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Episode 39: Sparks of Joy
94 Plays5 years ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to the Goblin Lore Podcast!
In our thirty-ninth episode, the goblin crew is back together to talk about the magical, mystical Planeswalker spark and what potential it holds both for Magic: the Gathering lore and our own lives. We discuss Space Jam, Malcolm Gladwell, defenestration, road rage, and one Mr. N. "Nicky B" Bolas's machinations, as we give an overview of the evolution of the spark from its humble beginnings to today.
For some of the background research behind this episode, check out Joe's article on Hipsters of the Coast.
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Remember: we've reached 400 followers on Twitter and will announce the lucky winner soon! Keep the word of mouth going; at 500 followers, we will do a random prize draw for two lucky followers!
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You can find the hosts on Twitter: Joe Redemann at @Fyndhorn, Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at @AlexanderNewm. Send questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to @GoblinLorePod on Twitter or GoblinLorePodcast@gmail.com.
Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art 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 to Goblin War
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another episode of Goblin War.
Metaphysics of Sparks & Magic Lore
00:00:17
Speaker
In this episode, the entire cast is back together and we're talking about the metaphysics of a spark. Specifically, the things that we've seen change in the history of sparks over the course of magic lore.
Pop Culture & Creativity
00:00:31
Speaker
We get into discussions about space jam, about creativity, about Malcolm Gladwell, and even how the planeswalkers are the 1% billionaires of our own multiverse.
00:00:44
Speaker
Specifically, we want you to know that everyone has the potential to spark and be a planeswalker of their own lives.
Show Sponsorship & Social Media
00:00:54
Speaker
Just a reminder that this show is presented by Hipsters of the Coast. You can find them at hipstersofthecoast.com or at hipstersmtg on Twitter. Thanks so much for their support. Now, without any further ado, let's get to the show.
Marie Kondo & Sparking Joy
00:01:20
Speaker
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of Goblin Lore. Today, like Marie Kondo, we will be helping you find what sparks joy. Wait, sorry. I mean, we are going to be talking about what sparks actually are. We're going to be talking about planeswalker sparks. Is this still episode about Marie Kondo? Yeah, I was going to ask the same thing.
Joyful vs Traumatic Sparking Events
00:01:43
Speaker
Are we going to talk about Marie Kondo at all? I mean, we can.
00:01:49
Speaker
It'll come up naturally because I do think there is room for discussion about sparks and joy, even though that is not how we have seen them act in most of Magic History. I mean, I am only familiar with her through memetic means. So this episode is Sparky Me Joy. All right.
00:02:12
Speaker
Which actually does bring us kind of to our intro question.
How Do Sparks Ignite in Everyday Life?
00:02:16
Speaker
This is Hobbs Q. I can be found on Twitter at Hobbs Q. And I'm going to give this to my co-host before I answer. But this is a question that I brought up a couple of times on different days, many different years, because I really like this idea of if you were a planeswalker, how would you spark? I think the initial discussion of this came from this idea that like all the planeswalkers sparking stories or these
00:02:41
Speaker
very elaborate things and I wanted it to be like I sparked because you know the guy cut me off and lying at the Starbucks just something very mundane so it did get me always thinking if you were a planeswalker how would you spark or what caused you to spark so I'm gonna throw that over to my co-host
00:03:00
Speaker
I'm Joe Redemann, you can find me on Twitter at FinDhorn, that's F-Y-N-D Horn. If I was a planeswalker, I would spark by just laughing so hard that, like, you know you get to that point that you're laughing, you've been laughing so hard and long that you're out of breath.
00:03:19
Speaker
and your face is red and you're like crying you're like cry laughing and then you're laughing that you're also cry you're laughing at the fact that you're crying and like people are laughing around you also like usually it's like that feedback loop it would be that where just like it would go beyond the like I'm out of breath I can't breathe and then all of a sudden just poof like you had to spark because you were actually going to laugh yourself to death
00:03:48
Speaker
Well, no, but like, I like the joyful part of it, the laughing part of it. Now you had to take my figured of, my metaphor here and make it very literal. I had a very nice happy thing going. I love this idea of sparking by joy and I want to come back to that. So thanks for starting us off just all warm and fuzzy, Joe. Anytime.
Literary Analogies to Sparks
00:04:17
Speaker
I'm
00:04:18
Speaker
Alex Newman on Twitter at Alexander Newham. And I want a different direction with this as I often do I kind of went to literary means to books and novels I tend to read a lot. And this this makes me think of a character from one of David Eddings series. It's a series where
00:04:39
Speaker
in this world, there are sorcerers and sorceresses, and their power is very similar to old school planeswalkers. And there's some differences and things, but that's not the point of this episode. But there's this character who was a sorcerer and didn't know it. Like most people, their abilities spark in a dramatic thing. Again, similar to most planeswalkers in Magic Story. But there's this one character who was a scholar who
00:05:09
Speaker
didn't realize that he had been alive for like a couple hundred years. Um, because he was a sorcerer at some point along the way in his study, it must've happened. And he didn't quite realize it until his colleagues were also academics trying to figure out why he was still alive. So they did an experiment and they hired a well-known defenestrator. Um, Alex, what's a defenestrator?
00:05:39
Speaker
The term to defenestrate is to push someone out a window. Yes, his colleagues hired a defenestrator to attempt to push him out of a very high window to just see what would happen because apparently they're academics and this is an experiment that made sense to them. And that defenestrator then found himself outside
00:05:59
Speaker
Because that's kind of when the guys powers manifested themselves as opposed to just keeping him alive So I think if I were a planeswalker my spark would probably ignite in some seeming, you know similarly mundane thing either in research or I'm like working excel and I just figured out how to make this macro work and then all of a sudden on lore went like what the hell is this and
00:06:24
Speaker
Well, actually, if I spark working on spreadsheets, I will probably go to some Excel based plane. You could be in charge of the Azorius. Yeah, that's true. Maybe I show up just in an Azorius board meeting. Yeah. Yeah. And like your appearance is enough that you like you appear with your kind of your spreadsheet in front of you.
00:06:48
Speaker
Yeah. And you just basically become their new guild leader. Oh, wow. Can you imagine trying to decipher like macros and pivot tables, but all in Azorius law runes? Oh, wow. Well, I am Hobbs Q and I really, you know, I think that how I would spark is I think, you know, going to my example, like, I feel like I'm the type of person that would spark for overreaction to something that's very minor. Um,
00:07:16
Speaker
It would be like somebody spoiling Game of Thrones for me when I'm a season and a half behind and really don't know if I'm going to finish and like when I'm going to catch up. So I don't really have a plan, but then I'm going to get something spoiled and then just like randomly get pissed for no reason and spark.
00:07:31
Speaker
Well, and then you won't even be able to catch up because I'm pretty sure most planes in the multiverse don't have cable TV. I mean, to be fair, if I show up on Ravnica, it could easily just be like an episode of Game of Thrones. The scary thing would be if you spark and showed up on Westeros. Oh, next level. To be fair, though, depending on when the spoiler came, that might be very advantageous. That's fair.
00:07:57
Speaker
We're waiting for the crossover, HBO and Wizards, you cowards. So now that we've talked about how we would spark, let's talk about what sparking is, what a spark is, kind of the metaphysics behind a spark.
Planeswalker Sparks Explained
00:08:13
Speaker
What is it? How does it happen? What does it mean for the game of magic?
00:08:18
Speaker
yeah um so we specifically want to mention also that we are going to be talking around planeswalkers obviously the spark is a central part of what makes a planeswalker but we're not really going to be talking about
00:08:34
Speaker
planeswalkers themselves we we want to specifically focus on the spark and what it does and so i'm sure we'll get into planeswalkers as a as an idea later on in some other episode but right now we're focusing on this concept especially because you know in magic story right now we are in the middle of war the spark and so a lot of things have sort of changed as a result as a result of this a lot of things in lore have been
00:09:03
Speaker
changed or clarified in in relation to the spark so uh let's let's just start with that spark dough uh the the first thing that you might be asking is is how likely is it that i am a latent planeswalker and uh
00:09:21
Speaker
Essentially, this is a question that was answered by Doug Byer in his Savor the Flavor column back in 2009, so a good decade ago. The closest thing we have to canon on this right now is that it is a one in a million.
00:09:39
Speaker
that you have a latent spark inside you. So for reference, Earth has about, what, seven billion people now? Is that about right? Yeah, they're about to take. About 7,000 of us have a latent planeswalker spark. Now you might be saying, hey, that's a lot of people. That is a lot of potential planeswalkers. Holy crap. We are going to have a lot of planeswalkers soon. Like, this is great.
00:10:08
Speaker
but that's not or bad or terrible depending on how you see you know yeah these things yeah war the sparks not going so well um but uh the next question then is okay well no you know how many people have that spark ignite and that's that's the thing is is it's a rare occurrence that this latent potential this latent magical potential
00:10:31
Speaker
blooms and blossoms and erupts so it's much much much fewer I believe it I don't believe that Doug gives any sort of odds on this but it's it's more of probably like one in a million on that too so somebody else can do the odds here I guess it would be like what one in a trillion that you have a latent spark and will spark
00:11:00
Speaker
So it's a very rare thing to actually have this quality in the multiverse. So that kind of gives us the parameters of what this all looks like. But now let's talk about the Spark itself. So the Planeswalker Spark is this magical power and potential that is sort of imprinted on a living being's soul, for lack of a better term.
00:11:28
Speaker
I don't remember if this was a no this was not a Doug Beyer this was Kelly Diggs and Ethan Fleischer who talked about it's it's essentially a little bit of ether the material that's in the blind eternities and specifically might be a part of the blind eternities that's imprinted on a being soul as it is
00:11:50
Speaker
becomes embodied. What they said in these internal documents for Wizards is that this is this magical imprint on somebody's soul, on your essence of being. It's sort of a birthmark. And so the theory that they had at least, and this isn't obviously there's never been
00:12:11
Speaker
sort of canonized in any public literature or on cards or anything but you know the internal documents said that this is like the life force of all beings is tied to ether and we're starting to see a little bit of that start to pan out with the Kaladesh I think but
00:12:33
Speaker
With the planes walker spark even the latent ones It's it's almost like there's an additional couple of strands tying you to the blind Eternities and that's what gives a planes walker the ability to move through that without being harmed And another aspect of that if you don't mind me jumping into that I think is interesting but might maybe we go into in more detail later that spark and this is according to a blog post by Doug buyer and
00:13:00
Speaker
I was kind of confirmed in this blog post, but having a spark is what allows Planeswalkers to draw mana from multiple planes. A lot of the more recent stories don't focus on the mechanics of mana as much as they did in earlier ones, where the Wizards, whomever, whatever character was casting a spell, was literally tapping energy from a land that they knew of a place they had been.
00:13:31
Speaker
And planeswalkers apparently the spark allows them to do this not just from lands of their own plane or the plane that they're currently in, but also other planes. And especially when we get into kind of the differences between the old walkers and the new walkers, this is one of the few things that sets new walkers apart.
00:13:52
Speaker
on an individual basis from just normal people on a plane. They have this higher potential for power. It's not necessarily that they automatically are more powerful.
00:14:02
Speaker
Yeah, and that's maybe a good way to put it. It's a higher potential for power. It's like having a larger jar to fill, essentially, you know? And yeah, it's, whereas we saw in stories like the Weatherlight Saga, Gerard could cast a spell using mana from Banalia, even if he was on Phyrexia, you know, now that's a power that only planeswalkers have.
00:14:30
Speaker
And we could get into all the theories about like maybe, you know, the mending fix that. And so now, since there are fewer fractures in the fabric of the multiverse, you have to be a more powerful being to, you know, find those channels. You need that connection to the multiverse to allow you to tap energy from elsewhere.
Post-Mending Planeswalker Changes
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, part of this is due to the fact that there's kind of been revisions within the history of magic.
00:14:57
Speaker
There was this idea of planeswalkers and sparks, even from, I mean, some of the early novels in Arena, the very first one, was just kind of this idea that you could, incredible amounts of mana being hoarded, which is interesting when we get to now bolus hoarding or bolus collecting sparks. But it was this idea that it was mainly mana that was being hoarded. And we've kind of moved kind of through that. Now, one thing I will say is that we know now is sparks occur randomly.
00:15:27
Speaker
Mm-hmm. They cannot be created artificially at least where we are currently and what we know They can be transferred Yeah, they could be stored which is just a really interesting weird idea which is kind of So it deals with certain characters that's mainly been to give characters these godlike powers who weren't planeswalkers and old stories but we have had them being contained in some way and
00:15:57
Speaker
yeah so specifically examples of the transfer that's that's been a little more recent that we've seen transfers happen as as things in stories so like Glyssa's spark when she died the first time transferred to slow bad um
00:16:16
Speaker
originally Memnarch on Mirrodin tried to get it transferred to him, but then they both died in this explosion and it transferred to Slobad because he was the nearest living thing. We had Vencer who transferred his spark to Karn also on Mirrodin. Mirrodin is a lot of spark transfer things happening. Interesting. Yeah, maybe there is something going on.
00:16:44
Speaker
To be fair, this isn't the first time Karnas had one transferred to him. This is true. He's not the best at keeping them. No, he really needs to take better care of these things considering how rare they are. Yeah. And then there was obviously the earliest one I think that we know of was Galatian, who was the latent planeswalker of the Thrawn.
00:17:07
Speaker
His spark got transferred into the miked stone and weak stone, the artifacts that then became a part of Urza when he sparked. And so there's a theory that it wasn't actually Urza who had a latent planeswalker spark. Maybe that was just Glatian's spark. Maybe he also had a spark and the two combined were unsure. But then eventually, once Urza died in the end of Apocalypse, his spark or both of those sparks transferred to Karn. So...
00:17:35
Speaker
Transfers happened a decent amount. There has been the containment. Ravidel did that to Altair of Kaloni. Yawgmoth did that to Glatian, again transferring the sparks out of him into the Mightstone and Weakstone.
00:17:50
Speaker
Um, so there's, there's a lot of weird things that go on. It's, it's this part of you. And I, and I think again, like you said, Hobbs, it's, it's gone from being this sort of innate mana power where like depending on how much
00:18:06
Speaker
how large of a spell you cast you could walk from one plane to another to now it's much more of a of a specific soul imprint thing I think as we go forward in magic history it's gotten more defined but some of those definitions kind of do contradict previous stuff we have learned and I don't think that detracts from it in story though you know it's it's sort of this thing of planeswalkers are almost like
00:18:37
Speaker
Unfathomable beings we're learning more about them as we come in contact with more of them sort of And I think it the spark is kind of an unfathomable thing that affects the beings I mean the beings I think in the the old walkers if we want to talk about that a little bit because if they're sparks were different they were more unfathomable and I think
00:19:01
Speaker
It's part of how Wizards has been doing their storytelling, and I think it's been a very good change that the individuals who are planeswalkers are much more, I guess, fathomable. They're much more, I don't want to say human, because many of them aren't humans, but they're much more... They're vulnerable. They can be hurt. They can die. I mean, they can... Yeah. Yes, and that's all true. What I was trying to get is that they're people.
00:19:29
Speaker
that that is there being there they're not characters that we can really do exactly they they are not gods they're not unfathomable forces which is what many of the old walkers were even the ones who were people like had a tendency towards acting more
00:19:51
Speaker
Deific and being more on the the god end of the spectrum just because of the power level they had It was harder for them to relate to individuals and events in a human in a human level way Yeah, I think that's a really good point that it that
00:20:09
Speaker
Potential for power is in any planeswalker spark or that's a part of any planeswalker sparking but it is The the ones who fulfilled a lot of that potential sort of it kind of distance them from their humanity or their their hump their humility in a way and
00:20:32
Speaker
It's almost the like the wealth of magical capability, you know that made they became the magical 1%
00:20:41
Speaker
well and so the planes walker spark in and of itself did change during the mending the event that happened during the time spiral block where those old walkers who did have god-like powers that could you know literally create worlds that was the reserve of power that the spark allowed for them back in the day we now have planes walkers who are
00:21:06
Speaker
able to
00:21:25
Speaker
the Spark and Planeswalkers were set up before that they Spark and they are immediately imbued with this great well of power. And now they kind of have to go out and build that power themselves. And the Sparks were used to seal these rifts. And if you listen to enough, you know, Vorthos story cast, you're going to hear the mending mentioned a lot.
00:21:55
Speaker
The mending was an event, happened during the Time Spiral Block, a little over a decade ago at this point in the real world, and something like 50 years in game? I knew it was a while, but it wasn't one of those in ancient millennia sort of things. But anyway, basically the plane of Dominaria had had so many Apokolai that it was starting to fracture. And Dominaria being like a center pillar of the multiverse, the multiverse was also beginning to just like start to crumble.
00:22:25
Speaker
And so in that trilogy, the three sets, the three novels relating to those three sets of the time spiral block, a group of mostly planeswalkers, but a handful of other people on Dominaria, basically went around trying to heal these rifts. And for the most part, they were healed by a planeswalker, usually who had some tie to what caused this apocalypse rift.
00:22:52
Speaker
giving up their spark to help to heal the multiverse. And I believe, Joe, if you have you read these recently? Yes, I have. Yep. Okay, so then you could talk a little more that you mentioned earlier, but the about how the sparks change because there was talk, I think, in the future site, but it's been it's been years since I read them.
00:23:10
Speaker
About the multiverse sort of shifting now that this whole disaster was averted. It's like yeah, not doing that again And so now planes work or sparks work differently so that they don't destabilize everything like they almost did yeah No, and it's that's exactly it is there is There's just much less
00:23:31
Speaker
magical impact on the fabric of reality by Planeswalker actions now. A big thing that has been theorized behind the scenes about what happened with the mending is that essentially any spell that is cast
00:23:50
Speaker
has an effect on the plane that you're on, the blind eternities, the ether, your own life force, all this sort of stuff. But depending on the magnitude of that spell, and maybe the destructive power and all this sort of stuff, depending on how big essentially the spell is, that sort of shapes the impact that happens. It kind of makes sense, right? I mean, it's the mass equals force,
00:24:18
Speaker
Force equals mass times acceleration, that sort of thing. Where yes, this thing, the ball hits the wall, the wall reacts to the ball hitting the wall. There's all sorts of, it makes sense when you think about it. It's the ripples going out on the water. I mean, it's the action and reaction. There isn't things just happening without consequences.
Cosmic Role of Sparks
00:24:40
Speaker
absolutely and and so now though because the sparks have much less scooping power essentially if we want to we want to think of it as like a jar they're they're much smaller jars that a spark
00:24:56
Speaker
that a spark gives somebody, there's much less of the water around that can be disturbed or disrupted by any single jar or any single scoop from any single jar. I think it's interesting too that some theories have said that there's absolutely no canonicity to this too.
00:25:20
Speaker
absolutely just speculation but i think it's cool is that sparks occurred from the multiverse being destabilized or sort of needing things to sort of balance out magic magical imbalances in the multiverse i really kind of like that idea it's very similar actually to the star wars theory of
00:25:44
Speaker
the force balancing itself in a in a grand cosmic sense but that the imprints that the uh that the blind eternities leave on souls tend to occur more when there is more imbalance happening so that those powers can then work to hopefully restabilize the multiverse i it's it's this like cosmic level galaxy brain type stuff that i'm like well to be to be fair i mean there are
00:26:15
Speaker
So, I mean, we have the whole idea of things finding balance, like the force in literature, but that is also how things function on the physical world. I mean, we have this idea of entropy, and for there to be order in one area, there needs to be chaos in another, and the only way you could have order come about would be for chaos to belong. I mean, the universe is constantly correcting itself based on creation of order and chaos. Nature, of course, thank you. Yeah, I mean, because we can't,
00:26:45
Speaker
create or destroy matter, basically. It's kind of beyond the laws of what we believe can happen. It just gets converted. It gets changed in some ways. And in some ways, it is a balancing. It is a return to stasis. It's that idea that systems at rest will remain at rest. I mean, it's that idea that you're trying to return to some sort of baseline. Yeah, no, absolutely.
00:27:07
Speaker
And this is entirely not canon, not anywhere. I'm just kind of spitballing here, but you mentioned the force of entropy, Hobbes. Everything inevitably declines.
War of the Spark Visualization
00:27:21
Speaker
Everything moves towards kind of nothing. And it would be really interesting to me, like the idea that maybe sparks were an attempt to combat entropy. If that makes sense, you're putting energy into the system,
00:27:37
Speaker
The old sparks were just too much energy in one place and it was destabilizing in different ways.
00:27:42
Speaker
I don't know, that may not mean anything, but it's an interesting idea. That makes a lot of sense, and I think that is that theory of when the time rifts on Dominaria had to be sealed, that the sparks of planeswalkers, specifically planeswalkers that were involved in the creation of those rifts, had to sacrifice their sparks for it. I think that's exactly it.
00:28:08
Speaker
and i think the biggest thing that we've seen with war the spark is this the first time that we've physically seen what a spark looks like thanks to the machinations of a one mr n bolus and uh we we now at least at least the way that it
00:28:26
Speaker
was harvested and shown in War of the Spark that's it's sort of this like I don't know if you if you put your two fists together and it's sort of about that size of like a glowing ball of white bluish light that has sort of like a tail trail like a comet behind it when it moves um and and we see that from the
00:28:51
Speaker
possibly thousands of nameless planeswalkers trapped on Ravnica whose sparks are being harvested by Mr. Bolus as part of his plan to return to near godhood as a pre-mending planeswalker.
00:29:12
Speaker
his theory, and this is why I kind of like the theory actually that Urza's power is because his own spark combined with another powerful planeswalker spark. Bolas is taking all of these sparks powers and trying to put them into his own capability. It's like he's grabbing everybody's jars and smooshing it into one really big bowl.
00:29:37
Speaker
Nickel Bowl. Wow. Wow. I was, I almost, I almost found myself following along and nodding. The universe leans toward entropy and so do my metaphors. So the universe invented puns in order to combat entropy? The universe invented me to combat sense. That's canon.
00:30:07
Speaker
So what we have here is that yes, we get to actually see these sparks flying as little glowing balls up into the air and moving towards Nicol Bolas through the use of a spell.
Sparks & Personal Identity
00:30:22
Speaker
So once again we're seeing basically sparks being moved or transferred through magic, through spell. Now we did get some helpful information about
00:30:33
Speaker
I think tying along to what you said, Joe, in some ways that these sparks are part of a person's soul or they're intertwined with the person in the sense that having the spark ripped out did not just leave people like back to not being planeswalkers, which is something that we had discussed on our episode when we were ranking what was going to happen. You know, not knowing at that point did the sparking actually mean death because we've seen sparks inactive. Obniksalis spark was inactive. Got it back.
00:31:04
Speaker
We've seen them transferred. We've seen them transferred without the person being killed. The question kind of became, well, what happened? Mark Rosewater said, eternals, harvesting sparks, you're done. They're tied to you. Now, we have Mark Rosewater's lovely wording, which is harvested by an eternal.
00:31:32
Speaker
We don't fully know, except we did see anybody who got what we did see. The story gave us a really good indication of what it was to have your spark ripped out of you from a character point of view, intertwined not only with your magical ability, but with who you are. Right. Yeah. And some of it, like the difference going back just a little bit, but thinking about the difference between, um, internal harvesting a spike for a spark.
Can Sparks Transfer Without Harm?
00:32:01
Speaker
versus the sparks being given up or transferred may come down, obviously, it obviously comes down to the method of how it's done. In a different blog post, Mark Rosewater does clarify that the way Bolas did it was lethal because he didn't care about them surviving. So in that way, it is a thing that is tied deeply to you, and it's a thing that if ripped apart, ripped out, will kill you, because you're just, something's being torn.
00:32:30
Speaker
But there is, there must be methods then where that thing can kind of be released without it tearing everything else out too. Right, because we saw, like for instance, Teferi volunteered his spark willingly and Karn did as well to close up two time rifts on Dominaria and they survived obviously.
00:32:52
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah, we when it's something forcibly taken and I'm sure it's your your body and soul's natural instinct to cling on to that thing and it just gets pulled in half maybe basically Yeah, or it all gets ripped out together
00:33:08
Speaker
Yeah. One thing that some have already asked questions about a little bit with the way Bolas did it, he didn't care about them surviving, is why when Bolas is de-sparked, how does he survive?
00:33:31
Speaker
I think part of the implied thing that I think part of the implied element of that is that Ugin and Jace who did lead to Bolas desparking specifically that they were trying to preserve Bolas so that you know Bolas could be locked away and imprisoned.
00:33:54
Speaker
I wonder though a little bit if some of it has to do with power as well or power level capability because you think about some of these unknown nameless planeswalkers, they might not have been
00:34:13
Speaker
You know, even at like sort of the power level of our characters in sort of the central magic storyline, they might have just been fledgling. We did see, I think, a few that were very fledgling planeswalkers, you know, one other than Teo who like just sparked there and was like, Oh, what's going on? And then gets harvested immediately.
00:34:34
Speaker
but then you have somebody like bolus who's lived for tens of thousands of years and Has a certain amount of innate magical ability and and willpower as well that Possibly and this is all headcanon because you know, of course mark specifically said it was methodology but maybe part of it too is that if you have the The power to survive that there's a certain amount of power and resistance that you have to survive something like that
00:35:04
Speaker
I
Latent Creative Potential & Sparks
00:35:05
Speaker
don't know. Or your jerk of a brother doesn't want you to die because he wants to torture you for eternity and I would watch that show. You know it's just waiting for Godot with dragons, right? Oh man. It's a big brother with only two people in the house. And only one of them can leave.
00:35:32
Speaker
Oh, man. But then that does sort of get us into the question, I guess, you know, when we've talked a little bit about what the spark means for the characters in the multiverse, you know, what it what it represents, it represents magical potential, it represents it's part of their souls and their innate
00:35:52
Speaker
identities, but of course on Goblin Lore we always want to tie stuff into the real world and talk about what, you know, what's the point? What does this mean for us? And so I want to ask you guys, what to you then is sort of our real world analog to the Planeswalker spark?
00:36:12
Speaker
I actually, there is an interesting point. Now we know that sparks occur naturally. My take on it is mainly to do what you talked about, Joe, in this concept of latent versus kind of actually sparking. So you could have the spark and not spark, which is actually kind of, I know they talk about it not being genetics, like these aren't past
00:36:37
Speaker
down through lineages but it does kind of come to a nature versus nurture discussion that can happen somewhat with um mental health being expressed and mental illness showing up in that having a spark or having the the like genetic makeup or something within you that is likely from a biological standpoint to develop mental illness isn't enough there has to be
00:37:02
Speaker
something that causes it to spark. There has to be an interplay between your environment and what goes on. This is why I do find this idea of sparking and the act of that being ignited to be the interesting thing. We made our jokes at the beginning of the episode about how we would each spark. What we have seen in magic is mainly spark through trauma or negative events. And it's basically that type of an event
00:37:30
Speaker
took this latent ability, if we're going at it from that part, and it is what jump-started it. Now, we know that it's basically anything with an intense situation can make it spark. One of the things that kind of does sound sad is that if that is joy or some other emotion that causes you to spark, if I'm holding my life in my hand, Maria Kondo style, and I look at it, and it's great, and I decide that it does spark me joy,
00:37:57
Speaker
The way we've seen planes walking when people spark is they leave where they're at. It actually takes them away from the environment. In the novel with Teo, we actually have a description where they're talking about it basically right at the moment of death saved him or right at the moment of death, it can take you away from that situation. So because what we've seen is this idea that sparking causes you to leave, it could be one of the reasons we haven't seen intense emotions
00:38:26
Speaker
that are more pleasant be what has caused the spike and I'm sparking because then we'd have almost a tragedy in and of itself right there. All of this is to say for me, the like real world connection just comes back to this idea that intense emotions at any end of the spectrum, if we kind of have propensity to be at risk for developing say depression, anxiety, any of it can occur because of that. We all have potential in us
00:38:55
Speaker
to have this happen, it doesn't mean that all of us are going to, which I think plays nicely into the idea of what does it mean to have a latent spark versus what does it mean to actually have the spark ignite as a concept. I don't have anything to add to that, but I have something different I want to say. So I'm going to transition by pointing at the transition and saying, see,
00:39:16
Speaker
And then moving on. There's a transition. Right there. There's a transition. Across my room. That was great, Hobbs, and I wish I could contribute to that. But instead, I'm going to contribute by doing something else. A different idea of... As this episode's been going, I've been trying to think of what is a real-world analog for a spark? This idea of something that suddenly changes, and then now you are different. And I think that...
00:39:45
Speaker
Obviously, there's a lot of literal differences to an actual Spark. But in a lot of ways, there are parallels in real life. There are certainly times where something will happen in a good or a negative way where now you are different. Now you have a new path. There is a new avenue. Actually, hey, look at this. I can tie into what you're talking about, Hobbs, to talk about an example that I can think of as my
00:40:15
Speaker
Finally being diagnosed with my social anxiety. Now my life can change. I can go on a different path. And so it's not the same because in that you could have dozens of moments like that in your life as things shift, as things move. But I think there is some parallels there to a moment of sparking.
00:40:35
Speaker
I think about it, too, in a similar sense. You have so many avenues open, but you just never know where you're exactly going to end up. I like that idea a lot.
00:40:52
Speaker
you know one of my past lives i was a a creative professional i guess i still am creative in my in my personal life but yeah so for a number of years i was an actor and a director and a playwright and um you know i stopped eventually doing that because it just while we're talking about this it didn't spark joy for me um thanks marie kondo uh but i
00:41:19
Speaker
I think there is, especially in creative stuff, there is a latent potential in everyone to be creative. That's something that we always talk about and something that I've always found when I do direct something is I love working with people
00:41:35
Speaker
Whether they're trained actors or not, I love working with them and helping them find the moments that matter, find meaning in their character. Because everyone's got something to say. Everyone's got something creative to do. Whether it's drawing or creating costumes or finding a way to express yourself verbally. There are so many ways and so many avenues that everyone
00:42:04
Speaker
in a sense has has this latent potential you just have to find the way to express it and you know sometimes you just need that that one spark that one moment of somebody recognizing it or of you recognizing it even that to say hey this is something i can do and this is a power i have i mean i like this idea joe that you're kind of you know it's flipping everything is the mental
00:42:30
Speaker
Health aspect we don't talk enough about positive psychology. Well, I mean we haven't as of today It's that idea of studying people who tend to live healthy lives Not just studying people who struggle and seeing you know, what are the habits of healthy people? What are the things that people? Do who you know that are resilient and this idea that we all have the potential for that inside of us It's just how do you unlock it? What is it, you know?
00:42:57
Speaker
how closely tied is it to our our being and how is it brought about you know is it done forcefully which then we're talking more of this trauma type narrative that may lead to this idea that you don't recover from having your spark ripped or pulled versus it's it's curated it's brought about by nurture or by like you said
00:43:21
Speaker
Somebody that's able to coax that potential out of you that reminded me a little bit of my Learning also in a previous life when I was a teacher there reminded me a bit of my education training and how we talked about
00:43:37
Speaker
you know the differentiation needed for students of differing abilities and a lot of people when you say that isn't the assumption tends to be okay you're talking about students who maybe have a developmental disability or a learning disorder sort of thing but
00:43:56
Speaker
In addition, you also have to consider students who would fall into the gifted and talented spectrum. So there is this amount of everyone has different abilities and as a teacher especially, you have to be that person who's looking for the chance to
00:44:16
Speaker
you're looking for any opportunity to to spark your students you know in real life real life i think it does look a lot more like the old walker model or even actually even more so the harper prism arena model where
00:44:32
Speaker
If you have the mana ability or the investment of time and training into your skills, into your figuring out how to be more resilient, into all this sort of stuff to augment your own natural gifts,
00:44:50
Speaker
Then that's where your potential sparks that it isn't this innate thing that you're you're born with all the time And that's the only thing that defines it. You know, there's a lot more I think put on Uh, especially at least in the creative realm a lot more about just going through it and practicing and building that stuff up I mean one of the things that that we do teach in a lot of our groups is this idea that even the people that we think of as having Just complete innate natural talent are going to tell you
00:45:19
Speaker
They literally had to practice all the time. They, they did not get to where they were by just, you know, it might've gotten them to a certain point that talent may have been cultivated, but they still had to pick up the ball. They had to pick up the pen. I mean, you see it with writers and Stephen King's on writing, like the number one advice is like to write, um, Michael Jordan being the person that he was in, but he was known for his intense.
00:45:48
Speaker
workouts that he had to just like be out there practicing and doing it over and over and over again and that there has to be a cultivation. You can't just rely on your natural talent.
00:46:00
Speaker
It's Malcolm Gladwell's sort of ten thousand hours theory that, you know, they did a study of, I think primarily it was classical musicians and that to achieve mastery of your instrument, you have to practice on average
00:46:21
Speaker
ten thousand hours over your lifetime that's sort of been taken a lot more literally these days and you know that the theory has become sort of butchered but that said it is just it's more of a thing of you put you have to put in the work you have to put in the work to realize your potential and i know i've mentioned this this anecdote in the past on the show but it's the idea of bill gates didn't become who he is today because he just
00:46:51
Speaker
happened to be incredible at computers and coding and making computers, it's because he did have the random chance of some situations in his life being put there for him, his spark, his latent spark was there, but then he did have the wherewithal to gather his resources, to build up his skills, and to let that spark once it had sparked to blossom and flourish.
00:47:21
Speaker
Not that I think that we should be idolizing billionaires or saying that they're the planeswalkers of our universe, because I don't like that analogy. But it's sometimes they're the handy examples. Yeah. Yeah. Like, let's be real, I would love to spark the billionaires and trap them on the prison on the meditation realm. Yeah, just for better words, like this, the sports stars, the billionaires, they're the the frame of reference that more people would have.
00:47:47
Speaker
Yes. Don't you dare try to put Michael Jordan on the prison realm. He already had to deal with possibly being trapped by the Monstars. When do we get that sequel? I mean, we could talk about the Monstars sparking when they stole, they stole the sparks from all the other NBA players. Oh my gosh. Monstar. Let's see. And in that case, they, you know, actually cared a little bit to not kill the people that they stole their sparks from.
00:48:14
Speaker
Wow. Space Jam. So what we're saying is Monstar's not quite as vicious as Acropolis. Wait, we are not saying that. Confirmed, Space Jam is in the multiverse. That's our show. You can find the podcast at Goblin Lore Pod on Twitter or email any questions, comments, or concerns to goblinlorepodcast at gmail.com.
00:48:43
Speaker
If you'd like to support your friendly neighborhood Gobslugs, you can do so at patreon.com slash Goblin Lore Pod. This episode of Goblin Lore was hosted by Hobbs Q, who you can find on Twitter at Hobbs Q. This episode was co-hosted and researched by Alex Newman, who you can find on Twitter at Alexander New M. Engineering, editing, and production for this episode is by Joe Redman, who you can find on Twitter at Findhorn. That's F-Y-N-D Horn.
00:49:12
Speaker
Our music is by Wintergotten, who you can find at wintergotten.com. That's winter g-a-t-a-n dot com. Logo by Stephen Raphael on Twitter at Stephen Raffel. Goblin lore is presented by Hipsters of the Coast, which you can find at hipstersmtg on Twitter or on hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you all for listening. And remember, goblins, like snowflakes, are only dangerous in numbers.