Not Even Sure

What all ask boxes look like for me (submission boxes look exactly the same):

Left: what happens when I try to open dms (New Message does nothing); I can’t even read them. Right: when I try to go to someone’s dms from their blog.

Neither new things I post nor old things I post show up in the tags they’re in, even if they were before.

I can type things into replies, but it won’t actually post them.

All my likes, reblogs, and replies are hidden from the notes of EVERY post.

When I like or rb things it doesn’t show notes in someone’s activity / dash, except long-time followers (not sure about the exact cutoff/conditions).

If I reblogged and added something to this from a non-follower they wouldn’t even know. Check and see: my rb’s don’t even show up in the notes. So people couldn’t even find out I added something on by checking the notes either:

Not to mention: I’m hidden from all searches, can’t be @’d, past @’s of me are hidden from my notes, I don’t get notified when people reply to a post I replied to, my @’s don’t give notes, and every search on my blog is blanked. I can’t even ask/submit to myself even with anons, and lots more.

DM: roll a perception check

*nat 20*

*rolls a 1*

DM: roll a perception check

*rolls a 9*

DM: Roll an intimidation check.

*nat 20*

DM: Poseidon quivers before him!

Fighter: rolls a nat 1

DM: Roll for Dodge.

Fighter: *rolls a 1*

anyway, so since water is essentially made up of a gazillion little hexagons, it tends to gather into larger hexagons as it shapes together. this is not visible unless the water is in a solid form, aka ice. when the water is split, it tends to crack around the established hexagons. that bottle rocket exploded in the PERFECT place to show this phenomenon and its geeking me out.

Except they ARENT sturdy, hexagons are an incredibly weak shape, and they stack incredibly well.

“thats why, when you fill up a glass of water to its full capacity, it can go OVER the brim a little and not spill over. It’s also why water beads.”

No, that's because water is a polar molecule and it forms hydrogen bonds with the stuff it touches, and itself.

“anyway, so since water is essentially made up of a gazillion little hexagons, it tends to gather into larger hexagons as it shapes together” Except no? It forms a 3d lattice that repeats indefinitely in any direction, it isn’t a fractal.

“It tends to crack around the established hexagons” Yeah, but around the hexagons that are SIX MOLECULES BIG, because it doesn’t just make big hexagons made of ice. If it DID it would have cracked in a HEXAGONAL PATTERN, instead of in straight lines.

Competitive Magic has a diversity problem.

I’m not talking about race or gender or ability or any of the other things that we all know exist and are at least attempting to fix despite the complaints of the endless ranks of white boys on the internet. I’m talking about something that people complain about constantly but haven’t seem to have made the connection that it’s actually stopping us from being able to fix the other issues.

I’m talking about class.

We all know Magic is expensive. A high quality standard deck will run you a couple hundred bucks, and that’s come down from where it’s been before. Modern hits anywhere from $500 to $1500, and unless you want to play Death and Taxes specifially, expect to shell out multiple thousands of dollars for a Legacy deck. That’s not to say you can’t show up to a tournament with a budget build, but if you have any aspirations of actually doing well you’re gonna have to pay up or get lucky. We see complaints about the price of Magic all the time, but no one ever stops to consider the effect that it’s actually having on our high level tournaments.

Competitive Magic is increasingly becoming a hobby of the upper class. Eternal prices increase constantly as cards get older and fewer people are selling them. Reprints bring down the prices of some cards, but the prices of everything else increase around them as people buy up cards that didn’t get reprint, leaving decks just as expensive if not even more. Standard prices are down, but several hundred dollars is still several months worth of disposable income for many people.

It gets harder every year to go to tournaments, as ChannelFireball continues to raise prices on Grand Prixs in the face of their total monopoly. Even for nearby GPs you may have to drop a couple hundred bucks to even show up to one.

The effect of all this is that we’re leaving out a huge portion of our players. New and experienced players alike look at the price tag associated with competitive play and they give up before they ever start. It’s just not possible for Magic players who are lower to middle class to meet this barrier. And as long as that barrier exists, it will not be possible to solve our other inequality issues, because financial concerns affect women, minorities, disabled people, and queer people significantly more than they affect the white, cishet, able-bodied men that dominate the Pro scene.

Whenever this subject gets brought up, people always bring up three points:

First, how bad it would feel to lose money on the cards I do have that are worth something. Let me tell you, it feels waaay worse to not be able to play ¾ of the game I love and to have my friends say they can’t go to events with me because they can’t spend the money.

Two, Wizards is a business and needs to make money. Well, considering 99% of the cost of Magic comes on the secondary market, I have a really hard time believing that they wouldn’t continue to make money if they reprinted old cards in high quantities. If anything they’d make a killing.

And third, the classic “You don’t want to end up like Yu-Gi-Oh, do you?” And you know what, for as much as I think Magic is a better game in basically every way, Yu-Gi-Oh players always have one thing that we don’t:

That being said, I’m glad the cards are worth what they are because I was able to sell them and get some of that sunk cost back when I needed it right away.

Here’s the thing though. Magic is always going to exclude people who don’t have enough money. Even if they were to lower the price of cards or print more of them, as long as the supply of cards is less than the demand of the audience people will feel this way. If wizards were to print so many cards that there was no scarcity at all, they would print more cards than they can sell, and that’s not something they want.

I don’t know how to fix the paper magic scene, but I think that a solution already exists that more people just need to embrace:

Online magic.

The digital economy is COMPLETELY different composited to paper magic since there is no cost associated with printing cards. The competitive scene online is not nearly as strong but only because the digital audience is much smaller.

Imagine if it wasn’t?

I feel it is my duty to inform you of the total BS that is Inalla, Archmage Ritualist.

That Eminence ability is insane. There is literally no reason to actually cast this commander in your deck, she does everything you want her to do while sitting in your command zone and there’s nothing your opponents can do about it (that’s the issue, by the way). Oh, did a Wizard enter the battlefield from anywhere? Pay a mana and get a copy of it. Now you have two.

Hey, here’s an idea.

Why not tap those two wizards to put another one into play from your hand? And don’t pretend you don’t have any in there, it’s Wizards. You probably have about 20 cards in your hand.

Oh hey, that creature that just entered for free is a Wizard, why not pay a mana to make a copy? Now I have two more wizards for the low low price of one generic mana!

Two Wizards, you say? Well. Why not tap them to put another one into play for free???? And thus the beat goes on until you’ve played everything.

Oh, and don’t even think of using Sundial of the Infinite to exile all the delayed “exile this token” triggers at the end of your turn, thus keeping them permanently. That would be rude.

This is what I had to put up with yesterday.

Cast that new Bloodline Necromancer, pay a mana, get two. One targets Vindictive Lich, one Targets Disciple of Bolas. They both return from the graveyard to play. Pay two mana, get a second copy of each. Sacrifice the Liches to the Disciples, draw 8, make everyone else’s lives miserable.

Horcruxes made: 0

Voldemort, died at age 71

Horcruxes made: 7

At Cambridge University, they were sick of checking the coffee pot level, so Quentin Stafford-Frasier wrote client software for a greyscale 128x128 camera hooked up to an acorn archemedes computer.  Paul Jardetzky wrote the server program.