Green Silence
Green is the color in Magic: The Gathering that in my experience people understand the least. It's the least intuitive, most subtle, and most far removed from our cultural reference points. (I wouldn't be surprised if this were not true in many other cultures.) It's also way too easy to oversimplify. People say they like Green because they "like nature," or because they think elves are cool. Rarely do I hear someone say they like what Green actually stands for.
Green is the color of acceptance. It is also the color of "nature," yes, but the reason it is the color of nature is because nature has an "everything in its proper place," almost deterministic sensibility to it. Green is the color of belonging and of fate. It is the color of life but also of knowing when to die. It is the color of making peace with the world as it is, rather than striving for the world as you would wish it to be. In this regard it stands at odds against its two enemy colors, Blue and Black, who are both the colors most preoccupied with defying fate or otherwise changing the "natural" order of things.
It is the color of letting go.
The other day I asked my first question of Magic head designer Mark Rosewater, my first ask in months seeing as how my interest in Magic has cooled since I was betrayed out of the story, and he kindly answered it. It was a question about which colors are the most common and uncommon in real life as "focus" colors. Mark is a lot like an Aes Sedai on his blog, in that he often won't answer the question that is actually being asked, yet often does give fascinating answers nevertheless. His insights and tidbits are sometimes well outside the realm of what is expected, and that makes his commentary especially valuable. In my case, he didn't answer my question, but he did say that Magic players themselves tend to skew Blue, since the game is very mentally challenging.
This got me thinking, in the shower the next day, about the difference between Silence and Galavar in terms of their Magic color identities. I wrote a journal entry years ago classifying Galavar and the Guard of Galavar in these terms. Galavar himself came up as Red, White and Blue (though not in that order), while Silence came up as True Five-Color. From this typification, therefore, the most obvious difference between them is that Galavar doesn't have Black and Green, while Silence does. This is interesting to look at in both the positive and negative directions. In other words, it is as interesting to ask what Galavar is specifically lacking as to ask what Silence exclusively possesses.
Having said that, I'm now going to skip over most of it in order to get us to the words promised in the title of this entry. But, first, I will say, of Galavar and Black: What Galavar lacks in Black is an especially strong and self-justifying will (he is a creature more so of ambition itself than of power, and will actually stems from the latter, counterintuitively, though it must be said that he is very strong-willed in the conventional sense and aesthetically); a fundamental independence and apartness (having grown up in the collectivist Ieikili tradition and never having been a social reject or a loner or an outsider); and a certain intrinsic selfishness or free agency that might compel him to, for instance, abandon his Galan project if it went in a direction he didn't like.
But now, Green. Silence and Green. What Silence possesses in Green, most iconically of all, is a profound capability for acceptance. An outsider might call it "imperturbability," but it's not like that all. It is, rather, the ability to acknowledge what is outside her control, and to be true to herself in the midst of that uncertainty, and to not let her lack of control dominate her. This is best explained if exemplified, I think, and there is a scene in Cowboy Bebop to the rescue:
With his ship the Swordfish II damaged and the situation looking grim, Spike Spiegel looks out at the damage, complains about having just overhauled the ship...and then says (at least in the English subtitles) "Oh, well. Whatever happens, happens."
From this moment, the whole tonal palette changes. The mood changes from one of claustrophobic fear and desperation to one of sheer adventure and spirit. You suddenly gape anew at what a stroke of genius Yoko Kanno's jazz soundtrack is. And you see in the storytelling something new. Something, well, I'm not going to call it "heroic," for obvious reasons, but I will call it...confidence-inspiring. And I will call it exciting, both in the story and in the viewer. And it is an exceedingly Green moment.
This is something rare in the world, and which Silence possesses in iconic fashion. Let me show you this from the Prelude. At first you're likely to think it's an example of the very opposite, of Silence not possessing this Green quality, or perhaps an example of her being Black. But let's have a look:
"You're asking me to submit to the Gods," she continued. "I can't do that. The person who could is not Silence Terlais. Whether or not we get where we're going, fine. If I fall down on that slippery brick and break my neck, so be it. If I choke on that cherry pit, fair play. And if the Gods drag me down under the wave, then that's how it will be.
"When it comes to the sovereignty of my will, I'm not going to betray myself. Ever. You, and all the rest of you, can bow down to the Ocean and go where it tells you. You can look at the horizon and declare that independence is illusory. I won't stop you, if that's what you want. But I know it's not. You were talking about the power of Gala. Well, Gala didn't exist when I was born. And look at it now."
This quote by Silence is essential to understanding her character. This is someone who wants to control everything but knows she doesn't and can't. This is someone for whom "acceptance" takes the shape of choosing to do anything at all. There is a built-in fatalism in her view, a sense that people must be who they are, both others and Silence herself. She is explaining to Galavar here not who she wants to be, but who she has to be.
Silence describes herself on occasion as "cowardly," and one of the ways she escapes cowardice's grip is by identifying what's important to her and what isn't, and being risk-averse with the latter and, with the former, declaring..."Whatever happens, happens." This is the source of her fierceness in battle (which is true to real life to a large extent, as memorably if dramatically articulated in Band of Brothers by Ronald Speirs), and of many other admirable qualities in her that relate to her aura of being relentless and unstoppable: She accepts the possibility of failure, even of death. It's not a normal person who might go out and say "I'm prepared to die today on this trip to the grocery store," but that's the way Silence thinks.
The Green in Silence is that she accepts all of the other colors within her. She accepts their conflicts and contradictions. She accepts the adversity of the world and her lack of full control in it. It isn't as many simpler minds would postulate, that Silence is a fatalist who would simply bow to the Will of the Gods. On the contrary, Silence sets herself up in the Prelude as the Gods' chief antagonist. "Acceptance" isn't to submit to something you aren't truly a part of. It isn't to defer to someone else's reality. It is to let go of what you don't control. Paired with her Black qualities, this makes Silence into an absolutely vicious exponent of achievement, and this is why she is the one called upon in the Prelude to sway the nations. To do the impossible. She'll do it, if she can.
I mentioned the Aes Sedai. Long before I ever heard of The Wheel of Time, I had set Silence up as someone who loves questions: loves asking them, loves answering them, and, by a similar token, often seizes control of questions and does not answer in a straightforward way. Much like the Aes Sedai, or, more interestingly, like Magic head designer Mark Rosewater, Silence's relationship when it comes to answering other people's questions is one of control seizure. Catch her "off the clock" and she might answer a question at face value. But if she perceives the question as an opportunity to do her will in the world, she will take that question and reflect it in unusual ways. She often answers questions by asking her own. She often answers questions "cryptically," by being tangential or even seemingly off-topic. It is not intended to be obnoxious, nor passive-aggressive, nor dominating per se, all of which are possible faulty interpretations of her actions by others. It is, rather, a form of honesty and of fidelity to her principles and convictions.
I wish I could say that this is why Silence customarily wears green, but it's not. She wears green because I "like nature" and think elves are cool. (She was originally an elf.) We will, however, allow this aesthetic coincidence as a good-fitting, auspicious retcon.
In Magic: The Gathering, Green is not a color of subtlety, nor of ego, nor of service, nor of pride. It is the color of big beefy titans who barge into the battlefield for beaucoup combat damage. Their "tricks" mostly consist of making themselves even bigger and beefier. And when it comes to Silence, there is a certain refreshment in recognizing that this impenetrable creature of innumerable layers also has this marvelously simple mechanism at her core...that, in a way, she's a big dumb idiot running on autopilot. On the piano her fingers perform the most extraordinary feats, but the song in her spark is plain.
If you understand that, it's one of the most beautiful things in the world.
Green is the color of acceptance. It is also the color of "nature," yes, but the reason it is the color of nature is because nature has an "everything in its proper place," almost deterministic sensibility to it. Green is the color of belonging and of fate. It is the color of life but also of knowing when to die. It is the color of making peace with the world as it is, rather than striving for the world as you would wish it to be. In this regard it stands at odds against its two enemy colors, Blue and Black, who are both the colors most preoccupied with defying fate or otherwise changing the "natural" order of things.
It is the color of letting go.
The other day I asked my first question of Magic head designer Mark Rosewater, my first ask in months seeing as how my interest in Magic has cooled since I was betrayed out of the story, and he kindly answered it. It was a question about which colors are the most common and uncommon in real life as "focus" colors. Mark is a lot like an Aes Sedai on his blog, in that he often won't answer the question that is actually being asked, yet often does give fascinating answers nevertheless. His insights and tidbits are sometimes well outside the realm of what is expected, and that makes his commentary especially valuable. In my case, he didn't answer my question, but he did say that Magic players themselves tend to skew Blue, since the game is very mentally challenging.
This got me thinking, in the shower the next day, about the difference between Silence and Galavar in terms of their Magic color identities. I wrote a journal entry years ago classifying Galavar and the Guard of Galavar in these terms. Galavar himself came up as Red, White and Blue (though not in that order), while Silence came up as True Five-Color. From this typification, therefore, the most obvious difference between them is that Galavar doesn't have Black and Green, while Silence does. This is interesting to look at in both the positive and negative directions. In other words, it is as interesting to ask what Galavar is specifically lacking as to ask what Silence exclusively possesses.
Having said that, I'm now going to skip over most of it in order to get us to the words promised in the title of this entry. But, first, I will say, of Galavar and Black: What Galavar lacks in Black is an especially strong and self-justifying will (he is a creature more so of ambition itself than of power, and will actually stems from the latter, counterintuitively, though it must be said that he is very strong-willed in the conventional sense and aesthetically); a fundamental independence and apartness (having grown up in the collectivist Ieikili tradition and never having been a social reject or a loner or an outsider); and a certain intrinsic selfishness or free agency that might compel him to, for instance, abandon his Galan project if it went in a direction he didn't like.
But now, Green. Silence and Green. What Silence possesses in Green, most iconically of all, is a profound capability for acceptance. An outsider might call it "imperturbability," but it's not like that all. It is, rather, the ability to acknowledge what is outside her control, and to be true to herself in the midst of that uncertainty, and to not let her lack of control dominate her. This is best explained if exemplified, I think, and there is a scene in Cowboy Bebop to the rescue:
With his ship the Swordfish II damaged and the situation looking grim, Spike Spiegel looks out at the damage, complains about having just overhauled the ship...and then says (at least in the English subtitles) "Oh, well. Whatever happens, happens."
From this moment, the whole tonal palette changes. The mood changes from one of claustrophobic fear and desperation to one of sheer adventure and spirit. You suddenly gape anew at what a stroke of genius Yoko Kanno's jazz soundtrack is. And you see in the storytelling something new. Something, well, I'm not going to call it "heroic," for obvious reasons, but I will call it...confidence-inspiring. And I will call it exciting, both in the story and in the viewer. And it is an exceedingly Green moment.
This is something rare in the world, and which Silence possesses in iconic fashion. Let me show you this from the Prelude. At first you're likely to think it's an example of the very opposite, of Silence not possessing this Green quality, or perhaps an example of her being Black. But let's have a look:
"You're asking me to submit to the Gods," she continued. "I can't do that. The person who could is not Silence Terlais. Whether or not we get where we're going, fine. If I fall down on that slippery brick and break my neck, so be it. If I choke on that cherry pit, fair play. And if the Gods drag me down under the wave, then that's how it will be.
"When it comes to the sovereignty of my will, I'm not going to betray myself. Ever. You, and all the rest of you, can bow down to the Ocean and go where it tells you. You can look at the horizon and declare that independence is illusory. I won't stop you, if that's what you want. But I know it's not. You were talking about the power of Gala. Well, Gala didn't exist when I was born. And look at it now."
This quote by Silence is essential to understanding her character. This is someone who wants to control everything but knows she doesn't and can't. This is someone for whom "acceptance" takes the shape of choosing to do anything at all. There is a built-in fatalism in her view, a sense that people must be who they are, both others and Silence herself. She is explaining to Galavar here not who she wants to be, but who she has to be.
Silence describes herself on occasion as "cowardly," and one of the ways she escapes cowardice's grip is by identifying what's important to her and what isn't, and being risk-averse with the latter and, with the former, declaring..."Whatever happens, happens." This is the source of her fierceness in battle (which is true to real life to a large extent, as memorably if dramatically articulated in Band of Brothers by Ronald Speirs), and of many other admirable qualities in her that relate to her aura of being relentless and unstoppable: She accepts the possibility of failure, even of death. It's not a normal person who might go out and say "I'm prepared to die today on this trip to the grocery store," but that's the way Silence thinks.
The Green in Silence is that she accepts all of the other colors within her. She accepts their conflicts and contradictions. She accepts the adversity of the world and her lack of full control in it. It isn't as many simpler minds would postulate, that Silence is a fatalist who would simply bow to the Will of the Gods. On the contrary, Silence sets herself up in the Prelude as the Gods' chief antagonist. "Acceptance" isn't to submit to something you aren't truly a part of. It isn't to defer to someone else's reality. It is to let go of what you don't control. Paired with her Black qualities, this makes Silence into an absolutely vicious exponent of achievement, and this is why she is the one called upon in the Prelude to sway the nations. To do the impossible. She'll do it, if she can.
I mentioned the Aes Sedai. Long before I ever heard of The Wheel of Time, I had set Silence up as someone who loves questions: loves asking them, loves answering them, and, by a similar token, often seizes control of questions and does not answer in a straightforward way. Much like the Aes Sedai, or, more interestingly, like Magic head designer Mark Rosewater, Silence's relationship when it comes to answering other people's questions is one of control seizure. Catch her "off the clock" and she might answer a question at face value. But if she perceives the question as an opportunity to do her will in the world, she will take that question and reflect it in unusual ways. She often answers questions by asking her own. She often answers questions "cryptically," by being tangential or even seemingly off-topic. It is not intended to be obnoxious, nor passive-aggressive, nor dominating per se, all of which are possible faulty interpretations of her actions by others. It is, rather, a form of honesty and of fidelity to her principles and convictions.
I wish I could say that this is why Silence customarily wears green, but it's not. She wears green because I "like nature" and think elves are cool. (She was originally an elf.) We will, however, allow this aesthetic coincidence as a good-fitting, auspicious retcon.
In Magic: The Gathering, Green is not a color of subtlety, nor of ego, nor of service, nor of pride. It is the color of big beefy titans who barge into the battlefield for beaucoup combat damage. Their "tricks" mostly consist of making themselves even bigger and beefier. And when it comes to Silence, there is a certain refreshment in recognizing that this impenetrable creature of innumerable layers also has this marvelously simple mechanism at her core...that, in a way, she's a big dumb idiot running on autopilot. On the piano her fingers perform the most extraordinary feats, but the song in her spark is plain.
If you understand that, it's one of the most beautiful things in the world.