Psuedo Newb and the Trite Artwork - This post rated PG-13

The nice thing about a blog is you can write really long things that you don't expect anyone to read. This is one of those blogs.

I'm writing this because I'm getting ready to do what will most likely be a very funny review of Avacyn cards but I wanted to address the outragey part elsewhere.

Ok so Jesse Mason, whom I find hilariously accurate and a necessary corrective to many aspects of Magic  Culture wrote and article on a reaction to Triumph of Ferocity, and Avacyn Restored Card, that looks exactly like an uncontrolled enraged bestial man is getting ready to torture and kill a medieval stripper.

And it caused a week of outrage:

This is actually an improvement for both of the characters in terms of Trope Portrayal - because at least Lilliana gets to look like a medievil stripper instead of just a regular stripper. I am in no small part amused by this on a regular basis because the local "disreputable" strip club is named "Wizards" and normally Lilly looks like she works there but with Innistrad she got a a wardrobe upgrade and now she looks like she works at the "Gentleman's Club" here called "Deliliah's." Much better crowd.

Here's what Lilliana looks like on the Duels of the Planeswalkers - which is apparently the real point of entry for a lot of new players.

Lilly is the mostly undressed one in purple and Garruck is the masked Man Towering over everyone in the back.

Now lets compare Lilliana to actual strippers wearing what is actually sold and advertised as working wear for strippers

from Snaz75 http://www.snaz75.com/gowns.html#top

I personally think the purple nail polish is a nice touch with the frosted lips.  Lilly likes to coordinate.

I do this not because I have a problem with either srtippers or Lilly but to demonstrate something called "cultural context". More people have seen strippers than read Magic the Gathering's well . . . anything.

They know what a stripper looks like, they might even know what a sex-positive feminist looks like:

This is Annie Sprinkle - do not look her up on GIS if you are under 18.

So you have to understand that when I agree with Jesse, it doesn't mean I'm horrifically offended or I'm going to quit magic or anything it means '

This is the color Blue 

And the art on this card looks like he's going to rape her before he kills her, 

or maybe after :

Not because it's Garruk or Lilly or their backstory or anything, just because they styled one planeswalker to look like a hypermasculine "wildman" trope and they styled and other planeswalker to look like a stripper.  So it looks like the wildman of the forest is going to dominate and kill the "evil sexual civillized woman"


Tale as old as time . . . .





What??? It's such an archetype that they write monorgaphs about it in cultural anthropolgy.                                                                      

And how many times is the evil woman trying to depower our hero a "seductress" whom he has to destroy or kill in order to be free?

Tons of times. That's why it's not something I'm going to quit Magic over, and why I'm willing to offend household objects by stating the bleeding obivous. I don't care how powerfull the two characters are, there a sexual apsect to the card art and frankly it's incredibly lazy visual storytelling that not surprisingly fell into the archetype that has existed since Civillized Woman , a temple prostitute was paid to seduce Enkidu cutting him off from his wildness.

And frankly we all know what's going to happen to the girl who dresses like a stripper in the movies or TV show she will be  evil/dumb/have-a-heart-of-gold and she will be mocked/humiliated/or killed. Because media uses "dressing like a stripper" to signal lots of things that make that character being hurt, humiliated, used or killed acceptable, implying that they deserve it. Because well they're strippers or dress like them.  It's just that in the course of things this time someone actually made the implicit explicit and called the artist on it. 

But really it's WotC's fault for creating tropes that make it so easy to accept this instead of not dressing their sexy, looks obsessed death mage like a stripper.

By the way she can and does look like a sex positive sexually empowered female dressing for herself and pleasure and not exclusively the male gaze in this picture. Lilly looks totally hot here, and like she's wearing clothes made out of actual fabric not spray on latex (not that there's anything wrong with spray on latex clothing, it's has it's place and it's an uber cool special effect)

Now, I've decided that I'm going to actually do a review of all of the art of Avacyn, because apparently no one really knows what a female person thinks when they see the card art.  So I'll deal with this card later. But I did have a response to Jesse's commenters - which is when they refused to admit that the card even had a sexual component, that it was exclusively violent, that there was no sex in this card at all.

I even read a completely awesomely incorrect defense of the fact that Garruck HAD to part her legs with his knee defensively.

Bullshit. This posing has as much to do with an actual fight as porn does with actual sex or the cool Conan the Barbarian sword swirling move does with anything that will block someone's incoming sword.

It's staged to show off something that the artist thinks is cool compositionally - Garruck is open to attack in about about three ways I can see off the top of my head and most of that exposure is because he's insisted on sticking his knee between her legs.

But then I started to wonder -  what if there was some other problem, that makes them truly unable to see this. Or makes them able to see it but makes them angrily defend it anyway.

I'm becoming aware of how very sheltered some middle class men are in their 20's. It would never have occurred to me before.

And I wrote a response, and then I realized I just didn't want to fight the fight and educate those who were already defensive and that it would be very hard to have a deep conversation about what this is bringing up for me as a woman, a mother of a son , a "girl" and a magic player.

So I'm puttting it here in my competitive journal. Because if nothing else this journal is one woman's interaction with the game and these conversations have been a deafening clamor. My reaction to them is part of the competitive environment - this is something I thought, took the time to write and didn't post - I mulliganed the comment.

Here it is:

The Repsonse I didn't Post

OK - really the first thing I though of when I saw both of them is "breasts in corsets don't work that way".

Mostly because there was no way not to notice her breasts.

As to the guys who see the raised arm and assume that the violence about to be done to her discounts the idea of sexual assault let me say this in the most complimentary way possible because I mean it -  I really do mean it


I REALLY AM SO GLAD THAT YOU DON'T THINK SEXUAL ASSAULT IS PRECEDED BY VIOLENT BEATINGS.

That means you are HEALTHY NORMAL MEN WHO CAN'T IMAGINE MIXING VIOLENCE WITH SEX. 

Which is good. Really good.

And therefore when you see impending violence you remove the sexual implication from the picture.

And really that makes you a good guy dismissing two really important things - sexual assault is frequently about violence and a lot of sexaul assault and domestic violence starts off looking just like that.

And violent rape frequently starts with slapping beating or punching a person ( men can be assaulted too) because rape is about dominance.  So you could have shown Lilliana losing a fight while fighting back ( which I assume is what the fire in her hand is supposed to represent) but she is shown as prone, passive and more than the implied violence I still happened to notice her breasts and her crotch because well - his knee is grinding all up in it.

She's dressed like a stripper. He's about to beat/kill a stripper. The artist chose to have a knee in her crotch - I'm actually almost pleased that you can't recognize this as "rapey" because it means you've never been involved in a rape or worry about a rape, or wonder if the guy who's getting in your face because he's mad at you is going to think he "deserves" something from you for upsetting him  if they guy following you in his car with his pants down while you walk through the parking lot or to school is going to get out of the car and do this to you.

That's fantastic.


Now those of us who do look over our shoulders in the parking lots and take the longer but more public route home from school look at it and go -"Oh yeah, that's rapey." Way to go WotC. And most of us aren't going to stop playing or boycott or even bring up this card when there are worse ones. Or bring it up at all. Because we have to see it everywhere ALL THE TIME. Woman dressed like a stripper is going to be humiliated/beaten/killed for the plot hook or just some color somewhere in the movie or TV show, not surprising at all.

But yeah- it's a trite choice, it could have been done better. I'd rather have seen them upright with his pointy punch embedded in her shoulder and her flame in her hand dwindling because of the physical disruption while she counter attacked to show she was losing.

But I do wonder what healthy normal non-violent men think sexual assault is? Is it only "mixed signals"? Is it because the way we've been brought up to fear being raped and killed you've been brought up to fear a false accusation of rape? That's legitimate and should be discussed.

Because maybe that's the breakdown in the conversation - we're raised in a way that we are aware that sex is used to cover up violence and involuntary and shift the blame to the victim ( she was asking for it) and you're raised to be aware that consensual sex is a tool that can be used back up a lie to destroy your life by the perp.

When we see this picture we don't see the same things, and because the image is shown so frequently we never think about what the other group might see.

Magic is disproportionately young men, they haven't usually had a lot of experience with domestic violence or general war or crime because we live in a pretty good society that is a lot safer than it used to be.

But I am a girl ( and an old girl) who has been threatened, assaulted, sexually harassed at work, followed by pantless men in cars when I was 13 and looked 10, when i was 16 and looked 12, when I was 28 and probably looked like a homeless 18 year old. And frankly, I'm not all that attractive.

And I am the mother of a son and I know what I taught him to be careful of because there are women who will lie about lots of things, for lots of reasons and the laws are not kind to young men.

Jessie's critique is accurate. I'm not sure how big a deal it is combined with many worse images in worse places, but I am beginning to think that discussing the defense of the image might be the more illuminating discussion. But I'm not sure anyone is ready to or wants to have it

Psuedo-New and preparation

So this weird thing has been happening where I really, really want to play standard or at least practice moving the cards around but I'm either not feeling well or fall asleep before I can get a game going - so I'm heading into FNM tonight not having played regular standard in about 4 weeks.

I think I'm going to play white tonight- there seems to be a flood of articles on the various Delvers and I have no idea what the metagame at the store is right now. My Delver build is sort of "not really Finkle's" but I'm expecting a lot of mirror or hate anyway. I'm amused by this since I was the first person running Delvers at the store about a week before I saw my first article on it. ( This isn't because I'm all special or anything, it's just because I was trying to find something to help me since I didn't have snapcasters and they looked like strategic advantage)

I might modify my sideboard to use Darwin Kastle's I don't have the shrine's of loyal legions though.

While his strategy looks like fun if I'm not brewing on my own for learning purposes I really really would like to take a shot at running one of the successful UB Zombies builds that have been floating around. There is one problem with not running my current Delver Build though. In casual and teaching games I realized that my big problem was hesitant mulliganing and working on that is done best with a deck where I'm very secure in how it works. The other thing is that sideboarding works better for me with that Delver build and that's another skill I need to work on.

But I'm not going in attempting to place today. I'm really just checking out the current meta to figure out how to prep for the Avacyn Restored season. It seems like I've missed most of the Dark Ascension period other than a few drafts and the GP. Part of it is timing: Holidays, midterms and being involved in costuming for Hairspray on super-short notice ( Hey Drinne we have 47 cast members and 6 costume changes for each, oh and 3 weeks; You're coming over now right? Yes, yes I am.) But the other thing that I can't seem t shake is this, FNM became much less like "appointment viewing" and more like "eh, whatever if I'm free" when the PWP value went down. For me anyway, I'm curious about the LGS attendance records. Part of it of course is that when I draft I'm building skills AND getting cards no matter what. Part of it is that since I realized that too little sleep affects both my gameplay and my attitude as a competitor it wasn't worth straining to get to it with no guaranteed return. It's shabbat so even though I do go, I try not to write which means my strategy has to be stuff that I am not likely to need to take notes.

I've been thinking a lot about notetaking. There's a good reference about the new tournament rules here . Working with the symbol processing disorder and recognizing that the learning curve is too high for me to deal with board states that are predominantly Scars block ( the artwork is too homogenous for associative recall to help me evaluate which cards do which ridiculous combat tricks) I've been thinking about the idea of taking reminder process notes on MY OWN BOARDSTATE when I play trigger effects, just like I teach tech workers to develop process reminders for tactile learners. But FNM doesn't really help me with that it just kind of would add a layer of guilt for being there in the first place with more writing. So between the disincentives and the other commitments I think I've been avoiding FNM since it moved down to "just another low level event". I don't know if this is just a "me" issue and avoiding social encounters or if it's really just happenstance. I'm coming out of a bunch of commitments so I'm going to make more of an effort to get to some before the pre-releases so I can evaluate it.

Bottom line though is that I'm going in unprepped for the metagame. My LGS seems to be more influenced by decklists on Wizards DailyMTG than Starcity, and our high level players when they are there are usually testing out homebrews.

What I have been doing:

I learned how to play EDH with the Heavenly Inferno precon. I picked it because I would be the most comfortable with the color combinations and Serra and the original Fallen Angel were two of my aboslute favorite cards on my first time at the rodeo. I was able to play relatively well against my friend who is literally the mythical casual gamer I didn't believe existed.

Hmmn he needs a nickname for the site, as he is easily identifiable and therefore I would be. Almost any relevant nickname I give him might actually still let people know, so maybe I'm in the rare situation where I just use his given name? Erg. No then friends who do know him will know all his deck strategies if I keep writing here. Oh I've got it. Mr. Pointy. ( ahhh the sweet, sweet irony),

Ok Mr. Pointy has a real life runs a regular and profitable business and LOVES magic especially EDH. He didn't realize that I played and some of my Facebook geekery tipped him off. I have been avoiding Commander like the plauge, I'm not really fond of multiplayer because I feel like I don't want to mess with it until I have a basic mastery of the head to head rules. Of course I'd already compromised on two-headed giant and Mr. Pointy said if I'd play with him we could play commander in a head to head style. He and I had been trying to get together for hanging out purposes for a while. So this seemed like a perfect yes. Let me tell you he has a full office with shelves dedicated to Magic, a worktable with sorted stacks, every precon deck ever and accessories. He does not however, read any of the online articles or follow the protour at all.

So apparently according to Mr. Pointy I had chosen my pre-con wisely since it was the only one out of the box that made him nervous.

Newb Note: Quick things about Commander

• you start with 40 life
• you pick one card to be your commander and it hangs out in the commander zone
• you can cast if from the commander zone whenever you have the casting cost
• when it dies you put it back in the commander zone and it just costs one more to cast next time moving cumulatively.
• You can only have 1 of each card in your deck
• there are about 100 cards.

Play Magic as normal - Glory in your Timmyflavored Timmy, Johnny or Spikiness cause you do get to play BIG cool cards.

I like angels and demons. I always have. Heck I played In Nomine. ( I miss In Nomine . . .).

It did not suck.

Rules Thing I learned:

The Phyrexian Metamorph actually changes color at the base card level so that if you have to declare "protection from" you can't use "blue" if the PM changed int a red card. I still do not know for sure if this is only with the Phyrexian Metamorph or if it is true for all clone effect cards.

It overwrites on Metamorphing. Mr. Pointy also played an odd infinite life combo that I should have written about here as soon as I learned about it because now I've forgotten how it worked.

Magic/Life Balance

I've also been playing with someone who started playing about two months ago. So the cool thing about that is that I can teach her the stuff that flummoxed me and explain why it was so hard to find out and she can learn the game on her own knowing about the scattered data sources and inconsistencies. It's very sweet of her to agree to be a case study in addition to a new friend.

The changes to OP and my reaction to them also helped my regular playgroup and I sort of work out where magic fits in our friendships and lives (we like it, we don't want it to be ALL the things because we loved ALL the things we were before we all played Magic.) And so I'll be working more on learning EDH because I think it might work better for my circle of friends and they'll put up with my obsessing about things in OP and tournaments that they are interested in but don't care about. The most important thing is that any of us will be able to say to any other one of us that we'd like to do something other than Magic right now and we'll go pick something else to do that minute or later. This is another reason that I'm going to have to break down the tiny avoidance and anxiety issues for FNM. Standard is too time-consuming and requires a constant influx of cards and secondary market expenses. My friends who came in with me when I came back now have a healthy library of cards as a base, we've really not gotten a chance to work with the ones we've got "for fun" so if we just build decks and have fun we'll take a bunch of the obsession out of it.

And I'm cool with that and switching competitive gears and "mastery" gears as long as it doesn't get too spikey. But honestly I think we're all good. We all like pre-releases : ).

Ok so I'm spending all day just working on Magic. I'll check in on Mark Rosewater's Reddit AMA, I'll design a new visual learning aid for Drafts based on Melissa Del Torro's really useful article. I will avoid political news coverage, play some Duels of the Planeswalkers on Steam and head to FNM. I have no idea what will happen there, but I've put it here so I'm not gonna chicken out and stay home.

Pseudo Newb and Things the Computer Taught Me _Updated Note

OK

Deathtouch resolves after blocking damage but before attacker damage so things blocking other things don't get damaged assigned if deathtouch is active.

This is important because creepy dolls ( my favorite card ) has the deathtouch coinflip AFTER the item is blocked but BEFORE combat damage is assigned - the damage is not on the stack, you can't save your critter if the coinflip goes against you with an interrupt.

This is important with other creatures with Deathtouch because I believe that I have put creatures with deathtouch into my graveyard even though the damage doesn't get to them when they are blocking. I have to look into it but my assumption is that if this works like "blocking damage is assigned first then an attacking creature with deathtouch that gets blocked does go to the graveyard - I will try to get into a Duels of the Planeswalker duel to test this out.

Update note *My impulse to test this was correct - Deathtouch doesn't exactly work this way - the saga of figuring it out is in the more recent entry.

Mana Activated Power ups - yes they can be activated multiply as long as you have mana, you can't activate them during actual combat but you can "stop time" to respond by activating them. so you can power up your regerate right before or right( immediately) after combat damage is assigned.

Also don't cast a creature summing when Olivia Voldaran still has enough mana to turn it into a vampier.

Remember that "target non-land permanent" can target control enchanments exlusively

There'a a one on one challenge where that's the key and it never even occured to me.

And oblivion ring isn't a real exile, it's an enchantment, which means it's susceptible to control decks - If possible dissipate is a more permanent choice.

Assign blockers and the attackers are blocked even if you sacrifice all the blockers to inflate one blocker that operates on sacrifices.

Now this, this is useful - suddenly Selfless Cathar makes a lot more sense - he blocks x, x is still tapped for attack and blocked but sacrifice Selfless Cathar and he can pump up another blocker that allows a more versitile creature to survive, take out another bigger or more dangerous creature than the one he's blocking etc.

It also explains a lot of the bewildering sacrifice moves I've seen. Now the creature blocked by the sacrificed creature is just blocked - no damage is assigned.

Used this knowledge to sacrifice things on their way to the graveyard at FNM last night

When you take control of a creature with control cards it has summoning sickness unless the card says otherwise.