Black-Green

Black believes that you are responsible for creating the opportunities that advance you in life. There is no obstacle that cannot be overcome if you are willing to do what is necessary. The key is understanding the power you have within you to bring about change. Green believes that the path you take in life is predetermined; you have a role to fill that you were born for. Your job is to figure out what exactly that path is, embrace it, and then dutifully fulfill that role. There will be distractions in life that will lead you astray, but you need to have the fortitude to keep returning to your destiny. In short, this is the classic battle of free will versus destiny. How much control do you have over the outcome of your life? Is each choice you make your own or is it part of some larger plan? Can you change what life has planned for you or is the path already mapped out? To black, this is an issue of having the strength to recognize that you control your future. Black thinks of green as a fool who believes in things that don't actually exist. Black sees this conflict as opportunity versus superstition. To green, this is an issue of accepting the patterns inherent in the world. Green thinks of black as a cynic that can't see the truth in front of them. Green sees this conflict as truth versus skepticism. At its core, this conflict is about the role you play in your life. h2Life vs. Death/h2 Green is about the natural way. Black is about its way. Green believes that everyone should step back and just let nature do its thing, whereas black believes that it needs to step in and make sure things happen the way it wants. Green believes no force is more powerful or important than life, but black believes death trumps life. Death is the ultimate power. With death, black can make the world into the image it wishes. h2Growth vs. Decay/h2 Green wants things to realize their potential, and it believes that only through growth will the world’s potential be reached. Black, however, thumbs its nose at potential. A dead creature, for example, has little potential... Well, other than as a resource to zombify. h2Symbiosis vs. Parasitism/h2 Green wants things to live together in harmony (well, as much harmony as the food chain allows). Black wants things to bow at its feet and do what it tells them. Green believes in the interconnection of all living things, and from that interconnection comes the true power of nature. Black sees all living things as yet another tool it can use to gain the power its craves. h2What do the two colors have in common?/h2 Last time I examined an ally color pair. This week I'm looking at my first enemy color pair. The commonality of two enemy colors is a little more of a challenge. The key is examining the conflict between the two because these are the two colors that put value on that particular conflict. Take green and black, for example. (I mean, it is Golgari week after all.) Their conflict is a fundamental one, the conflict of life and death. Green is focused on growth. It promotes the life force of nature. It wants things to evolve and prosper. Black, on the other hand, isn't about building things up. Black is about breaking things down. Black, in its focus on the individual, seeks power by destroying that which stands in its way. To achieve this goal, black, in its unflinching willingness to harness whatever force will advance his quest for power, latches on to the awesome power of death and decay. How could two colors working at such opposite ends have anything in common? First, as I said above, they both turn to the same primal forces. As such, they are the two colors that have an appreciation for the cycle of life. And they are the two colors that most take advantage of abusing this cycle. Green and black, for instance, are the two colors most adept at manipulating the graveyard and taking advantage of its resources. They are also the two colors that use their link with the graveyard to make use of recursion, consistently reusing their threats. Second, these two colors share a resiliency to withstand the forces of death. This is why regeneration is found in these two colors. In addition, these are the two colors that most easily build themselves up over time. The best example of this is the +1/+1 counter. No other color pair makes more use of the +1/+1 counter than these two colors, most often using it as a means to represent their ability to strengthen themselves through adversity. As you will see as we examine the enemy color pairs, it is interesting how enemies, while diametrically opposed, act in a very similar fashion. h2How do the two colors differ? What is the guild's internal conflict?/h2 If ally pairs shine in their commonality, enemy pairs take their spotlight in their difference. Green and black attack their respective goals from the opposite side of the spectrum. Green builds. Black destroys. Green is symbiotic. Black is parasitic. Green's motives are global and far-reaching. Black's motives are completely selfish. Green wishes to keep the status quo. Black wants to warp the world to its favor. Last time I talked about how green/white shared a common goal but differed in the way they chose to accomplish that goal. Black/green is torn not by the means it tries to accomplish the goal but more so by the very nature of the goal itself. Black/green fights for the larger community and for itself. It wants life to thrive but in a way that benefits its own advancements. Black/green's conflict is that it wants two different things. It fights to try to accomplish these two different tasks through singular action. In fact, it is this desire to marry two divergent goals that gives the color combination its focus. h2What does the guild care about? What is its end goal? What means does the guild use to achieve these ends?/h2 So what exactly is this goal? To understand it, let's take a look at the two goals of each color. Black seeks power. Black wants the world to conform to its own selfish needs. Green seeks growth. It wants to allow nature to evolve unhindered. How do these two goals merge? Simple, by taking a black outlook of the forces of green. Black understands that there are many aspects of nature. If you want nature to succeed in its growth, you have to be selective in the parts of it you nurture. The strongest elements of nature are those that are the most ruthless, be it a weed, a fungus or a plague. If nature is to fight back against the forces that oppose it, it doesn't have the luxury of subtlety or gentleness. To succeed nature has to get down and dirty, unleashing the most virulent weapons at its disposal. In addition, nature has to come to grips with one of the most primal forces at its fingertips, death. Nature can kill very easily. Don't be scared of it. Embrace it. Finally, black/green realizes that nature's secret weapon is its ability to recover from harm. If you recognize death as but a piece of the bigger picture, you realize that nothing can ultimately stop you. Sure, things can slow you down temporarily, but combine growth with death and you start creating an unstoppable army. In the end, black/green embraces green's desire for growth with black's willingness to do whatever it takes to succeed. Black/green is unafraid of harnessing the darkest forces nature has to offer. Combined with the ability to regrow itself, black/green has an army that won't stop until it is victorious. h2What does the guild despise? What negatively drives the guild?/h2 To understand what an enemy pair despises, we need to look at the other enemies of each color and see what they have in common. Black's other enemy is white while green's other enemy is blue. What is the overlap between blue and white? A desire for a sense of order and purpose. White and blue seek to control the world through strict laws and rules. Black/green doesn't want that. It doesn't want outside forces upsetting the natural order. No, only it gets to harness the primal forces of nature. Black/green hates any desire to confine or restrain nature. As such, it uses its deadly arsenal to attack civilization. It breaks down any type of order that it feels is self-imposed. Black/green doesn't sit around waiting for threats to attack it. Rather it takes the offensive, slowly eroding the forces that will cause it harm. h2What is the color's greatest strength and biggest weakness?/h2 Black/green's greatest strength is that it's virtually unstoppable. Its threats cannot be vanquished. Sure, you can destroy pieces of it, but others will always return to take its place. Like a weed or a virus, black/green constantly searches for new ways to continue spreading, adapting whenever necessary. Black/green's greatest weakness is its lack of control. The very qualities that make it so hard to contain also make it almost impossible to mastermind. The plague that is unleashed takes on a life of its own. This means that often black/green doesn't always accomplish what it sets out to get done. Sure, it gets in the ballpark, but the lack of pinpoint control keeps black/green from having the finesse of many of the other color combinations. h2The Plague Unleashed/h2 And now comes the fun (and controversial) part where I give examples from pop culture of the guild. bPoison Ivy/b – This is one of Batman's villains. She is an eco-terrorist that believes that mankind is detrimental to nature. As such, she uses nature to strike back at mankind. Her favorite weapon is poison (she's immune to poison for those that care). Her motives are a little less greedy than the average villain yet still follow a very selfish desire on her part. Mess with nature and she'll see to it that nature messes with you, most often killing you if she has her way. bVenom/b – This is one of Spider-man's main villains. He is an alien symbiote that attached itself to a human host. Both the alien symbiote and the human host hate Spider-man. Venom is very feral in nature, taking on many animalistic properties. At the same time, he is very self-centered, particularly in his hatred of Spider-man. Venom is vicious yet flexible. He is ruthless while also being tenacious. No matter what Spider-man throws at him, Venom keeps on with his almost mindless quest to destroy Spider-man. Venom is a force of nature bent on destruction. bVillain from “The Twelve Monkeys”/b – SPOILER – IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM “TWELVE MONKEYS”, STOP. GO SEE IT. IT'S VERY GOOD. COME BACK ONCE YOU'VE SEEN IT BECAUSE I WOULD HATE TO SPOIL THE MOVIE – Okay, everyone reading this part has seen the movie? Good. We can continue. The villain in the film purposefully exposes the world to a deadly plague. His motivation is never spelled out exactly but it appears, to me at least, that his actions are very purposeful. He is doing it not out of vengeance but rather for some agenda. I think he believes what he is doing is necessary. That the plague has a need to be released. If I'm correct, this is quite black/green. bMilitant Environmentalist /b– I'm talking about the people that go around killing people in order to keep them from killing animals or destroying swaths of nature. I'm including this group because I want to demonstrate that not every black/green group is an out and out villain. While I think this group is somewhat misguided (I never got killing as a means to prevent killing), it is clear that their goals are more about preserving nature than gaining power. (For those that care, this is more of an example of green using black's means than black using green's means.)