92 posts
Latest Posts by hedgeiii - Page 2
An excellent sentiment.
Admittedly, I will have to watch carefully with a few of my own family members to be sure I don't fall into this.
official elon musk hate post reblog to hate like to hate reply to hate
Highlighting this bit, but the whole thing is amazing. Another killer from Rosewater.
"But why are we “making it the forefront of their character”? We’re not. We’re making it a part of their character. But in a world where you’re not used to ever seeing it, it feels louder than it is. Things that are a natural part of the world that you’re used to feel like the background of the story because you understand the context to it."
I want to speak out against the whole push towards DEI. I feel that ever since you made the push to make identity the forefront of a character it has hurt the stories you tell. Captain Sisay's race was never the focus of her character and she was a complete badass! And I fear if you did it over again Gerrard would be trans, black and disabled just because. It also cheapens the stories of world devastation when characters worry more about their gender than Bolas destroying everything.
The reason I started this blog is so we can have frank conversations about things, so please let’s talk about this.
Imagine if every time you turned on the TV or watched a movie, no one looked like you. For some of us, that’s never happened. We see ourselves constantly, so it’s hard to truly understand what not seeing yourself represented in media is like.
I do have a personal window to this experience. While I am white and male, there’s an area where I am the minority - my religion. Jews are just under two and a half percent of the US population. I have had many experiences where I’ve been in situations where everything is geared towards a group I do not belong to, and zero consideration is given that not everyone at that event is part of the majority.
You just feel invisible and like an outsider. It’s not a great feeling. And I just experience it a tiny portion of time, only things that are geared specifically towards something religious. Most minorities have this feeling all the time, whenever they’re outside their personal community.
Now imagine, after years of not seeing yourself ever, you finally see someone that looks like you, but nothing about the character rings remotely true. They don’t sound like you, they don’t act like you, the facts about their day-to-day life are just wrong. It’s clear whoever wrote the character didn’t truly understand the lived experience of the character, so the character feels fake.
You bring up Sisay. Michael Ryan and I didn’t technically create Sisay (she played a small role in the Mirage story), but we did do a lot to flesh out her character as the creators of the Weatherlight Saga. We turned her from a minor character into a major one.
And while I’m proud, in general, of our work on the Weatherlight Saga, I don’t think we did justice to Sisay as a character. Neither Michael nor I have any knowledge of what it’s like to be a black woman. Nor did we ever talk to someone who did.
And if you’re someone like us that has no knowledge of that experience, you probably didn’t notice. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.
Imagine if we made a movie about your life, and we just made everything up. We invented people you never knew, we gave you a job you never had, and we had you say things you’d never say. The movie might even be a good movie, but your response would be, but that’s not my life - that’s not me.
Now imagine we put the movie out, and people that never met you assumed that was what you were like. When people met you for the first time, they assumed things, because, you know, they’d seen the movie.
That’s what misrepresenting people does. It not only makes them feel not seen, it falsely represents them, spreading lies, often stereotypes, making people believe things about them that aren’t true.
Our move towards diversity is just us trying to better reflect the world and the people in it. We’re trying to do to everyone else what a certain portion of people get every day without ever having to think about it.
But why are we “making it the forefront of their character”? We’re not. We’re making it a part of their character. But in a world where you’re not used to ever seeing it, it feels louder than it is. Things that are a natural part of the world that you’re used to feel like the background of the story because you understand the context to it.
If a man kisses his wife before going off to a battle, that’s not a big deal. It’s just a thing a husband might do to his wife when he leaves. It’s not the forefront of his character. It’s just part of his life. But you’ve seen it hundreds of times, so it feels normal.
When someone does something that isn’t your lived experience it pulls focus. It seems like a big deal, but only because it’s new to you. It’s just as mundane a thing to that character as the man kissing his wife is to him.
Even the turn “pushing” implies that it’s unnaturally here, that we’re forcing something that naturally shouldn’t be. But why? That thing exists naturally in the real world, and it doesn’t make the real world any less. Maybe you’re less aware of it, but is making you aware of how others live their life “pushing” something on you?
How you live your life is represented constantly, everywhere. Why isn’t over-representing your experience at the expense of everyone else’s “pushing” it? Why is media only being the experience of those in power the “proper way”?
Having more depth and variety doesn’t lessen stories. It makes them deeper, more rich, more nuanced. In short, it makes them better stories. In my former life, I was a professional writer. I took a lot of writing classes. One of the truism of writing is “speaking truth leads to better stories”.
There’s another famous quote: “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” You’re used to being over-represented, so being a little less over-represented feels like something has been taken from you. But really it hasn’t. Having a better sense of the rest of the world comes with a lot of benefits.
I’ll use food as an example. Let’s say all you were ever exposed to was the food of your heritage. Yeah, that food is really good, but sometimes isn’t it nice to eat foods of other nationalities? Isn’t your life better that you have a choice? Isn’t your exposure and access to the food of other nationalities a positive in your life?
Exposure to variety is a positive. It allows you to learn about things you didn’t know, experience things things you’ve never experienced, and get a better sense of understanding of your friends and neighbors.
Our actions are not to harm anyone, and if you think that’s what we’re doing, please take a minute to actually absorb what I’m saying. You’ve spent your whole life metaphorically eating one type of food, and we’re just trying to show you how much you’ve missed out on.
And while this might not impact you directly, we’re making a whole bunch of people felt seen. We’re bringing joy. Think of it this way. We make a lot of cards. Not every card is for you. But if it makes someone else happy, if they get to include it in a deck, and it makes Magic better for them, how is it harming you that we include it? You have so many cards that you can play.
To this poster or people that share their viewpoint, the narrative that a gain for someone else is an attack on you is just not true. As I just pointed out above, you play a game all about personal choice, about players getting to choose how they play and enjoy the game. Why should life be any different than Magic?
Thanks for reading.
Maro, as a straight white old guy who’s been playing since The Dark, I wanted to thank you and everyone else making Magic for the diversity and inclusion on the cards. Characters like Ral, Nissa, Nico, Daretti, and others mean a great deal to other players (and for me they are just great characters), please continue to show everyone how much variety the multiverse has room for.
We have no plans to change that. Some of us still recognize that diversity, equality, and inclusion are good and valuable things.
Whatever minor design disagreements I occasionally have with him, Rosewater will always be one of my favorite people, as both a designer AND human person.
Im really torn between the fact that my favorite set of all time Will be seeing the light of the day again ( lorwyn) and my gut feelings of how It Will be fucked up by the new superbland mediocre art style and the real world politic agenda ( not so) subtly pushed in late sets, in a CARD GAME. We want to see stories of faeries, kithkins, elves, goblins, Giants,merfolk and cinders in their beautiful fantasy setting, no trans they/them faeries that think they're kithkins
Two points:
1) When returning to a world, we’re very cognizant of the aesthetic of the world. We understand returning to Lorwyn requires embracing what made people love it the first time around. Obviously, there will be updates, as the game has evolved much since our first visit, but we’re very aware of the need to recapture the plane’s essence.
2) For far too long, fantasy, as a genre, was used as a way to reflect the worldview of those in power. It leaned into stereotype and reflected how the privileged wished the world was. Modern fantasy is more reflective of the actual world, which includes the wide variety of life experiences that exists.
Trans people, people of color, and women playing a larger role, are all part of modern fantasy because they’re all part of the actual world, and it’s important that our stories and world building be reflective of that.
“I want to return to a time where we could ignore the existence of certain elements because I was happy living in that ignorance” is not an excuse to deny real people and their real life experiences.
Entertainment is at its best when it lifts everyone up and isn’t used as yet another means to ignore certain people’s reality.
Feb 4, 2025
Y'all we are down to the wire on "I hate vaccines and flouride, I love bird flu" RFK Jr's final appointment to Health and Human Services. 😬 I don’t want to panic anyone, so please quietly, calmly,
Contact your senators today so that someone sane will run HHS.
(Especially if you live in Alaska, Maine, Kentucky, or Louisiana!)
The Science and Families Engaging (SAFE) Communities Coalition has an easy call script and email template. Don’t worry abt what to say, it's not so much WHAT you say, it's HOW MANY of us say it.
Phone: Call the federal switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to your state’s senators.
Email form via SAFE: Click here.
We can oppose this appointment but it's going to take a LOT of us. Trump, Kennedy, and their organized masses are pressuring the Senators who have doubts. Those doubtful Senators just need a quick call from us to give them some backbone -- Let's remind them we exist!
WaPo:
The Senate finance panel vote Tuesday morning fell along party lines, with the panel’s 14 Republicans voting to confirm Kennedy and its 13 Democrats opposed. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), a physician who had been openly wrestling with whether to support one of the nation’s most prominent vaccine skeptics, opted to vote for Kennedy in a decision that could foreshadow the upcoming vote in front of the Senate.
NBC:
Previously, groups including Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit Kennedy founded, and the National Vaccine Information Center had organized supporters to flood Cassidy's office with calls and emails urging his support for the nomination.
At the one of Kennedy's confirmation hearings last week, Cassidy acknowledged that his phone was being “blown up” by Kennedy’s “tremendous following”
WaPo again:
[RFK Jr's] nomination now will advance to a vote before the full Senate, which has not yet been announced but is expected to be scheduled for next week. If Democrats unite in opposing Kennedy, he can afford only three GOP defections. Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) are viewed as pivotal swing votes, as is Sen. Mitch McConnell (Kentucky).
The final confirmation vote is expected next week. Don’t be silent.
Please folks, if you have even 3 minutes, do this thing. 🥹 For a healthier you, for the health of your friends and grandparents, for a regular boring everyday normal medical system where vaccines are just good practice.
Make the call to (202) 224-3121, or send the email. It's super easy.
And tell a friend to do the same.
Thank you so much for reading.
Psyched again for a follow up!
@ratyger
"If the focus is on the three worlds, there has to be a thematic (and mechanical) through line." Does the thematic have to allign and match between the worlds or can it be clashing thematics that work well together?
You want connective tissue. The different worlds can address the theme differently, but you need mechanical cohesion.
I'm psyched my question fueled another follow up. It makes me feel more seen. Thanks, @mythial-blog
"If the focus is on the three worlds, there has to be a thematic (and mechanical) through line." The mechanical throughline seems straightforward enough to figure out; but what constitutes a thematic throughline? Does it require a story event running through all 3 planes (as with aetherdrift) or could it be something simple like "The Big Monster Planes" covering Ikoria, Muraganda and Tarkir. Then again, saying that, a territory dispute between the multiverse's biggest beasts would be cool plot.
It has to have a thematic through line that can have a mechanical component. The story taking place on all three isn’t enough.
I know there needs be a through line. And racing is fine but not my favorite. I stand by my original ask, though, and I want racing / theme quieter and the worlds to be louder.
Thanks for agreeing, @portisleft !
Good afternoon! I agree with the asker who preferred the “three worlds” to “racing”. I’d love more travelogue sets with a heavier emphasis on the worlds (kind of like how alara was five worlds all together)
If the focus is on the three worlds, there has to be a thematic (and mechanical) through line.
I KNOW HOW MY FILTHY MUTANT ABILITIES UPSET YOU, SCHMIDT. DON’T WORRY–
–YOU WILL DIE PURE. NO MAGNETISM
JUST FISTS.
Idk, can't hurt.
This is an old favorite build-around card of mine. The mini game of Flailing Soldier (turn one, first player) is fascinating and wonderful test case for testing both new and established players regarding card and strategy priorities, resource commitment, resource saving, risk assessment, and I think a few more skills not hitting me at the moment.
Where on the storm scale is "any player may activate this ability" type abilities?
I’d call it an 8.
Unless that toad has psychic defenses (or Jace had his memory wiped just prior to this fight) this is over before it begins, maybe literally, and Jace doesn't lose to toad that a) thinks they're friends or b) doesn't remember anything at all or c) is replaying some kind of lava bug eating fantasy
We have Pokémon at Home!
Round 1 matchup 127
Propaganda for Jace Beleren:
No propaganda has been submitted for Jace Beleren yet.
Propaganda for Eruptoad:
"It's a toad with a volcano on it"
More info under the cut
More information about Jace Beleren:
More information about Eruptoad:
This joke was il
With the success of Foundations do you think we see a Kor set in about 5 years.
If not, maybe a Vec set or a Dal set.
If you get this joke, you’re old. : )
Big agree, Friend. Love the set. Only slight disagreement is I love Bloomburrow more, methinks, at least for now.
After so many core sets, you guys absolutely nailed it with Foundations. Best set of the year (a high bar against Bloomburrow). I’m drafting it a lot having tons of fun. Right mix of traditional and modern magic, accessible but not boring, you really mastered the core set foundation. Please, would you be so kind to apply generous high fives to everyone involved on its creation? Thank you.
Will do.
Still my favorite card.
Hedge Troll (Planar Chaos Promos) - Paolo Parente
More cards with art by Paolo Parente on Scryfall
Maybe the best red common creature for decades, certainly top 5.
Dwarven Soldier
There is a legend among present-day Dwarves that the Dwarves of Sarpadia will one day return to defend Dwarvenkind against a deadly peril.
Artist: Randy Asplund-Faith TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link
Need is and always has been the wrong metric.
We don't NEED movies or most any art at all. I forget which ancient Greek it was that settled on needing not even a cup to drink to from once he learned to use his hands. We NEED very little, and that's assuming the the need at all is to survive.
I want six+ more sequels to James Gunn's The Suicide Squad, and I'm interested in seeing one or two more of those holiday portals from The Nightmare Before Christmas, amongst other as yet non existent concepts from my own head or other stories. Obviously I don't NEED them, but if done well, it would be enormous fun and/ or satisfying, and that's what I want.
babe. I know we’re all going thru a lot rn but I just wanna give u the heads up that sesame streets future is in jeopardy. hbo has chosen not to renew it for new episodes (a series that has been going since 1969) and the residents of 123 Sesame Street no longer have a home :(
When you discuss set complexity, what do you mean? I prefer a set with lots of mechanics being used in unique ways or in ways not seen the first time around, but I don't like complex/wordy effects.
There are three basic types of complexity:
Card complexity - Can you read the card and understand what it does?
Board complexity - How hard is it to understand what's happening on the battlefield, how the individual cards interact with one another?
Strategic complexity - Do you understand how to best play the card?
You dislike card complexity, but seem to enjoy some amount of board complexity (and I'm guessing strategic complexity).
On a separate axis, there are numerous mental skills that Magic cards can tap into and some are probably easier for you than others. For example, maybe you're poor with memory tasks, but good at picturing hypotheticals (aka future board states).
This is a real bummer; at least I'm in good company.
How do I make it clear I also find it mind boggling that the game keeps printing color pie breaks? It normalizes the breaks and exacerbates the noise calling for more breaks and the precedence of the first break.
Preaching to the choir.
So here’s the thing. News stations love to sensationalize the orange man for money. If you weren’t politically aware during his first term I have a few tips to help your wellbeing till 2025:
Do not engage with news media after 8pm. Nothing you learn then will help you before the next morning. You’ll just go to bed anxious and mad
You’re gonna see the worst possible people nominated to head diff parts of the govt. Understand that’s the point, to set everything in favor of corps, internalize that feeling and remember it for the next election, and move on. Dwelling on it only serves to hurt yourself
Learn to sit in uncertainty. Last term the orange man would tweet policy and expect it to manifest. This led to people never knowing if he was talking big game or passing legislation, so people did not know how the government was going to act. Chill. We don’t know what will happen.
Curate your social media experience, do not follow algorithms. Algorithms need you hooked and its easier to keep you hooked if you’re miserable. Be purposeful when you engage with political content, don’t do it on a whim
You are not responsible for the ailings of the world. Don’t put that on yourself. And don’t put it on yourself to keep up with every single wrongdoing about to happen. There will be far too many for one person to keep up with, you’ll exhaust yourself and make yourself miserable
Chill. Its not gonna be fun, but there are ways you can take care of your own well being to keep from spiraling.
Attention Pennsylvania voters!
Senator Bob Casey’s race is now at a margin of 0.53%.
An automatic recount in PA is triggered with a margin of 0.5%. That’s a difference of 0.03% or a little over 2,000 votes. We need to make sure every ballot is counted here, and there’s thousands of uncounted ballots right now due to voter error.
Did you mail in a ballot? Check to see it was accepted here:
If it says anything other than accepted/counted/etc, your ballot needs your attention. A mistake in filling it out means that your ballot will not count unless you “cure” it. Check your county’s curing policies:
See full instructions for curing by county here.
You have until November 12 to cure your ballot in PA.
Do you know someone who mailed in a PA ballot? Please pass these links on to them. You may be the difference between their vote counting or not in a super close race.
Everyone else, you can help PA voters cure their ballots. If you live in Pennsylvania, you can help canvass in your county (see links in this thread). If you are in another state, you can sign up to call voters and help them cure by phone.
Want to help another state? Sign up for a shift through November 19.
Reblog to hug prev poster (they need a hug)
omfg i forgot that i never showed tumblr my greatest achievement. my pride and joy, my pi-ass de résistance
