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Rhystic Cast #14 - We Need to Get Weird (Patreon)

Published:
2023-11-10 01:14:52
Edited:
2024-02-14 14:40:28
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

Magic media is stale. 

We need to cultivate guerrilla scholarship. We need to preserve our history and represent it meaningfully. We need to create spaces that connect people to objects. We need to get away from the commercial and reconnect with the community. We need to work with serious intention. We need to send signals that cut through the noise. 

Music in this episode:Circa Survive - LustrationCirca Survive - 1,000 Witnesses 

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Comments

Nick

Speaking to scholarly work on MtG, Cameron Kunzelman (Ranged Touch, does a bunch of podcasts like Game Studies Study Buddies & Just King Things) is apparently working on an academic book about Magic’s history and reach. I’m not sure exactly about it’s scope, but I’ve been excited to see the work once it comes out. He’s a fantastic critic & writer.

Douglas Ott

Recently I've been watching the Resleevables by Cedric Phillips and Patrick Sullivan. Patrick's first hand accounts of Magic sets coming out while he was a kid are an enormous highlight. Also, they always seem to be trying to get in the headspace of the game designers of that time which is not something I had ever lent thought to. I had never even heard of the East Coast Playtesters before listening to them. Though their podcast doesn't seem to fit the idea of bridging Magic with weird and new concepts they do seem to be a great source of historical information that doesn't get a lot of light in Magic media.

MURDER SNACKERS

A History of Vintage by Stephen Menendian is good scholarship on the earliest days of Magic. If you want the .pdfs lemme know!

Pete Paul

IMHO, I think the super heavy scholarly MTG videos are great and all but we also need the inverse of that, dirty backroom game nights with less rules or crazy ideas like 10 person Two Headed Dragon. Can't go full bore on one end of the spectrum, just to ignore the other end too

Pete Paul

Not saying you are neglecting that side Mr. G. Just what I see in my yt recommendations

Jeff M

This has me reflect on the sheer noise I blindly inundated myself with and how it limits creativity Wishing these endeavors the best of luck, they are important to the culture of magic and drive positive growth

Bent Bunge

Stoked about the Vagabond Gallery mention, been watching their stuff with interest. A pessimistic view would be that in the current era of ‘hat worlds’ - to borrow the term - it’s harder for me at least to feel that spark of excited discovery in Magic. How am I to delight in something new when I can fairly accurately predict what’s going to be in a given set, from a flavour standpoint at least? (Mayan doomsday calendar, cat people, Hollow Earth tropes - anyone filled their bingo card yet?) Counterpoint: in Ryan Sainio’s Shattered Perceptions over on Hipsters there was this notion that these sets too are someone’s first. As much as I’m nostalgic for Onslaught block, Mirrodin, and Kamigawa, to others Throne of Eldraine was the entry point. All experience is valid. What we are left with though is an appetite for ‘advanced reading’, for the ‘Other/Independent’ shelf in our comic shops, off the beaten track of those established franchises. I wholeheartedly support your push to challenge more, to drag those on the doorstep deeper into various rabbit holes, to inspire others to start asking more interesting questions. When ‘baseline Magic’ turns to the established, the formulaic, the safely profitable, it really is up to us to put front and centre those holographic entry points to a deeper, richer, more meaningful world. Let’s make it happen!

Will Butler

Loved this, Sam! I'm currently working on a PhD around videogame preservation. One of the core frustrations with games culture writ large is contradiction in the community wanting to impress the cultural importance of their hobby but not wanting to take serious steps to detach their hobby from the commercial market that insists upon controlling what the hobby is. Fan culture is the soil where the stories grow. Not that I want this but if the companies that make these games totally abandoned them, they would still live on. They would still flourish and change and be worthy of study and constant re-examination. I'm with you, Sam.

Dylan Davis | Fiction

Since you asked, I want to recommend my own YouTube channel Gorganian Tome. While it's about a different card game (Flesh and Blood), it comes from a direct lineage to Rhystic Studies, though I focus on narrative and ludo-narrative synchrony. What's interesting is I wanted a "Rhystic Studies of FaB" and when no one made it, I did, and instantly, everyone called me "the Rhystic Studies of fab." It's one of the more popular channels in this community, and all it took was someone deciding to get weird!

rhysticstudies

agreed in full. I'm all for getting weird in all directions.

Pighway

Would it be substantive to add a "Guerilla Academia" chat to the Discord? I've been writing a video on and off since mid-July about the disparity in game preservation Pokemon has in spite of their industry-leading backward compatibility for the Pokemon themselves, and I would personally love to connect with others in this space in discussions about game preservation movements.

Pighway

I would love them! bgardinereaster@gmail.com

Pighway

Akin to Chess Grandmasters, what if we saw a champion like Andrea Mengucci play against several people at the same time?

Audrey fern

Low brow culture becoming topics of high brow acedemic works reminds me of "in praise of shadows" one of my favourite Youtubers who discusses horror to the depth and seriousness as you do magic. In fact, he did a 2 part on comic books as well! I'd love to jump in and share my voice here with magic, but I've always wanted to do it for my favourite music that deserves essays and feel the need to do that first(screamo somewhat similar to circa survive) . I will join you some day hopefully! Also: https://youtube.com/@vagabondgallery?si=fgp4bgRx9Z3dQGl6

Wes Lockhart

I couldn’t agree more. If I see one more commander “game night” video I’m going to gouge my eyes out. Magic feels as stale and hollow as the content creation right now.

AlmaV

I really love the worldbuilding Magic does. My first videos were simply condensing the information from disparate sources about a specific race from a specific plane into one more easily digestible video. Recently I've tried to dig deeper into influences on worldbuilding. My latest video is on the vampire houses of Innistrad and their connection with various horror books and movies. Strefan Maurer for instance meets his end in the very same way as Jack Torrance from The Shining. Just earlier this week I read the story Horn Dancer from the 1996 Distant Planes anthology. As Berend/Squirle mentions in his Multiverse in Review: "It's more an anthropological survey of the Hurloon than a proper story." I love it. It's a cute slice-of-life story with a minotaur and a human. It relates how the matriarchal Hurloon society is structured, with traditions and festivals and interpersonal relationships. After reading I went on a short research spree, and quickly found out the Hurloon Minotaur was an mascot for Wizards in the early days. There are pins and cosplays and clothes. And here he is again, as image for this podcast about diving deeper and exploring more. Your mention of Addock's interview in The Duelist already has me looking it up. If the cast was a call, this comment is a positive response. I'm interested and enthusiastic. My channel is called Cavern of Souls on youtube.

Spencer Leath Johnston

I didn't like this one as much as I expected, but the main reason is because this kicked my ass a little. I've felt all these things about Magic, and our wider culture in general, and my last couple years were spent grappling with how to deal with these feelings. This reminded me that I just pushed a lot of this down, rather than really dealing with it. To cope, sometimes we [I] ignore the stale and uninspired side of things and fall into a dull routine. Thanks for shaking me out of that routine.

People3004

I have no editing skills and am not smart- but this podcast has made me really want to create a documentary on the making of Amonkhet....

Michael MacMurdo

A little late to this one, but I can commiserate on the sameness of magic content. I might be feeling a little magic burn out but I can’t stomach another set review. I still find myself craving more video essays like the content you have been making. I know spice8rack and commander’s sphere have been doing their part to add to the space in some way and I hope more are inspired to follow suit! I do hope spice stays in this space with you, his video unsets was legendary!

Julianne Edwards

I am super late to this one, but I just wanted to write this down before I got into work and forgot/had my momentary passion smashed by tasks. I really loved this particular podcast. I’ve been binging these over the last few days while commuting. I’m a very recent patron and watched all/at least most of your videos, which are phenomenal. This podcast episode has inspired me to try and write an essay/documentary on the history of Dragons in card games. Especially with the release of Tarkir Dragonstorm, I have been hyper-fixated on MTG to a level that I haven’t been in 10 years. This episode made me ask myself why Dragons are the thing that excites me and what dragon cards in particular can I pinpoint as the pillars of my love for them. Currently it’s The original base set Charizard, Blue-Eyes White Dragon from Starter Deck: Kaiba and the first printing of Scion of the Ur-Dragon. There are so many more mtg dragon cards that I really want to get into and discuss why the designs are so evocative and creative. Particularly Twinflame Stormbrood and its swan-like features. I haven’t written an essay in over 12 years and the last essay I enjoyed writing was even longer ago (the effect of viewing art through mediation and finishing art through modern means vrs classic means, specifically referencing Gaudi’s Cathedral in Barcelona). I also hate the sound of my own voice, so creating a video with narrated dialogue would be interesting… But thank you. I can’t promise I will actually do this because life has me chained in so many ways… but it’s nice to be inspired every so often.