MTG Story and lore thread

Oh please don't start this up again.

I'm fine with the aetherborn lacking gender, it's a cool race trait. I just wish English had a better singular no gender pronoun than "they".

Nah there's a few times in story where people talk about other aetherborn, they use "they" pretty consistently.

The genderless singular pronoun is it/its. It's just that English-users have a thing about applying a pronoun used for objects to people of an ambiguous or indeterminate gender instead.

It's why MtG uses the 'he or she' and 'his or her' wording on its cards, and in other situations where the individual is of an unknown gender.

"They" just sounds better than "It" anyway.

Whatever happened to the official wednesday lore threads??

>nothing to shitpost about

Ravnicanon seemed to sort of move on with his life or something and no one picked up the slack in his pace.

Actually a singular "they" has been in use since the 14th century, so if it is incorrect it's by very modern standards

I would have liked aetherborn even more if they didn't have the lifedrain power.

Now it seems too easy to have an evil aetherborn.

It was used incorrectly back then, in that case. There's been no instance of it technically being correct, no matter how much it's been used.

Accepted, yes. Correct, no.

>I just wish English had a better singular no gender pronoun than "they".

I'm sure (((((Wizards of the Coast))))) agrees with you.

Well duh, they're the black aligned race. They have to have something that makes them obligatorily potentially evil/justify life drain effects on black cards.

What's telling though is that it's rare. Most aetherborn can't do it. And here's one who can, who doesn't want to use it, which makes him flat better than someone who can't do it at all.

One day, you see a cat you don't recognize wandering down your sidewalk. You have no way of determining the owner's gender.

Which of the following do you think?
>I wonder who lost his cat.
>I wonder who lost her cat.
>I wonder who lost their cat.
>I wonder who lost its cat.

>who doesn't want to use it

except the whole last bit of the story where they were arguing among st themselves

>I'd drained essence (once, accidentally) before; it felt amazing. I could do that again. I could do that again a hundred times over, if someone deserved it.

that is a real slippery slope of who does or does not deserve "it"

That's not how language works.

Just because someone said something once upon a time, doesn't mean that the way they spoke was correct.

That's exactly what gives the story character.

A being that can tell exactly how much it has going to live, that it can expand that at the expense of others, and that, at least from now, restrains for it

Well they knew what it was like. They COULD, they know it, they acknowledge it, they could even find ways to 'justify' it, easily. But they don't. They choose not to.

>I have other things to do with the time I have left.
Was the choice of words, but it's basically saying. Even without life drain powers, his monologue was basically "I could just kill this guy. I don't like him, no one would notice and I have an alibi." That could be thought by anyone. He has the power to, but decides "Nah. Not worth it."

They evolved into the "snowstorm" threads.

Making your own shitty OC snowflakes was a fun distraction for a little while.

Now it's gone on for far too long, has a circlejerk of namefags built around it and a troll dedicated to shitting up lore threads because of them.

this

Nobody likes phyrexia. Not even Tezzeret, and that was your only chance to get off New Phyrexia before Karn nukes you with the naya suns of artifact destruction.

It died and came back because in the end, no one has anything better to do with their time until they die.

>and a troll dedicated to shitting up lore threads because of them.
Vronak is just the new Chandere. Nothing ever changes.

Aether Revolt is just going to be anarchic aetherborns, right? At least we would have monoblack villains with decent motivations

I say "his." I consider the default human a man. Why? Let's just say I am an optimist :^)

Well the consulate is shitting on everybody at the moment.
>Restricting the use of aether to pretty much just the rich or influential or who they're patroning
>confiscating inventions
>at least three corrupt individuals in high places, one of which is Tezzeret, and the other is a dude that thinks he's evil robocop
>Punishments stricter than the crimes committed
>They're about to fucking take everyone's inventions
The consulate is about to shit on literally everyone and they'll have no one but themselves to blame.

>Hoping the owner of a cat is a man.
That's just sad. A dog I sort of understand, but a cat?

Yes, because you have more merit in the English language than say... Shakespeare

>Chandere
please don't utter the name

She(?) may return if we aren't careful.

I say their. It's a pretty easy decision.
Their is possessive without specifying gender.

whats wrong with "they"?

>Wheres Xorblax?
>They are on their way.
>Oh cool.

The chicken has no power anymore.

>Which of the following do you think?
Dinner

Best Korea, please.

sarpadianempiresvol-viii.tumblr.com/post/150734861394/todays-story-was-whorrible-yahenni-is-totally-not

Yes, we're all impressed with user forgetting he was on tumblr before shitposting.

No, but he has equal standing. Language evolved over time, and Shakespeare's usage of the English language is considered archaic now.

But if something was okay in english when Shakespeare did it, and it's been okay ever since, why would it not randomly be okay now?

Not everything Shakespeare wrote was perfectly grammatically correct, even for back then. He was a playwright, not a scholar of the language.

There's plenty to shitpost about.
>Wizards unironically using singular "they"

>image makes fun of nonstandard gender-neutral pronouns
>post moans about commonly-accepted gender-neutral pronouns that have been in use for hundreds of years now
Well, which is it, user?

Singular "they" is generally used to refer to a nonspecific person, not a special snowflake who wants to be neither man nor woman.

We need to put the nonbinary meme in its place.

Using 'they' even though technically not correct it still better than any of the made up SJW horseshit, or saying 'he or she' which just sounds clumsy.

>Singular "they" is generally used to refer to a nonspecific person, not a special snowflake who wants to be neither man nor woman.

This is not a thread about transsexuals, this is a thread about fantasy nonsexual beings referring to each other using a nongendered pronoun other than "it," because the connotation in English is well known that "it" is only used to refer to nonsapient things. If you want to bitch and moan about your eternal SJW boogieman, you can fuck off to /pol/ if you will.

Honestly, what do you fucking expect them to use? Would you sincerely rather that they make Aetherborn perceive and treat gender as a purely social construct? Because I've got a feeling you'd be just as triggered from that as well. So, again, which is it?

I wouldn't mind if some random fuck like Gonti is a dude. He's a "lord," he's broad as fuck. People call fuckin Optimus Prime a he, why not the magical energy being?

Kid,that "they/their" thing for gender neutral subjects has been around for a long,long time. Not all the shit in this world is Tumblr's fault; also,it seems fitting,since the aetherborn themselves seem to lack any personality trait asociated to gender, or even secondary sexual traits.

See,this user gets it. "It" is more for inanimated or non-sapient subjects.

Now,about the story, I liked it very much. I couldn't help but imagine this Yahanni as a Freddy Mercury voiced,Ruby Rhod styled character, transpiring charisma through every crack.

A few points:

The connotations associated with "they" can read more organically than "it." Sometimes when identity of something or someone is meant to stay hidden, it adds more variety to use "they" instead of describing it every damn time.

Not what's going on in the stort, but thought I'd still mention it.

My other point: FUCK you if you're one of those blind motherduckers who refer to Monasterg Swiftspear, Tireless Tracker, Drana, OLIVIA etc as "he." Bitch, could you not identify a pair of 2d tits for your very survival?

If you're not, though, we good.

Also, comma splices, bitchhhh

magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/homesick-2016-08-29

Has anyone read this fucking story?
It reads like parody. It's insane. I can't even work out what to think about it.

Beefslab?

Because there are feminine transformers apparently: See RC.

Chandra was bad, Liliana was lowering herself to get in good with Chandra, Gideon is trying to keep his terrible idea working, Lavinia's whipped Jace, Ugin hasn't been told about Emrakul, Sorin, or Nahiri, and Ral Zarek should be having an aneurysm by now.

Gideon and Nissa were the good parts of that chapter by far, which is really saying something.

Nissa's writing has improved dramatically since MUH ASHAYA came to an end and she left Zendikar behind.

Personally I think the Consulate is shutting on everyone and everything because Tezzeret (and to a lesser extent, Bolas) is influencing them to have its inventors try to figure out inter-planar travel after the Mending.

And the Aetherborn are a byproduct of the Consulate's increasing corruption and squeeze for power, because holy shit, sentient Aether, what the hell man? And they can drain life essence (even if maybe 5% can do it)?

Anyone else get a kind of Great Gatsby vibe from this story?
Yahenni throws these big, pointless parties to get noticed, but in the end they'll die and be forgotten within a month.

I can only assume it's because the writer is new.

I really liked this story.

The aetherborn are really interesting.

I hope Nissa goes to his party in a month. ;_;7

This. We actually had a lot of discussion about this back when that particular piece came out. A little research showed that Chris L'Etoile has actually been around for a while, and has been a high level plot writer at wizards for some time.

But that's the problem. They write high level, overarching plots and make creative decisions. They do not write prose.

If you break down the Homesick story, all of the major beats are generally okay. Its their implementation that sucks because Chris has no idea how to write the dialog for these characters and outside of a few scenes he only really has one narrative voice.

I don't blame Chris for that article. I blame either whoever told him to do it or approved him to do it if he volunteered. This is clearly not his strength, and he should not be writing these kinds of stories.

There are different kinds of writers, and this isn't what he is good at. So don't make him do it.

Their, not his.

Stop projecting your biology, fucking Consul-loving aetherist.

Nissa realized that Aetherborn as effectively elementals, which are her specialty. I wonder if she can 'fix' one?

Kaladesh is, aside from their amazing artificey, a pretty low magic plane. They don't have a lot of casters running around. There legitimately might not have ever been someone with Nissa's skill on the plane before.

Phyrexian invasion of Ravnica.

Phyrexia can't invade until they get their hands on the planar portal tech that just now being invented on kaladesh.

Which I expect will be Tezzeret's fault.

fuck OFF already, Jesus Christ not even Tezzeret gives a shit about Phyrexians anymore just shut up about them
goddamn nornies

Sorry, getting used to the pronoun usage.

Kaladesh/Aether Revolt story will end at Yahenni's final party where Chandra and Nissa will finally hook up thanks to Yahenni playing matchmaker and being able to see they've got the hots for each other.

>Jace! You must save your plane while you still can! Nothing is left of mine but a festering abomination.
>Koth, Boros Commando

>Yahenni asks for a final kiss from Nissa
>Nissa's kiss injects tons of aether energy into Yahenni, making them a planeswalker

>Yahenni asks Nissa for a kiss since as she has no mouth she's never been interested before
>About to die, why not
>They do it
>Yahenni thinks its lame and goes to go snort aether coke

>Koth
>Giving up on Mirrodin
>Ever

>Koth giving up on Mirrodin
>Koth, not being the first example of a 'heroic' RB character.

Okay, I accept this.

It's typical WoTC policy to walk up to whoever vaguely has time and be like "YOU! You're from Creative, right? Oh, IT? That's great! Write a story where The Gatewatch is just like the Breakfast club. Gogogog."

Can we both agree that Mei Li's writing for Renegade Prime was a mess, and Doug Beyer really needs to do more work on characterization and dialogue?

I know he's improved a lot since Alara Unbroken, but that was back in 2009 or whatever...

>WotC caring about established lore

Never, because they wouldn't be able to do a block that has the ten guilds AND Phyrexia in it.
Ravnica is the ultimate safezone from planar invasion, because its entire identity is wrapped in the guilds, and the guilds need so much space in the block that any other major theme is impossible to work into the block.

I enjoy reading about the flamboyant aetherborn for some reason.

I actually like the idea of the planeswalkers having a moment off and just sitting around enjoying the world. It adds a little bit to the world when they're not just fighting.

I got the impression that there was some kind of miscommunication among the writers regarding Renegade Prime, possibly because most of the magic lore stories are standalones or have timeskips between them, but this one was supposed to happen mere seconds after the previous short.

Because there clearly wasn't a correct level of coordination between the ending of the previous and the beginning of RP. Nissa is suddenly just there as if she always has been, and the events really just don't line up.

Agreed. You can easily milk an entire story of Jace and Lili having banter. And they are clearly setting up a 'Chandra and Nissa form a bromance' arc. Nissa is used to dealing with Zendikar, the super mad plane of elemental rage, so Chandra is honestly probably a good standing for her planefu. And I can totally buy Chandra being fascinated by the fact that Nissa is so goddamn serene, which is something that Chandra has trouble imagining much less being because she can't hold all this red color identity.

Gideon is the Reinhardt of the team, but without the Catchphrase. Maybe he can can have totally not gay wrestling with Ajani after they go back to Theros and tag team the gods in APOCALYPSE IN NYX, ONE NIGHT ONLY! NO RULES, NO JUDGES, NO GODS. TWO PLANESWALKERS ENTER, THREE PLANESWALKERS LEAVE. GET YOUR TICKETS AND YOUR BOOSTERS NOW!

I wouldn't mind them having a bromance. I hope they don't make them lesbians for the progressive points though.

God damn were nissa's tits always so perfect or is that artistic liberty?

I don't think they will do that, its just Veeky Forums screaming LESBIANS whenever two female characters so much as look at each other.

There's a reason why some anons always rant and rave about her Joragas.

Oh, I don't know if this is something people are already pissed about. It's just something I wouldn't put past WOTC I guess.

Nissa's joragan mana batteries have always been pretty great.

Too bad nobody will ever draw good MTG porn.

Damn

Is sentience the only thing that separates an aetherborn from an elemental; some of which are similarly short-lived?

>it's technically incorrect
A native speaker can't talk incorrectly (even if he can make 'mistakes' which he will most likely correct himself quickly because they don't conform to his dialect) as the way he speaks is the definition of how to speak that language.

>ywn live fast at an aetherborn party

It's not clear.

Weirds are a similar not-quite an elemental creature type, so it's not unprecedented.

Anyway, I'm amused by how protoss aetherborn are, including psychic abilities, but lasting much less than a thousand years.

Having them not be randomly gendered is nice.

.... I wonder how you would voice them in an audio format.

>use of the word "they" is tumblr
They literally don't have any semblance of a gender. It's not gender politics, they're made of fucking magic gasses.

>Implying Boros.
>When Koth would clearly be the Rakdos to New Phyrexias Bant.
you pillock.

...

Erin Campbell does literally every Aetherborn.

Mirrodin resistance is clearly Boros.
Niggas are only necessarly alligned with Black colorpie in real life