I got everyone that he got right, except the half point. I'm at least three.
00:16:17
Speaker
Sorry, I know this is derailing the sort of flow of the conversation, but what was the question that you got right? Oh God, I'd have to go back and watch the video. I don't have that memory.
00:16:29
Speaker
Depression and anxiety have stripped me of all detailed memory. I can remember that something happened and I did it. And there's times that this is completely off the rails right now. It's something I've been talking, I think, a little bit more about on the show. But I love photography because it helps me remember things. I love to do photography. I love photographing my kids, partly just because then I have a reference.
00:16:56
Speaker
And this is the second episode. We probably should have warned you the last episode. We don't have rails. They were never installed. Which is good, because then I can't pee on the third one. What? I mean, if you know anything about rails when we're talking about subway systems, there's always that you don't. Oh, yes. Oh, I see. Sorry. I was so completely and absolutely flabbergasted by that. From my perspective, an
00:17:23
Speaker
absolute left-hand turn into something that I was not expecting. Yeah, so now we're into the funner part. You know, last episode was pretty serious. This episode I'm hoping is going to be a little more, well, I mean, we hit on some good topics. I think we hit on some things that are.
00:17:38
Speaker
Perhaps on the scale of where we're at right now, it was pretty serious. It was more structured, less left hand turns. And if we have some turns, well, we have. So what our plan was follow up last episode with one of the main topics of goblins with just community. As we're coming off of kind of spice is great question. We want to talk about that community aspect, especially as Alex kind of brought it up with numbers and the other half is a mailbag. And I think I've shared some of the questions, but I also just have random stuff. It could, it could.
00:18:08
Speaker
It could easily be just turns every which way and I cannot predict that. Love you. Let's go. So let's talk community. And I guess one of the questions has me, I'm going to start with it and you're going to be able to completely derail everything I have planned if you don't agree. Um, because I think it is going to introduce us to kind of the, the, the topic that I wanted to bring up. Somebody asked you, and this was at Marcos to underscore backup, our goblins, the best race in all of magic.
00:18:39
Speaker
I would say, and I personally, I found that I've been really enjoying using the term tribe, partially because it links back to obviously, you know, it's tribal mechanics in magic, but I also feel that like species is too unwieldy and too scientific. Race, I think, for me, when we talk about the goblin race in of itself, just feels like a strange thing to say. I really like using tribe.
00:19:07
Speaker
Okay. And like, that's just a personal thing for me. Great. There's a controversy of using tribe in the US, in the US in particular. I'm also like First Nations and indigenous. Yes.
00:19:23
Speaker
Oh, I see. But this is where there's controversy, but also discussion, because we talked about some of the anti-Semitic tropes. And if we do still have that, we're trying to improve those, but maybe goblins fulfill that space. The idea of a tribe and tribal is very big within Judaism. And so there is also the idea that tribes do predate kind of First Nations and indigenous. And this is where on a larger scale, I mean, this is a whole episode topic right here on just like,
00:19:52
Speaker
what we look at versus race versus trouble using race versus tribal uses versus species like that that right there is so interesting oh well in that case i'm more i'm more than happy because the audience of this is and if it's uh i'll just say groups of character creature types and magic we can stick with creature types groups i like that oh i like creature types creature types is also very mechanically apt um i would say absolutely uh i would say that goblins for me possess
00:20:23
Speaker
the greatest degree of narrative, sorry, the greatest degree of narrative variance that I think magic has, that magic has full stop. I think that humans have diversity in what they can do only by virtue of the fact that humanity in and of itself in our real world is a very diverse thing. And as such, the diversity of exploration of sort of like, you know, human beings behaviors throughout world is kind of, it's to be expected.
00:20:53
Speaker
There's nothing novel and new about seeing humans being selfish and humans being altruistic and humans being members of authoritarian organized religions and humans being members of anarchistic hunter-gatherer society, stuff like that. There's nothing particularly new and novel about that. Goblins, on the other hand, and if we talk about other creature types of magic, there's not much in the way of
00:21:22
Speaker
trope exploration. You've got the elf supremacist of Lorwyn versus the stewards of nature that elves represent in Zendikar, but even then there's like elf supremacists sort of undertones to their narrative and certainly in Original Nyssa that was her whole deal.
00:21:42
Speaker
Yeah, we talked about that with like the rehabilitation and what they did to change that. Which I personally think is a good idea because the I think that it's just more interesting to have like, not every plane needs to explore that notion law and it does it more than when enough. But there's not much in the way of, like diversity of approaches in magics, zombies, magics, elves, magics, dragons, most of magics, like creature types don't really have
00:22:11
Speaker
much in the way of, I guess, some like ideological diversity, and much also less in the way of like physical diversity, like, you know, elves might have horns on one payment, not on the other, but they're all, you know, they're all tall, slender, they live in the woods, stuff like that. Goblins throughout all these different planes have such a massive physical diversity, you know, looking at the ackee of Kamigawa and comparing them to the red caps of L-Drain and then comparing them
00:22:39
Speaker
too. I mean, even just the Bob arts of law and in of themselves, each individual goblin has a completely different design, all of them having completely different ideological reasons for most of the best design goblins of each time, I should say, having different ideological reasons for why they're getting up to the shenanigans that they do, even the character of the shenanigans. Some of them are helpful little scrappy people who just want to destroy machines and feed them into the furnace God.
00:23:08
Speaker
Others are murderous, like war leaders who just want to pillage and burn. Others are, in the case of Norway, sort of, you know, communally focused, people who just want to share with their brethren and their warrens and stuff like that.
00:23:24
Speaker
We even have a, we have like Bogart, the Bogart ante that takes on like little kittens. So yeah, there's very much like an adoption of community in there. And scientists of, uh, of modern Kamagawa and Ravnica as well.
00:23:39
Speaker
Yes. Oh, absolutely. The Tinkers. I was just thinking, they're one of the only magic creature types, too, that is in all five colors, outside of some of the things like dragons, which are kind of just a cool race. So for marketing reasons as well, you have a dragons in every color, but elves aren't in every color that I can think of. The other big one would be slivers. Slivers is like the other big one. And that's part of their design is literally diversity.
00:24:09
Speaker
I think, I think just on the topic of elves, I think probably, I can think of, yeah, I think there'll be, there's Selesny elves, there's Grohl elves, but there's also elves in Golgari, and there's elves in the Simit. But they are- That's true, that's true. For like, but on that topic, they are, those are all pretty much exclusively centered around Ravnica. Yeah. Like most of the representation of elves in like, in terms of diversity and magic comes from Ravnica, and even then,
00:24:39
Speaker
They're all stewards of nature, just in one, like different ideological outlooks of life. Nature is our parks. Actually, nature is the wild. Actually, nature is my natural laboratory. Actually, nature is the sewers. So like even then, like they're all sort of linked in that, whereas, you know, the ackee of Kamigawa, oh, we live in the mountains and we cause problems and we, I can't actually remember, like the, you know, we worship the patron of the ackee.
00:25:08
Speaker
And then you compare that to, I don't know, the, even like, you know, the, is it goblins? Like, oh, we're here to experiment and to blow stuff up. The goblins in the Boris Legion. Oh, we are fiercely loyal to our, our adopted home, the goblins of Grol. We are going to burn everything to the ground for the sake of burning everything to the ground. You know, there is even their massive ideological differences. Yeah. I mean, and then within lore, yeah. And it's, yep.
00:25:36
Speaker
because you have a couple of representations there that are different than other planes. Yeah.
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah. So good. I am very glad that you answered that way. Because that see, I told you, you could have just been like, no, it would have been very awkward. Very awkward episode. We're gone. Great. Yeah, like, okay, I told you all part two. Well, every question I have left is a now irrelevant. So, um, what I heard in there too, because it was the follow up and where I thought it would lead into is kind of the communal nature. I think you are a, a well known
00:26:09
Speaker
We'll say socialist figure. We can go communist, baby. We can absolutely say that. Great. I just want to talk ideologies because I want to talk kind of some of your work that I have seen in your discussions when it comes to communal nature. And the goblins is a piece of that.
00:26:28
Speaker
that I think we do have the analog for. We brought it up a little bit in the last episode, kind of with our idea of Cranko leading the uprise of the people, the guild-less. You and I played, I remember this a long time ago, on Chase's stream.
00:26:43
Speaker
So as manicurbs so they they are uh, they are the other host of the goblin lore who hasn't been on a while But we played and I was making just solemn simulacrums this actually came up on stream this past weekend because I started to do it again and we joked about like I want to win that that game through mechanized production because I want eight solemn simulacrums seizing the means of production and just taking over and
00:27:05
Speaker
And, you know, just like we had such a great discussion on that cast. It became such a like hilarious piece. And it just really made me like realize with goblins and that tie in. That's what I want to talk about today. That, you know, this communal nature and this with your political ideology and those pieces, you know, is that part of the love of goblins or am I just tying together threads that aren't there?
Goblins & Societal Ideals
00:27:29
Speaker
No, I think you're absolutely correct. I think that
00:27:31
Speaker
I mean, I love goblins for a whole host of reasons. I love, you know, I love my, and when I use this term, I am using, I love my funny little guys, but I use that very much in a gender neutral capacity. When I say funny little guys, simply because I adore the goofiness, I adore my wee little, and I will do a very light sweat, my wee little bastards and stuff like that, and my precious and perfect babies as well. I maintain that all goblins can in some way be spotted into one of those three umbrella terms.
00:28:01
Speaker
But additionally, I think that, yes, I feel that there is a sense of a lot of the goblins in magic, certainly the ones that I find the most interesting and the ones I love the most, which are the lawwin goblins. For the record, I think that my favorite goblins are the ones in lawwin, not by a huge amount. I think that I do also have a massive amount of love for other goblins and other planes, but I feel that the goblins represent a society more so
00:28:31
Speaker
in those planes that has much less of a focus on being better, much less of a focus on competing in a hostile capacity between each other and with the rest of the world, and more so simply enriching themselves. Now, even goblins like on Ravnica, even goblins there,
00:28:57
Speaker
who steal, who nick things from people. They're doing that less in the capacity of understanding what theft truly means within the mode of production or within the societal structure of the world they live in. And more so, this person has something that me and my Warren need. And so I will take that. And that's a very simple thought process for a goblin. Now, obviously, you've got smarter goblins like Cranko who understand
00:29:26
Speaker
what avarice even is, why people are hoarding treasures, hoarding gems, hoarding money, stuff like that. But I think there's an innocence to a lot of the goblins' community, where even when they're doing bad things, it's in aid of some greater cause of building themselves up and giving back to each other, even when goblins end up
00:29:53
Speaker
shoot each other out of cannons, it is for some kind of greater good. And a lot of the times the goblins are the bust of some cosmic slapstick routine. Even then you have goblins like Squeak who come back with a smile on their face. They don't mind the idea of them being sacrificed by their brethren for the greater good. They're just quite happy to be useful. And I think that's
00:30:21
Speaker
really quite delightful in a fantasy group of creatures for sure. And I know that for me, that kind of brings up, as you said, the Warrens, there's this idea of
00:30:35
Speaker
whatever kind of that family looks like. It can be found family and that's fine, but it is a kind of dedication to that. And as you said, kind of like where we see them is we see goblins in groups and they tend to be clans. They tend to have like a structure, even if it's a chaotic structure, there is still this idea of making sure that everybody within that has what they need.
00:31:00
Speaker
Alex, you brought up Zada a little bit, which I think brings up an interesting story beat for how even attack of your own group is necessary when you believe that it's not for the betterment of the whole war end.
00:31:16
Speaker
Yeah, and that's, that's a, that's a thing. Zata is one of those goblins who we have a little bit of story and we've actually did a profile back and it's a goblin that's special to me, both in and out of the story because I have a Zata deck, that's one of my goblin commander decks. But Zata story, you know, taking place on
00:31:36
Speaker
of Benk and Zendikar during the Eldrazi Rising. So it was part of the Tuktuk tribe. And Tuktuk was a goblin in the original Ravnica who stumbles into some old Zendikar ruins. And stumbles into some old ruins and ends up in the card, turns into a
00:32:00
Speaker
you know turns into a goblin statue and so it's like in this in the story of the world like so then he comes back as this you know
00:32:11
Speaker
animate rock tuk tuk thing. And so the goblins are following him, but while all these Eldrazi are going on, then Zada says, we can't be following this leader who has been touched and changed by this very force that's tearing our planet apart. And there's this storyline about Zada.
00:32:31
Speaker
literally taking you like literally tearing him down and, and smashing up the heat. Well, part of Zada's flavor texting talks about smashing up the hedrons to get at that old magic and have this powerful magic. And so that's the story of the community for the good of the community taking out this, this person who's been compromised by this big force that's consuming everything. Hmm, absolutely. I feel that I feel there is a sense of, you know, we have to
00:33:00
Speaker
We have to look out for not only like ourselves in terms of making sure that we're going to be okay individually, but also we have to look out for each other within that. I think that just generally, I think it's not that other creature types of magic don't have that. Obviously, elves look out for elves, elves keep elves okay. But I think with forgotten specifically, it comes from a place of sort of like
00:33:26
Speaker
bumbling innocence, whereas elves do it in a solemn manner. And zombies do it because they don't even know that they're doing it. They're just forming under phalanxes, a sort of like one big hive mind, or what have you. Slivers are doing it just because that's the way that they work. They're sort of like buying mechanical machines or this. But goblins just do it sort of like, I don't know, Mr. Magooing their way into solidarity, which I find endlessly endearing. And that's my favorite part about goblins, for sure.
00:33:56
Speaker
And one of the reasons why I love that too, when you talk about my goblins is traditionally in fantasy stories, that's not goblins. And in magic, they're still center red, and especially how magic started, where black and red are the evil colors. Black is evil, red is chaos, those are bad.
00:34:16
Speaker
they've become this thing where, as you say, they kind of have bumbled their way into this community where it's like, they're still mono-red or like center red for goblins. And in many of these places, they're red splash something else, or they might just be mono-red. But it's like, even within this environment of them being mono-red, they still have built this community around themselves. And it's sort of that expansion of story to say, just because you are
00:34:42
Speaker
you know, read and are not necessarily about having written down orders and laws and strictures to follow, you can still have a community that cares about each other and acts in a way. I think that, yeah, if there's one piece of advice, if anyone's a burgeoning writer listening to this, if there's one piece of advice I'd like to give when it comes to constructing a fantasy world, easiest way to like make an interesting character, take a fantasy creature type
00:35:10
Speaker
that is traditionally associated with nothing but evil and just make them lovely. It's easy to sell. Easiest sell of any kind of fancy literature you wanna write and do the exact, like take something that's supposed to be like full of joy and love and just make them the most evil, monstrous creature you possibly can. So easy to do. And it forces you to think about, okay, but what does, what does like love and pleasantry and kindness look like?
00:35:38
Speaker
from the perspective of a goblin, or it looks like stealing a pie from the windows of a kithkin to give to your raid mother because, look, look, I found something interesting, as opposed to stealing a pie maliciously because theft is evil, you know, that kind of stuff.
00:35:54
Speaker
Yeah. And I love that approach too, where to make them, you know, to have this positive aspect, you don't just make them good the same way that you would have, you know, your, your paladins or whatever in a model white or in green. And you're not making them good. Like your Bant nights would be good. You're making them good within their own context of their communities within their red or whatever lens they're from.
00:36:21
Speaker
Where I think this is interesting is we've had this discussion before when we've talked about goblins in all colors is Trying to figure out what certain mono color goblins would look like then right and you just mentioned like the the mono like a white goblin But we took a mono white goblin It's it could very much be that idea of good just not good from the same way that a paladin it would be
00:36:42
Speaker
not that they can't be in those places, but that you're kind of expanding that idea of it's not just you have to be positive in this one way, you can build community in many different ways, and have these positive things in many different ways. Yes, I wholeheartedly agree.
00:36:59
Speaker
One of the things we had brought up in the, in the, in our discord is when do we get a Boros or Amano white goblin legend? And I mean, I think that Boros element as we've seen, there was like, we have the, the, the cool in Ravnica that like going up through the ranks goblin. Oh, yes. Yeah. So like if they became a legend, what would that look like? Cause we have not seen something like a red white legendary. I would love to see.
00:37:26
Speaker
Um, and this, you know, maybe this is wishful thinking, but on our inevitable return to new Phyrexia, I would love to see a goblin that has been mentored by whatever the name of the leader of the mirror and resistance that I cannot remember the life of me, the name of, um,
00:37:45
Speaker
uh, boring Dell, God, I can't remember. It's a red, white, legendary metal craft. Everything gets, uh, Jorkadeen Jorkadeen. Thank you so much. I would love to see a goblin having been mentored by Jorkadeen and like not obviously not linked back to slow bad, but just as, because obviously the goblins of what, what, what has been mirrored in, um, were goblins that, um, uh, were goblins that had a propensity to be more than, you know,
00:38:13
Speaker
creatures that just threw things in a big hole and set it on fire. I would love to see that. And I know that could be a very interesting place to explore what a red white goblin would mean, especially within the context of sort of like a mirror, a piece of mirror and resistance. And actually, I have fanfic or I have headcanon that we're not to yet. The Urobrask is actually a predator that is kind of
00:38:37
Speaker
would also be aligned with the goblins in a mission like that. That there was actually a rule. Yeah. So this does bring up kind of an interesting thing as we're talking about the community. Somebody brought up the fact that, you know, this is Ryan Sullivan, who was in our Discord too.
Society Without Violence & Goblin Planeswalkers
00:38:51
Speaker
He's great. He's a teacher. He's a fantastic person. And he brought up this idea that
00:38:56
Speaker
Can goblins create though a functioning society that's free against violence against themselves kind of leadership that's free of abuse and he talks about that thing that we've brought up before about many of the popular characters and we're thinking slow bad and
00:39:10
Speaker
… and Kiki in particular that have been removed from their clan or their family for not fitting the kind of the stereotype, which is very much against – we've struggled with this. What we had on Skyler to talk about Kiki being pushed out of the family, right? Like the family still is represented as the Aki.
00:39:27
Speaker
the communal and then they kick out the one character that we really get to see. We think of Goblin King, the flavor text is basically who that goblin killed to kill to kill. I mean, it was like the opposite of the Bible like who baguette who it was who killed. So it's like great flavor text, but it does bring up this question of, you know, where do they stand with this when the chaos does come into it with being communal? I would say that it's
00:39:52
Speaker
It completely depends on some, I mean, this is gonna get into potential deep philosophy that's far beyond the pale of what we were intending. But the question- We weren't intending anything other than like hand over the mic to you, which is what we do for our guests. So like, yeah, you take us in a direction, we'll try to bring it back to something. The issue being when we ask, for example, how a fantasy society operates can, for example, the question of can
00:40:19
Speaker
Goblins operate without a leadership that abuses the people within that society. We have to ask the question, what does abuse look like in that society? We know what abuse looks like in ours, and we can see that happening in that society. However, in that society, abuse or violence or what have you may look completely different. Like the idea, for example, going back to Lauren, like goblins literally
00:40:47
Speaker
set far to each other and throw each other at giants for fun, to experience it, you know, sensation gorgeous stuffs like frogs in its ears and a skunk on its nose and all manner of stuff like that. But abuse within that society doesn't look like that. Abuse in society looks like the art of Hoarder's Greed, which showcases a goblin having found something that it doesn't want to give to the rest of the clan.
00:41:16
Speaker
and then the kind of outset because that's an abuse, that's an abuse of the rules of that society. So we can very much look at a goblin, every goblin society, and across pretty much the entire multiverse and go, yeah, this looks a little bit chaotic and a little bit like an extended punch up in a car park, as opposed to a functioning mode of government. However, if we're going to be considering stuff from the perspective of a fantasy group of creatures,
00:41:45
Speaker
we have to completely throw away our understanding of philosophy and look at it through their lens, you know? Yeah. So I think that is completely the way that we would need to go about this. Obviously that, you know, it is literally impossible to then go, I wonder what the actual like ideological line is with, I don't know, the goblins of Babylovia. Are they actually cool with being like,
00:42:13
Speaker
hammered into machines and thrown out of canon. Some of them look like they're having a good time, some of them don't. It's impossible to actually work that out, but I think the joy of fantasy is exploring those ideas in a way that obviously people don't actually get hurt. And exploring these fancy settings and exploring these fancy characters and being like, what does violence as a concept look like a goblin? How does that differ to our understanding of it?
00:42:41
Speaker
Because, you know, even in modern day human society, our understanding of so many different things, you know, our, you know, if we're looking at like, thinking about like Antonio Gramsci's idea of cultural hegemony, what we understand as common sense is only common sense because of the structure that we live in. And people who live in very different structures understand a very different form of common sense, be it, you know, the violence, diet, like,
00:43:09
Speaker
rules for friendship even. What does a friendship look like across different societies? Stuff like that. And fantasy allows us to explore those ideas in usually a much more characterised capacity. Like what if a society is fine with like throwing each other onto a big old chainsaw because that's kind of what they do. Like, you know, it's interesting, but I think that viewing a goblin society from the perspective of human rules is foolish.
00:43:35
Speaker
and fantasy chauvinism. It's kind of funny to me to be thinking about this idea that this is where storytelling has been difficult for goblins. And there's there was a question in our discord about goblins as basically an avenue or sorry, why don't we have more goblin planes walkers? And
00:43:58
Speaker
you know, this is a good question. And I think it's a question that we're seeing with our legends that we've talked about before is that's the only reason we know that right. We had a suggestion for a five color squee that doesn't die for having zero loyalty. So I love everything about it. I could completely take it like he went from red to all five colors just because for sparking but I mean, the fact is we have to ready right and
00:44:27
Speaker
it could be this thing that we are talking about with how they function, that it's very hard maybe for storytelling. And this is something that I am thinking about where we've more and more this year talked about like, it's almost like they need to be separated from their group to either do a found family. That's a very interesting point because Doretti is by far the most quote unquote reasonable goblin that exists in magic. Yeah. You know, Doretti is for all intents and purposes has very human emotions, you know,
00:44:57
Speaker
worked for the, you know, worked as a student, had his work stolen from him by his professor, then confronted that professor about it, you know, spark is ignited and all that stuff. We don't know much about Doretti, but certainly if like, certainly Doretti is the most quote unquote human acting goblin, even you know, Grenzo is very unquote human, but pretty much only exists
00:45:23
Speaker
especially into like, later, the sort of conspiracy tape crown only exists as a foil against Doretti, the slightly more sort of actual goblin acting goblin, and then one of the rest of the goblins of the plane. I mean, they both also look very differently. They stand head and shoulders for one reason or another above the like their compatriot goblins. So I think that is very interesting how the goblins that get the most screen time are the ones that
00:45:50
Speaker
are presented in ways that humans can understand better and that we can understand better through our real lens about society and a sort of faux pas. That's a very interesting point. 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.
00:46:17
Speaker
Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to goblinlordpod on Twitter or email us at goblinlordpodcast at gmail.com. If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood gobslugs to our link tree on our Twitter account and listed in our show notes, this has everything from our discounts for the grinding coffee company to our Patreon.
00:46:41
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 Vorthos 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.