#there were more i could have included - almost all of them golgari elves in fungal fashions

[melleonis]

Wifelink: Guilds of Ravnica

Hello, and welcome to Wifelink, a show where I review the most attractive characters in a collectible card game that none of my followers play! I’ve been doing sets in reverse chronological order (mostly because I think I will eventually hit a point of diminishing returns where the art in older sets becomes too unrelentingly male-gazey, and also just bad) but it turns out Wizards of the Coast also puts out new Magic the Gathering sets on an ongoing basis, so I’m going to review the most recently-released sets, which all take place on the plane of Ravnica.

Ravnica has a very strong claim to being the coolest & most popular setting in MtG - basically imagine if you took Prague, made it an entire planet, filled it with ten ideologically-opposed factions, and watched them go at it. It’s fun, colorful, and apparently just full of attractive women.

Blade Instructor (art by Zoltan Boros)

So the facial scars, the fur, the short white hair, the quiet air of cool confidence - if I’m the pupil behind her, I think it’s going to take a while for me to get the stance and the grip quite right until my instructor comes to stand behind me, guiding my sword-arm through the strokes (”Like that, see?”) - correcting my stance with quick, firm touches to my shoulder and hips (”Really put your weight into it, stand with your legs just a little further apart.”) - her breath on my cheek when I finally get it right (”That’s it, well done.”)

And then she moves on to the next pupil, of course. She’s a professional through-and-through, very much married to her job. She won’t even remember my name when I finish her lessons and get assigned to my first posting. But still, I replay those few seconds of contact over and over that night, staring up at the barracks ceiling. I was prepared for a certain kind of hardship when I joined the Legion, but I wasn’t ready for this.

League Guildmage (art by Svetlin Velinov)

This is the kind of woman you meet at a party and you’re like “damn” so you try to flirt with her and she just does not react like at all so you get to feel bad about yourself until she finds you about an hour later and pulls you into someone’s bedroom, and she’s gorgeous and it’s great, except she doesn’t let you talk and when she finishes it’s immediately over, and over the next couple of weeks you keep finding excuses to go to her lab and talk to her and this never goes well until one day you’re like “Natasha what do I have to do to get you to give me the time of day?” and she’s like “i dunno i could use a test subject” clearly expecting you to decline and leave, only you think you’re in love and it has made you extraordinarily stupid so you’re like “fine!” and she’s like “okay, fine” and then she sends several thousand volts directly into your chest and you wake up in the hospital with second-degree burns and a lingering taste of copper in your mouth. You avoid her after that.

Still, though: damn.

Notion Rain (art by Lius Lasahido)

“City air is a constant drizzle of private thoughts,” says the flavor text, and I would like us all to drink in the pure noir happening here. The trench coat, the twelve discrete belts, the cheekbones, the thousand-yard stare, the vertical lines of arcane matrix code which are simultaneously rain and the thoughts of a rain-slick city. Carrie-Ann Moss wishes she could be this iconic.

Izoni, Thousand-Eyed (art by Eric Deschamps)

Look I fucking love a woman who’s into bugs, it’s really that simple. I mean, it helps that she’s hot, and I dig the chitinous eco-goth thing she’s got going, but it really does just come down to: she likes bugs.

Find (art by Tomasz Jedruszek)

Look at her! Look how happy she is about this large beetle! I would immediately marry this woman!

Vraska, Regal Gorgon (art by Magali Villeneuve, who continues to defend her position atop the Wifelink artist leaderboard)

MUSHROOM DRESS

Thought Erasure (art by Anna Steinbauer, whose continued work on behalf of lesbians everywhere is greatly appreciated)

So you come home and your ex is in your apartment, slung insouciantly over your good armchair, and you’re like, “Hey, Bec, what the hell are you doing here?” and she’s like, “I came to get my stuff,” and you’re like, “What, the turtleneck? I would have given that to you if you’d responded to my fucking texts,” and she stands up and says, “Hey, remember the first time we made out?” and you blink for a second and then you say, “Yeah,” cause you do - you were watching Twin Peaks together on the couch and when you got up to go get water she called you back, and when you turned around, she kissed you full on the mouth, and you took a step back and practically fell onto the ottoman, and she followed you down and pinned your wrists and kissed all the breath out of you, and it was so exactly what you had wanted to happen for so long.

“And do you remember,” she says, coming toward you with an expression you can’t interpret, “that time I got sick and couldn’t get out of bed for a week and you called in sick too and stayed with me the entire time, making me soup and tea and taking my temperature and reading to me, even when I was delirious, and we got so behind on rent that we had to eat nothing but ramen for the next month?” and you say, “Of course, Bec, I -”

“And do you remember,” she says, very quietly, tucking your hair behind your ear, “that last night, when we both knew it was over between us, and decided we might as well go out swinging, and I got out the strap-on and fucked you so loud the neighbors called the cops?” and you do remember, you’ve used that memory several times since on particularly lonely nights, but you say, “Bec, what do you want?” trying to keep the shaking out of your voice, you know, trying not to cry, not in front of her, and she whispers in your ear: “I said I came to get my stuff. Those memories don’t belong to you,” and there’s a piercing pain in your temple -

When you come to, you’re alone in your apartment. There’s a black turtleneck in a box by the door. You know it’s not yours, but you can’t for the life of you think whose it might be.