It’s true that there’s not a lot of variety in options for truly colorless decks. As of the Fallout set (and spoilers for Modern Horizons 3), there’s 20 total possible commanders. 3 are only technically colorless, since they ask you to choose a color for them to be. Of the 17 left, 7 are Eldrazi, so it’s about half of the total options. Even with that, there’s a decent variety of ways to build/plan your deck. If I’m looking for a deck that’s not going to be as scary just from the commander, I’m either looking Kozilek, the Great Distortion or Zhulodok, Void Gorger. They’re obviously not low-power or anything, but avoiding Annihilator in the command zone gets you a brownie point or two, and people don’t like destruction or extra turns in the command zone, so that just leaves Kozilek. Of course, we’re going to play all those other cards in the deck, so they are right to fear. Just not in the command zone.

Between Kozilek and Zhulodok, it depends a lot on what you want to be doing. Both of them provide pretty massive card advantage. Kozilek stops your opponent from doing their thing, whereas Zhulodok doesn’t really care, his pedal is to the metal, which is my style. Let’s build a Zhulodok deck.

Follow along with the decklist as I talk about the card choices!

Commander

The goal with Zhulodok is to play big-ass colorless spells, which in turn become two more extra spells. Three spells for the price of one is pretty good. Of course, you don’t always know what spells you’re going to get…but we might play a few cards that can help with that.

Mana

Your goal is to consistently drop 7+ mana on a single spell, and waiting until turn 7 is not the way to do that. When considering mana options, there’s some usual sub-categories: non-creatures that make mana, creatures that make mana, playing extra lands, and temporary mana. Colorless is probably the best at non-creatures, aka mana rocks. But there’s some decent creature options too. Since I know that the top end of this deck is going to get pretty pricey, I’m going to purposefully make this section a little sub-optimal, a little cheaper, by utilizing a combination of the categories. It’ll be a pretty deep section, but again, we want to be dropping bombs early and often.

Card Draw

Luckily for us, the commander giving us “card draw” in the form of free spells means that we’re not as desperate for card draw in this deck. Of course, that doesn’t mean that we don’t play any. But again, we can afford to play a few sub-optimal choices here, so we can focus on the real power of the deck later. Then again, we can make a few smart choices here. Sensei’s Divining Top and, in a different way, Brainstone, help us plan the top of our deck for future cascades. You can also stick in some sneaky fun like Key to the City, which both draws a card, and makes your big boys unblockable.

Removal

This is going to mostly double as the “instants and sorceries” section of the decklist, since there’s not a lot of those, but a lot of them are decent to amazing removal. Some of them require you to reveal a colorless creature card from your hand. Good thing we’re going to have a lot of those. I’m skipping the artifact-based board wipes for flavor reasons, and the big Eldrazi spells that also destroy things are going in another section.

Winning the Game: Big Idiots

This is the real meat of the deck. The part that makes you feel like a cool dude/dudette/gender neutral form of “dude” that needs to be invented. We’re going to focus primarily on Eldrazi, but I’ve included a few good artifacts, and there’s no reason you couldn’t throw a Blightsteel Colossus, Platinum Angel, etc in this section. There’s also going to be a wide power disparity between some of these cards, but remember, even the lamest 7-mana Eldrazi is also two more other spells.

Misc Top 3

Not as much miscellaneous cards for this deck, but there’s still enough for the top three.

• Psychic Paper. This is part of the miscellaneous category of “make my big dudes unblockable”, which is a good way to make people be dead.
• Swashbuckler’s Whip. Yes, it’s expensive, but I’m including all the cascade and discover cards that get you more big stuff.
• Eldrazi Conscription. Double the annoying-ness of any big creature you play.

Lands

For this particular deck, I recommend keeping the mana base at least half Wastes. I’ve included a few high-synergy lands in the decklist; feel free to fill it in with whatever Wastes or utility lands you like.

Moxfield cost, based on TCG Mid: $513.97

Power Analysis: I’m not doing power level numbers. Rather, I’ll give a rundown of what you can expect when playing, and being played against. Obviously, you’re going to lose to very fast decks that can get out problems before you can start landing giant bombs. But if you can survive long enough, every big annoying spells is going to come with, at minimum, two more useful things, if not more problems. You don’t even fold to most board wipes, due to indestructible threats and having a billion mana left over to rebuild with. That being said, even the idea of big Eldrazi can make you a target, so prepare to get attacked and focused early and often.

Would I play this deck: Just because I build a deck doesn’t mean I’d play it. That being said, big idiot beatdown gets my inner Timmy super excited, so if I had all these cards on hand, I’d definitely give it a shot.

Tune in next time, when I look at the very first Magic set…that has legendary creatures in it.

Before I get into the article, I’ll describe my plans moving forward.

I don’t want to push myself too far at the beginning and turn it into burnout at the end, so I’m going for two posts a week for now. Weeks will alternate between an exploration of color combinations, and a travel through the history of Magic sets and their viability as commanders. There’s obviously more sets than there are color combinations, so eventually I’m just going to be talking about sets. But for now, that’s the plan. Posts will be in the following order:

• A bit about the general plan for the chosen color combo, and looking over my deck.
• Decklisting a new deck in that color combo, with a significant departure from my deck’s game plan.
• Analyzing the legendary creatures from a set, in chronological order.
• Choosing one of those legendary creatures and making a deck for them.

Yes, I like deckbuilding. Guess that’s why I’m doing this. Anyways! Let’s actually get to what I’m doing here today.

Also, I looked into a plugin for having card link embeds in my posts, but I’d need to pay WordPress $40 a month for that. I might do it later.

Color Combo 1: Colorless

Colorless is a strange beast in Magic. At the same time, it doesn’t have an identity like the five colors do, but it sort of does. The identity of colorless, for a long portion of Magic’s history, has been general support. Colorless cards have been printed that specifically help certain colors (like tapping for mana), but a lot of them are simply generally useful. They do less powerful versions of colored effects, but because there’s no color requirement, every color has access to them. Colorless is the “color” of artifacts, with blue, white, and red generally being the best colors to support artifacts.

With the advent of the Eldrazi cards, colorless achieved a new identity: giant monsters. Moreso than green ever achieved by itself, colorless has somewhat turned into the “color” of singularly game-breaking creatures. Play one creature, take an extra turn, also it’s extremely hard to kill, hard to block, deals 15 damage, and your opponent has to sacrifice their stuff so it’s even harder to kill or block. Granted, the first Emrakul is a little overkill, but it’s a good example of what colorless has started to become.

When building a colorless deck, your choices of focus are somewhat limited. It’s either artifacts, Eldrazi, or trying to combine the two.

Karn’s Pawn Shop

For my deck, I’ve chosen to focus on artifacts. Yes, there’s a few Eldrazi in there, but it’s mostly because they’re really good. Those who know what’s available will be surprised at the lack of Eldrazi Titans, but that’s due to a phobia of the card Bribery. I have a lot of success with this deck. It’s very resilient, with multiple redundancy pieces, lots of ways to get cards back from the graveyard, and several options for completely dominating a game, to the point that you might as well be the only person there.

Decklist

Let’s take a look at the major categories of card. I’m going to try and use the same categories across posts, for consistency. One of the categories will have to change a bit from post to post; you’ll see why.

Commander

This deck is helmed by Karn, Silver Golem. His ability to turn non-creature artifacts into creatures means that, in general, I’m running very few creatures compared to most decks, since every mana rock, utility card draw artifact, and giant bomb are all creatures waiting to be hatched.

Mana

For most decks, there are two main important support categories: mana, and card draw. Luckily, colorless is absolutely stacked with good mana options, even limiting yourself to just colorless mana. I categorize 15 cards in the deck as mana-related, whether because they discount my spells, let me save mana, or just give me access to more mana. If you’re looking to make this deck, there’s absolutely no need to run Grim Monolith or Mana Vault (yes, I don’t own a Mana Crypt yet). That being said, here’s the top three that you should definitely get, whether going artifacts or Eldrazi:

• Forsaken Monument. All your lands and mana rocks make extra mana, on top of life gain and a power boost. It’s an even better Mirari’s Wake, and that card is already good.
• Ugin the Ineffable. He makes blockers that draw cards, he blows stuff up, but most of all, discounting spells by 2 is bonkers.
• Krark-Clan Ironworks. Yes, this one is more than a few dollars. But there’s really not a better card for emergency turning permanents into answers. There’s also plenty of spare artifacts, tokens, etc that make Ironworks mana positive.

Card Draw

This is generally where colorless decks struggle. Obviously, the colors of Magic have their own ways to draw cards, but giving even an underpowered card draw effect to all colors is not something WotC does a lot. It’s not impossible, but your card choices are more limited. I list 7 cards as dedicated card draw, in that it’s their primary function in the deck, though there’s more than 10 total cards that provide some sort of “get more cards in hand” advantage. Mystic Forge and Karn, Scion of Urza are both pretty obvious good choices here, and if you have a copy of The One Ring, this is about as good a deck as any to include it.

Removal

Getting rid of problems is always important. And luckily, colorless has some absolute bangers. All is Dust, despite not being an artifact, is back-breaking, and gets around indestructible. Nevinyrral’s Disk (shoutout to Larry Niven) solves a lot of problems, and becomes an actual lock if your permanents are indestructible. I’ve got over a dozen removal-y cards, but my favorite, by far, is Null Brooch. Colorless counterspells are, by and large, crap. But this one is amazing. Discarding your hand is a bit of a tall ask, but again, colorless is bad at card draw. How many cards were in that hand in the first place? And because it’s a permanent, you can untap it through various means and counter another spell later too.

Winning the Game: Big Idiots

This is the category that’ll shift across posts. Sometimes, you want big power plays that make you win. Sometimes, you want a big pile of synergy that eventually creates a win. Here, I’m going with several big cards that turn the game in my favor. Obvious choices like Darksteel Forge and Platinum Emperion are present, but there’s a few that are secret all stars. Akroma’s Memorial not only powers up all your temporary creatures, but gives itself haste and vigilance when you turn it into a creature, making it a better Akroma than actual Akroma. And Dragon Throne of Tarkir might be a bad Craterhoof, but even a bad Craterhoof wins games.

Misc Top 3

Some cards don’t fit neatly into these categories, but are very good in the deck regardless. I’ll save space at the end of each decklist post to put my favorite “extra” cards.

• Mishra’s Self-Replicator. The tokens you create also trigger to make even more tokens, quickly making a large army of 2/2s. If you get the Replicator out along with Krark-Clan Ironworks, you can put the triggers on the stack, sacrifice half of them to pay for all of the triggers, and get a net-gain of 50% more Replicators each time you cast a spell for no additional cost.
• Chimil, the Inner Sun. Free spells are great, and the biggest blowout you’ll get to your Darksteel Forge is getting it countered.
• Mirage Mirror. Mirror is a good card in lots of decks, and the fact that it’s an artifact gives it even more utility here. Playing a Nevinyrral’s Disk out tapped, implying your opponents have an extra turn, and then making Mirror a copy of Disk and using it right away, is a big brain play that makes you feel real smart.

Lands

For the most part, when I’m making decks, I don’t worry too much about lands. I’ll either say “you should invest in fetches, shock lands, triomes, etc for fixing” or “you’re fine with Gates, refuges, basics, etc”. Land bases vary wildly in cost, and honestly, most decks can work casually with a pretty basic mana base. That being said, colorless is a bit of an exception, since you have access to a truckload of utility lands with spell-like effects. It’s not necessary; you can just run a bunch of Wastes. But if you can get your hands on good utility lands, there’s basically no down-side to running them, except for the wild Wave of Vitriol, so if your playgroup is lousy with Vitriol, maybe stick to Wastes.

This post doesn’t cover every single card. We’d be here all day. But hopefully, you get an idea of the deck’s game plan, some ideas for good cards to prioritize if you want to make a deck like this, things like that. Tune in later this week, when I pick an Eldrazi commander and make a deck around the other thing that colorless does.

It’s been a while, sorry. I’ve been sick, and not recording the podcast, and I usually post right after uploading.

So I had this idea a little while ago. When I was hella out of commission for a few days because of dentist, I went to the library and got a few movies, one of which was Fearless, starring Jet Li. It’s not on any reputable legal streaming service I know of, but the library had a copy. It’s Jet Li’s last wushu film, and is loosely based on a true story of a man who defeated multiple foreigners in exhibition fights using traditional Chinese wushu.

What this means is, this is a movie about a hero of the country, who overcomes incredible odds, earns the respect of his peers despite also earning the ire of those who would destroy him, and dies a martyr for the cause of his nation. This is something we here in America have seen a lot. The term “jingoism” comes to mind a lot for the glut of American war movies, showcasing single heroes who go above and beyond, enduring lifetimes of hardship in the span of moments, in the name of America.

I don’t wish to disparage the reality of what soldiers have to go through. What bothers me is how the stories we get told in film seem a bit…same-y. I’ve heard the stories before, and most of them don’t do something new enough to be interesting to me. Some of them do, like Hurt Locker, but there’s so many that are like Saving Private Ryan’s Blackhawk Down Behind Enemy Lines.

What’s interesting is, when the setting is a different country, it’s a much more interesting story to me. Part of it is probably the fact that I don’t necessarily know how it ends. For example, if I see a WWII movie, I’m fairly confident I know the outcome. But even the Korean War isn’t as hammered into my memory. When I don’t know what’s going to happen, all of a sudden, the stakes feel real.

But there’s also different choices being made. Different things being highlighted. Different focuses of the entire film. All of a sudden, I’m excited about a movie that is ostensibly a “rah rah China” movie. And I think that’s a good thing.

Song of the Week: Also sprach Zarathrustra by the Portsmouth Sinfonia. I bet you’re wondering what’s going on here. Apparently, this album was recorded by the musicians trading instruments, and then recording. It’s a train wreck, and even better because of how iconic the song is.

Yep, can’t think of something good to put here this week. It stinks when your life is going in a perfectly reasonable direction, at a reasonable speed. Nothing fun to talk about.

And it’s not the kind of “nothing to talk about” that comes from nothing remarkable happening, and your life is painted all in grays and beige. It’s just…I guess nothing I did this week feels worth celebrating. That’s probably because, in the past few months, I’ve made some relatively major adjustments, and this week, I didn’t make major adjustments. So compared to a few months ago, I’m doing great. Compared to last week, it’s status quo. A different status quo, but still, short term vision sees nothing new.

I have an idea for a video series. It’ll require me to write a script, learn basic video editing, and put it all together, which doesn’t sound difficult, but learning new things is never super easy. It’s based on something that I’ve done casually for people in the past: lowering the pretentiometer. For those who are new to the concept of this made-up word, the pretentiometer (a device that measures pretentiousness) is a scale from 0 to 10 that indicates how far up their own ass a person is. This is usually in regards to art, but it can also apply to anyone knowledgeable in a field. Some good examples of high pretentiometer readings are: a 12 foot photograph of a green screen, woven balls of yarn with a note describing the artist as “a painter, and yarn is my paint”, and a Star Trek fan insisting that the bat’leth fight from Sons of Mogh isn’t actually in keeping with the established lore because the warriors didn’t properly acknowledge each other, thus staining the memory of Kahless. Basically, if you’re talking to someone, and they tune out halfway through, you’ve got a high number.

So my idea is to bring topics that are easy to have a high number, and lower it to a more broad audience. This is different from the phenomenon of “explain it like I’m five”, which often over-simplifies things. For example, you don’t necessarily need to explain what superheroes are to someone, but you might need to help them understand why Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl are the best thing to happen to comic books in decades.

I don’t know which topics I’m going to cover, or how in depth, or how broad or specific the topics will be. It’s still just a plan for now, but I think it’s got legs.

Song of the Week: Toxic by 2WEI. A fairly recent trend for summer blockbuster movie trailers has been “take a pop song, or otherwise recognizable song, with lyrics that are sort of relevant, and change the backing music to instead be as stereotypically bombastic as possible”. This is by no means the only song like this, or even the only artist working in this area. Whereas Two Steps from Hell works across multiple genres, 2WEI has found their specialty. If you don’t know, the original is Britney Spears, and this is very much not like her rendition. Also, I might post another song originally by Britney Spears next week. In fact, I might make it a mini theme for a few weeks.

The hard drive I save all my podcast files on is having trouble right now, so I’m hoping it hasn’t decided to lose everything.

In other news, my life is coming around nicely. I don’t have much new to post since last time, since I’ve been sort of…boring recently. Sticking to the diet, keeping my life relatively organized, getting mail from the IRS saying they sent me more money, you know, life is good.

So what should I complain about this time…

Well, E3 is happening. That’s the show where video game industry professionals get together to show off pieces of new games that look good in screenshots, but don’t actually tell us about what those games will actually look like, or play like. This wasn’t always the case. The PS2, the Gamecube, the initial Xbox information was very impressive. The problem is, as time wore on, video games stopped being only for those who could understand tech specs. The mainstream market wanted to know what was going on. And so companies obliged them.

The Wii demo had one of the most foundational men in video games pretending to play an invisible instrument. The Kinect saw a man standing on stage, pretending that he was controlling prerecorded footage with his flailing arms. Another man, while winning a game against a woman, said some things that are the kinds of words you expect before sexual assault. The entire Mr. Caffeine thing. The entire hashtag lady wood thing. Cars, and celebrities, and rappers, which isn’t the same thing as celebrities, I guess.

Hard drive update. I can open the file on my laptop, so now I’m transferring everything off that drive to a new drive, I ran an extension cable from the port where I knew the drive worked before, and eventually, I’ll try it again.

OK, back to E3. Does this mean that the games have been better? Or faster, or stronger, or harder? Despite what Daft Punk would lead you to believe, not really. Prettier, maybe, but that’s a product of the hardware. If they could have made photorealistic graphics, orchestral soundtracks, and 300 hours of dialogue in the 80s, they probably would have. But those games succeeded in part because they embraces the limitations that they had, and made the most of them. Now, there basically are no limits. Developers promise the stars, and to realize that dream, they either work their staff near death, delay the game beyond what they promise time and again, release it before it’s ready, or a combination of the three.

Some games can come out of this quagmire of hype, with hard work. No Man’s Sky is the best example. The marketing was full of both actual empty promises (a game advertising finding any old planet you want was using the same, stable, interesting planet for multiple tech demos) and over-promising (the lead creative director was making statements their team wasn’t ready to follow through on). The game came out, it was buggy, it was lacking lots of features, and it was bland. So what did they do? They paid their staff with the existing game sales, and kept working. Free update after free update, improving the game, fixing the bugs, adding the features, spicing up the world. Years after its release, it’s finally the game that people wanted, and you don’t have to spend any extra money to get that version of the game.

Contrast this with Fallout 76. The problems with this game are numerous, and I’m certainly not the first person, or best person, to be explaining that. But since this is a blog that “normal” people might read, here’s a brief summary. Fallout 4, the previous game, wasn’t bad. They decided to make another one, but this time, you could play it with your friends. This is something that you couldn’t do in Fallout 4. Turns out, playing with your friends is not as simple as checking a box that says “internet on”, and the game was a pile of problems on release. Since then, the company has had multiple bad PR moves, including cancelling promised and paid for real-life products, and accidentally posting customer’s contact information to their website. The game is not awful now, but a lot of that has come from paid expansion packs. To get the “proper” version of the game costs more than just buying the game.

And that’s the crux of it, really. Big studios have realized that you can now sell 80% of a game for the same price as a full game, and then tack on the remaining 20% as “bonus content”. Not every game is subject to this, even games that include paid bonus content. Borderlands 3 had a garbage plot, but it was contained, the gameplay was fun, and at the end, it didn’t feel like there was something missing, aside from the dignity of multiple characters. Super Smash Bros Ultimate released with 75 playable characters and 103 playable stages, which would have been a fine place to end, but they’ve made, what, 10 more characters since then, and are still making more?

Industry professionals will probably point to the used game market as the reason behind getting their money’s worth with bonus content. But that market is dwindling, in comparison to the digital market. Now you can release the game without having to pay for making DVDs, boxes, or shipping. And everyone who wants your game needs to buy it in a way that gives you a percentage, rather than giving that percentage to Game Stop (who is still in business somehow). Now, more than ever, games should be cheaper to release.

I’m probably going to keep ranting about the game market for a long time if I don’t decide to stop, so I’m going to decide to stop. I have opinions, and these opinions are definitely from an outsider that has only ever worked in game retail, and never as a developer, tester, artist, etc. Please, if someone finds this and has real world experience that proves me wrong, I would love to hear from you.

Song of the Week: The Games We Played by Torley Wong. As it was explained to me when I first found this file on the internet, there is no sheet music to this. He either had this memorized, or just knew the melodies and riffed on them all in one go. Anyways, this is a 17 minute piano medley of classic video game music. And I mean classic. It lists the games in the video description, and I think the most recent one is Final Fantasy Crystal, from…checks Google…2003. And if you discount that one, then we’re talking about 1999 at the latest.

It’s still technically spring, right?

Anyways, as a part of removing the big table from my room and preparing to make a new one (a process that might be temporary put on hold because of the inflated price of wood, still working on that), I’ve been pruning the amount of random stuff in my room. So far, I’ve found:

• My paintings from the one painting class I took, that I thought were shit (the class was fine, my paintings were shit, I know that creators are their own biggest critics, but I still have a lot of improving to do in painting)
• The first cosplay I ever had for a convention, including the extension cord I had taped to it for authenticity.
• Three boxes of checks
• A terrifying large self-portrait
• My dad’s old technical drafting supplies
• A collection of dust bunnies that, while not large enough to develop a bicameral system of government, was probably capable of farming, metal tool production, and written history.

So now I have no table (no big table, I still have the small computer desk that I’m writing this on), a new larger bookshelf that doubles as also a stuff shelf, a giant trunk for Nerf guns, and two shelf systems that are mostly empty and exist mostly because it’s incredibly hot outside and I don’t want to do anything strenuous. So, progress.

I’m also considering a new car, since the car I’m currently using has multiple non-emergency problems, like the AC going out. That’s probably going to be the subject of a later entry.

Oh, and a phone, my battery is starting to be suspect. Yay, spending money.

Song of the Week: Shout by Scandroid (originally by Tears for Fears). Scandroid is a side project for Celldweller, an artist working mainly in electronic music, but also with an amount of real instruments. I categorize Celldweller in the category of “music that makes you want to do things”: aggressive tempo, driving bass and percussion, and uncomplicated lyrics, so you can sort of melt into the rhythm. Scandroid, on the other hand, is all 80s synth, but still fun.

I’ve been trying to post on Saturdays, but the website wouldn’t let me make a post. Turns out, I needed to clear my cache, which is always odd when a website requires that. The cache is how websites remember content so it doesn’t have to re-download it, the fact that the remembered content can cause problems is always weird.

Anyways, I’m here, I don’t really remember what I was going to say the last two weeks, but this time around, I think I’m saying that spring cleaning is a vital time of year. Granted, I’m getting rid of more things than most, since I disassembled and gave away the very big drafting table that was in my room, along with over half of my silly hat collection and the Dungeons and Dragons books I had. But it’s important to keep your life uncluttered.

I haven’t done a serious inventory of my possessions for a long time. I have done some culling of my stuff about a year ago, when Grandpa was moving in and the entire house was trying to conserve space, but that was just the really obvious. Like my bike helmet and racquetball racket. Why is racquetball and racket spelled two different ways? Racquet. Huh, that’s also right.

Anyways! There’s a lot that I didn’t need, or even really want long-term. It was just in a spot in my room, and it’s easier to leave things where they are. After all, it technically doesn’t hurt anything to continue to have things. But that’s a slippery slope to having too much stuff, and around here, we’ve seen the effects of having too much stuff. So I’m not going to do that.

And then eventually, I’ll make a new desk, with easy to use drawers, and it’ll be nice.

Song of the Week: The Night Begins to Shine by B.E.R. This is…a weird song. It was written in 2005 for a music library, as a generic 80s-style song, which is succeeds at. And then it was used in a kids cartoon as a throwaway joke in 2014, and the fans liked the song so much that they did another episode all about the song, and then it was the subject of a multi-part special…and then another multi-part special. It was also covered by Fallout Boy, Ceelo Green, and a Japanese group called Puffy AmiYumi. If you don’t know those groups, I assure you that they have name recognition among various music circles, and are far too qualified to be covering a song like this.

I don’t have much going on this week. Worked at two schools, they were very different, built some Lego, ate chicken wings, you know, the usual.

I guess if I’m going to talk about anything, it’s bookending your stories, since that came up with the movie we watched today for the podcast.

We record the podcast on a pretty significant delay, a few weeks, so if something catastrophic happens like an injury or people going on vacation, and I remember to upload, we have a buffer. I’m not great at remembering. Anyways, we watched The Last Emperor, which is a good movie and you should watch it, and the ending of the movie is a callback to the beginning of the movie. This is a personal storytelling favorite of mine; often, the final chapter/paragraph/section of my writing will have very similar sentence structure on purpose. The reason why bookending is important is because, especially with long pieces of entertainment, you focus on what’s happening in the present, and by the time you get to the end, yes, you generally remember the beginning, but not that well. By mirroring the beginning at the end, the audience more easily recalls the entire work, and sees it as a completed story.

Harry Potter going home after Hogwarts is another good example of this. In general, the Hero’s Journey style of storytelling does this well, as the last step is when the hero goes back to his old life, but something has changed. Not every story can do this, of course. Shoehorning in writing tropes just because you like them is a good way to make a story feel disjointed. But when it’s done well, you almost forget how long you spent enjoying it. You’re back at the beginning again.

Song of the Week: Roundabout by Yes. That’s right, I’m finally getting around to watching Jojo. Only the first two seasons are on Netflix in English, but the third is coming soon. Of course, it’s still a good song in its own right, but nowadays, it’s been completely co-opted by To Be Continued memes.