Hyperwords

[hypexion]

Well, it's been a year since The Reality War.

Not much news since. The War Between the Land and the Sea was kind of damp and has had no international distribution.

The outlook is not looking good. Perhaps, in the future, someone will write a book about what went wrong. Until then, we can only speculate.

[hypexion]

The thing about calling for Kier Starmer to resign is that he's deploying what I must admit is a very powerful tactic against such calls.

That tactic being not resigning. Utterly foolproof. If you ask Starmer to resign and he says no, well, that's that.

There is a stronger option than just asking for a resignation, but that requires coordination and having an idea of who you want to replace Starmer with. And currently it seems no one is really sure who that would be.

[hypexion]

The official Hexhaven reveal has unfortunately led to an explosion of the terrible theory that the Dragonlords from Tarkir will show up in Reality Fracture as founders of the five Hexhaven schools.

The entire logic is that Strixhaven has enemy colour Elder Dragons, Hexhaven uses ally colours, therefore the existing ally colour Elder Dragons will return after mysteriously disappearing. Sometimes some extra scaffolding is getting added, but that's the core of it.

The incredibly obvious counterpoint here is that once again, none of the Dragonlords bar Ojutai are fit to run a school. Ojutai is also the only Dragonlord that actually aligns with the school he shares his colours with. Kolaghan, who does not speak, cannot lead a school of words. Atarka, who does not think, cannot lead a school. Like, at all. Dromoka hates necromancy, and a school of "invasive healing" that wants to keep mages fighting at any cost sure seems like it will dabble in that. Finally, Silumgar has no connection to mathematics, estoric or otherwise, in anyway. Plus Blue is fighting for its life in Silumgar, while being the shared colour between Quandrix and Theorix.

These dragons simply do not fit the given flavour of Hexhaven.

But there's another point to consider. It would make zero sense for the Dragonlords to be in charge of Hexhaven from a narrative point of view.

Hexhaven is a creation of Jace Beleren. In the Outlaws of Thunder Junction epilogue, it's established that he doesn't know what Tarkir is like, meaning he had not visited the plane before then. This means he never encountered the Dragonlords. Once he did visit Tarkir, the main sources of information about them would likely portray them (accurately) as vicious, brutal and genocidal tyrants.

Additionally, Jace's experiences with the Elder Dragons he has met are fairly negative. Nicol Bolas has left countless planes in ruins. Ugin is secretive and judgemental, even when his secrecy leds to the events he condemns. And while Niv-Mizzet isn't mechanically an Elder Dragon, he still old and dragon, one who is arrogant and vain.

Jace has zero reason to either coopt the existing Dragonlords or to create Echoverse versions of them. If anything, it would be more likely for him to excise them from the Echoverse. Indeed, since Bolas and Ugin are twins, and the Dragonlords are sort of decended from Ugin, if Jace decides he doesn't want Bolas running around, the Dragonlords might just be collateral damage from that.

Furthermore, if Jace does decide to delegate running Hexhaven, he's probably going to put the Echoverse versions of his former allies in charge. His goal with Hexhaven isn't to create a one to one mirror of Strixhaven. His goal is to have a ready-made army to help him attack the main multiverse and enable the Echoverse to replace it.

And as a final note, Hexhaven is presenting a chance to do something novel with allied colour pairs, but the Dragonlords and their broods are like the most boring and obvious expressions of their colour pairs.

[hypexion]

The worst-kept secret in Magic is now revealed: that Reality Fracture will feature Hexhaven, the evil anti-Strixhaven. What's new information is the reveal of the five schools of Hexhaven, and what they're up to.

I'm now going to opine on the this initial information for no particular reason.

Fatehold – Starting strong, with a name that really invokes the idea of "inverse Lorehold". It's the school of "future histories", suggesting a focus on dictating the future rather than discovering the past.

Theorix – Namewise this one feels a little weird to say, and it's less mirrored compared to the first. As a school of "estoric mathematics", I'm not quite sure what will make this different to Quandrix.

Stingerquill – Yes, it's really called that. Perhaps a little too much "evil Silverquill" happening here. I'm also not sure how being the school of "painful words" makes it much different from it's Strixhaven version. Silverquill is all about words and how to use them.

Konstrari – Okay this one is just awkward to say, what with that rouge r running around in there. But the concept of "constructive arts" is an interesting mirror of Prismari's focus on expressive arts. Additionally, Hexhaven will be forgiven if this is the fabled "not stupid RG faction".

Vigorbloom – Getting back in the flow of things with a very anti-Witherbloom name. This is the school of "invasive healing", which has a very sinister ring to it. You know who else was into invasive healing? That's right, Momir Vig. And also Yawgmoth.

Very interested to see if Hexhaven will be doing Strixhaven-style mechanic twists for the allied colour pairs.

[hypexion]

If I wanted to project the image that I was not involved in dodgy dealings, I would not deploy a three-line whip to block an investigation into a decision I had made.

But I'm not super forensic UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer.

[hypexion]

This is definitely missing the point of Riginarazione (the episode) but Riginarazione's age-reversal powers appear to have zero costs or downsides. Normally in fiction this kind of thing requires the user to steal the youth of others before they can make people young, but Riginarazione de-ages Roland and Tom before she's made anyone older. In other cases, the effects will only be temporary, but that doesn't appear to be the case either.

It's actually kind of weird because the closest other villain to what Riginarazione is doing, Backwarder, did need to steal other people's time before she could do what she wanted (as did Timebreaker). But Riginarazione's power seems to be entirely beneficial.

These are the things that stick out to me. I don't know why!

[hypexion]

Well in addition to all the complex problems, the new change to notes makes reblog chains look super ugly.

"What users really want is more buttons breaking up the flow of the content" is an idea that could only come from the twisted mind of a UX designer.

[hypexion]

I think if the best defense you can up with for Kier Starmer is that there's nobody capable of replacing him, you're effectively just saying the Labour Party is doomed.

Labour literally has 403 non-Starmer MPs. To say nobody can replace Starmer is essentially saying that the party has utterly failed to recruit any new talent. Which is, well. Not good.

Also from a strict organisational perspective it's pretty dire. Sometimes people just keel over. Arguably, the Prime Minister needs to be the most replaceable part of the government. Not a reassuring thought for the office holder, but much better than the alternative.

[hypexion]

A Song of Ice and Fire prequel play? Why not? Going backwards is the name of the game these days. Endless prequels, no forward plot progression. The past is now, young man.

[hypexion]

Well it's taken actual literal years but I've now come up with a reason why a certain character shows up in Many Paths, One Destination. (my Phyrexia: All Will Be One AU fic)

To be accurate to how canon distributes information this does mean I'll need to make a whole "Legends Of One and Many" side work to explain it. Truly, work expands to fill the time available.

[hypexion]

It's the end of the year. So that clearly means it's time to look at some Magic: The Gathering mechanics! For a second year in a row!

I'm back to share my (undeniably correct) thoughts on the flavour of 2025's new mechanics. Or more specifically, how flexible the flavour of each mechanic seems to be. Are they forever locked to the context they were created in, or can they be grabbed for any purpose?

I'll be looking at all named mechanics from the six Standard sets this year: Aetherdrift, Tarkir: Dragon Storm, Final Fantasy, Edge of Enternities, Spiderman, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. Keywords, abilities words and predefined tokens are all up for inspection, including one you might not expect!

As always, this is mostly considering Standard sets, as supplemental sets generally pull from a much wider flavour pool rather than being based around a specific setting or plotline.

Aetherdrift

Crew your vehicles, saddle your mounts, then start your engines! DFT had a bumper-sized Planeswalker's Guide, explaining why Avishkar is now called Avishkar, along with who is racing and why. Mechanically, there were a lot of vehicles. Along with two polarised mechanics.

Exhaust - Obviously, in the context of DFT, this is specifically a pun about cars. But a pun requires a double meaning, and that's where the main meaning of exhaust comes in. It tags an activated ability as having a single use, which is exhausted upon use. This is very easy to use in other contexts. So much so that it's already been reused in TLA.

Speed Mechanics - While last year I argued that quite a few mechanics others thought were closed were actually more open-ended, speed is the opposite case. It's just a very strange thing to care about in Magic's general presentation. DFT is specifically about a race, where you want to go fast. Even if "Start your engines!" was less specific, speed and max speed only really make sense in the context of a race. And honestly even then the mechanic's connection to the flavour feels a little loose. (because as revealed in a Making Magic article. it was originally a laps mechanic.)

Tarkir: Dragonstorm

The Dragonlords are dead, mysteriously disappeared offscreen for the crimes of being cringe, allied-coloured, and just generally not that interesting. And also all the genocide. Long live the Khans! Of course, Tarkir still has dragons, which means this set has quite a few mechanics to cover.

Behold - Look at my dragon. Behold is putting a specific name to an action that's been around for a while, and does so fairly generically. It literally going "look at this thing" to gate an effect. Somethings are perhaps less interesting to behold, but that's not much of a barrier.

Renew - The Sultai are no longer universally evil, and now enjoy renewing things. By exiling cards from graveyards to get a bonus effect. This is a generic enough name that it can probably go on anything, anywhere.

Harmonize - The Temur are also getting in on that graveyard action, but via instants and sorceries. This is another one that doesn't really have a strong flavour baked into it, and indeed very few of the cards in TDM suggest that there would be. The one card that grants harmonize is a bard, but that's about as far as it goes.

Flurry - Another mechanic that's naming an existing thing, styled around the specific flavour of the Jeskai. But while it points to a flurry of blows, it can equally mean a flurry of spells. TDM puts this only on monks or cards that create monks, but it could certainly go on other things with minimal stretching.

Mobilize - The first of the TDM mechanics that's getting a little restricted on flavour. While a lot of planes have armies that are getting mobilised, mobilize itself specifically creates warrior tokens, rather than soldier tokens. There's a certain kind of vibe to that, the spice that makes the Boros Legion different from the Mardu Horde.

Omens - A new spin on adventures, where the card is shuffled off if the omen is cast. I think this has the same kind of limit as Impending from Duskmourn, where a regular creature feels strange as something with an omen. However, the kind of creatures that mesh flavourly with omens tend to be the big, high-end creatures that omens were designed to support. So while less open than some other mechanics, both the fluff and crunch restrictions are about the same.

Endure - Probably the most restricted TDM mechanic, and mainly because the token mode is linked into the specific things the Abzan are doing. I still think it's possible to lift endure out of the context of Tarkir, but it's important to see how the Abzan are currently the bridge between enduring and making a spirit token.

Final Fantasy

I've never played a Final Fantasy game. But I've played Chrono Trigger, which may or may not be close enough.

Tiered - Another mechanic so generic in a few years no one will remember it came from FIN. Tiered is like Spree, although in more of a split card rather than a kicker way. There is no flavour here beyond "spell with multiple levels of strength". That's easy to encapsulate into a single card.

Saga Creatures - Kind of a stretch to call this a mechanic, since it's mainly combining subtypes in a new way. This requires a little bit of effort to justify, but it's not strongly locked to the specific flavour FIN went for. With some planes, you can easily hit on the "living story" beat, and those planes are probably the ones that would mechanically want Saga creatures.

Job Select - To my understanding, selecting jobs is specifically a Final Fantasy thing. So while this keyword looks as generic as tiered does, it might actually be locked to FIN. Strange. I wouldn't call this a great loss, as both Living Weapon and For Mirrodin! are quite restricted as well, with the latter being named after a plane that's just straight up gone. You could make a more mechanically generic version of this mechanic family, but I don't there much reason to do so.

Edge of Eternities

Edge of Eternities is Magic's first full-on dive into sci-fi, provided you ignore all the sci-fi stuff happening on Dominaria, Phyrexia, Kamigawa, Ravnica, and Avishkar. It has great worldbuilding and fiction, so go read that if you haven't already. In the next interation, you already have!

Warp - In EOE, this one is all about warping around in space through the weft. However, I think it's possible to reframe this in terms of straight fantasy, as a form of teleportation magic. There's also space (ha ha) to recontextualise it in terms of dodgy interplanar travel, although that might be getting a little too abstract.

Void - This one might be slightly harder to reuse compared to warp, ironically in part because of its connection to warp. But the void of space and the void between planes aren't too dissimilar, in a sense...

Station - As a specific action, station isn't too stressed. You can station all sorts of things beyond the options present in EOE. Perhaps the main sticking point is that station uses charge counters, which does suggest some limits. It's weird to charge up a castle, you know?

Lander tokens - Sometimes, you need to land on a planet. There is, technically, a type of boat called a lander, but the name here very much brings to mind things like the Moon Lander rather than boats.

Spacecraft/Planet - What station currently goes on, however, is pretty much strictly locked to the grand scale of the Edge. Dominaria is the only plane with confirmed other planets. Ravnica literally just stops where space should begin. For now, if you want to fly around in Spacecraft, the Edge is the place to be.

Spider-Man

The spider-set was revealed and released to much confusion. Ten million spider-individuals filled the set, which was originally going to be small. But March of the Machine: Aftermath casts a long shadow. Also, I'm unable to escape the machinations of Ben Brode, as Through the Omenpaths makes this section a little more complicated.

Mayhem - Well, at least this starts easy. Mayhem definitely feels like they had this less weird version of madness ready to go whenever, and it has no thematic links to spiders. In theory there's a little bit of flavour toll here, but many madness cards have no link to the concept of madness.

Harness + ∞/Origin - I told you there was one you wouldn't except. While this mechanic has been created for the Infinity Stones, the concept of harnessing a powerful artifact doesn't rely on the those rocks. The Infinity subtype, however, does. OM1 solves this by creating the new Terminus subtype... which while slightly less restricted, is still quite restrictive. Mechanically, there are many was of having an artifact you need to "unlock", so maybe it doesn't matter that much.

Web-slinging/Enweb - Slinging webs is literally Spider-man's whole deal. This name pretty much can't be reused ever. The mechanic is pretty boring, so it's not a huge loss. For OM1, the spider-theme remains, giving us enweb. Which honestly feels disconnected from the effect itself. Yes, it was a set full of spiders probably reskinned at short notice, but c'mon. Enweb. Really?

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Avatar: The Last Airbender is back again, including in card game form. Fans want merchanise (which is what Universes Beyond is), and sometimes it lines up with new entries. TLA didn't, but, well.

There's no point talking about the four bending mechanics separately because they are all rooted directly into the Avatar universe. They exist specifically to be the four bending arts. They are named after them. They are locked to the world of Avatar. In terms of mechanics, they're a little all over the place, but I doubt firebending is going to be something that would click into a lot of sets.

Coming up with Magic version names for them is also a little tricky. Although it's going to be hard to do worse than enweb. Really, you want all four to have some kind of grouping going on, if only for that one Aang card.

Conclusion?

A lot of range this year. Some very generic mechanics were released, including as part of Universe Beyond sets. But there were definite some that are locked into their flavour in a way that's highly inflexible. And like last year, I think several mechanics do have more flexibility that an initial look might suggest, while others are actually more rigid.

But hey, no child soldier mechanics this year. So that's one thing that's definitely changed.

[hypexion]

I don't think people are putting mean comments on fanfiction to make the authors delete them as part of a plan to cover up AI training. This is attributing a level of purposeful malice to the scrapers when they almost certainly don't care.

Also when you actually think about it it doesn't really make sense. Random AO3 authors are not going to be seen as a threat, and mean comments are not an effective vector of attack if for some reason you do think those authors are a threat. The big names have been perfectly willing to go up against big publishers in court, with all the costs that entails.

(I'm also somewhat curious as to how widespread these comments actually are. I've never seen one "in the wild" which is of course entirely anecdotal but surely some sort of analysis can be done?)

Obviously these particular mean comments are templated or copy/pasted, and they have to be coming from somewhere, but it doesn't have to be an organised conspiracy. The fanfiction space is not exactly a land of infinite harmony and respect. There are jerks, people with vendettas, and people with strong opinions in all kinds of directions. It takes minimal effort to copy out a comment a dozen times on different stories. And if you don't want to write the comment, hey, other people have provided a bunch of mean comments for free!

[hypexion]

How I feel about The War Between the Land and the Sea is that I don't particularly feel like doing a big post about it but I still feel vaugely compelled to post something.

It's a miniseries you can watch, with a beginning, middle and end. You don't even have to be charitable to say it has a conclusion.

Many things happen, although some of those things don't seem to really matter. Some of the character motivations felt rather dubious.

Overall I just wasn't very impressed.

[hypexion]

I'm several months late behind to be posting about Werepapas, but I had a thought and it has once again consumed me. Miraculous is like that sometimes.

People have already gone over how it's kind of messed up that Marinette chose to crack open what she believed to be Adrien's amok incredibly quickly, without trying alternative plans. So I won't be talking about that it. Instead, I'm back on my favourite topic in relation to the sentibeings plotline: narrative inconsistencies!

The way amoks are shown to work across seasons three and four is effectively parallel to akumas. The feather or butterfly enters an object, and that object becomes an amok or akuma. When the object is broken, the feather or butterfly is immediately released. In the case of breaking an amok, this immediately kills the linked sentibeing. Which of course, is where the problem arises.

When Ladybug breaks the rings in Werepapas, only an akuma butterfly is released. An amok feather is not. Given the information presented about amoks, this means that the rings aren't Adrien's amok. Which contradicts several scenes in season five, where Gabriel is able to command Adrien in a way Adrien is seemingly incapable of disobeying. As well as the whole weird play in Representation which effectively confirms that Adrien and Felix were created with the Peacock Miraculous.

This is a direct logical contradiction between pieces of information provided in the text. And this time, there's no amount of "well maybe Gabriel is just the dumbest man alive" that can get out of it. The show just completely fails to maintain internal consistency.

This is the point where I'm sure a hypothetical and very annoying reader will want to say "but on Twitter the writer said the feather didn't come out because Ladybug only wanted to release the butterfly, and also being an amok for so long meant the feather didn't come out immediatey". Well, this post is about the text of Miraculous Ladybug, not external clarifications written on social media. When I'm writing an analysis post, I generally follow the rule that Social Media Isn't Canon.

Of course, the fact that explanatory information required to make the main character not look like she's okay with killing her boyfriend isn't in the show actually feeds into the second part of this post.

I don't particularly care for the senti-children plotline. And sure, the plot holes are annoying, but this particular issue highlights why. Adrien being a sentibeing doesn't matter to his narrative, and it will never matter.

Werepapas shows that the writers do not treat Adrien being a sentibeing as a serious matter. The only reason the rings are holding the akuma is because Adrien removed them. If he knew those rings were his amok, he wouldn't have done that, for what are obvious reasons. But he doesn't know, so he does remove them, unknowingly placing himself in mortal danger. This then goes entirely uncommented on by anyone who is actually in the know.

It's not like the writers have shown themselves to be unaware of the absolute existential nightmare being a sentibeing is. That's Felix's entire motivation for all the terrible things he does. Yaksi Gozen is entirely about the threat of losing control of your amok. While also containing a scene treating the whole thing as a joke even as it reveals just how strong an amok's control is.

It's incoherent! It's not a good metaphor for child abuse! It's just dumb!

Back when the senti stuff was just a theory, I read at least one post saying how wonderful or beautiful it would be for Adrien to learn the truth and how it would allow him to come to terms with how his father treated him. Well, the show is actually addressing how Gabriel was an awful parent, and Adrien is dealing with that. Which did not require him to learn he was created by magic. Because from the beginning, Gabriel was always a bad parent in a mundane way. You don't need a metaphor for his controlling behaviour if you're already showing it on screen. (which is also true in regards to Tomoe and Kamagi)

When you strip things down, the whole sentibeing plot is entirely irrelevant to Adrien's narrative. That's why this contradiction exists: the rings being his amok don't matter to what's going in Werepapas. The rings are there, in a sense, as a representation of Adrien and his parents, and they don't need to be an amok for that. Emil doesn't want them so he can magically control Adrien, he wants them because he sees them, his daughter, and his grandson as his property. Again, it's an entirely mundane issue, being shown literally. Similarly, Millie takes the rings not due to their amokness, but because Emil wants them and she's angry at him because he sucks.

If anything, the fact that the rings are Adrien's amok gets in the way of the plot, because that makes their actual non-metaphorical value far more important than the metaphor. And the writers choose to solve this issue by ignoring it. Because Adrien being a sentibeing isn't important.

Obviously, stories are not reality. They do not need to conform to absolute logic. You can bend minor details here and there to serve more important narrative and thematic goals. However, because a story is constructed, it is often possible to investigate how it might have been constructed, and from there determine what might have been considered important. Which means that you can also see what is considered unimportant.

Adrien's nature as a sentibeing has been put aside multiple times in favour of allowing other plots. This is because it's utterly incompatible with Adrien's basic narrative, as the way amoks appear to work should make his conflict with his father impossible. You can't have Chat Blanc if Gabriel has absolute control over Adrien. You can't even have Origins.

From the irresolvable contradiction introduced in Werepapas, the truth becomes clear. Adrien being a sentibeing is the least important aspect of his character. While Felix and Kagami's amoks are important plot points, Adrien's is cracked open to resolve another problem. Indeed, it's never actually been directly stated that Adrien is a sentibeing, unlike the other two. The Big Lie everyone is so invested in is covering up Gabriel's identity as Monarch. In comparison, Adrien's amok is a footnote.

That it shouldn't be a footnote is of course a weakness of the writing. It's incredibly distracting. There's a reason I think it's a retcon, as it's a crack that permeates the narrative, unspoken yet still weakening it.

And the funny thing is, this was originally just going to be a "hey look at this plot hole" post, but writing it out spurred me to really think about the implications. Internal contradictions aren't just for mockery - they might be able to teach you something!

[hypexion]

So a bit of trivia for Aetherdrift is that the initial plan had Ikoria as the third plane of the race. However, it got switched out for Muraganda as the arc planning team had another idea for Ikoria.

There's speculation that this idea is Ikoria being half of a Giant Robots vs. Giant Monsters set, with Kamigawa being the obvious choice for the Giant Robots side. This would make a lot of sense, and while there's certainly been a lot of talk in-story about the potential threat of Omenpaths, "Zilortha visits Towashi" would be a good realisation of that threat. What I also think it would be good at doing is having an "interplanar conflict" set while avoid the problems that would occure with an "interplanar war" set.

Now, obviously, Magic sets have already featured interplanar wars. There's the Invasion block, and more recently March of the Machine. Plus Dominaria United as sort of a run up to the big main event. Notably, these all feature Phyrexians as one of the sides, and the Phyrexians are the ones driving to other planes to break their stuff. This is because in the current state of things, interplanar war has some awkward issues. (War of the Spark meanwhile is somewhat more of a Bolas vs. Planeswalkers deal with Ravnica as the backdrop)

First up is that if two planes are going to war, it has to feel like the two are evenly matched. One can imagine various "weight categories", with the fairly magitech worlds of Ravnica, Avishkar, Kamigawa and Dominaria up at the top, then a weird mix in the middle with places like Eldraine, Innistrad, Tarkir and Ixalan where you can probably make things look as if they line up. Meanwhile some planes just can't be contenders, like Amonkhet, New Capenna, and indeed Ikoria itself (or Theros which based on the cards got compleatly wrecked by New Phyrexia). You could pull an Aetherdrift and put an established plane up against a less-defined one, but that has the meta-level problem that the 'new' plane will probably have less support.

However, monsters from Ikoria showing up on another plane sidesteps this issue because that works more as a natural disaster. Could Kamigawa utterly flatten Lavabrink, Ikoria's only surviving major settlement, a believable way? Absolutely. But that won't stop Snapdax wandering through an Omenpath! There are still ways to introduce conflicts between the non-monster populations of the two planes, but the main problem isn't just "who can military the most"?

The other issue is that an interplanar war needs an instigator, and this instigator is probably going to be the villain, because War Is Bad. This makes things tricky, especially since we know Wizards has previously tried to dodge being too close to contentious political issues. One might even argue that war is the most contentious political issue there is. If one of the two planes attacks the other without provocation, that makes them the villains. But if you try to make things more ambiguous, you risk creating parallels to current conflicts. Which again, the Wizards living by the Coast don't want.

In theory, this can be solved by Ob Nixilis. Or I suppose another villain, but plane-ruining wars are kind of Ob Nixilis' thing. Have Nixilis roll up and cause problems, igniting the interplanar war on the backs of chaos-inducing false-flag attacks. By the time anyone realises what's going on, it's too late. In practice, this runs the risk of essentially pulling focus from the "interplanar war" detail to "Ob Nixilis' plan to ruin things" detail. This would make the set less about the planes, and one issue people had with Aetherdrift was it being more about the race than the planes.

Once again, Ikorian monsters don't have this problem, because they are essentially big dumb animals. There is the possibility of adding in extra complications, either on the Kamigawa or Ikoria side that might be contributing to the problem, but the base idea can avoid assigning any direct blame. People can even assign false blame in-universe, thus adding some conflict. And if the set absolutely needs a human-scale villain, there are plently of jerks on both planes. Or you could make Lukka's ghost the bad guy.

Perhaps the one thing this conflict doesn't do is provide a way to propell the set-to-set story along. But if you put it near the beginning of a new arc, it works as a way to introduce a new kind of problem. Then things become about trying to solve it.

Anyway, that's why I think Ikoria as a source of giant monsters bothering Kamigawa is a good seed for an interplanar conflict. Really the only other idea here is Eldraine vs. Innistrad, because that would be incredibly weird if it did happen.

[hypexion]

There is nothing Miraculous Ladybug can do to make me sympathise with Andre Bourgeois. He is terrible.

Like Audrey gets all the attention for being actively awful but who was actually raising and enabling Chloé? It's Andre, the guy who abused his position to basically let Chloé do whatever she wanted until she deposed him because even she couldn't handle how pathetic he was any more. He is a contemptible worm of a man. A comparison that is insulting to worms, who perform a vital role in the ecosystem.

Indeed I'd be surprised if anyone who has watched the show likes Andre. He's just... so, so bad. A moral void. I could continue, but there are not enough words to discribe my antipathy for this guy.

[hypexion]

Miraculous theories still running out of control I see.

How can Aglaé be Lila, when Aglaé has a dad? It's well established that Lila collects mothers, not fathers.

I mean I guess it's possible she might be working with Lila in some way but no one who has a dad can be Lila. It's just simple reasoning.