I think, while the conversion therapy is apt in how it applies to his self identity, it doesn't cover the proper severity of his actions prior to the intervention of the authorities. What they did, from their vantage, was more like chemical castration on a sexual predator.

That it has to do with his identity and the idea he sees himself as a victim, he was always a fairly twisted individual by the accounts we have.

Edit: I want to explicitly state that I don't consider the predator comment and victims of conversion therapy to be even remotely comparable. I definitely don't want that misunderstood.

I think it's less important whether villains' motivations are sympathetic or unsympathetic than it is that they be coherent. Even just "I like money and power" or "I have fun hurting people" a coherent and comprehensible, even though it's not sympathetic in the slightest.

Re: Nahiri: I like some aspects of her characterization, but dislike others. The part where she sees destroying Innistrad as fitting revenge against Sorin for his role in what happened to Zendikar is fine, and it makes sense that an Oldwalker who's used to basically being a God would see planeswalkers as the moral center of the universe. I don't like the part where she attacks Sorin and gets kicked into the helvault for the planeswalker equivalent of missing her texts because he didn't have cell reception, that just felt contrived and forced. It always feels really annoying and pointless when a plot relies on misunderstandings or poor communication in lieu of any real underlying conflict. And the part where she's channeling Harley Quinn energy and being the giggling manic pixie trauma girl who acts like a child is irritating both because I don't like the trope, and because there isn't anything in her backstory to make her act that way. She's thousands of years old, she didn't have any kind of childhood trauma we know about, and she lived among her own people normally for centuries. You can say "oh she's an oldwalker, they're all insane", but Teferi and Sorin and Ugin never acted this way.

@barinellos I didn't say it was a *good* conversion therapy allegory.

@Cato: maybe, but it is still apt since it was the first thing to mind for me too when they first announced him. It was only after thinking on the situation I thought of how wrong it was later.

What is it in writer's brains that makes them go "Let's make a fantasy race was persecuted in a way that's an allegory for the mistreatment of a real-world marginalized group, except they're actually dangerous and inhuman so the people doing the persecuting kinda have a point."?

I guess its mostly a lack in perspective. The X-Men for example were conceptualised as heroes hated by the very people they save (*coughdoompatrolripoffcough*) so it naturally evolved from there into making the mutants allegory for minorities. Problem is, most minorities can't wrap the universe out of recognition with a single thought.

Again, I doubt Oko is meant to be particularly sympathetic given how he is pretty much a truther stereotype, but he does seem like Nic Kelman's self-insert so maybe that's just a mary sue backstory thing.

Okay, this is far from confirmed but...

Strongly doubt

I... honestly can't find a solid reason to disbelieve this, other than it being surprising.

1) The templating is a little new, but cards like Nest of Scarabs already reference when "you put" counters on something.
2) Phyrexian could be the "new creature type people have been asking for" that MaRo promised for this set.
3) New art.
4) All the minor details (collector's number, holostamp, spacing) look right.
5) This leaker also posted a new snow sorcery, which also doesn't have any clear flaws. It also has new art, a new frame, and some new (but reasonable) reminder text for snow mana.

The most suspicious thing here is that the two leaked cards happen to be the most bombastic cards imaginable, revealing both the return of snow and the first appearance of New Phyrexians on a different plane. Still... I'm like 60% on the side of believing these are real.

The card could be genuine, but even then are we sure its from Kaldheim and not say Strixhaven?

If phyrexians are involved then Tibalt's role as an antagonist is kinda pointless. Its like having Peg-Leg Pete as the main villain when The Thing is in the background.

I'm pretty sure it's fake. This is a tribal set with Changeling. Making "snow type matters" would probably involve a bunch of tribal stuff, and since snow is a supertype, it wouldn't work with Changeling, which would be both confusing and frustrating to players. I also sincerely doubt they'd go through the first round of spoilers without revealing that snow as a mechanic was coming back, since it's such a pivotal mechanic.

There also isn't room in the set's color pie. We already know the u/g mechanic is changeling/shapeshifter tribal, the b/g mechanic is elf tribal, and according to the "spoilers", the g/w mechanic is supposed to be tokens. So we're then expected to believe that phyrexians and snow, two new and unrelated mechanical and flavorful themes, are crammed into green when only one color combination remains. I very much doubt that.



The "spoiled" cards have the kaldheim expansion symbol.

Is it possible that Vorinclex could be a one-off, a single notable to represent the realm chaos Tibalt is messing with, possibly causing Phyrexia to end up with a means of planar travel even if they're not so much a "thing" in this set?

The set being too packed to also support snow, though, seems very realistic as much as that makes me sad.

Technically we aren't in spoiler season yet, we just got a few preview cards, so it's entirely plausible they're hiding lots of huge things from us like Phyrexians or snow that will eventually be revealed. Heck, we already know about a mechanic they're consciously keeping a secret at the moment, foretell.

These are probably just visions of the future, which would be apt since we are getting time spiral remastered.

I'm pretty confident they're real, based primarily off the artwork. It would mean the set has Snow, Boast, Sagas, Changelings, Foretell and MDFCs, and I'm kind of surprised the showcase frames aren't for snow cards in that case (maybe there would be too many), but I'm willing to buy that being the case. Although the text box has this kind of "rime" background to it, so that's neat. I don't think Vorinclex hints at a set theme, although it's probably the most spicy card you could leak early and I love it.

I would probably guess at it being some sort of vision, maybe of a metaphorical ragnarok, which would be kind of cool.

It also seems real to me and it fits several clues (new creature type that's been asked for, it's possible to kill a player with poison in Kaldheim Limited). The biggest knock against it to me really is that the set seems really stuffed now.

It may be a 'scouting party' drop so only a few cards that includes like one poison card. It feels antithetical to how they put sets together now though.

I've seen this suggested as well as or we might just start seeing small parties of them showing up in upcoming sets showing the they are invading, not a huge threat or easily pushed back (at this stage) by the protagonists but we the audience know the threat is worse than they think, more so if we seen across multiple planes.

This might also why we are getting the phyrexia creature type and the water mark, so we the audience know they are clearly even as they might only be a few cards here and there.

Funnily enough, I think the snow part is less believable than the phyrexian part, just because snow typing would entail snow typing synergy, and snow typing synergy is like the only typing synergy you can slap on a creature that *doesn't* work with the Changeling mechanic the set's bringing back.

Ah, but if it's fake then maybe it's just a Strixhaven fake with a misprinted set symbol?

If it's a fake, then it's not in Kaldheim OR Strixhaven, so I don't know why that would matter.

I wanna know if I'm getting a jump on next set's fake spoiler season or not.