Re: Bezenlok's whole "readying Dominaria for it's one true master" thing...I'm surprised no one seems to have thought of "Dominaria's one true master" being...Belzenlok. Not that he is LITERALLY Dominaria's one true master (obvi, that's Bolas, duh...), but the dude is re-writing all KINDS of history, inserting himself into all sorts of stories and making himself the ONE TRUE EVIL FORCE in all of Dominaria's history. He's a Demon...I don't think it takes a leap of logic to think that he has no greater master than his own pride. I mean, sure, Bolas and yaddayaddayadda, but...just because he KNOWS Bolas, doesn't mean Bolas is his master. And from what we've seen so far, he doesn't seem the sort of demon to bow and scrape. Not when he can make himself seem badder and scarier than he perhaps actually is, thanks to his dementia magic using cleric/assassin/necromancer frat bros...
The number 3 could also be a clue as to Ugin's involvement. The latest story, with it's reference to a "Winged being" taking the Sun and hiding it away just makes me buy into that more, but the fact that a number that directly ties to Ugin's most famous quote is a nice added touch. "Remember, they came as three..."
So, my vote is not Eldrazi, but just an extra, "Didja get it!?" reference to Ugin. I think the Sun was a early run at trapping the Eldrazi. Hell, maybe Ixalan is a world that the Eldrazi 'renovated', Ugin tried to trap them, but when it didn't work, he left to look for other solutions...
Since I like the theory that the purpose of the Trials and the whole...'death is winning!!' atmosphere of Amonkhet in general is that Bolas is building an army of Planeswalkers loyal to him in sort of a Planeswalker Puppy Mill (tm), I vote that they've found a way to trigger a Legendary Creature's Spark to Planeswalker-dom, some kind of emblem-like effect effect that hits a Legendary, and adds one or two Planeswalker powers to it or something along that line.
For me, it's just...life...that made me decide that Christianity wasn't for me.
I was born into an observant Baptist family. We weren't SOUTHERN Baptists, so we didn't think that civil rights were just about a bunch of uppity black folk not knowing their place, but we were pretty conservative. My folks were very stern, 'spare the rod, spoil the child' believers who never hesitated to exact their pound of flesh for whatever youthful indiscretion I might commit. I still have scars to this day - I'm approaching 40 - from those early days of regular beatings and Bible study. They were also the sort who never let me watch things like HE-MAN or even THUNDERCATS because of the 'occult influences!' that might corrupt me and make me turn to Satan.
To make matters worse, I knew from a very early age that I was gay...and I also knew that being gay was the worst thing a person could be. AIDS was just becoming a big deal when I was in Junior High, and I heard regularly from pastors and clergy (but never my family itself, thankfully) about how it was 'a punishment from God', or that being gay meant I just wasn't praying hard enough, or the right way. This constant barrage of 'sin!', 'punishment!', 'Eternal HELLFIRE!!!' and so on wore me down to the point where I had tried to end my life twice by the time I was 13, once with pills, once by hanging. I was TERRIFIED of being sent to a 're-education camp' - which were just starting to get widely publicized in terms of their 'theraputic practices'. I KNEW I was a disgusting abomination to God, that my 'urges' were going to lead me to hell anyway, so I may as well put a capper on things by way of suicide - since I was going to Hell in the first place - and remove the stress of having a '*******' for a son from my family. Obviously, that didn't work out, because here I am.
When I entered high school, I was sent to a private Christian school run by members of my family's church. While I didn't suffer from the stereotypical hazing and abuse that seem to be common among gay teenagers at the time, that was because I was smart enough to align myself with the prettiest girls at school - the ones the jocks all fought for...which meant that they also looked out for me, to impress the girls. So while my PERSONAL experience in high school wasn't terrible, I was becoming more and more aware that there was something DEEPLY wrong with the state of the faith. We were taught in science class that the world was 6000 years old, which was easily proven by studying the accumulation of dust on the moon. This 'theory' (I use the term generously) was disproven in the 70's, yet was being taught as FACT in the early 90's by Christians. We were ALSO told that we were being groomed for a war in which we, as Christians, would stealthily insert ourselves into positions of authority - school boards, medical facilities, military, and politics, particularly - so that we could ensure that America came to heel and served God OUR way.
Torture? LIES being taught as fact to impressionable minds? Infiltration and coercion? Conquest by deceit and conspiracy? Even as a teenager, that seemed to be...very counter to the teachings of the man whose teachings we supposedly followed. So I started doing some reading. I read the Bible...I read apologetics. And I read critics. What struck me most during that period of questioning was how often the CRITICS of Christianity understood the TENETS of Christianity FAR better than the people clumsily trying to defend the errors and contradictions with bad and/or lazy argument styles. I studied debate, and through that, discovered still MORE ways that Christian apologetics and fundamentalists muddied the water about EVERYTHING. Science, sexuality, evolution, abortion...EVERYTHING they stood against...they stood against because of BAD arguments and defended those arguments with lies and distortions.
I finally quit going to church at 16, preferring to spend more time with my aging grandparents and great aunts because I couldn't pretend to follow the teachings of a church I no longer believed in. Over the years, I've gone from indifferent about Christianity, to angry about it, to indifferent again. There's a lot to LIKE about the teachings of Christ as a philosopher, but I simply cannot believe in the more...mystical mumbo-jumbo that comes with it. And I cannot STAND the fundamentalist Christian who ignores reality in favor of a corruption of faith that he's blind to, because it gives him permission to hate the people he doesn't understand.
All of this is a long way of explaining that I became aware of the corruption in the faith a long time ago. What might once have been a faith of, by and for the downtrodden and neglected has become the faith that steps on the downtrodden and neglects the 'undesirable'. It's ceased to be a religion of love and hope and become a religion of hate and fear, stoking a civil war the likes of which we've seen before - in Iran, most specifically, where religious zealots turned a swinging, modern place like 60's-70's Baghdad into the repressed hellhole we're all more familiar with today. The religions may be different, but the goals are the same - everything will come under OUR rule, and everything that doesn't learn it's place in the new age is sinful and must be destroyed.
That said, there are MANY people of faith who do NOT fall for this deceit, and so, while I dislike Christianity as a whole because of what the fundamentalist extremists have turned it into, I do not hold anyone's faith against them outright. Then, I'd be no better than the people I can't stand.
Wrong company, but....here's my vote! He's even a Planeswalker of sorts (in that he's traveled multiple planes of existence and back) and I don't think anyone can deny that he's black-aligned...but he saved the multiverse and became the god-king of all the survivors recently:
Thank you so much for clearing that up! I still feel they could retcon her to a Faerie at this point, but...at least there's a canonical reason for it! Have we ever seen any other Eumidians in card form?
So, not sure if this is the right forum for this, but as a long-time lurker, I was hoping SOMEONE would have an answer to this...
Why is Xira Arien an Insect, and not a Faerie? Sure, she has insectile features, but...so do Faeries, particularly Llorwyn/Shadowmoor Faeries. She wears clothes, she uses magic, her flavor text refers to 'court'...but she's an insect. It's a minor annoyance, I know, and likely no one else has been bugged (if you'll pardon the pun) by this, but every time I look at her card, I think 'Faerie'. Can anyone clear it up for me? Has she ever appeared in any canon storyline or source that can shed some light on this?
Maybe it's just me, but I don't see anything of "Predator" in the new Sliver designs...I see "Species".
I mean, the Predatory Sliver art looks JUST like the Male alien in Species 2, and Steelform Sliver looks like so much like Sil it's shocking to me that no one else seems to have made the connection...maybe I'm mistaken, but hey, 108 pages to go through, I'm bound to miss something.
My favorite Magic card would have to be a classic: the Sliver Queen. The very first pack of cards that I ever bought with my own money had that old girl in it, and cemented a love of Slivers that has persisted even through the weird Species-esque new Slivers.
So, my vote is not Eldrazi, but just an extra, "Didja get it!?" reference to Ugin. I think the Sun was a early run at trapping the Eldrazi. Hell, maybe Ixalan is a world that the Eldrazi 'renovated', Ugin tried to trap them, but when it didn't work, he left to look for other solutions...
I was born into an observant Baptist family. We weren't SOUTHERN Baptists, so we didn't think that civil rights were just about a bunch of uppity black folk not knowing their place, but we were pretty conservative. My folks were very stern, 'spare the rod, spoil the child' believers who never hesitated to exact their pound of flesh for whatever youthful indiscretion I might commit. I still have scars to this day - I'm approaching 40 - from those early days of regular beatings and Bible study. They were also the sort who never let me watch things like HE-MAN or even THUNDERCATS because of the 'occult influences!' that might corrupt me and make me turn to Satan.
To make matters worse, I knew from a very early age that I was gay...and I also knew that being gay was the worst thing a person could be. AIDS was just becoming a big deal when I was in Junior High, and I heard regularly from pastors and clergy (but never my family itself, thankfully) about how it was 'a punishment from God', or that being gay meant I just wasn't praying hard enough, or the right way. This constant barrage of 'sin!', 'punishment!', 'Eternal HELLFIRE!!!' and so on wore me down to the point where I had tried to end my life twice by the time I was 13, once with pills, once by hanging. I was TERRIFIED of being sent to a 're-education camp' - which were just starting to get widely publicized in terms of their 'theraputic practices'. I KNEW I was a disgusting abomination to God, that my 'urges' were going to lead me to hell anyway, so I may as well put a capper on things by way of suicide - since I was going to Hell in the first place - and remove the stress of having a '*******' for a son from my family. Obviously, that didn't work out, because here I am.
When I entered high school, I was sent to a private Christian school run by members of my family's church. While I didn't suffer from the stereotypical hazing and abuse that seem to be common among gay teenagers at the time, that was because I was smart enough to align myself with the prettiest girls at school - the ones the jocks all fought for...which meant that they also looked out for me, to impress the girls. So while my PERSONAL experience in high school wasn't terrible, I was becoming more and more aware that there was something DEEPLY wrong with the state of the faith. We were taught in science class that the world was 6000 years old, which was easily proven by studying the accumulation of dust on the moon. This 'theory' (I use the term generously) was disproven in the 70's, yet was being taught as FACT in the early 90's by Christians. We were ALSO told that we were being groomed for a war in which we, as Christians, would stealthily insert ourselves into positions of authority - school boards, medical facilities, military, and politics, particularly - so that we could ensure that America came to heel and served God OUR way.
Torture? LIES being taught as fact to impressionable minds? Infiltration and coercion? Conquest by deceit and conspiracy? Even as a teenager, that seemed to be...very counter to the teachings of the man whose teachings we supposedly followed. So I started doing some reading. I read the Bible...I read apologetics. And I read critics. What struck me most during that period of questioning was how often the CRITICS of Christianity understood the TENETS of Christianity FAR better than the people clumsily trying to defend the errors and contradictions with bad and/or lazy argument styles. I studied debate, and through that, discovered still MORE ways that Christian apologetics and fundamentalists muddied the water about EVERYTHING. Science, sexuality, evolution, abortion...EVERYTHING they stood against...they stood against because of BAD arguments and defended those arguments with lies and distortions.
I finally quit going to church at 16, preferring to spend more time with my aging grandparents and great aunts because I couldn't pretend to follow the teachings of a church I no longer believed in. Over the years, I've gone from indifferent about Christianity, to angry about it, to indifferent again. There's a lot to LIKE about the teachings of Christ as a philosopher, but I simply cannot believe in the more...mystical mumbo-jumbo that comes with it. And I cannot STAND the fundamentalist Christian who ignores reality in favor of a corruption of faith that he's blind to, because it gives him permission to hate the people he doesn't understand.
All of this is a long way of explaining that I became aware of the corruption in the faith a long time ago. What might once have been a faith of, by and for the downtrodden and neglected has become the faith that steps on the downtrodden and neglects the 'undesirable'. It's ceased to be a religion of love and hope and become a religion of hate and fear, stoking a civil war the likes of which we've seen before - in Iran, most specifically, where religious zealots turned a swinging, modern place like 60's-70's Baghdad into the repressed hellhole we're all more familiar with today. The religions may be different, but the goals are the same - everything will come under OUR rule, and everything that doesn't learn it's place in the new age is sinful and must be destroyed.
That said, there are MANY people of faith who do NOT fall for this deceit, and so, while I dislike Christianity as a whole because of what the fundamentalist extremists have turned it into, I do not hold anyone's faith against them outright. Then, I'd be no better than the people I can't stand.
Why is Xira Arien an Insect, and not a Faerie? Sure, she has insectile features, but...so do Faeries, particularly Llorwyn/Shadowmoor Faeries. She wears clothes, she uses magic, her flavor text refers to 'court'...but she's an insect. It's a minor annoyance, I know, and likely no one else has been bugged (if you'll pardon the pun) by this, but every time I look at her card, I think 'Faerie'. Can anyone clear it up for me? Has she ever appeared in any canon storyline or source that can shed some light on this?
I mean, the Predatory Sliver art looks JUST like the Male alien in Species 2, and Steelform Sliver looks like so much like Sil it's shocking to me that no one else seems to have made the connection...maybe I'm mistaken, but hey, 108 pages to go through, I'm bound to miss something.