Welcome to the Funderdome

There is a specific kind of silence that settles into an apartment around nine in the evening. The commute is over, the dishes are done, and the day has nothing left to ask of you. For a growing number of people, that hour is no longer empty. It is increasingly being filled by an AI companion that learns your name, your moods, and the small running jokes that accumulate between two people over weeks.

What makes SweetDream stand out in this space is how little it feels like software. The platform, found at sweetdream.ai, lets you build a character from the ground up: appearance, personality, the texture of their voice, even a backstory and the odd quirk that makes them feel particular rather than generic. The chat itself is the surprise, though. It remembers what you told it on Tuesday and brings it up on Friday, the way a real person would.

A mountainous region, as humble an origin as a people can claim. Small city-states form, with collaborative projects proposed and enacted to create sanctioned safe-travel trade route between two or more cities. A network of alliances form between these locales of civilization, and the magic of these mountains is soon explored.

In this world, a chemical reaction burns in the atmosphere that allows a semi real manifestation of desired boons (blah blah magical asteroid with Magic Properties changed the scape of the world forever this is several million years of evolution later). This aurora is known by these peoples as the Stream, resembling the rippling waters that flow from cliff to foothill and carry life on its tides.

The first recorded summoning in recent history was accidentally manifested by a top resercher's precocious daughter, asking for another stonefruit from his pouch. The gathered magic in the air folded and squeezed entropy into reality, and an entirely new breed of sweet-savory fruit took root in front of the girl. This plant, hence named Joat after the young girl who ensorceled it into being, became a bumper crop for the city it was formed in. This fruit, a gift twofold, would allow its consumers to assume the form of the wild fauna that inhabit this yet-to-be-industrious divine epicenter, and the people of this village would leverage this gift to benefit their side of trade agreements with neighbors near and far.

Joa, the young girl who changed her world in adolescence, soon let her attention be shifted to ambition and oversight of a rapidly-expanding citizenry. She became an idol of the new age of the mountains, a symbol of the empire to be formed by her people, with a coat of fur and a thick tail resembling a snow leopard's. Following her death, she was defied and her progeny became the de facto administrators of the throne of her lands. Joatai was named in her honor, the Imperatrix Eternal who moved the world through her families and chosen benefactors.

Research was still done of the Stream, of course, but several uninspiring results of manifestory attempt led a vast majority of the population to believe that the Gift of Joat was as divine a blessing as anything to be expected, and who knows how long it may take for the magical energies to surge in such a magnificent way again? It was soon considered tasteless to seek further understanding or insight into the Stream's function, with those interested in learning the process of unreal creation and its various mysteries as looking a gift miracle in the mouth. A vast majority of the efforts put into such study were quietly wound down, with the foremost experts in the field turning their attention to maximizing breeding healthy and powerful Joat.

Soon enough, the demand for this blessed stonefruit was the central pillar of the industrial strength of the billowing blanket that is civil sway. State-sanctioned oratory and debate was enhanced by raven-headed humanoids with the ability to out-squawk their opposition. Battalions of foot soldiers changed their shape to that of wooly loxodon, a fur-coated mammoth species as its primary inspiration. The ruling class, nearly all of them descendents of the Ever-Reigning Joa, chose to permanently adjust their given form to that resembling a snow leopards in one way or another, each personalizing their mutation with great zeal.

Some more custom MTG cards! It's been a minute since ive posted my designs, so I hope you enjoy. I want feedback on these, feel free to comment on what works or what feels weird.

Yurlok began to feel a familiar tug of the Blind Eternities. Some mana-mancer, massive and ungraspable. This happens from time to time. Some great force, aware of Yurlok's particular set of skills, has need to summon his essence to a field of war and conflict. Privately, Yurlok thought that those great ones who commanded him so often were unkind, cruel, or worse yet - he was a plaything to an ill-entertained Planeswalker.

He felt himself slip from the bonfire of Scorch Thrash. In a moment, he was present, alove and whole in some battle-scarred taiga. He took a breath, then another, then a third. This 'summoning', as he knew it, always put him off-kilter.

And yet, he found himself modified somewhat, tenser in his arms and legs. He noticed his posture was straighter, and when he ran his tongue over his flesh-rending teeth, their sharpness surprised him. Something must have happened to him in the summoning, something that was not expected. He was used to the overwhelming sense of mana flow, the warm rush of leylines full to bursting with arcane power, but he was never the recipient of such an uplifting force. He scanned the area he now found himself in, using his vigilant sense of smell to find what's caused his newfound power.

A little... guy.

Big eyes. Red and obsidian-dark scales. A flaming blade, not unlike Ajani's dual-head axe, but much smaller. Tail as long as his body.

He was why Yurlok was feeling so bolstered.

He looked tired. Poor fella, he probably just seeing his little blade, and he was beside himself from the effort.

The little eye blinked at him, seemingly aware of Yurlok's enhanced state. Then, as though he could hear something coming, he motioned with his free hands, clawed and infantile.

Back up.

Yurlok backed up.

A frilled sandwalla burst to reality. Hardly a creature Yurlok would need to make room for, but it was about the small thing's size. Immediately after this new lizard became tangible, the bladed ally began to glow and spurter. He hissed a gruesome curse, magical flame building around him, and three bolts of energy blazer or of him, flying in three different directions.

Yurlok then realized that the sandwalla was as tall as him.

For all the time-warp shenanigans that the plane has been victim to, it baffles the mind of many of the Cabaretti that nobody here cooks with garlic? They ask about it, the aromatic bulbs that grow in small clumps, and the Abzan look at them confused. Yeah, we've got plants like that, but we never really bothered to use them. It's, like, a weed. It grows in the cracks of our roads, we don't go out of our way to cook with it.

The great, immutable truths of Theros are aligned with magical reflections of the belief. The sea, the sun, and death have all been around for forever, and they seem to have ever-changing opinions on our lives and livelihoods. What if we... offered them a song? What if we sang to the sun? And what if the sun liked the song enough, it wouldn't give us heat stroke so much?

...what do you mean that worked?

Okay, cool cool cool. The sun is a guy. A huge guy. That is choosing not to give us heat stroke because he likes our songs. Great. Should we make songs for the other stuff we deal with all the time, maybe?

We hunt, and we really need to be good at hunting. Let's sing a song... to the idea of hunting well! Holy shit! That worked! Let's make a song about making better tools to hunt better! Holy shit!! That worked!!

As society crept further and further into stability, more human-centric worship started popping off.

"Hey, babe? I love that we made a big city where all of our people could live together in peace, and I think we've got a really good thing going, but I feel like we're missing something."

"I totally agree, Tiro, I want this place to last. Let's offer some of our best boar to the God of Making Our City Last!"

"What are you talki- oh! Right! Thank you, God of Making Our City Last! Here's our best boars! Love you!"

A booming voice that shakes the grounds of Meletis responds,

I disagree, for a couple reasons.

1) Smash Bros is a video game where you play as characters from other video games. Magic's UB collabs have yet to make a meaningful overlap with other collectibles card games. The medium we find the characters in, the medium in which we originally interact with the characters, hasn't changed in Smash Bros. It has drastically changed in Magic. Warhammer is sort-of similar, in that it's a hobby you'll often pick up form an LGS, but Dr. Who, TMNT, fucking Jurrasic Park? This is DIFFERENT STUFF. Youre not enjoying it for the reasons you enjoyed the original product. It's a cash-grab from popular media for the sake of lining Hasbro's pockets. A lazy cash-grab, at that.

2) Smash Bros, as it exists, is a game that stands on its own, ludonarratively. These video game characters, each in their own world, have been brought together for evil/tournament of champions reasons. They all acknowledge that they're not where they came from, not where they used to be. It's a side-event from the canon of their universe.

When Doc Ock and Sauron and Starscream are all in a deck together, it's a mish-mash. It's nothing. The characters exist solely in the context of their own stories, and while mechanically that may synergize, there's no interaction with the base truth of the Story of Magic. A story that has plenty of universe-hopping, alternate-reality elements, that are fascinating! The story of Phyrexian invasions of All the Planes of Existance is an imagination-swirling concept that is fully undercut when it turns out that, actually, a ton of universes never had that problem, they're running a rerun of my favorite children's show!

It's an especially irritating note that, yeah! A ton of these IP have played the 'hopping dimensions' game before! If anyone would have met through the Omenpaths, it'd be one of the people from Dr. Who! Or Spider-Man! Or TMNT! It would be so easy to weave these products into the story Wizards of the Coast has been telling, but for the sake of IP Singularity, they don't.

3) It's Magic: the Gathering. MAGIC. There is an implied sense of fantasy and suspension of disbelief that is shattered when Fallout, Jurrasic Park, Walking Dead, and other magic-free media are represented in the Spellcasting Game Where You Play The Role of a Powerful Wizard. I take umbrage with this fact in Mainline UW sets as well, like Magic Wild West or Magic Haunted House, but the Universes Beyond sets are the most guilty. Beyond the nitpicking of 'blah there's no magic' whatever, I also have a problem with the art on UB cards are just artist's renditions of Real Actors From Movies. What is Jeff Goldblum doing as the face of your Eggs deck. Why is David Tennant your commander. Get Walton Goggins out of your Zombies deck Right Now. He's an actor. He deserves better.

Now, look. On the one hand, I love thinking about my favorite Blorbos in the context of mechanical design for my hobby. I'd be a grade-A hypocrite if I said there should be no expression of other media in the world of card design. But! You'll note, dear reader, that I'm not selling my card designs. I'm not an employee of the longest-running trading card games to ever exist. I like the characters, I like the game, and with my own free time I've designed cards I think match the vibes and actions of my favorite moments of media.

Custom MTG cards I've designed for Worlds Beyond Number's WWW, except I didn't steal or (god forbid) /generate/ any art for them. Let me know what you think!