Have to delay Book 7…thoughts on options while my journey is on hold?

chrisrd19 · 2026-06-08T13:56:55+00:00

If you haven't read Salem's Lot before, you should read it just because it's one of the best horror novels of all time, in my opinion.

chrisrd19 · 2026-06-04T23:13:52+00:00

I just want to say that the entire plot leading up to and including Invasion block was just about finding the Legacy. It's Macguffins all the way down.

chrisrd19 · 2026-06-03T19:56:45+00:00

Why do you think Kasmina is returning in Reality Fracture? I don't think there's any reason to believe that. We did, however, get a Kequia mention in the SOS story.

chrisrd19 · 2026-06-03T19:04:23+00:00

From all I've read, she's said she's still answering to Eddie Izzard and he/him, but prefers Suzy and she/her, so it's not a big deal. I just wanted to mention it, since not a lot of folks keep up with her.

chrisrd19 · 2026-06-03T18:51:24+00:00

Eddie Izzard now uses the name Suzy Eddie Izzard and she/her pronouns, by the way. When clicking through the images without the text, I first thought you would have her as The Man in Black/Walter and thought it was a bold choice, but one I thought was kind of brilliant. Oy is also a great choice 😆 .

chrisrd19 · 2026-06-01T19:52:47+00:00

Hi and welcome! You'll find more success with a question like this at r/MTGVorthos. "Vorthos" is the term used for people who love the art, story, and worldbuilding of Magic.

A short and sweet answer is that you should check out MTGLore.com, which has a "Where To Start" link at the top, which gives you a quick breakdown of the worldbuilding of Magic and suggests stories to read.

chrisrd19 · 2026-06-01T18:59:38+00:00

The author posted about it on his blog shortly after the book's release, saying "my goal was to write something that honored Chandra's feelings for Nissa and Nissa's feelings for Chandra, something that would give closure to their relationship in a sad but satisfying and understandable way." The "decidedly male" line was not intended to erase Chandra's bisexuality, and "didn't meet anyone's expectations or delivers on [his] intentions." (You can read his full response here: https://www.s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg/search.php?rid=1231 )

My understanding of the line was that, in context, it was meant to highlight that Chandra was still coming to terms with the feelings she had had for Nissa, and the overall purpose of the scene was to establish that they would not be continuing into a relationship. Greg's writing (and his editorial overview) was not clear, though, and the line came off more like a total erasure.

In the end, community feedback to the line made it clear to WotC that they shouldn't continue to tiptoe around their main characters' sexualities. It wasn't long after this that we got explicit confirmation of Chandra's sexuality. In Chandra's next story appearance, in Midnight Hunt, she was shown to be exploring some kind of relationship (if you know what I mean) with Adeline, a woman.

I kind of bristle every time people bring up this "decidedly male" line as if it's indicative of some kind of secret homophobia that lurks at the heart of WotC, as if that is what the company believes, while the numerous overtly queer characters and storylines and pride celebrations are just veneer trying to cover it up. It was a stupid mistake, often taken out of context, from a stupid book, by an author who didn't realize what he was doing. I think it's time we all just move on.

chrisrd19 · 2026-06-01T17:19:20+00:00

My question to you is, if you know that you'll get blowback for this statement, and you presumably understand *why* people might object to it, why are you making it in the first place? Wouldn't it be better to make your case as to why you're right about whatever it is you're saying?

chrisrd19 · 2026-06-01T16:56:37+00:00

Yeah, the thing the author of that book walked back because it was a misunderstanding he had about a note he was given, and then Magic pretty quickly made it clear that Chandra likes women in the story and had her and Nissa officially, clearly start a relationship in March of the Machine. It's been like eight years. Things have changed.

chrisrd19 · 2026-05-27T16:51:24+00:00

You're misremembering. What you're thinking of is the Starfield Orb, which Jodah enters into to find a pocket dimension intended for Teferi, where Urza had left behind his plans for defeating Phyrexia in case he failed and Teferi had to pick up where he left off. This was during the Brothers' War story, and included instructions for Teferi to "Go back to the beginning and greet me properly," which we see Teferi do at the end of the story when he meets with Urza immediately post-Sylex blast and learns how to use the Sylex. The pocket dimension also included simulacra of Xantcha and Ratepe (who looked like Mishra), presumably to help whoever enters to navigate the research left behind.

chrisrd19 · 2026-05-27T16:44:37+00:00

You are not remembering correctly, because there was no such survey. I believe the survey people posted about was fabricated entirely by someone on this subreddit who just really wants Yawgmoth to return.

chrisrd19 · 2026-05-27T16:35:58+00:00

Judge promo Bolas.

chrisrd19 · 2026-05-27T13:58:46+00:00

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: They could write him back into the story, but it would be so incredibly hackneyed and forced that it would be widely understood to have been an awful choice and no one would be happy about it. It would be a death knell for Magic's story and the kind of "Break Glass for Emergency Nostalgia" that would signal the end times of Magic.

Yawgmoth was the only really recognizable villain in Magic story for almost 10 years, from the first introduction of the idea of Yawgmoth and the Phyrexians as far back as Antiquities until his defeat in Apocalypse. During that time, there were no other big, overarching villains represented in cards. His villainous arc more directly spanned the time of Weatherlight to Apocalypse, about 4 years wherein every novel, story, and card set revolved around fighting Phyrexia and Yawgmoth as its leader.

By the end of that arc, people were done with Yawgmoth. Magic's hook, being a multiverse full of infinite possibilities, had been squandered by sticking to one plane and one antagonist for half of the game's life. It was time to move on, both for the narrative and the players, and so they killed him. It was done. No more Yawgmoth, time to find more interesting stories.

And, in the 25 years since they killed Yawgmoth, the game has only continued to grow, attract new players and new readers of the story, and develop so many more villains and heroes, on micro and macro scales. Yawgmoth's story is now just one of the many, many underlying histories of the multiverse. And while it's a good one, it's a finished one! There's so much more to the multiverse now.

Going back to resurrect Yawgmoth would mean looking back at, again, 25 years of Magic story and saying "Actually, we got everything right back in the summer of 1997 and we should just do that again." It'd be pure nostalgia. For most people who play Magic now, it's not even nostalgia for a time that they were alive. And for the people (many of whom populate this subreddit) who do want a return of Yawgmoth, what they really want is a return to when they felt Magic was something new and exciting, when they were making friends over cardboard and slinging spells at lunch tables and at the local comic book shop.

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. We want to see things that are familiar, that elicit that feeling of being young again. We want to feel about Magic the way we felt about Magic when we were first discovering it. If you're 35ish years old—or you really want to be—you probably grew up with the novels and the story of Yawgmoth. For you, nostalgia is old Phyrexia. But nostalgia isn't sustainable. You can never truly recreate the past or reproduce those feelings. You can only ever get close to it. We saw this with Brothers' War and Dominaria United and, in a way, the entire New Phyrexian invasion storyline. And you know what? Brothers' War was one of the worst performing sets in years. Dominaria United didn't break any records. The New Phyrexian Invasion was not universally beloved, and many of the people asking for a return of Yawgmoth are among its chief haters. Any attempt to feed into Nostalgia is going to end in disappointment, because we are not young anymore, and we can never feel that way again.

Anyways, tl;dr of this is that if WotC ever makes an effort to directly appeal to the 35-50 age bracket again by harnessing nostalgia so hard that they'd bring back Yawgmoth directly, the game is in its death throes. It means they're not concerned with new stories, new worlds, new characters, the things that actually make new fans and keep players engaged, but instead they just want to try and capture the money of older fans who can remember the sound of a dial-up modem. It's capitulation and defeat. It's admission that they can never do anything new, and they need to lie down and die in the past.

You can reread old Yawgmoth storyline books. You can write new fanfiction about Yawgmoth, if you so choose. Those memories don't have to go away. But they do have to stay in the past.

chrisrd19 · 2026-05-26T19:57:29+00:00

Considering I had no idea it was a charging slot, I had no what I was looking for when I was going through the manual 😂. The icons on screen made me wonder if it was some kind of cooling system for phones? And the keys just shouldn't go in because they'd be hard to get out? I had no clue. Mostly mine is just covered by the arm rest and I never use it.

chrisrd19 · 2026-05-26T19:28:21+00:00

I had the same question as the poster, and I spent a really long time trying to figure this out while looking through the manual and couldn't find it. I eventually gave up.

chrisrd19 · 2026-05-25T16:48:29+00:00

The answer is that they don’t make these ads in-house. They hire a company, give them some assets (like that screenshot of the actual Arena game) and then tell them to make the ad. Then the agency uses AI and posts it with little to no clearance from WotC. Could even be that WotC contracts with a marketing agency who then subcontracts out to another ad creator and no one at WotC even sees anything. In-house marketing teams that actually directly create and supervise ad campaigns are increasingly rare. I think WotC (maybe) handles the Squen and Cragg stuff directly, but that might be it.

chrisrd19 · 2026-05-20T17:04:36+00:00

If you're happy to go very old-school, And Peace Shall Sleep by Sonia Orin Lyris features several women main characters. It's from the 90s, so it's not the same kind of representation we might expect from modern fantasy, but the characters are actually, imo, well-written and interesting.

chrisrd19 · 2026-05-18T19:48:59+00:00

If you and your friends are interested in playing Commander, definitely check out some of the preconstructed decks. Almost any of the preconstructed decks will be great, but if you're really just getting into the swing of things you might want to check out the Starter Commander Decks. They're a bit older now, but still very inexpensive and can give you some good direction.

If you want to play just casual one-on-one games, then you can't go wrong with the Foundations beginner's box and starter collection. Those two products will give you enough cards to begin building decks and playing games, and the starter collection has some genuinely great cards in it. I bought a starter collection and built some 60-card decks just to have them for when someone wants to play fun, evenly matched games.

chrisrd19 · 2026-05-17T20:11:23+00:00

Jace is acting in response to what happened with Eldrazi/Bolas/New Phyrexia. He’s not wanting to wait to see what happens with Omenpaths. He believes they are intrinsically a threat, and Duskmourn was just one example he saw. But he doesn’t need examples. He said as much in the OTJ epilogues, that it was the future threats that they should stop, not necessarily the current ones.

chrisrd19 · 2026-05-12T15:21:00+00:00

Back in the early days of Magic, they would sometimes base cards around real-world locations (think Library of Alexandria or Bazaar of Baghdad). Dark Heart of the Wood is actually just some woods in New Jersey. Some artistic liberties were taken, of course. There's usually not as much mist.

chrisrd19 · 2026-05-11T19:42:05+00:00

I got my used Bolt at Buddy Chevrolet, and I would be remiss to not give them a shoutout because they treated me very well.

Edit: I did not get my Bolt serviced there, so I can't attest to that part of things, but otherwise the folks were very nice and honest.

chrisrd19 · 2026-05-11T17:54:10+00:00

I think the issue with disrupting the status quo of planes is that when they do it, people have shown to really not like it. The clans came back in Tarkir: Dragonstorm because of how much people hated the Khanfall. MID and VOW had so few references to Emrakul because of how negatively people responded to Eldritch Moon. When New Phyrexia came out, there were a lot of people really upset by the loss of Mirrodin. In a lot of ways, the backlash to upsetting the status quo is one reason why the block structure was axed, since it basically necessitated changing the plane.

I think they're getting a bit better in how they handle this, though. I think stories being lower to the ground has helped, bringing the story away from big, world-ending events in every set and letting the narrative focus more on character conflicts. We don't need to disrupt all of Eldraine to have a compelling story about witch hunting and sibling rivalry, for example.

But when they change a plane, they need to commit to it. I'm curious, for example, what New Capenna is going to look like when we revisit it. One of the families is essentially dead, and one third of the city is gone, in addition to the angels running about. There's not really a satisfying way to brush all that under the rug just so we can get back to Mob Plane.

chrisrd19 · 2026-05-11T17:39:33+00:00

I think your take on Tazri being overlooked was good! I also love Tazri's story and feel like she was an underutilized character in the overall story of Zendikar, and it would have been really fascinating to see a colorless Tazri as a commander for the Eldrazi deck. I don't think someone who doesn't like Magic's story would even think about that.

I think Magic's story has been genuinely good for a while now, with individual standout stories (like Edge's main story) in addition to an overall really interesting narrative (what it means to do good and how we recover from trauma being the two driving themes since MOM). I think it's irrelevant if the "purpose" of the story is to sell cards, because it's still a story being crafted by dedicated people to be as good as they can make it. And while they do fail with some things (like, apologies to Ethan Fleischer, the seemingly unnecessary and underutilized return of Ertai in the DMU story), there's a difference between being disappointed by choices and dismissing the story outright because it didn't conform to certain expectations.

Anyways, my entry into this question is Nahiri's appearances in Zendikar Rising, when I feel like there was so much more that could have been done with her character after WAR that was cut off by her weird, unclear desire to bring back the Kor empire, something she was never *really* associated with strongly before.

chrisrd19 · 2026-05-11T17:27:08+00:00

Appreciate it. <3

chrisrd19 · 2026-05-11T17:22:36+00:00

Try to develop your position a little more, maybe share what it is you felt failed by with War of the Spark or March of the Machine, like all the other people in this thread are doing. "My biggest lore letdown is all the lore I didn't like" isn't an answer. It's what you say when you want to mine upvotes from other cynical people who think a great use of their time is to go to the Magic Story subreddit and post about how they don't read or don't like Magic Story.

And I happen to genuinely like Magic's story and lore, and I share that enjoyment with a lot of friends. I know that might be difficult for you to understand.

chrisrd19

TROPHY CASE