There have been several Green antagonists, from Kumena to Xenagos to the Myojin of Life's Web. In two of them, Green's philosophy actually is deconstructed savagely: Vorinclex is a social darwinist devourer, while Xenagos is a conspiracy theorist with the means to violently enact his delusions.
Yeah but Vorinclex comes from a plane where there are 4 other monoclors taken to the extreme and funny enough the Red One is relatively the most good.
Kumena was a minor foe who was quickly tossed out of the pyramid.
Xenagos fair enough but he is not Mono Green.
-So seems like not just anyone can use the bow since the animals will attack the user or they can't seem to have the animal fully manifest.
-Huh I wonder who the Baron has met? Angrath?
-Dang the vampires torture is rough...and they sew the nuns mouths shut D: Cassandra Khaw is really showing her horror skills.
-All the nopes on the vivisection.
-So we do learn that the Arkbow was made for Vivien herself and that is seems like it take her kind of magic to use it properly. And the story does hint she dose have some beast master kind of magic.
-And then the story ends...huh ok. Short one this week and it was okay. Very slow moving plot but a nice way to have some exposition moments that felt natural. I'd be more disappointed if we weren't getting part 3 Friday.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
I found nothing to compliment in today's story. Reads like fan-fiction. Continued overly flowery language that serves no purpose. We still haven't been told much about Skalla at all. Somehow the Baron has met several planeswalkers, but since the planeswalkers we know try not to mention what they are, we're just meant to roll with it, especially on the formerly or soon-to-be planeswalker trap plane, depending when this story takes place (probably post-Ixalan block). The gore continues, just to make us really dislike the Baddies, which is an annoying one-dimensional approach. The dialogue is written as if the writer thinks they're writing something intellectual, a wonderful tete-a-tete, but it's juvenile and simplistic when you read the lines alongside each other and drop the over-descriptions that lie in between. And the story ends suddenly, almost as if I was thunked on the head. What?
Story just feels like a mess. Considering the earlier Core story, this is landing on me like mud. I haven't felt this way about an MtG story article in quite some time.
Yea not a huge fan of this newest author, but with the rotating doors of "professional" authors that WotC is now using, we're bound to get some stinkers.
Actually, I just read Cassandra Khaw's bio on the main site, and apparently the most she's done is video game script writing, which I now totally see in her writing. When you go from creating skeletons for dialog to an actual storytelling approach, I think there's a lot of descriptive process that someone like Khaw might be lacking. I definitely hold it less against her now, and more on WotC for taking someone who doesn't write stories and hire her to write their stories.
I like the Baron as a villain, but unfortunately I actually like him more than Vivien as a person, since while he's detestable for being an elitist vampire who tortures animals for science, Vivien is a tiresome charcter who is totally on board with mass murder to save a TRex. She wouldn't be getting tortured if she didn't kill a bunch of people. Yeah, I'm going to hate the Baron for being a guy that tortures people, but that's not going to make me sympathetic to Vivien. When she was trying to get the Baron to let her use the bow, I was thinking "Just kill her already dude, just slit her throat and let her bleed out on the floor like Littlefiger."
Vanpire society is twisted, but you end up in a situation where you have to ask if it's any worse than alternatives. Yeah, they drink people's blood, but they specifically don't kill them, and the response to the guy claiming he wanted to leave wasn't threatening violence or imprisonment, but saying "Yeah, you won't leave, because if you did you'd actually have to work rather than selling us your blood." Those human sailors sure seemed happy to get home in the first story, just saying. Mortal nobles would be asking for a lot more in terms of agricultural product than would be required to replace the blood the vamps take.
The whole thing has been too simplistic, and pretty dumb. Ixalan sucked from a story perspective. The concepts were cool but terribly executed, and the quality of the relationship between Jace and Vraska helped mask the problems with the plane. This is the first time I've ever said that the focus on the Planeswalkers was a good thing. Without Jace and Vraska, Captain Capslock is the high point of the story. Otherwise you have the bland warrior poet, tag team one note vampires, some pirate tropes, and a villain whose weakness is windows. Oh, and a rigged Geo cache contest.
And damn does creative have a problem writing mono green charcters. Vivien is at least more interesting than Nissa, but they come off as so one note. It's all "nature good, everything else bad" and "look at me, I'm so special, im a loner, I've suffered at the hands of society." We've seen different flavors of red, of black, of blue, and of white. We've seen those colors approach their philosophy from different perspectives. But green, green is always the same, and done poorly at that. Green is right now sitting in the same spot that Jace was in at his worst, grating, cliche, unsympathetic, and fake.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I enjoy the high-brow language in these stories, though it does seem a bit incongruous for Vivien's personal voice. I dunno, maybe in Skalla even the shamans read Nabokov.:)
The body horror descriptions are particularly effective, and I'd nominate Cassandra Khaw to write the stories for New New Phyrexia (or Scars of Scars of Mirrodin, whatever they call it). Highly intellectualized clinical violence seems to be her strong suit.
Still unsure why Vivien can't planeswalk out of captivity and then come back to the plane. It seemed that maybe the round white cell was impeding her -- but what about the second cell? Ah well, it's a common plot hole in these things. Or maybe this is pre-Ixaln block, and she can't, who knows. It would stand to reason that Angrath wouldn't have been the only walker to get trapped on the plane during the past few post-Mending years.
But there is a structural problem here: any captivity/torture story really tends to deprive the protagonist of anything interesting to do. From a plot standpoint, nothing would have been lost from making the whole torture process one sentence long and cutting straight to the vivisection party scene. And honestly, we don't develop Vivien's character much here either: all we find out is that (a) she's very tough, and won't break under extreme physical torture; (b) she really wants the Arkbow back (not much of a revelation); (c) she's easily bored while alone; and (d) it doesn't occur to her to planeswalk away (again, supposing that this is after the Ixalan block story and not beforehand).
She gets much more interesting in the final scene, where she seems to begin figuring out how to play Luneau's social game back against the Baron. Her cleverness here seems to be a shift from her previous seeming naivete. I'm looking forward to seeing how chapter three plays out.
I enjoy the high-brow language in these stories, though it does seem a bit incongruous for Vivien's personal voice. I dunno, maybe in Skalla even the shamans read Nabokov.:)
Whoa, don't take a shot at Nabokov! And it's important to make a distinction between high-brow language, and language masquerading as high-brow. The writing style is reminiscent of a high school graduate trying to impress their first literature professor. To the student, the words seem profound and intellectual because they are new words to them and correspond to their own new maturity, and they're making the effort to show off their ability. To the professor, it's obvious what the student is doing, the red pen is lifted, and at least 1/3 of the words are crossed out and much nose-bride-pinching commences. Wordiness and flowery language do not rise to the level of high-brow. If we make that concession, high-brow writing will lose its meaning!
Though I will agree that a planeswalker who seems so forest/nature-centered really clashes with the voice of these stories.
The body horror descriptions are particularly effective, and I'd nominate Cassandra Khaw to write the stories for New New Phyrexia (or Scars of Scars of Mirrodin, whatever they call it). Highly intellectualized clinical violence seems to be her strong suit.
But on a serious note, sure, she can write violence and gore, but the last thing I need, as someone who needs a return to New Phyrexia like I need oxygen, is this kind of writing on New Phyrexia. "Elesh Norn, her enameled plates white like the last petal of the last white rose of what once was Mirrodin, her red flesh reminiscent of red fish gills from planes she never knew, inclined her head ever so slightly, yet not slightly enough, to regard with her blank marble wall stare the Phyrexian who now approached her in abject supplication. 'I will not tolerate dissent!,' she growled like a hungry dragon, but her voice was sultry and salacious." Blech! Give this author an editor and a mentor, and maybe in while I'd agree. But until then, I cannot!
Im pretty sure she could walk anytime but is choosing not to until she gets her Arkbow back..
Above said it perfectly, using big words does not make it high brow. It just leaves me with a negative impression of someone trying to hard. It still has to be fluid writing and some of this is jarring and stilted,
Didnt really get to much here, The third chapter is the last? And someone mentioned it will be on Friday?
We shall see then I guess,
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Been a member here for over a dozen years. Playing since '95 just got lost in the twitch shuffle.
Story wise, better than last week, because there's more description on Skallan culture as well as Vivien's history. Her fear of feeling inaction, for one, is a good note, and the comparison between Vivien's "preservation" compare to vampires' is also ringing.
However, it's hard to like a character who popped out of no where, suddenly acting out the protagonist role, with so little information. Normally you should give some background (the intriguing parts) of a new character so readers would be enticed to know more. In other words, the character should be at least intriguing even people outside of MtG community would fall for without knowing terms like PW, Vivien and Skalla are just too vague at this point. If you can't like a character, you'd also be indifferent towards her origin and action. For someone who bears the entire legacy of Skalla, Vivien was too willing to dive into overwhelming challenge, and how could her deem this as a "good death" when her failure erases Skalla forever?
And shouldn't Vivien attempt to planeswalk in these two chapters at least once? We're uncertain if this is before or after Immortal Sun, but she didn't even bother teleporting once, it would've at least shift her out of her bondage, no?
I like Cassandra's style, it paints vivid picture in my head with her accurate description, comparison, and physical stimuli. As Trinite0 said, I'd vote Cassandra to write for Phyrexia related stories as well. Once again, I think the agenda WotC bestowed on writers might not have been entirely fair, asking them to create a certain "ending" without enough time to flush out the character. The vampires were great, since they are minor and had earned their due, Vivien being major character deserve more layout.
Story wise, better than last week, because there's more description on Skallan culture as well as Vivien's history. Her fear of feeling inaction, for one, is a good note, and the comparison between Vivien's "preservation" compare to vampires' is also ringing.
However, it's hard to like a character who popped out of no where, suddenly acting out the protagonist role, with so little information. Normally you should give some background (the intriguing parts) of a new character so readers would be enticed to know more. In other words, the character should be at least intriguing even people outside of MtG community would fall for without knowing terms like PW, Vivien and Skalla are just too vague at this point. If you can't like a character, you'd also be indifferent towards her origin and action. For someone who bears the entire legacy of Skalla, Vivien was too willing to dive into overwhelming challenge, and how could her deem this as a "good death" when her failure erases Skalla forever?
And shouldn't Vivien attempt to planeswalk in these two chapters at least once? We're uncertain if this is before or after Immortal Sun, but she didn't even bother teleporting once, it would've at least shift her out of her bondage, no?
I like Cassandra's style, it paints vivid picture in my head with her accurate description, comparison, and physical stimuli. As Trinite0 said, I'd vote Cassandra to write for Phyrexia related stories as well. Once again, I think the agenda WotC bestowed on writers might not have been entirely fair, asking them to create a certain "ending" without enough time to flush out the character. The vampires were great, since they are minor and had earned their due, Vivien being major character deserve more layout.
I agree with most of this. I'd also say that this story could have benefitted greatly from flashbacks. While undergoing torture, instead of the repetitive Skalla refrain, we could have been shown a scene of her life there, something to really drive home the loss. It's easy to write gore and violence; it's harder to write something that really strums emotional strings.
And indeed, it seems kind of out of character (based on the little character development we've had) for Vivien to risk the last bit of Skalla to teach a lesson. In Man of Steel, it took the risk of losing the entire planet Earth for Superman to sacrifice the future of Krypton. Vivien's actions present a strange disregard for the 'future' of Skalla.
Yeah but Vorinclex comes from a plane where there are 4 other monoclors taken to the extreme and funny enough the Red One is relatively the most good.
Kumena was a minor foe who was quickly tossed out of the pyramid.
Xenagos fair enough but he is not Mono Green.
And? Vorinclex is pretty much a commentary on how evil Green can be, just like Elesh Norn is for White. As you say, Urabrask and Red are sympathetic.
Xenagos is part Red due to his hedonism and anger, but his core motivations are very Green. He feels that the system of Theros is unnatural and tries to go all Ronaldo, except with more broken skulls.
I am saying Vorinclex isn't a great example when the other colors also had Evil Options Walking Around.
I say he thinks the system is Unfair and thus his motivation is Red. That is Debatable.
The story was OK for the most part, but as another poster already said, it only really got interesting at the end when Vivien figured out how to use the other Vampire's interest in spectacle for her own goals. But up to that point, she was pretty dull - I rolled my eyes when she started "give back the Arkbow" for the seventh time. Yeah, we get it, she's determined. The baron might be evil, but at this point his character seems more interesting than Vivien's.
I also have to echo what everyone else has said: Why doesn't Vivien try to planeswalk away? Sure, she wants the Arkbow, but if she was able to planeswalk, she could "flicker back" immediately and catch the vampires off guard.
I am finding Vivien completely uninteresting as a protagonist. She's tough, she doesn't give in to torture. She could just as well be Han Solo or Rorschach or Batman or fifty other characters I could name, but so far we haven't been given a reason to care about her 1/10th as much as we might those other characters. In an interview I saw with the author, she expressed a real liking for New Phyrexia, and I hope she gets assigned to write the stories next time we go there. Here, her achievement is to give us a bunch of vampires I would like to see wiped out even more than the ones from Twilight. I guess that's an achievement?
Clicked on the article, started to read it, didn’t finish.
I’m just not into Vivien.
Green has been said to be one of the hardest colours to empathize with and write. Yet I’m finding that I prefer Amonkhet Nissa, Garruk, Ajani or Xenagos over her.
Dunno.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Wizards. listen. The Vorthos community will await the consequences of the Eldrazi Titans' deaths/sealing. We will keep the watch.
“The wind whispers, ‘come home,’ but I cannot.”
— Teferi
Just curious if we've ever seen ANY character crack under torture? I mean that's what is endearing about theon greyjoy is his struggle and conflict even after the physical torture stops. I guess Tezz tortured Jace, but Jace has had zero ramifications from it really. I don't like how "tough" they've made her, it cheapens a character when they can take the most brutal of physical assaults and walk off saying "I hurt before when I lost my [thing held dear], this is nothing." That's not a compelling character, that's superman being bulletproof.
Her asking for the arkbow is like Nissa saying Ashaya over and over again like everyone else has mentioned. I'm going to echo the concern over repetition here.
Still have no clue why bolas a) went to skalla b) let Vivian live c) destroyed skalla. Maybe he took the army there first for something and destroyed it and she walked soon after amonkhet from skalla to ixalan? Who knows, we have no time reference at any point to try and weave this story in with the ixalan/universal story.
Just curious if we've ever seen ANY character crack under torture? I mean that's what is endearing about theon greyjoy is his struggle and conflict even after the physical torture stops. I guess Tezz tortured Jace, but Jace has had zero ramifications from it really.
Most of Ixalan was exploring the effects the trauma Tezzeret had caused Jace. They even point out in the story and shown with Jace, Cunning Castaway and Jace, Ingenious Mind-Mage, he still has his right glove because that is where one of the scares from the torture is and even in his memory lost state he didn't want to look at it.
I think the point of that was to show for Vivien traditional torture didn't work, what was ******* her up was when she was left alone in the palace room with her thoughts. Very green too, physically tough but her mind is the weak point.
This is post Mending right when Bolas cracks Skalla? I am surprised he can still nuke a plane quite frankly.
That was the whole point of him absorbing the maelstrom on Alara, which he was going to destroy to flex his new muscles, to get a degree of his old power back.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
From the sneak peak/interview with the author she mentions it hasn't been very long since Skalla was destroyed and this seems to be set present day or close to present day, since it looks like we are Ixalan after the Sun was taken, so post conflux seems right.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
I preferred Vivien's character in the flavor texts where she acts like Planeswalker Steve Irwin (Gigantosaurus, Bogstomper) rather than here. The FT shows a side of Green that we've yet to see, and having Vivien be another "Civilization bad, SMASH" is not really that fun to me.
From the sneak peak/interview with the author she mentions it hasn't been very long since Skalla was destroyed and this seems to be set present day or close to present day, since it looks like we are Ixalan after the Sun was taken, so post conflux seems right.
Wouldn't this imply that Skalla was destroyed post-Mending? Where would Bolas draw the power to destroy an entire plane after the Mending? He needed to rush as his power was diminishing to defeat the Amonkhet God's and create his new society. This tells me he doesn't have planes-destroying power anymore.
The Skalla timeline is a bit messy to me.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Kumena was a minor foe who was quickly tossed out of the pyramid.
Xenagos fair enough but he is not Mono Green.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/unbowed-part-2-2018-09-05
-So seems like not just anyone can use the bow since the animals will attack the user or they can't seem to have the animal fully manifest.
-Huh I wonder who the Baron has met? Angrath?
-Dang the vampires torture is rough...and they sew the nuns mouths shut D: Cassandra Khaw is really showing her horror skills.
-All the nopes on the vivisection.
-So we do learn that the Arkbow was made for Vivien herself and that is seems like it take her kind of magic to use it properly. And the story does hint she dose have some beast master kind of magic.
-And then the story ends...huh ok. Short one this week and it was okay. Very slow moving plot but a nice way to have some exposition moments that felt natural. I'd be more disappointed if we weren't getting part 3 Friday.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Story just feels like a mess. Considering the earlier Core story, this is landing on me like mud. I haven't felt this way about an MtG story article in quite some time.
Actually, I just read Cassandra Khaw's bio on the main site, and apparently the most she's done is video game script writing, which I now totally see in her writing. When you go from creating skeletons for dialog to an actual storytelling approach, I think there's a lot of descriptive process that someone like Khaw might be lacking. I definitely hold it less against her now, and more on WotC for taking someone who doesn't write stories and hire her to write their stories.
Vanpire society is twisted, but you end up in a situation where you have to ask if it's any worse than alternatives. Yeah, they drink people's blood, but they specifically don't kill them, and the response to the guy claiming he wanted to leave wasn't threatening violence or imprisonment, but saying "Yeah, you won't leave, because if you did you'd actually have to work rather than selling us your blood." Those human sailors sure seemed happy to get home in the first story, just saying. Mortal nobles would be asking for a lot more in terms of agricultural product than would be required to replace the blood the vamps take.
The whole thing has been too simplistic, and pretty dumb. Ixalan sucked from a story perspective. The concepts were cool but terribly executed, and the quality of the relationship between Jace and Vraska helped mask the problems with the plane. This is the first time I've ever said that the focus on the Planeswalkers was a good thing. Without Jace and Vraska, Captain Capslock is the high point of the story. Otherwise you have the bland warrior poet, tag team one note vampires, some pirate tropes, and a villain whose weakness is windows. Oh, and a rigged Geo cache contest.
And damn does creative have a problem writing mono green charcters. Vivien is at least more interesting than Nissa, but they come off as so one note. It's all "nature good, everything else bad" and "look at me, I'm so special, im a loner, I've suffered at the hands of society." We've seen different flavors of red, of black, of blue, and of white. We've seen those colors approach their philosophy from different perspectives. But green, green is always the same, and done poorly at that. Green is right now sitting in the same spot that Jace was in at his worst, grating, cliche, unsympathetic, and fake.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
The body horror descriptions are particularly effective, and I'd nominate Cassandra Khaw to write the stories for New New Phyrexia (or Scars of Scars of Mirrodin, whatever they call it). Highly intellectualized clinical violence seems to be her strong suit.
Still unsure why Vivien can't planeswalk out of captivity and then come back to the plane. It seemed that maybe the round white cell was impeding her -- but what about the second cell? Ah well, it's a common plot hole in these things. Or maybe this is pre-Ixaln block, and she can't, who knows. It would stand to reason that Angrath wouldn't have been the only walker to get trapped on the plane during the past few post-Mending years.
But there is a structural problem here: any captivity/torture story really tends to deprive the protagonist of anything interesting to do. From a plot standpoint, nothing would have been lost from making the whole torture process one sentence long and cutting straight to the vivisection party scene. And honestly, we don't develop Vivien's character much here either: all we find out is that (a) she's very tough, and won't break under extreme physical torture; (b) she really wants the Arkbow back (not much of a revelation); (c) she's easily bored while alone; and (d) it doesn't occur to her to planeswalk away (again, supposing that this is after the Ixalan block story and not beforehand).
She gets much more interesting in the final scene, where she seems to begin figuring out how to play Luneau's social game back against the Baron. Her cleverness here seems to be a shift from her previous seeming naivete. I'm looking forward to seeing how chapter three plays out.
Whoa, don't take a shot at Nabokov! And it's important to make a distinction between high-brow language, and language masquerading as high-brow. The writing style is reminiscent of a high school graduate trying to impress their first literature professor. To the student, the words seem profound and intellectual because they are new words to them and correspond to their own new maturity, and they're making the effort to show off their ability. To the professor, it's obvious what the student is doing, the red pen is lifted, and at least 1/3 of the words are crossed out and much nose-bride-pinching commences. Wordiness and flowery language do not rise to the level of high-brow. If we make that concession, high-brow writing will lose its meaning!
Though I will agree that a planeswalker who seems so forest/nature-centered really clashes with the voice of these stories.
https://i.imgur.com/cjwQn6v.gif
But on a serious note, sure, she can write violence and gore, but the last thing I need, as someone who needs a return to New Phyrexia like I need oxygen, is this kind of writing on New Phyrexia. "Elesh Norn, her enameled plates white like the last petal of the last white rose of what once was Mirrodin, her red flesh reminiscent of red fish gills from planes she never knew, inclined her head ever so slightly, yet not slightly enough, to regard with her blank marble wall stare the Phyrexian who now approached her in abject supplication. 'I will not tolerate dissent!,' she growled like a hungry dragon, but her voice was sultry and salacious." Blech! Give this author an editor and a mentor, and maybe in while I'd agree. But until then, I cannot!
Above said it perfectly, using big words does not make it high brow. It just leaves me with a negative impression of someone trying to hard. It still has to be fluid writing and some of this is jarring and stilted,
Didnt really get to much here, The third chapter is the last? And someone mentioned it will be on Friday?
We shall see then I guess,
However, it's hard to like a character who popped out of no where, suddenly acting out the protagonist role, with so little information. Normally you should give some background (the intriguing parts) of a new character so readers would be enticed to know more. In other words, the character should be at least intriguing even people outside of MtG community would fall for without knowing terms like PW, Vivien and Skalla are just too vague at this point. If you can't like a character, you'd also be indifferent towards her origin and action. For someone who bears the entire legacy of Skalla, Vivien was too willing to dive into overwhelming challenge, and how could her deem this as a "good death" when her failure erases Skalla forever?
And shouldn't Vivien attempt to planeswalk in these two chapters at least once? We're uncertain if this is before or after Immortal Sun, but she didn't even bother teleporting once, it would've at least shift her out of her bondage, no?
I like Cassandra's style, it paints vivid picture in my head with her accurate description, comparison, and physical stimuli. As Trinite0 said, I'd vote Cassandra to write for Phyrexia related stories as well. Once again, I think the agenda WotC bestowed on writers might not have been entirely fair, asking them to create a certain "ending" without enough time to flush out the character. The vampires were great, since they are minor and had earned their due, Vivien being major character deserve more layout.
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest WUR Voltron Control
Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun WU Unblockable Mirror Trickery
Ra's al Ghul (Sidar Kondo) and Face-Down Ninjas
Brudiclad, Token Engineer
Vaevictis (VV2) the Dire Lantern
Rona, Disciple of Gix
Tiana the Auror
Hallar
Ulrich the Politician
Zur the Rebel
Scorpion, Locust, Scarab, Egyptian Gods
O-Kagachi, Mathas, Mairsil
"Non-Tribal" Tribal Generals, Eggs
I agree with most of this. I'd also say that this story could have benefitted greatly from flashbacks. While undergoing torture, instead of the repetitive Skalla refrain, we could have been shown a scene of her life there, something to really drive home the loss. It's easy to write gore and violence; it's harder to write something that really strums emotional strings.
And indeed, it seems kind of out of character (based on the little character development we've had) for Vivien to risk the last bit of Skalla to teach a lesson. In Man of Steel, it took the risk of losing the entire planet Earth for Superman to sacrifice the future of Krypton. Vivien's actions present a strange disregard for the 'future' of Skalla.
And? Vorinclex is pretty much a commentary on how evil Green can be, just like Elesh Norn is for White. As you say, Urabrask and Red are sympathetic.
Xenagos is part Red due to his hedonism and anger, but his core motivations are very Green. He feels that the system of Theros is unnatural and tries to go all Ronaldo, except with more broken skulls.
I say he thinks the system is Unfair and thus his motivation is Red. That is Debatable.
I also have to echo what everyone else has said: Why doesn't Vivien try to planeswalk away? Sure, she wants the Arkbow, but if she was able to planeswalk, she could "flicker back" immediately and catch the vampires off guard.
I’m just not into Vivien.
Green has been said to be one of the hardest colours to empathize with and write. Yet I’m finding that I prefer Amonkhet Nissa, Garruk, Ajani or Xenagos over her.
Dunno.
The Vorthos community will await the consequences of the Eldrazi Titans' deaths/sealing. We will keep the watch.
“The wind whispers, ‘come home,’ but I cannot.”
— Teferi
Her asking for the arkbow is like Nissa saying Ashaya over and over again like everyone else has mentioned. I'm going to echo the concern over repetition here.
Still have no clue why bolas a) went to skalla b) let Vivian live c) destroyed skalla. Maybe he took the army there first for something and destroyed it and she walked soon after amonkhet from skalla to ixalan? Who knows, we have no time reference at any point to try and weave this story in with the ixalan/universal story.
meh.
I mean I guess it has to be since Vivian aint an Oldwalker and Bolas spent quite a bit time off the map.
Most of Ixalan was exploring the effects the trauma Tezzeret had caused Jace. They even point out in the story and shown with Jace, Cunning Castaway and Jace, Ingenious Mind-Mage, he still has his right glove because that is where one of the scares from the torture is and even in his memory lost state he didn't want to look at it.
I think the point of that was to show for Vivien traditional torture didn't work, what was ******* her up was when she was left alone in the palace room with her thoughts. Very green too, physically tough but her mind is the weak point.
That was the whole point of him absorbing the maelstrom on Alara, which he was going to destroy to flex his new muscles, to get a degree of his old power back.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
From the sneak peak/interview with the author she mentions it hasn't been very long since Skalla was destroyed and this seems to be set present day or close to present day, since it looks like we are Ixalan after the Sun was taken, so post conflux seems right.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
----------------------------
Club Flamingo Wins: 10
----------------------------
EDH Decks
BG Vicious Varolz | RW Jor Kadeen, the Mean Machine | RG Atarka: Muh_Dragons.dec (WIP) | WU Brago, Blink Eternal (WIP)
----------------------------
Wouldn't this imply that Skalla was destroyed post-Mending? Where would Bolas draw the power to destroy an entire plane after the Mending? He needed to rush as his power was diminishing to defeat the Amonkhet God's and create his new society. This tells me he doesn't have planes-destroying power anymore.
The Skalla timeline is a bit messy to me.