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Post by Daij_Djan on Sept 26, 2022 20:32:36 GMT
Welcome to the Card of the Week Contest! To participate in this Contest you'll have to design a card along the contest guidelines and throw it into the arena with other competitors' entries! At the end of each week, a winner will be determined by forum poll. The winner's card will be rendered and featured on the Welcome page, and the winner decides the challenge for the next week's Contest! Here we go, competitors: our four-hundred and thirty-forth challenge!
The winners of the "Return to Tolarian Academy!" poll were Fermat (left) and Idea (right) with... And the challenge issued by one of our winners was... Choose a fictional trope and design a card based upon it! The card should strive to convey the trope in question in flavor and mechanics.
Additionally, please try to keep your entry edits all in one post - if you need to change it you can put your old entry in a spoiler marked "Old entry" and leave the newest rendition to be seen. Just use the edit button in the top/right of your original post.And now, time to begin the challenge! Best of luck, competitors!
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Post by Daij_Djan on Sept 26, 2022 22:38:33 GMT
Quick inspiration as I'm going to bed: Dead Parents ?B Legendary Enchantment - Background Commander creatures you own have “When this creature enters the battlefield, search your library for up to two creature cards, put them into your graveyard, then shuffle.”
EDIT: Almost forgot adding a render:
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Post by twintania on Sept 27, 2022 1:59:59 GMT
Quick inspiration as I'm going to bed: Dead Parents ?B Legendary Enchantment - Background Commander creatures you own have “When this creature enters the battlefield, search your library for up to two creature cards, put them into your graveyard, then shuffle.” This protagonist will have three or so pairs of their parent. But I preferably see it as representing junk mangas with random and crude storyline. |
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Post by sade612 on Sept 27, 2022 2:08:47 GMT
 {Text} Sworn Nemesis   Creature - Human Assassin  When ~ enters the battlefield, choose a creature an opponent controls. ~ must block the chosen creature if able. When the chosen creature dies, draw a card. 3/2 |
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Post by BinaryBolas on Sept 27, 2022 2:30:19 GMT
After a bit of short thoughts exchange, I changed my entry to the one below, and altered a little confusing/false wording.  {Spoiler}{Previous Entry & Remarks}
a) There must be a better way to phrase what I try to express, but I lack better words. If there's a more technical term, let me know. It's a trope where the second protagonist (mostly female) becomes mostly motivations for the main protagonists and/or a plot device.
b) Yes, it's Lucy from Cyberpunk: Edgerunner. This shows that I don't enjoy that show very much since its plot crosses one of the "red lines" for me. (Also it's not very Cyberpunk)
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Post by hydraheadhunter on Sept 27, 2022 3:53:22 GMT
| Disgraced Gentry
Three generic and a white or a black
Legendary Enchantment — Background
Commander creatures you own have “When this creature enters the battlefield,
create treasure equal to the half the amount of mana spent to cast it rounded down,”
and “Whenever you sacrifice a treasure, draw a card and lose 1 life, then if you
control no treasure, sacrifice this creature.”
FT: "How's it feel Madam? To be as common as the rest of us... Street Rats was it?"
Art: A woman dressed like a former nobel who's fallen from riches to rags.
Art by: Sentron
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I hit the random trope button on tvtropes until I got something I liked enough to make a card for, and here we are at riches to rags.
All the backgrounds are mono-color, so I figured slide into two color backgrounds, maybe with a special rule that backgrounds only contribute at most one color to commander identity of your deck, maybe not (I rather like it, but admit it'd be hella arbetrary).
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Post by hydraheadhunter on Sept 27, 2022 4:16:15 GMT
a) There must be a better way to phrase what I try to express, but I lack better words. If there's a more technical term, let me know. It's a trope where the second protagonist (mostly female) becomes mostly motivations for the main protagonists and/or a plot device. In terms of TVTropes, you may be thinking of a Living MacGuffin, the act of Fridging, Damseling, or treating as Disposable a woman character. But these are typically used for the unfair treatment of side characters rather than characters with full-on protagonist status. There's also The Chick of a fiveman band, but that's an entirely different dynamic with another set of problems. Love Interest and Lust Object are twin tropes that while technically gender neutral are typically analysized wit respect to the man in a cishet relationship (that is, the love interest / lust object is the woman).
I can't for the life of me find the TVTropes page, and maybe it doesn't exist on TVTropes, but there's another term in literature called, The Lamp Test, which measures whether a character is a fully realized character important in a story based on whether that character could be functionally replaced by a particularly desirable lamp without losing too much; a disappointing number of women characters fail this lowest bar test leading to the idea of a 'lamp with tits,' to mock this way of treating of women characters; I'd swear that I've read it on TVTropes somewhere but they change so much over there often enough that if it used to exist, it might not exist anymore.
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Post by twintania on Sept 27, 2022 4:32:40 GMT
a) There must be a better way to phrase what I try to express, but I lack better words. If there's a more technical term, let me know. It's a trope where the second protagonist (mostly female) becomes mostly motivations for the main protagonists and/or a plot device. b) Yes, it's Lucy from Cyberpunk: Edgerunner. This shows that I don't enjoy that show very much since its plot crosses one of the "red lines" for me. (Also it's not very Cyberpunk)  We Japanese call it "Princess/Heroine get abducted". |
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Post by BinaryBolas on Sept 27, 2022 9:13:45 GMT
a) There must be a better way to phrase what I try to express, but I lack better words. If there's a more technical term, let me know. It's a trope where the second protagonist (mostly female) becomes mostly motivations for the main protagonists and/or a plot device. In terms of TVTropes, you may be thinking of a Living MacGuffin, the act of Fridging, Damseling, or treating as Disposable a woman character. But these are typically used for the unfair treatment of side characters rather than characters with full-on protagonist status. There's also The Chick of a fiveman band, but that's an entirely different dynamic with another set of problems. Love Interest and Lust Object are twin tropes that while technically gender neutral are typically analysized wit respect to the man in a cishet relationship (that is, the love interest / lust object is the woman).
I can't for the life of me find the TVTropes page, and maybe it doesn't exist on TVTropes, but there's another term in literature called, The Lamp Test, which measures whether a character is a fully realized character important in a story based on whether that character could be functionally replaced by a particularly desirable lamp without losing too much; a disappointing number of women characters fail this lowest bar test leading to the idea of a 'lamp with tits,' to mock this way of treating of women characters; I'd swear that I've read it on TVTropes somewhere but they change so much over there often enough that if it used to exist, it might not exist anymore.
I don't intend to pick an agressively generalized term here (Fridging, for instance). The one I meant to describe is widely common in Anime plots, and it's specifically "the second main character gets abducted/captured so rescue mission/big showdown can happen". Although it's true that mostly it's the female protagonist that's getting tucked. So Damseling seems fit, except that TVTropes specifies that the term is always for female (or crossdressed) characters, and it makes a term counterpart Distressed Dude for male characters (even Distressed Dude can have the capacity to escape by themselves, while the Damsels are not). However, I do try to express the gradual or subtle (or abrupt) change of the 2nd protag's position in the plot. In this regard, the term Faux Action Girl is closer to describe it but even that it fails to convey this specific meaning. Also I try to make this gender neutral but I believe it's nigh-impossible at this point. For now, I change my entry to Damsel in Distressed to save the trouble, but discussing this kind of topic is appealing to me, so thank you for sharing a bit of knowledge with me. |
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Sept 27, 2022 12:21:06 GMT
Slap  Instant Slap deals 2 damage to target creature. If you gained life this turn, ~ instead deals 4 damage to that creature. //Fuse (You may cast one or both halves of this card from your hand.)// Kiss  Instant You gain life equal to the last amount of damage dealt to a creature this turn. Bonus points if you can guess the trope before clicking this link. I was inspired by how certain cliche fictional relationships in a certain fictional medium tend to involve a girl hitting a guy she likes (especially if he does nice things for her). 
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Post by emberfire17 on Sept 27, 2022 16:54:11 GMT
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Post by sdfkjgh on Sept 27, 2022 18:05:03 GMT
hydraheadhunter : You mean the Sexy Lamp Test? TvTropes also mentions it in their page on the Bechdel Test. First click on the Random Trope button! I wanted to use the page image for the card image, and make a bonus alt-art card using my chosen image, but MSE can't find .webp files:  Spontaneous Mustache Enchantment--Aura  Enchant creature Flash Split second (As long as this spell is on the stack, players can’t cast spells or activate abilities that aren’t mana abilities.)
When you cast this spell, draw a card if you have a mustache. Whenever Spontaneous Mustache becomes attached to a creature, you draw a card if that creature has a mustache. Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 if it has a mustache. Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 if you have a mustache. ------------------------------------------------------------------ ERRATA: Putting on a false mustache follows the same timing rules as removing an item of clothing (see Hurloon Wrangler). Yes, even if you have to use spirit gum.emberfire17: Montage you say?
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Post by vizionarius on Sept 27, 2022 19:27:03 GMT
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Post by Daij_Djan on Sept 27, 2022 20:38:44 GMT
This protagonist will have three or so pairs of their parent. But I preferably see it as representing junk mangas with random and crude storyline. So many dead parents - it might as well be a Disney movie 
(Yeah, you're not wrong - but I don't mind that^^)
I wanted to use the page image for the card image, and make a bonus alt-art card using my chosen image, but MSE can't find .webp files Small heads-up: You can convert webp files into png or similar. Take a look here, for example. |
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Post by sdfkjgh on Sept 27, 2022 21:13:14 GMT
vizionarius: Both TVTropes and MSE say mustache is correct, so I'ma go with that. Daij_Djan: Now you tell me! Oh, well. Might as well stay with the more high culture choice of art.
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Post by vizionarius on Sept 27, 2022 21:25:24 GMT
vizionarius : Both TVTropes and MSE say mustache is correct, so I'ma go with that. Daij_Djan : Now you tell me! Oh, well. Might as well stay with the more high culture choice of art. Oh! Haha, I didn't even notice the spelling difference. Shared for the video. |
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Fermat
8/8 Octopus
Posts: 436
Favorite Card: Force of Will
Favorite Set: Guildpact (set when I started playing)
Color Alignment: White, Blue, Black
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Post by Fermat on Sept 27, 2022 22:09:48 GMT
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Lady
1/1 Squirrel
Posts: 95 
Favorite Card: Secret Rendezvous
Favorite Set: Kaldheim
Color Alignment: Black, Green
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Post by Lady on Sept 27, 2022 22:15:41 GMT
Passing On the Torch 
Enchantment - Aura Enchant creature you control Flash When enchanted creature dies, if it had counters on it, and/or had equipment and/or auras attached to it, move all but Passing On the Torch to target creature with lesser power than enchanted creature.
Went through a couple of different ideas before I came up with this that I'm quite happy with. And for those wondering: Yes, it is inspired by Next of Kin. |
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Lady
1/1 Squirrel
Posts: 95
Favorite Card: Secret Rendezvous
Favorite Set: Kaldheim
Color Alignment: Black, Green
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Post by Lady on Sept 27, 2022 22:17:13 GMT
I had been playing around with the idea of doing something with that trope, but didn't come anywhere close to being as simple and elegant as this. I love it! |
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Post by sdfkjgh on Sept 27, 2022 22:29:49 GMT
vizionarius : Both TVTropes and MSE say mustache is correct, so I'ma go with that. Daij_Djan : Now you tell me! Oh, well. Might as well stay with the more high culture choice of art. Oh! Haha, I didn't even notice the spelling difference. Shared for the video. What the actual fuck have you just inflicted upon my poor, defenceless, innocent eyes?! Teferi: Innocent?! I've seen enough of your porn tastes to know you stopped being innocent 30 years ago! Ral: What was it that one girl at Patrick Henry Middle School said? "I may be a virgin, but my hand certainly isn't!" |
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Post by hydraheadhunter on Sept 27, 2022 22:58:19 GMT
In terms of TVTropes, you may be thinking of a Living MacGuffin, the act of Fridging, Damseling, or treating as Disposable a woman character. But these are typically used for the unfair treatment of side characters rather than characters with full-on protagonist status. There's also The Chick of a fiveman band, but that's an entirely different dynamic with another set of problems. Love Interest and Lust Object are twin tropes that while technically gender neutral are typically analysized wit respect to the man in a cishet relationship (that is, the love interest / lust object is the woman).
I can't for the life of me find the TVTropes page, and maybe it doesn't exist on TVTropes, but there's another term in literature called, The Lamp Test, which measures whether a character is a fully realized character important in a story based on whether that character could be functionally replaced by a particularly desirable lamp without losing too much; a disappointing number of women characters fail this lowest bar test leading to the idea of a 'lamp with tits,' to mock this way of treating of women characters; I'd swear that I've read it on TVTropes somewhere but they change so much over there often enough that if it used to exist, it might not exist anymore.
I don't intend to pick an agressively generalized term here (Fridging, for instance). The one I meant to describe is widely common in Anime plots, and it's specifically "the second main character gets abducted/captured so rescue mission/big showdown can happen". Although it's true that mostly it's the female protagonist that's getting tucked. So Damseling seems fit, except that TVTropes specifies that the term is always for female (or crossdressed) characters, and it makes a term counterpart Distressed Dude for male characters (even Distressed Dude can have the capacity to escape by themselves, while the Damsels are not). However, I do try to express the gradual or subtle (or abrupt) change of the 2nd protag's position in the plot. In this regard, the term Faux Action Girl is closer to describe it but even that it fails to convey this specific meaning. Also I try to make this gender neutral but I believe it's nigh-impossible at this point. For now, I change my entry to Damsel in Distressed to save the trouble, but discussing this kind of topic is appealing to me, so thank you for sharing a bit of knowledge with me. Yeah, I distinctly disgree with TVtrope's decision to gender segregate any trope because its silly; tropes are tropes and a pink screwdriver is a screwdriver. But, at the same time I think that I'm forced to recognize that we do live in a society where the pink screwdriver is enfact used differently, and trying to find an agender term for a trope that's used differently between the two genders is hard especially if you ignore all the use. I don't see a problem with calling some distressed dude "a damsel," but I have to recognize that boy damsels and girl damsels aren't given the same treatment under the narative in most cases and one is more rare than the other, yeah?
Like, complete tangent but Mary Sue is so intertwinned w it its messy gender connotations that people can't process the idea of a masculine sue unless it's very obvious. Chris Winkle, author, podcaster, etc, coined the twin terms candy and spinach as an alternative to Sueness and it's messy gender connotations. Candy is anything which glorifies a character and makes them out as cool, while spinach is anything that humbles a character and makes them out as an absolute mop; under this construction characters need a healthy balance of candy and spinach to properly engage the audiences sympathy and the phenomenon of the Mary Sue is the label applied to a character that happens to be a lady gets too much candy and not enough spinach.
It's hard.
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Post by FLAREdirector on Sept 27, 2022 23:40:28 GMT
This is basically a take on a Xenomorph drone from Alien. Here's my thought process--flash and entering the battlefield during combat is like a jumpscare for your opponent; forcing them to sacrifice a *non*attacking creature is like "don't split the party," "don't turn your back on the rest of the group," sneak-attack-from-the-shadows kind of thing; and then the death trigger destroying a permanent is a reference to the Xenomorph's acid blood.
I have never actually seen an Alien movie, no. Do not @ me.
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Post by sdfkjgh on Sept 28, 2022 0:45:19 GMT
hydraheadhunter: I was not aware of any messy gender connotations beyond just changing the name of the trope to Gary Stu for a male character. A badly written character is a badly written character, and having separate names for two different sexes of badly written characters, while still describing the same phenomenon, is useful, but not inherently sexist. It's just when the label is misapplied to any character that an audience member might not like that things get godawful. Assholes always gotta ruin things for the rest of us. If this all sounds mansplainy, I'm sorry, I'm just trying to get my thoughts out on the fly. That article is very good, and has convinced me to change my terminology. FLAREdirector: Do you have lucid dreams? I've occationally had them, sometimes being able to affect my dream before I realized I was even asleep--kind of skipping a step, as it were. In my youth, a lot of times after I'd woken up from a nightmare, I'd be able to go back to sleep and revisit that same nightmare in a better, more commanding position, usually involving more and heavier firepower. The reason I bring all this up is that Alien is the nightmare, Aliens is the lucid dreaming revenge on the nightmare, Alien3 is the nightmare recurring years or even decades later, after you've grown up and out of being afraid of such things anymore, and Alien Resurrection is the indigestion nightmare brought on by acid reflux from eating too much cheese, drinking too much Jägermeister, dropping too much LSD, and staying up WAY too late watching the films of Jeunet et Caro. After that, the quality drops off precipitously and progressively with each subsequent offering.
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Post by BinaryBolas on Sept 28, 2022 3:18:05 GMT
Fermat: The second ability needs to change to " ~'s owner gains control of it", otherwise it won't work. So is the affliated wording in the third paragraph. Every iteration of the ability that involves benefiting the owner of the permanent while it changes control rapidly needs to specify the owner. hydraheadhunter: I kind of feel sorry for leading a huge tangent about sexually biased tropes. I guess my original entry is kind of mixed with a little bit of personal frustration regarding the difference of opinions about the Edgerunner show. I like plots and deconstructing them. My problem of that show is that the writer dumbed down a potential badass female protagonist (which they showed us previously) into a literal trophy for male protagonist to acquire. For this lazy writing alone I'm down on the overall rating of the show (Not to mention they morph the original script, a perfect cyberpunk story, into a mediocre love opera). I'm dumping all of these so that I can feel better. sdfkjgh: In my mind, gender-specific terms are sexist inherently. We are looking at the literature existed in thousands of years of human history when we discuss tropes in media, while the gender equally, race equally or gender/race variety movement merely started in recent century. Besides, many publicly accepted masterpieces written by public accepted talented writers or artists a) are themselves of privileged member of the society, or b) created the plots for the targeted audience with most of them white straight males. I do, however, agree that these terms are necessary to exist because it reflexes the problem we currently having in popular media, and we are not quite there to ditch them. I think it's crucial that we admit that these discriminations and double standards exist, and they will keep existing for a long time.
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Post by vizionarius on Sept 28, 2022 6:34:57 GMT
 {Original (not sure if a permanent entering phased out would trigger enters the battlefield effects, so decided to be safe and updated the wording to account for that just in case)}  |
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Sept 28, 2022 6:42:47 GMT
Dang that's clever. I still can't believe we live in a world where Phasing is a mechanic that's a semi-regular part of modern magic design, but designs like this definitely show how it can be very interesting. |
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Post by vizionarius on Sept 28, 2022 6:53:18 GMT
Dang that's clever. I still can't believe we live in a world where Phasing is a mechanic that's a semi-regular part of modern magic design, but designs like this definitely show how it can be very interesting. Thanks! Was driving home, just listening to music, when the inspiration struck me.  |
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Post by hydraheadhunter on Sept 28, 2022 11:09:03 GMT
BinaryBolas, don't ever worry about "leading a huge tangent about [anything]." Firstly cause I'm about 73.5% sure most of this site's userbase has ADHD (no offense intended and I ain't pointing that dx at anyone in particular, it's just I've got it and y'all be givin' similar vibes yeah?) so no matter who's talkin' about what, it'll snowball into a tangent on it's own accord, and Secondly cause this discussion ain't even that big a tangent cause we're still discussing the subject of the prompt, and if things ever get too far off topic I have every confidence in the mods to reign us in.
sdfkjgh, yeah, Gary Stu is a term that exists, but in my experience no one ever actually uses the term or discusses men characters in terms of Sueness. The critique is typically reserved for women characters that are 'too candied' for the audience's tastes. Like, in the discussion surrounding Star Wars 7, the criticism surrounding the film in certain circles™ revolved almost exclusively around Rey's 'Sue-ness' despite the fact that she was in that movie practically a genderswapped Luke from Episode 4 and Luke had never been analysized for his Stu-ness, and the fact that the film had a lot of other more important structural problems. The term in etymology and use has gender connotations that are messy, and when using the term, that's something that needs acknowledged and grappled wit; However, I stand by the fact that I think segregating examples of a trope's by the gender of the character exemplifying it is silly. I just don't see the point drawing that particular line in the sand, especially if the goal is getting rid of them connotations.
I'm also glad you like candy and spinach, cause yes those are some good gender neutral terms Winkle don' did coin; But, I don't think they wholely replace Sueness, because Sueness represents a specific set of symptoms that often arises from characters being over-candied but not all over-candied characters are necessarily Sue-symptomatic if you will nor are all Sues over-candied. Red of Overly Sarcastic Productions has a video, Trope Talk: Mary Sue, in which she discusses the history, use, gender connotations, and etc of the term at length, and gets into what she thinks actually rests at the heart of Sue-ness. Her interpretation is that Sueness is a sort of narative gravity well centered on a character that causes the metaphysics, plot, and other characters to all warp around the Sue-singularity. Her interpretation sees The Sue is the center of the story's universe around which all other elements must revolve, even at the expense of those stories. And that's a useful trope to be able to identify (and potentially revise around) which needs to be distinct from candy and spinach, both because over-candied characters can be over-candied without exhibiting this gravatational narative warping and because over-spinached characters can exhibit this gravitational narrative warping (which TVtropes calls The Chew Toy or The Woobie). It's just unfortunate that in the world we livin' in, the term picked up some messy gender connotations because it was first identified in characters that happened to be primarily fanfic writer self-inserts (and most fanfic writers are women), and that users of the term refused to let go of those gender connotations even after years of continued use.
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Lady
1/1 Squirrel
Posts: 95
Favorite Card: Secret Rendezvous
Favorite Set: Kaldheim
Color Alignment: Black, Green
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Post by Lady on Sept 28, 2022 15:34:29 GMT
I don't have anything to add to the discussion about tropes and genders, but I've been following along, and I gotta say it's super interesting to read you people's opinions and arguments for and against.
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Post by sdfkjgh on Sept 28, 2022 19:14:45 GMT
I don't have anything to add to the discussion about tropes and genders, but I've been following along, and I gotta say it's super interesting to read you people's opinions and arguments for and against. Nah, I'm just joking. @bunarybolas, hydraheadhunter : The main reason I brought up Gary Stu is because I remember reading (possibly on the TVTropes page on the subject) that Jesus was the original Gary Stu. I'd argue that there's prolly plenty of older characters from pre-christian mythoi that better qualify for that title. I would say Rama, but then I remembered this. Also, hydraheadhunter , I myself am on the spectrum near the higher functionality end, but exactly where is unspecified, and somewhat irrelevant at this point in my life, but you correctly guessed that already. Ral: Gee, I wonder what gave it away? MOUSEKETEERS ROLL CALL!! Teferi: No, please don't. We're already drawing too much attention to ourselves. Mel, I can clearly see you vibrating, but cool it, ok? Hey, Jund, can we get an update on the whereabouts of He Whom Shall Not Be Named? Last I saw, he was deep at the bottom of The Pit, and thank the stars and all that is holy for that.
Ral: Is that your asshole?
Appendix, technically. Or as close as one can get for the personification of an entire demi-plane.
Teferi: Oh, crap. We just did the whole rollcall, didn't we? Ral: Yep. And in the most convoluted way possible. I'm right proud of you, Teferi. Teferi: Kuvenga iwe zvikuru! Alright, Mel, you might as well-- PRESENT!!!WELL, WHAT ABOUT ME?!Nobody wants to hear from a bad trump expy, we're all thoroughly exhausted by the original at this point! |
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"When in doubt, do a common." 
