Leslak, I think most feminists would say that body positivity applies to men as much as women. However, the discussion emphasizes women because overall they are impacted more by this issue. That doesn't mean that men's self-esteem doesn't matter, it does. But typically the way this discussion has gone in our society, feminists bring up an issue for women and anti-feminists reply "what about men?" And it's very telling that a discussion focused on women can't proceed in this context without bringing up men. This changes the topic, and conveys the sense that anti-feminists won't allow such a discussion*. That's why feminists tend to push back and dismiss questions about men. Unfortunately, what we see in our current society is a huge surge in anti-feminist sentiment. Maybe there's a practical problem with using dismissive rhetoric, but the intellectual problem of the "what about men?" behavior is a much bigger barrier to productive discussion.
*This thread is an even more severe form of derailment, where a guy said he hoped a gay character would be violently killed by another, more gender-conforming character, and the apologist for that guy immediately tried to change the topic to an issue that affected him, male body image. The topic of the discussion was literally hate speech against gay people, and he wanted to change it to be about himself instead. That's some pathological egocentrism.
You and the other user have misunderstood my arguement over and over again and its because youre not reading clearly what I am saying or thinking about what im saying. Because if you did you would have noticed that I havent once expressed any hate or anger towards Oko being lgbt. Not a single time.
Let's break this down. I'll start backwards to see if that helps. Let's say person X doesn't want actual gay people to be killed for being gay. How likely would it be for X to then go and say they want a fictional person to die because they're gay? Not very likely, and if they did, it would be reasonable to tell them to re-examine that statement since there is a logical inconsistency of holding both views. Either X does in fact want actual gay people to suffer violence, or they don't and so should not want fictional gay people to suffer violence either. Anything else is cognitive dissonance, or hypocrisy even, and we know how much you hate that.
The whole basis of your argument is an unprincipled distinction you're making between fictional and real gay people, that violent statements about one sort can be considered "hate speech," but not the other. This isn't a true formal distinction, however, but rather a difference of degree. While the degree of difference is significant, you didn't take the position that the phrase "hate speech" is a hyperbolic characterization of the post in question. That position perhaps would have been defensible, but that ship has sailed. Instead you have repeatedly argued that saying a fictional character should die for being gay doesn't imply that one also wants real gay people to die for being gay. But it does imply just that, as can be seen by the above paragraph. The fact that you refuse to acknowledge this plain and clear implication reflects on your extreme bias.
So how should they execute this set's story, then?
MTG is a pop culture commodity, so we should all heavily manage our expectations accordingly. But I will say this: the inversion, subversion and playing-straight of tropes are all mere formal differences. The underlying content, the trope itself, remains essentially its tropey self. The slew of dark adaptations that have come to saturate our media as mikeyG alludes to demonstrate that while initially we find this cute and novel, it gets old. The use of tropes in narratives is well executed when they contribute to the quality of that narrative by having their content developed within it. So if a handful of tropes are just dumped on top of a narrative (or, God forbid, a heap of tropes with no overarching coherence is the entirety of the narrative), it's poor execution. They can't just be there as props, they have to help tell the story, to say something. But, it's a card game. We are unlikely to receive a deep contemplation on the meaning of life or even mildly interesting political commentary. It doesn't have to do all that to feel fresh, it just has to tell a story we haven't heard before to a significant extent. And that's a pretty low bar, I think.
I'm not interested in "meaning of life" contemplations and especially not political commentary, anyway.
That's a conceit, but okay.
I just want to play a fun card game. And the story doesn't have to be anything new for that to happen because quite honestly it can't be anything new.
No, it absolutely can. Something new is created by the story being created, period. Unless what you're saying is that the story should just be a copy of the Brothers Grimm with the MTG logo stamped on it, it can't not be new. The question is, does this new thing stand on its own merits, and does the stuff it references actually contribute to the story, versus just clutter it?
We've explored a lot of the story possibilities out there. And when your whole set revolves around tropes people recognize, story tropes in particular, it's inevitable that the canon story is going to be predictable. It's supposed to be, otherwise it doesn't feel faithful to the source material. Cinderella and the other Princesses are going to have happy endings (though I do worry for the Mermaid, since her story didn't originally have a happy ending). The Frog will be turned back into a prince, the Gingerbread Man is probably going to get eaten by a Fox, 2/3 of the Three Little Pigs' houses are going to get blown down by a Big Bad Wolf who will presumably also try to eat a girl in a red hood. The destination is predictable, it's the journey that's interesting.
I don't think you understood what you were responding to. Predictability is more or less a measure of a trope being played straight. I was pretty clear when I mentioned that's a difference of form only. Although your last sentence here is a platitude, I think it points to an underlying agreement. The details that go into telling the story of the journey are very much a matter of execution.
What I care about is personality. MtG has always been good about exploring tropes through the lens of its personality, which is centered around the color pie. Innistrad and Theros exemplified this when they showed how various creature types fit into different colors, and when they gave us mechanics that summed up their overall feel. Amonkhet also succeeded in this, for the most part (though I resented Bolas' presence overtaking the Egyptian atmosphere). I expect Eldraine will be the same; a host of recognizable tropes in card form, complimented with a handful of mechanics that convey the set's general feel. We have the storybook mechanic, which I honestly expect will be some kind of "Ever after" effect that changes the game state from then on, like an enchantment. Sort of a reward for playing through the card's story.
The gameplay is where Magic's real story plays out. Tropes are tools, after all, and Magic thrives on letting us play with tropes. The most fun stories aren't the ones the team writes but the ones we experience through playing the game. That's why I look forward to the gameplay each set offers moreso than the story.
The discussion, however, was thus far regarding the question (posed by you) of how the story should be executed.
I'd agree that a Magic set should continue to stay true to its basic principles as a game. Applying those principles to this context of a fairy tale world certainly could be interesting. Or not. I, for one, am not terribly concerned about the quality of the game play at this time.
That's a valid point, thank you for it. What we've seen of Eldraine still reads as lazy to me (and in fairness, I'm "meh" on the setting on a conceptual level because I see it as played out and I don't think MtG has the capacity to make it feel fresh), but your post gives me more reason to hope they'll pull off what they're going for.
I think what you're experiencing is another acute case of Lorwynitis. It's one thing for a setting to be derivative if the content that's derived is rich or has some kind of artistic merit that warrants revisiting and re-exploring in a new medium. Old horror tropes fit the bill here because horror never stops being relevant to the human condition regardless of time or place. Fairy tales also have timeless themes in them but they mostly resonate with children, especially if they are interpreted heavily in the Disneyesque context. If they had tipped the scales of the balance towards more Arthurian themes with a smattering of little fairy tale stuff added, instead of the other way around, most likely it would have felt more substantive. But you're right that WotC can still execute the hell out of this concept.
I mean, we'll see if they can. One of the bigger criticisms of the Gatewatch (aside from the "shoved down our throats" argument) was that it felt like an obvious ripoff of The Avengers with a clunky execution so I think the standard for a smooth execution is higher when adapting things audiences have a lot of exposure to. I doubt I'm the only one out there tired of Disney adaptations (which I now this technically isn't, but given the ubiquity of the Disney versions of fairy tales, it's where much of the audience's familiarity will come from), so I think WotC has their work cut out for them.
Well, I didn't mean to imply I was feeling especially optimistic about this outcome. More along the lines that it's at least conceivably possible that Eldraine will be executed well.
So how should they execute this set's story, then?
MTG is a pop culture commodity, so we should all heavily manage our expectations accordingly. But I will say this: the inversion, subversion and playing-straight of tropes are all mere formal differences. The underlying content, the trope itself, remains essentially its tropey self. The slew of dark adaptations that have come to saturate our media as mikeyG alludes to demonstrate that while initially we find this cute and novel, it gets old. The use of tropes in narratives is well executed when they contribute to the quality of that narrative by having their content developed within it. So if a handful of tropes are just dumped on top of a narrative (or, God forbid, a heap of tropes with no overarching coherence is the entirety of the narrative), it's poor execution. They can't just be there as props, they have to help tell the story, to say something. But, it's a card game. We are unlikely to receive a deep contemplation on the meaning of life or even mildly interesting political commentary. It doesn't have to do all that to feel fresh, it just has to tell a story we haven't heard before to a significant extent. And that's a pretty low bar, I think.
I could argue we already have a number of that in the art already. I see True loves kiss, Evil step mother enslaving a stepdaughter, witch cooking kids in pies and living in the woods, magical swords and twins/brother/sister lost in the woods are all found on many stories. The hag offering an apple referring Snow white which in term is often thought of linked with other stories of temptation of women with fruit such as Eve and Persephone who are then curse after eating the offered treat.
I think its simply Inninstrad just lesser know with the source material as a story and the themes where more known as it being a genre instead of a mythology. And a number of thing you talking about horror tropes being broad and not having a single source are also true for many fairy tales tropes I listed above. As I said above a number of stuff we have seen has gone with way with Eldraine.
That's a valid point, thank you for it. What we've seen of Eldraine still reads as lazy to me (and in fairness, I'm "meh" on the setting on a conceptual level because I see it as played out and I don't think MtG has the capacity to make it feel fresh), but your post gives me more reason to hope they'll pull off what they're going for.
I think what you're experiencing is another acute case of Lorwynitis. It's one thing for a setting to be derivative if the content that's derived is rich or has some kind of artistic merit that warrants revisiting and re-exploring in a new medium. Old horror tropes fit the bill here because horror never stops being relevant to the human condition regardless of time or place. Fairy tales also have timeless themes in them but they mostly resonate with children, especially if they are interpreted heavily in the Disneyesque context. If they had tipped the scales of the balance towards more Arthurian themes with a smattering of little fairy tale stuff added, instead of the other way around, most likely it would have felt more substantive. But you're right that WotC can still execute the hell out of this concept.
I really like Angels normally but this one is kind of strange?
She fits in some of the Naya decks I saw with Mayael as commander or lead the deck as commander I guess. The +1/+0 is a little odd for a card that is green and white. Is this the red influence? The revive effect is more greenish than white but could fit for both colors. I like the art except for the face. Her face looks strange.
I thought so too until a close up picture popped up in my feed which revealed that she's actually just ugly-crying. So that's unfortunate.
The fact that it's a humanoid and treefolk "fusion" actually makes it a bit more unusual. I immediately got weird Aaroniero Arruruerie vibes when I looked at the artwork.
But I'd agree that a straight up treefolk walker would also be a nice design to see independently of my desire for bizarre magical beings that happen to include human faces.
Perhaps Teysa's end game is to turn the Syndicate into a cooperative where formerly indebted spirits take the reins of the guild, with some kind of theme of empowerment to keep it black, just more equitably distributed. Still has the potential to go badly if the old plebians become the new patricians. But it would substantively contrast Teysa with the way the Ghost Council ran things.
I _really_ can't see Teysa becoming a Distributist. And Distributism, as an economic theory, doesn't really match WB. I think it's much more likely that Teysa would curb the incredible shortsightedness of the Obzedat, but not make many other changes.
I don't know if you have some specific jargon-y meaning in mind for the term "distributism," but whether or not it feels WB probably comes down more so to the rhetoric involved than any exact mapping of color themes onto real-world theories.
For example:
"To become the greatest of the guilds Orzhov must empower all of its members to realize greater excellence..." yadda yadda, where white accepts black equating power with virtue so long as the group as a whole gets the power, and black accepts white's terms here probably because the organizational structure provides opportunities for exploitation. This is already the case for the Orzhov ethos though it is, as you say, short-sighted.
But the real reason I'm foreseeing a plot development like this is because narratively, it makes sense with all the build up over the years of Teysa plotting against the Obzedat. If Orzhov doesn't go through any kind of meaty reforms in the fallout of the Obzedat's deaths and Teysa's eventual succession, what's the point? Orzhov is one of those definitely problematic guilds that flew under the radar compared to the shenanigans some of the other guilds got up to in the past but I think it's due for a bit of a makeover. And Teysa, Oppressive Capitalistic Ghost Council 2.0 would be a bit same-y. If the whole reason Teysa wanted to get rid of the Obzedat was purely for ambition, that'd make her a mono-black character. But if she has more complicated motives that makes her more interesting as a character and one who has grown since we first saw her.
Though based on some of the other content we're seeing with respect to Kaya, Teysa might be more conservative in the end than what I suggested. It depends on how the nature of their relationship bears out.
Perhaps Teysa's end game is to turn the Syndicate into a cooperative where formerly indebted spirits take the reins of the guild, with some kind of theme of empowerment to keep it black, just more equitably distributed. Still has the potential to go badly if the old plebians become the new patricians. But it would substantively contrast Teysa with the way the Ghost Council ran things.
*This thread is an even more severe form of derailment, where a guy said he hoped a gay character would be violently killed by another, more gender-conforming character, and the apologist for that guy immediately tried to change the topic to an issue that affected him, male body image. The topic of the discussion was literally hate speech against gay people, and he wanted to change it to be about himself instead. That's some pathological egocentrism.
Let's break this down. I'll start backwards to see if that helps. Let's say person X doesn't want actual gay people to be killed for being gay. How likely would it be for X to then go and say they want a fictional person to die because they're gay? Not very likely, and if they did, it would be reasonable to tell them to re-examine that statement since there is a logical inconsistency of holding both views. Either X does in fact want actual gay people to suffer violence, or they don't and so should not want fictional gay people to suffer violence either. Anything else is cognitive dissonance, or hypocrisy even, and we know how much you hate that.
The whole basis of your argument is an unprincipled distinction you're making between fictional and real gay people, that violent statements about one sort can be considered "hate speech," but not the other. This isn't a true formal distinction, however, but rather a difference of degree. While the degree of difference is significant, you didn't take the position that the phrase "hate speech" is a hyperbolic characterization of the post in question. That position perhaps would have been defensible, but that ship has sailed. Instead you have repeatedly argued that saying a fictional character should die for being gay doesn't imply that one also wants real gay people to die for being gay. But it does imply just that, as can be seen by the above paragraph. The fact that you refuse to acknowledge this plain and clear implication reflects on your extreme bias.
That's a conceit, but okay.
No, it absolutely can. Something new is created by the story being created, period. Unless what you're saying is that the story should just be a copy of the Brothers Grimm with the MTG logo stamped on it, it can't not be new. The question is, does this new thing stand on its own merits, and does the stuff it references actually contribute to the story, versus just clutter it?
I don't think you understood what you were responding to. Predictability is more or less a measure of a trope being played straight. I was pretty clear when I mentioned that's a difference of form only. Although your last sentence here is a platitude, I think it points to an underlying agreement. The details that go into telling the story of the journey are very much a matter of execution.
The discussion, however, was thus far regarding the question (posed by you) of how the story should be executed.
I'd agree that a Magic set should continue to stay true to its basic principles as a game. Applying those principles to this context of a fairy tale world certainly could be interesting. Or not. I, for one, am not terribly concerned about the quality of the game play at this time.
Well, I didn't mean to imply I was feeling especially optimistic about this outcome. More along the lines that it's at least conceivably possible that Eldraine will be executed well.
MTG is a pop culture commodity, so we should all heavily manage our expectations accordingly. But I will say this: the inversion, subversion and playing-straight of tropes are all mere formal differences. The underlying content, the trope itself, remains essentially its tropey self. The slew of dark adaptations that have come to saturate our media as mikeyG alludes to demonstrate that while initially we find this cute and novel, it gets old. The use of tropes in narratives is well executed when they contribute to the quality of that narrative by having their content developed within it. So if a handful of tropes are just dumped on top of a narrative (or, God forbid, a heap of tropes with no overarching coherence is the entirety of the narrative), it's poor execution. They can't just be there as props, they have to help tell the story, to say something. But, it's a card game. We are unlikely to receive a deep contemplation on the meaning of life or even mildly interesting political commentary. It doesn't have to do all that to feel fresh, it just has to tell a story we haven't heard before to a significant extent. And that's a pretty low bar, I think.
I think what you're experiencing is another acute case of Lorwynitis. It's one thing for a setting to be derivative if the content that's derived is rich or has some kind of artistic merit that warrants revisiting and re-exploring in a new medium. Old horror tropes fit the bill here because horror never stops being relevant to the human condition regardless of time or place. Fairy tales also have timeless themes in them but they mostly resonate with children, especially if they are interpreted heavily in the Disneyesque context. If they had tipped the scales of the balance towards more Arthurian themes with a smattering of little fairy tale stuff added, instead of the other way around, most likely it would have felt more substantive. But you're right that WotC can still execute the hell out of this concept.
I thought so too until a close up picture popped up in my feed which revealed that she's actually just ugly-crying. So that's unfortunate.
But I'd agree that a straight up treefolk walker would also be a nice design to see independently of my desire for bizarre magical beings that happen to include human faces.
I don't know if you have some specific jargon-y meaning in mind for the term "distributism," but whether or not it feels WB probably comes down more so to the rhetoric involved than any exact mapping of color themes onto real-world theories.
For example:
"To become the greatest of the guilds Orzhov must empower all of its members to realize greater excellence..." yadda yadda, where white accepts black equating power with virtue so long as the group as a whole gets the power, and black accepts white's terms here probably because the organizational structure provides opportunities for exploitation. This is already the case for the Orzhov ethos though it is, as you say, short-sighted.
But the real reason I'm foreseeing a plot development like this is because narratively, it makes sense with all the build up over the years of Teysa plotting against the Obzedat. If Orzhov doesn't go through any kind of meaty reforms in the fallout of the Obzedat's deaths and Teysa's eventual succession, what's the point? Orzhov is one of those definitely problematic guilds that flew under the radar compared to the shenanigans some of the other guilds got up to in the past but I think it's due for a bit of a makeover. And Teysa, Oppressive Capitalistic Ghost Council 2.0 would be a bit same-y. If the whole reason Teysa wanted to get rid of the Obzedat was purely for ambition, that'd make her a mono-black character. But if she has more complicated motives that makes her more interesting as a character and one who has grown since we first saw her.
Though based on some of the other content we're seeing with respect to Kaya, Teysa might be more conservative in the end than what I suggested. It depends on how the nature of their relationship bears out.