Magic: The Gathering – 3 amusing Ravnica characters

Since it was really fun reading about some story flavour for my previous post, I thought I’d pick out 3 characters (again secondary as that’s where the good stuff hides) which really tickled me!

I decided to look at the plane of Ravnica again – as I’m still relatively new to Magic this is a plane which I am most familiar with and taken a liking to.
Reading through the list of secondary characters on the MTG wiki, these 3  are ones that I wanted to share in this post. Unlike Mileva, we don’t actually see what these characters look like – room for the imagination to create some funky looking characters!

 

Janoc, Tin Street tinker

This character is first mentioned in Ravnica Alliegance on the card “Shimmer of Possibility“.

As far as I know, we’ve never met ‘Janoc’ before. However, from the flavour text here we can see that Janoc lives/works on Tin Street. This street, as the wiki states, is a “vital center of trade and a popular spot for restaurant and theatres”.

Next, we can see what Janoc means about the rain being “peculiar”. Looking at the art for this card, the individual on the left is walking towards the left of the card. Underneath them, their ‘reflection’ is walking in a different direction – almost like it’s walking towards the right. So yes! Janoc is right, this is rather peculiar! This nonchalant way of noticing something really strange gave me a laugh because if I saw that kind of thing happening I think I would lose my shit. But then again I suppose you can see stranger things happening in Ravnica.

Batman Adaptations – An essay (part three/case study)

A continuation from my previous post on Batman (part one can be found here, and part two here).
This section looks at The Lego Batman, looking at how and why this movie was a successful Batman adaptation.

Case Study: The Lego Batman Movie (2017)

The Lego Batman Movie (McKay, 2017) was not the first time audiences had seen the character. The Lego version of the character had been around for some time in children’s toys before making a digital debut in Lego Batman: The Video Game in 2008 before appearing as a significant character in The Lego Movie (Lord & Miller, 2014). The Lego Movie was a financial hit worldwide, with Will Arnett’s portrayal of Batman referencing heavily from the deep-voiced and broody persona created in Nolan’s trilogy being a popular character amongst audiences. Therefore, The Lego Movie had indicated to Warner Bros. that there was an existing audience in Lego Batman which could be made into a stand-alone film built from intertextual links with the Lego video games, the previous Lego movie and previous versions of Batman from Nolan’s films.

Magic: The Gathering – getting that Mileva flavor!

Mileva! Protector of the Tenth District! Red haired beauty! Never heard of her?? Me neither!

That’s why I decided to do a bit of research about the mystery lady from Ravnica. I’m still relatively new to MTG, I admit I’m not amazing at playing but the flavor (I really REALLY want to write flavour because British) really hooks me into the story around the multiverse.

So when I got my hands on the Guilds of Ravnica set, then Ravnica Alliegance and War of the Spark, I knew that this woman was a recurring character. She isn’t a main character in the story, so we don’t really know too much about her but I think that’s what makes her so interesting to me. With a little bit of research, I think I have managed to compile what we know about Mileva from the cards that she has been featured in. (Maybe she appears in the book?? I haven’t bothered to read it since the reviews were astonishingly negative. I’ll get around to it one day).

Guilds of Ravnica

The first set that Mileva makes her appearance in is Guilds of Ravnica. Now I may have the order of these cards wrong, but that doesn’t really change much as her character is only just being introduced.

“Tenth District Guard”

I would consider this the first time that we see Mileva. She looks like a pretty cool guard here, rocking the golden armour and having a big ol’ axe. I’d trust her!

The flavour text immediately tells us that she’s a good girl who strives to protect the Tenth District – her home. At this point, we don’t know her name just from this card alone. She could easily be thrown away as a one-time character appearance. Thankfully, that’s not the case!