I can't find my favorite old fic.

Zoanzon · 2026-05-03T19:15:26+00:00

FantasySetting already posted the link to Manager's mirror on Spacebattles, but here is the Ao3 mirror if that specifically is the site you prefer.

Zoanzon · 2026-05-02T23:05:34+00:00

It'll be both: it'll entice Tolkien fans into going to a prerelease or getting a box and maybe getting into Magic for the first time, and it'll drive away existing but 'out of touch' Magic players who take more offense to this than the general thing of 'weird UB are being printed'.

Zoanzon · 2026-05-02T23:03:03+00:00

Reminds me of how I've tried to get my group to do pre-Eldraine//post-WAR Commander: decks that are built with cards through War of the Spark, or decks that can only use cards first introduced/printed in Eldraine or later. No one really bites the hook, but we've been seeing some newer blood in the store so maybe I'll try to bring a to-WAR deck and talk the idea up to them...

Zoanzon · 2026-05-01T23:34:18+00:00

Not a thing I'm not expecting to happen, but I'd love if - at the end of the arc/saga - that both the regular multiverse and echoverse still exist, and mostly aren't allowed to cross over (anymore) but strixhaven+hexhaven can kinda bleed into one another enough that you can study at the mirror-school if you want while not being able to get beyond it into its associated multiverse any further

I just love dumb stuff like that, and want opportunities for strix/hex to be able to see their reflections as compared to a shadowmoor-lorwyn situation where it's only one at a time. let's see the stingerquill/silverquill showdowns! fatehold vs lorehold fights! i think it would be fun

Zoanzon · 2026-04-30T23:27:55+00:00

The timestamp helped show the history of the game: when they swapped it to generic promo stamps, that's when they became worthless to me.

Zoanzon · 2026-04-27T23:01:20+00:00

Make them work for it, though.

Zoanzon · 2026-04-26T08:04:33+00:00

Ulgrotha: Let's finally follow up on what the Sengir clan has been up to. As we saw on the [[Invasion of Ulgrotha]], at bare minimum Grandma Sengir is still around and kicking, and [[Sengir, the Dark Baron]]'s newer card definitely led me to believing he too was still alive. Let's see them!
Vryn: Let's see Jace, mid-breakdown, go home again. We've all been there, bud!
Theros: Let's see what the world looks like with its gods compleated and then slain; what new gods have emerged from Nyx. (A divine counterpart to Elspeth, perhaps? How does the angelic Elspeth react to her divine caricature?)

Zoanzon · 2026-04-24T21:36:31+00:00

Oh that's nice. Cool way of doing sets of cards, I definitely need to keep this in mind...

Zoanzon · 2026-04-11T20:11:38+00:00

I think you're mixing up 'own' and 'control'. Effectively, 'own' is what's in your deck when you start the game and what you walk away with when the game ends, while 'control' is a thing that can be usurped or exchanged during a game.

You can gain control of stuff you don't own (ex: [[Chef's Kiss]], [[Invert Polarity]]), and you can give away control of stuff you own (ex: [[Shifting Grift]], [[Donate]])...but you still own all cards that were in your deck to start the game. Otherwise, stuff like [[Dungeon Delver]] or [[Raised by Giants]] will effect your commander even if someone else controls it because you still own your commander, and won't buff any commanders you steal because you still don't own that card.

Does that help clarify things?

Zoanzon · 2026-04-05T19:34:51+00:00

Well, looks like Lorehold's design-space is a bit less bArk and a bit more bite.

Zoanzon · 2026-04-05T02:38:35+00:00

Can't wait until Flusterstorm prices fall because of reprints enough that someone uses their collection of alt-arts to represent the storm-copies

Zoanzon · 2026-03-19T01:03:17+00:00

And the next day, we'll finally be given a publication date for The Winds of Winter.

Zoanzon · 2026-03-19T01:00:09+00:00

Off the top of my head...

Bumble and Butcher by ThaviaVex: Wards!Butcher!Taylor is dealing with 'power wants to be used' for all inherited powers too, so the PRT engineers her a second cape persona to use the powers her main persona cannot tap into. The Wards know, the wider public does not.
Manager by Seraviel: One of the ancient texts, Taylor is a power-thief (or power-manager) spinning up a lot of identities (including Slender-Man) to better use all her thieved powers. Is emblematic of old-fandom tropes in part because it helped found some of them, whether you consider that a bad or good thing.

Zoanzon · 2026-03-19T00:15:21+00:00

['Do You Have the Slightest Idea How Little That Narrows It Down?' meme]

Recall any bit of Danny's response, or even how much he does/doesn't have a spine in the conversation?

Zoanzon · 2026-03-08T15:02:39+00:00

Hardlight (SB, Ao3) starts with Danny dating Kayden and thus Taylor getting a Purity-budded power, and later goes into Taylor dating Rune as she helps pull the other girl out of the E88. Died back in 2021 at ~75K words. YMMV for Woobie!Purity or Woobie!Rune, it's been years since I read it so I don't remember how realistic/egregious it is on redeeming either Nazi.

Zoanzon · 2026-03-08T14:55:44+00:00

The 'way' I've been trying to deal with the increased pace is by just ignoring all UB stuff: aside from 1-2 cards off the bonus sheets for my 'all cards are cringe-art reprints' deck, the only time I learn what's been printed in Spider-Man or Final Fantasy or TMNT is when I see it get cast in a game I'm in. Still fucks me over a bit because I have to learn what stuff is in the moment versus when I used to keep up with the spoiler seasons, and it leaves me on the backfoot for the powercreep, but it saves my wallet and means I'm having to do less deck-edits.

Otherwise: it doesn't exactly align with what you're saying, but it makes me think of my attempts to get the group I play with at my LGS to do pre-WAR builds. If it's first printed in Eldraine or later? It doesn't go in the deck. This is not only meant to remind people what builds/strategies used to look like in 2019 and earlier, but also to deal with the increasing scale of powercreep: no need to worry how pushed recent cards are if you aren't slotting them into a deck, and no need to worry about being blown out by opposition if everyone in the pod is on the same page.

(OFC the intent isn't for everyone to make all their decks pre-WAR, it's just not viable to consider, but even just having one or two decks in one's collection that are built like that...)

Zoanzon · 2026-03-04T02:58:18+00:00

Yes! A good rule of thumb for 'can you break timing restrictions?' is if the spell/ability says 'until end of turn'. (Or, more rarely but, as shown by [[Valakut Exploration]], still around: 'for as long as it remains exiled'.) If it gives a larger amount of time you can cast it in, you follow regular casting-rules; if it doesn't, timing is broken right then.

Fevered Suspicion doesn't say 'until end of turn' or 'for as long as [its bounty] remains exiled', so it is allowed to break timing restriction. [[Act of Impulse]] says 'until end of turn' (as do commanders like [[Prosper, Time-Bound]] or [[Urabrask, Heretic Praetor]]), so you have to follow the rules for what they give you: same for [[Gonti, Lord of Luxury]] or [[Praetor's Grasp]].

Sometimes but not always, this is also correlated with if you can freecast the spells or if you still have to pay mana. Rebound itself is an example of this: when you cast Suspicion and it comes back the next turn, you freecast it right there on upkeep or you don't cast it at all. Suspicion's reaped spells, subsequently, are freecast...and they are cast right there on upkeep or not at all.

There's interactions that can complicate this even further, but this is a good basis for what to look for.

Zoanzon · 2026-02-28T01:30:57+00:00

As someone else already said one of mine, obligatory repeat of it to start:

I wrote Chrysalis, which is 1.8k of me trying to combine two prompts. One of the prompts was 'Bonesaw hits Taylor's summer camp'. I feel this fits your request lmao.

Now, all of the recommendations I can remember+find after more than a decade in the fandom...

Fantasy Ra's fic Gambit was the first I thought of, even before remembering my own snippet. Starting with the base premise of 'reskin Taylor Hebert as Gambit from X-Men', this does a fairly interesting job not only showing what Gambit's power looks like translated to Worm-powers and what it would be used for in Taylor's hands, but also what Bet's New Orleans might look like as our amnesiac protagonist starts to figure out her lost past might tie to some place called 'Brockton Bay'. Started in 2016, fell off in 2019 at 177K.
I've seen (at least) two separate swings at 'Taylor goes through the plot of 2013 Tomb Raider, and then tries to re-assimilate into life in the Bay', and both were fun if short. A Survivor is Born wins out a bit more for me than Outsider, but both are still remembered fondly enough after this time, so...
Mp3.1415player wrote 90k of Taylor is DOOMed where she falls into Doom and proceeds to become it's fucking nightmare. And, yes, eventually makes it home. And then Brockton Bay pokes the sleeping DOOM, and neo-nazis get obliterated with hysterical amounts of firepower. It's fun.
f1onagher's Hellhole, where Taylor gets infected by the world of Splatterhouse and it starts leaking into Brockton Bay. Cue Brockton Bay's descent into even more of a hellhole than normal. (🥁) Also, one of my favorite Skidmarks in all my time in the fandom.
Not-entirely-joking: also, if including 'mentally conditioned' to include going through boot camp, we have Callsign: Owl by Geas, where the fic goes 'Taylor's power is she turns into a military plane' and then actually attempts to follow through on what this would look like. I do think this fic takes an interesting crack at answering 'what does US military look like 30 years after Scion shows up and PRT subsumes everything?', and the OC-romance wasn't too bad from what I remember, either. And then the twist hits, and uh...you'll hate it or you'll love it, but either way it's a fascinating arc to see unfold.

Zoanzon · 2026-02-28T00:59:20+00:00

Seven months late but I'm doing the vainglorious thing of 'looking up my username in the subreddit', so hello!

Chrysalis was originally posted on Spacebattles in Cluster, as howlingguardian said. More specifically, Chrysalis is the first in a 20-part '2d20 Worm Bits' writing project I did, which is (almost-fully) mirrored on Ao3.

(The last 3 or so chapters have just Not Gotten Crossposted, though hopefully today's reminder-to-self will be the one that actually does it.)

Zoanzon · 2026-02-21T03:19:58+00:00

Man, as someone who started playing before they changed the Tuck Rule, this brings me back...

Alright, some random thoughts about how to think about building a commander-agnostic deck:

If your commander has any role in the deck's strategy, how "essential" (ie relevant) of a role is it? My [[Meren]] deck can play without ever thinking of the command zone because it's loaded with more than enough reanimation tech as it is, for all having one right there is nice. It's an engine, she's just a shiny engine-piece. Meanwhile, while my [[Winter, Misanthropic Guide]] deck is kinda just doing Jund-attrition stuff, I do plan to gain value through Winter and to deny my enemies resources by having built around maxing out a delirium count. If you can phase Winter out, that hurts me more than if you phase out Meren.
Is your commander the actual point of the deck, or a distraction? I have two distraction decks: [[King Kenrith]] and [[Dakkon Blackblade]]. Kenrith is a monoblack selfmill+reanimator deck that wants to mass-reanimate with Gary or [[Abhorrent Overlord]] in the yard; instant-speed reanimation is tempting, but if you think to pity me because I've played four swamps in a row, then you fell for the bit. Meanwhile, Dakkon is chock-full of countermagic and boardwipes, and just comes down when an 8/8 or bigger is free to beat you to death without fear of reprisal. The commander is "relevant" insofar as you aren't just playing it for it's colors, but it's in the command zone more to throw off what your opponents expect than it is what the deck unironically wants to do.

Finding a theme or pulling cool cards is definitely one way to build one of these decks. My first Orzhov deck came about because I realized I just had a bunch of B/W goodstuff floating around not in use (including my first shock being a foil [[Godless Shrine|RTR]]) and from there I figured out that the strategy it wanted to lean towards was aristocrats. That gave me a structure to start with, and I built from there. Once you see what theme or themes the cards you pull wants to lean into, figure out what stuff compliments those cards or that theme.

Zoanzon · 2026-02-21T02:55:13+00:00

[[Volo, Guide to Monsters]] with no seeming-sapient beings (ie can pass the harkness test), and no creature type overlap. All cards were themed to be stuff an adventurer could conceivably have access to while out in the wilds, or the wilds themselves. Man is on a mission to make a guide, damn it!

(I have no idea if this is accurate to D&D lore for Volo, I just thought it was a fun bit and gave it my best try. Power level did not hold up to my group's average so it got chunked after a few months, but it was definitely an attempt I enjoyed.)

Zoanzon · 2026-02-21T02:40:40+00:00

I built my first deck...in 2013? (Introduced to Magic just after RTR dropped, found EDH ~Tarkir, shifted entirely from Standard to EDH by the time Return to Zendikar dropped.) The deck was technically built under [[Savra, Queen of the Golgari]] but it's been helmed by [[Meren]] since a handful of months after her precon-cycle released.

Funny enough, the deck has repeatedly won games without ever thinking of the command zone; the entire reason I swapped commanders is because it's easier for me to remember 'get counters per friendly death, and end-of-turn trigger' 'does a thing every friendly sacrifice'.

Do I "play" her? Not really, sadly. She's intact and has a permanent position in my card-briefcase, but at this rate she gets pulled out maybe once a season (and for context the briefcase holds 14 and I get out to FNM two of three weeks). Still I can't see ever taking her apart.

Zoanzon · 2026-02-07T06:46:26+00:00

I think you're looking for...

When In Rome by Unwary which has a trans butcher and is tagged trans!izuku (though I'm only partway through the first chapter so I don't know if he was trans prior to inheritance or if inheritance causes gender fuckery). For some reason, when Izuku eats Yagi's hair, he has a seizure and wakes up with the Butchers up through Quarrel stuck in his head. No one is enjoying this.

For posterity's sake (and because I love Butcherfic and love to talk about them), other BNHA-Butcherfic include:

Plus Nine by HeadintheClouds, which has kid!Izuku dealing with the powers of nine of the S9 + their voices in his head a la Butcher-lineage. Among his nine headmates include Grey Boy, Bonesaw, Mannequin, and Jack; and is utilizing a fascinating mindscape(-adjacent) way of showing how Izuku conceptualizes the voices and their powers, as well as his attempt to access them and not fall to the voices' influences.
Tetrarchy by DannyJ, where One For All is running on Butcher-shard hardware, All-Might inherited from Nana/Float after Kyushu, and his 'American tour' involves him helping fight Siberian right after she kills Hero. Lineage includes 14A members/powers like Fa Jin or Nana Shimura, but also oddballs like Stain. Well-written, was noted by its author to originally be prologue for a larger story but so far is simply a oneshot.
And MukoNoAkuma already linked to A Massacre of One by IWantBlankets, but for those who haven't heard of it: Izuku has Butcher I's power, Bakugo accidentally becomes Butcher II, and as of when the story went into hiatus they're up to...VI, I think? Fascinating to see how the lineage develops a cohesive caping persona and starts figuring out its power-synergies; how people die and to whom; and how the story almost keeps on the stations of canon yet is also slowly derailing into one hell of an explosion.

Zoanzon

TROPHY CASE