
- Trinite0
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Member for 5 years, 2 months, and 8 days
Last active Thu, May, 30 2019 08:31:44
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Sep 28, 2017Trinite0 posted a message on Who is the Raven Man?Transform card, maybe?Posted in: Articles
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Sep 27, 2017Trinite0 posted a message on Who is the Raven Man?Great write-up. I've been an advocate of the Lim-Dul theory for a long time, but this is far more evidence than I've ever seen before for it. I'm really hoping that the Dominaria set gives us the big reveal. It would be a fabulous payoff for all of us old-time Vorthoses.Posted in: Articles
I'm especially intrigued by the possible connection between Lim-Dul and Nicol Bolas's army of Eternals. I could certainly see Bolas making a deal with Lim-Dul to open the way for him to dominate his host in exchange for the promise of service as a general. And Bolas was brokering those demonic pacts fairly soon after he first set up his plan for Amonkhet, too...
Do we know the time period for Liliana's initial meeting with the Raven Man and planeswalker ascension? Could it have been during or immediately after the last time Lim-Dul was known to be active on Dominaria? - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
My major beef with the Vault right now is that the progression in both invisible, and so slow as to be imperceptible in its effect, so that right now it feels as though it doesn't even exist. So it's not serving its psychological purpose of offsetting the frustration of opening duplicates at all. Even if all we could see is some tiny little icon that tells us that the duplicates are doing *something*, that would be better than the current system.
I'm very much in favor of these developments, and feeling quite optimistic!
I probably won't read the novel, because I generally don't find novel-length MTG stories worthwhile, though Greg Weisman is a pretty strong draw for me. But I'm still not worried about not being able to get the whole plot without reading the novel; that's what wiki pages and outlines are for. I've never read any of the old novels (with the exception of Lorwyn, which was garbage), but I'm quite happy with the degree to which I've absorbed the old stories. I'm never gonna be at Jay13x's level (congratulations, Jay!), but I'm still a happy Vorthos.
While I definitely think this set of stories wasn't as good as Kate Elliott's Bolas story, I still think Wizards is on the right track. Despite agreeing with the legitimate criticism of some of the florid overindulgence of the prose style, I'm still happy to read stories with a singular, identifiable authorial voice. It's certainly better than the pre-Dominaria "story team" pieces, in which several writers with obviously varying capabilities were patching together stories with no evident editing passes.
There are still structural problems:
I've been defending the writing style, but by this chapter was wearing thin on me, too. Stuff like:
So now the shamans of Skalla talk like Azorius lawyers, I guess.
And:
I certainly hope they're deliberately pitching her as a villain, because that's certainly what this bit of dialogue does. I don't know if she's quoting Nicol Bolas or someone else, But it's something he certainly might say (with a bit of a G twist).
That being said, I'm down for non-heroic neo-walkers, and even a return to walkers in general being almost bad guys by default. But I'd rather they come off as smart and reflective, even in their villainy, rather than monomaniacal and kinda dumb.
I also agree with Lord Mektar above, that Vivien's personality and behavior come off as more R in nature, or RG. She seems to really enjoy watching violence, and has more regard for raw power than natural order.
But hey, I guess when you manage to use your -8 Ult, it feels pretty good to swing with everything.
Bolas is gonna go all Darth Vader and reveal that he's Niv's father, I've been tellin' ya!
Then Niv's gonna find out what the B in UBR means when daddy Bolas stabs him in the back.
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.
There are still some remaining structural problems with the story chapters, mostly due to their fundamental format. I think that each chapter is generally a bit too long, and it often seems like each one is required to have an action scene whether it makes sense or not. A higher number of shorter chapters would be easier to write, I think, and they should allow authors more leeway to explore varied dramatic content (IMHO the best parts of the Dominaria story were the side-character chapters that weren't obligated to advance the main plot).
Overall, though, it's a huge step in the right direction, and I would me more than happy to have lots of future stories in this mold.
Yes, anti-civilization nature heroes can be a tiresome trope, hopefully Vivien doesn't get stuck too hard inside that box. That said, if you want to make such a hero sympathetic, this is a good way to do it. Have the "civilization" in question be pretty horrid and disgusting. And shout out to Cassandra Khaw for knocking that one out of the park! Pay attention, Wizards: if you want people to hate your vampire conquistadors, write 'em like this. The historically-inspired animal cruelty was highly effective in creating revulsion against them.
Maybe a little too effective, though. In this story, Vivien comes off as pretty immature and passive, what with all the waiting around and wallowing in internal disgust before taking any action. I'm not quite sure why seeing the starved monstrosaur was enough to push her over the edge, and not any one of the dozens of other awful things she'd already seen. There's also the unanswered question of what she's doing on Ixalan in the first place, which I hope we find out more about in the coming chapters. And it will be interesting to see her in a more balanced, sustainable civilizational situation, like among the Selesnya on Ravnica.