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My husband saw the Tumblr app icon on my phone and came at me all sad and confused about why I had Tinder on my phone.

At first I was offended because, I was like “What’s wrong with you! You don’t recognize the Tumblr logo?!” But then I realized that in the real world it is more likely for a person to be trying to cheat on their husband than spend their days on a weirdass website from the original days of the internet to read sci-fi fanfic, swoon over Garashir fanart, learn about obscure historical events, and make sure Neil Gaiman is still alive.

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This is so cute 😭🥹

Marvel’s Voices: Pride (2021)

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Mark, I'd like to remind the room that different people want different things by stating that I have loved the hats. More hats please.

Next up, Top Hat World. : )

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Universes beyond is honestly incredible flavor. Imagine fighting a Wizard and they cast Summon Dalek

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Liliana Vess + Tumblr Textposts

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Medieval authors were so fucking funny. In "The Faerie Queene" this guy comes up to the main hero and is like "Don't go over to that cave, there's a guy inside that makes people kill themselves." And the hero is like "Bet." and goes into the cave. Then the old man (literally called Despair) is like "If you die, you can't commit sin." and can you guess what happened.

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Funniest part of Magic the Gathering lore is the plane where vampires are evil Catholics, and they finally find and revive Vampire Jesus (who is a woman). And Vampire Jesus goes “What the fuck is wrong with you all? This is literally the opposite of what I said to do. Vampirism is a curse to take on to serve a burden of the church and you all are just using it for power and racism?”

And then so many vampires were like “But I want power, not responsibility” that they went “Can’t believe Vampire Jesus was wrong about Vampire Jesus’s teachings, we should schism.”

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if you're just joining us, george takei is having to educate jk rowling on holocaust denial

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FINALLY the first transmasc legendary creature dropped!!!

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To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995)

Dir. Beeban Kidron

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All jokes aside, and acknowledging most of the MoM story has been highly enjoyable so far, it's a terrible waste what was done with Lukka.

Speaking from the minority position here, I found Lukka to be a pretty interesting character in The Sundered Bond. Here you have a character with a very earnest and dedicated nature, made hard by the necessity of the plane/world he was born into. You then have that character forcibly thrust into a position where, as a bonder, he must now question the life he's led up to that point, leave behind everything he knows, and survive against the hostilities of the very society he once protected.

And he screws up! He screws up big time! He comes close to making positive decisions that could have brought him to a more sympathetic relationship with the creatures of Ikoria, but events, the aforementioned hostilities, and (often overlooked, I think) direct manipulation by the voice in the Ozolith put him in a situation where he makes horrible decisions and hurts people. And he does so while, and I think this is very important, genuinely thinking he is acting in the best interest of the people and place he calls home.

The man himself has a lot of issues, and flaws aplenty, but I was excited to see him show up again in future stories, to see where this complex take on the monored character would go, and how he would bump up against the rest of the multiverse. He had a lot of growing to do, but that journey of growth was off to an interesting start.

Instead, I get the impression the creative decision was to look at the general backlash against Lukka following The Sundered Bond, throw up hands, and go "hey look! we're in on the joke too; look at this idiot and how bad he sucks!"

And the result, quite frankly was...some pretty weak storytelling? Lukka's Strixhaven storyline (like the villains he aligned with) was sort of a big nothing - a really awful act of violence against an institution of children and young adults with poorly explored motivation and no real follow-up in any subsequent plotlines. His compleation story was interesting enough, but then gets followed up on by a story that seems to exist purely to kill him off in he most humiliating way possible, every character in-universe acting with a very deliberate disdain for him before he can get two sentences out of his mouth.

I absolutely understand why Lukka wasn't a popular character. His motivations and worldview are entirely too self-centered, and he didn't win any fans by being much less sympathetic to his animal bonds in the novelization of the Ikoria set than appeared to be on the cards.

Still, wouldn't it have been more interesting to GIVE us something to care about in regard to Lukka rather than swing him around a bit like a rag and toss him in the bin just because his introduction to the story was a mis-fire? Isn't the magic story better served by an attempt to make something enjoyable out of him than just shit-can him for a (if I may be so bold, not even particularly witty) laugh?

I think so, fwiw.

PS - I write all of the above well aware that, for any of the compleated and killed walkers so far, one could make the argument they've been done narratively dirty. Personally, I would argue that so far those walkers have all been given a depth of previous stories Lukka has not, and that they, notably, have been granted POV sections in the stories where they are either killed or presumed killed. I would also not for a moment mean to diminish the negative feelings folks have about other walkers dying in the MoM story. The above critique is all ultimately very subjective, and I hope is taken as such.

PPS - Majorly telling, imho, that Lukka gets written off as a moron for trying to use his SOLE magical ability to bond with Phyrexians in order to survive and save others in ONE, but Wrenn bonding with Realmbreaker gets no such scrutiny, because the narrative rewards one and not the other

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Now that Ral has appeared in Bloomburrow, is Ral a planeswalker who hasn't lost Spark?

He’s still a planeswalker.

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King

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it's too bad hardly anyone has read The Gathering Storm (2019) by Django Wexler due to the fact that it was published via weekly newsletter email because at the time it released i was honestly blown away by how openly and honestly django wrote Ral Zarek's sexuality as a gay man. like. wow. he cooked.

link: The Gathering Storm chapter 11 on MTGLore.com

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Ral: Would you still love me if I was an otter?

Tomik: What?? I mean, of course- I’ll always love you no matter what!

Ral: Okay good- because

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Official MTG art of Ajani showing underwear and even a bit of bulge. I'm. In shock.