#come to the downside

[inventors-fair]

The Upside to Downsides

Let’s talk some more about downsides! They are an important staple of MTG, having existed since the very first days of Alpha. Their existence ebbs and flows, but drawbacks are an important tool in any designers Balance Belt™. Let’s break it down!

Synergy

One thing you always want to pay attention to when putting a drawback on a card is synergy. Does the drawback play into the rest of the card? If the creature has to attack each turn, then is it the type of creature that wants to attack? It may sound odd to say that drawbacks should fit the card- what with them being drawbacks- but the reverse leads to cards without purpose or place. A high-cost creature that enters the battlefield tapped is incredibly difficult to put in a deck, since it won’t be able to block the turn it’s cast and you won’t be able to do anything else that turn, so you’ll just end up dying. Make sure the drawback feels appropriate for the card.

Too Much Synergy

Counterpoint: it’s easy to steer too far in the other direction. After all, a downside still needs to be a downside, and if it plays into the rest of the card too well, what’s it playing against? If you have a creature that attacks each turn if able, but it’s unblockable and has one toughness, then it’s not like you want to hold it up as a blocker anyways! If you’re giving a card a downside in order to temper out the design, make sure that the rest of the card doesn’t render the downside irrelevant.

That’s not a REAL Drawback!

This is an argument you hear sometimes. Is Decayed really a drawback when it lets you trigger morbid? Is  a downside if it lets you bluff a pump spell more easily? The short answer is yes. Don’t get blinded by potential. While synergy is cool and important, so long as a downside has situations where it is unfavourable for you, then that’s all it takes to be considered one. Ultimately, the term is colloquial and lacks a strict definition, but in most cases, it’s pretty clear one way or another. As for the corner cases? Well, we’ll look at those if they come up.

But the Flavor

Something we see a lot is drawbacks that play into card flavor. A peaceful warrior who can’t deal damage, a spell that can only be cast at night, or a demon that eats your own creatures. Downsides are a great way to really hammer home the connection between flavor and mechanics, as it forces a particular event instead of leaving the choice up to the player. This is a great tool in your arsenal, but it can be dangerous. If the downside doesn’t match up flavorfully, or the rest of the card is pulling too hard in another direction, you end up in a bit of a discombobulated puddle. Use the flavour to inform the downside (and the rest of the card), but don’t allow it to dictate everything. After all, as we know, mechanics trump flavor. This is, first and foremost, a game.

Symmetry

There is also the argument to be made that giving an opponent an upside is the same as giving yourself a downside. Totally true! If you play a creature that allows your opponent to make a bunch of tokens, that’s a downside! Where it gets a little murkier is a perfectly symmetrical effect. Is “Each player draws a card” a downside to “you draw a card”? Technically, sure. I’m definitely not gonna disqualify a card that does that this week. But ask yourself how it’s using that downside as an effective part of the design. If the card just does the symmetric effect and nothing else, well then it feels less like a downside and more just like that version of the ability. How does the downside inform the rest of the card? That’s what you should ask yourself here. 

A Note on Color

There are a few exceptions, but typically speaking, you don’t have to worry about downsides breaking the color pie. The color pie is concerned with allowing too much mixing of beneficial abilities, but downsides are almost always fair game for whatever card needs them. Since you can always choose to block with a creature, a creature that forces itself to block can be any color that it needs to be (depending on the rest of the design, of course). Any color can force you to sacrifice one of your own permanents, even if some colors lean into it a little more. However, just because there’s a mechanical justification doesn’t mean there aren’t still limitations. After all, you are limited by player expectations. Why is black the color with the most downside cards? Because black’s whole deal is “power at any cost”, which lends itself naturally to these designs. Sure, Abyssal Persecutor isn’t technically a pie break in green, but would it make sense? Not at all! So don’t worry about breaking the color pie with your downside, but make sure that your card as a whole still feels right at home in the color(s) you put it into.

That was a whole chunk of text, but I hope you enjoyed reading, and I can’t wait to see your designs!

[napping-sapphic]

Dragging you outside to go stare at the moon and stars before kissing you

[naamahdarling]

Graffiti raises property values actually. In my eyes anyway.

[tizeline]

Heuheeuhe turtlssss 🐢

[sakasakiii]

glorfindel strikes me as the kind of guy whose love language is physical touch so a few weeks ago i did some rough sketches just to explore that and how he'd interact with all the different ppl in his life 🤔

bonus: can hugs have healing properties? the imladris case study

sparkly pink bg credit to Cartoon Network as always :D

[jamandjazz]

My personal headcanon is that Pony got his love for reading from Darry. When Darry was in high school he’d read the books he got in class out loud to Ponyboy and straight up just handed him some of the easier ones so they could talk about it later. In my brain the reason Ponyboy clings onto it so much is because it’s one of the things he and Darry REALLY bonded over when he was a kid and it just brings back good memories of when they got along better.

[lifealteringtimesandwich]

WHITE BOY SAVE ME

[ddeck]

long lived sw races must be so extra about their hobbies. imagine you live for thousand years and a century of that time you decide to dedicate to making a single big af carpet

[tacagen]

one of the things that fascinate me about thawne: yes, he CAN be normal with kids! surprisingly normal!

((not at all times, though. his mental illness still spills through and as usual he, in trying to manipulate or hurt others, spits out at them the exact stuff that would hurt him (or have in his childhood/barry's rejection interpretation) the most in the first place lmao))

but at the same time. his like second instinct when doing his bullshit is FUCK THEM (as) KIDS

(and, well. whatever this classifies as)

[marlynnofmany]

Me: *tells a roomful of people about my adventures in marketing my books, which includes an enthusiastic description of my time on Tumblr*

Me: *wonders an hour later what I've reblogged recently, in case they look me up*

My Tumblr: "All good, boss. Aliens, words, fae bargains and humans being weird about food."

Me: "Oh good."

[nabesimart]

Found old plasticine in the lab. Behold, a creature

[lord-squiggletits]

i know i’m late to the conversation—i just watched the movie this month—but i feel compelled to say this because i was genuinely shocked (still am) to see that the overwhelming takeaway for many viewers was the "d-16/megatron was right" bs. while it’s understandable to sympathize with his anger and grief, justifying his actions in the end or framing them as entirely right feels so deeply misguided. what surprised me even more was the tendency to shift the blame on orion/optimus, as though he was solely responsible for d-16’s downfall. it’s disheartening to see orion/optimus being villainized so much. his efforts to reason with d-16 came from a place of desperation and hope, as he tried to prevent the escalation of violence. at that point, d-16 had already begun to spiral into his unchecked rage, disregarding the safety of those around him. to see that nuance overlooked, with orion being faulted for a situation that was far beyond his control (the whole "don't be like sentinel" thing is often used to shit on op lol), is genuinely baffling.

while i love that the movie showed the tragedy of d-16’s arc and even empathize with his situation, painting his actions as justified—and vilifying orion/optimus in the process—feels like a misreading of the movie’s core message. sorry but i was so happy to see your post about the movie, it was tiring to see so many 'megatron was right about this and that' comments.

Oh man if you're new to this fandom, you really ought to know that this place is full of people who glorify terrorism and war in the name of "justified revolution" and it doesn't really matter what Dee/Megatron does or how horrible/over-the-top it is, he's oppressed or he's mentally ill or he's just plain upset which means that everything he does is justified and questioning him makes you evil.

It's so funny because I hoped for sure that a continuity where both OP and Megatron were working class individuals before the war would reduce this kind of shit take (compare to something like archivist/librarian OP and gladiator Megs in TFP or CBV, or cop OP and miner Megs in IDW1), but unfortunately this fandom literally still found a way to blame Orion for everything even though he suffered the exact same things Dee did..... and furthermore Orion literally was the rebel challenging the system compared to Dee who wanted to keep his head low and not cause trouble so honestly at this point I just think the fandom (and somehow new fans whose first exposure to TF is this movie) purely sides with Megatron on everything as either a knee-jerk reaction or some misguided attempt at being counterculture and intelligent.

People get sooooo mad when you tell them that unbridled rage and killing everyone who disagrees with you isn't a good social/political strategy, but then again this is a problem that is universal to humanity and not just the Transformers fandom. It's just a shame that so many people looked at a movie that blatantly spells out what the moral of the story is, and has all of the protagonists be working class oppressed people fighting against a tyrannical system, and their takeaway from it is still basically "fascism is okay if you're mad enough about it and if your friends try to stop you it's a sign that they're centrist liberals who think punching Nazis makes you as bad as a Nazi." It's childish black-and-white thinking masquerading as critical literary analysis.

And at this point people pretty much just don't give a shit about Orion/Optimus and will find a way to make him the villain no matter what the context is, no matter if he also has feelings or if he also deserves to be respected/listened to/validated as Megatron's long-time (possibly lifelong) friend. If ppl look at the way Dee treated Orion and their other friends and DON'T see what was concerning about that then there's really no saving them until they deradicalize a little and learn what usually happens when "kill all the bad people until society is a utopia" is implemented as a governing party's primary strategy.

[isbergillustration]

Rare Pre-Death Portrait of The Boy

[pjowasmy1stfandom]

This is something I should probably save for when I'm not supposed to be asleep. Ce' la vie or whatever

I've been wondering about what exactly Morro did to deserve getting banished to the Cursed Realm bc why not. Anyway, I have a headcanon as to how he got there exactly (taken from an amazing fic I'll probably talk about later) but I wanted to know if there was a canon reason so I went to the wiki

I guess this turned into an essay of sorts so I added a cut bc it got long what the heck

Summary isn't proving helpful. What 'previous actions'? Cause if you're talking about his being willing to defy fate, I think that could honestly be taken as either arrogance or desperation

Again with the arrogance vs desperation. He's been told by Wu for years or however long he's trained that he's the Green Ninja. He essentially was taught to associate his self-worth and competency with being the Green Ninja. And then that got taken away from him

Audacity??? Really?? Did the person who wrote the wiki watch the same episode as me?? He hadn't even hit his growth spurt yet, he still had the tiny legs! Okay, yes, waking a Grundle. Not smart. He's what, a preteen/teenager? That's kinda what they're known for

Okay, now we're getting somewhere! Aaaand nevermind. The link just took me to the summary of the episode where they do the whole entire exposition dump. From Wu's perspective. Hmmm. I wonder how the way the story was written would change if we heard it from Morro instead?? Anyway, they say he's committed atrocities, but the only atrocities I've actually seen any real proof for are the things he did during Possession, not before he ended up in the Cursed Realm. I'm not saying he didn't commit them, I'm just saying if they want me to believe he actually deserved to get cursed, they needed to give me a better idea of what he did wrong. So far, I'm just seeing a kid with an identity crisis

Oof. Awful way to go out. I mean, it could have been worse, but still. The fact that the Master of Wind died underground... Yeah, that's all sorts of levels of irony this post isn't about. Anyway, still haven't gotten any clear idea of what his 'actions' were and why they were so horrible

And honestly, I'm not even gonna touch what the wiki's saying about his personality rn. Let me just summarize it as 'literally everything is negatively spun, even the good things'. Which, yes, I get bc he is a literal antagonist, but at the same time...

Okay, moving on! Trivia!

I mostly knew this already but. Wow. That's a teenager. I'm somewhere around that age and yeah, being that age is hard. Having an extra identity/existential crisis on top of all that and having no way to actually healthily deal with that... Yep, I can see why he went evil

Okay, that's it? Just 'some bad act'??? Wait, as he perished?!? But he was in an explosion... We don't see any other skeletons around him, right? I think that'd be mentioned/shown at least ONCE. So I don't think he killed anyone...

Anyway, cool cool cool. I learned... Pretty much nothing I didn't already know. Nice. I wanna fist fight the wiki now

If anyone's curious, my headcanon is based off Land of the Living on Ao3 by CaptainBrookeworm. Basically, Morro accidentally managed to curse himself just by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time (and I highly recommend reading the fic if you haven't already, it's one of my absolute favorites)

[fisherrprince]

various (including frills)

[valewritessss]

I’m hoping (I’m praying) that once the insecurities society has created for people—mainly women— becomes too much, the world will kind of reset and we’ll realize this is ridiculous and stop caring so much about appearance.