Me a few minutes ago: * Sees Spice uploaded a new video* "Yes!" *Sees the video title* "Yeeesss!" *Sees the video length * "YEEEESSSSSS!!!!!!" In all seriousness though, congrats Spice on achieving this long term goal, can only imagine how much hard work it took.
@@Spice8Rack as far as i'm concerned, you've been working on this video for 2.5 years continuously, which works out to 7300 hours put in. that's dedication! seriously though, your passion for making these and the commitment to still keep your brain churning on it for so long is impressive, and you should be proud of yourself for seeing the project through to the end. Good Show!
“We need to get a tiny bit more complicated, we need to talk about the self” has the same energy as “to answer that, we need to talk about parallel universes”
I love that as soon as spice has finished talking about how a citizen in magic could be driven insane by looking out their window and seeing demons or dragons roaming outside; someone starts doing woodwork outside his own window, annoying him.
“My good bitch, I live in your walls.” I will find a way to incorporate that into a real-life conversation or I will die trying This was a masterpiece by the way
"... those who were pathologized with being mad were forced to endure incredibly inhumane punishments and treatments- the line between those two often blurring into non-existence." Banger of a line, gotta commend that writing
once i realized the repetition of this video, it really hit me hard because, as someone who took care of an Alzheimeric grandparent for 14 months straight, it dug up hundreds of collated memories and instantly engrained the flavor point of the video thank you for this video, only 20% in and it's one of my favorites
The payoff to the "i took this screenshot from the Wayback Machine" was utterly sublime, and also explains why the MTGA client updates lead to 404s. Amazing work Wizards (sarcasm) and amazing work Spice8Rack (genuine) edit; No mention of the Madness Keyword? Shame on you Spice, shame on you..../s
Having played Magic: the Gathering for decades and knowing it's ludonarrative meaning in context to each flavortext, storyline, and cardname (In that order); it HORRIFIES me that it such description makes perfect sense.
I can't believe it took me two hours to realize that I was being baited with a video about my favorite card mechanics to watch an essay on the issues of mental health in today's modern society. Touché, man who embodies what I imagine Vampire Diaries to be about despite having never seen a single episode of that show.
Man, I wish that's what Vampire Diaries were about. Unfortunately it's mostly about sexualising teenagers, glorifying teenage/adult relationships and subliminal homophobia, racism and general right wing messaging.
I was recommended this video by my brother and I can't believe it took me two hours to realize I was being baited with a video about mental health and psychologs to watch an essay on Magic: The Gathering lmao
Thank you for giving me a summation of what this would turn into so I don't have to waste my time with something that would bait and switch me into something I don't care about. Much appreciated.
There should be a silver border...er, I mean acorn card that says "Whenever a card’s text directly contradicts the comprehensive rules, the rules takes precedence. _(Ignore rule 101.1)_"
As a long time depression sufferer, this video was really cathartic to watch. The level of nuance and love here is truly something rare and precious, as are you, the person reading this.
Yeah, I found his channel a few months before this one. Both great content creators though I might ironically like Spice more because talking about card/boardgames in a video essay format is something that I've never seen before. Jacob does have a ton of variety mind you
“Very concise capacity” *checks runtime* Me: That’s what I thought Edit: the section on madness is very interesting to me. I’m autistic, but all of the symptoms I have fundamentally make sense in the framework of a human mind. I’m not good with social rules, but plenty of people are bad with the rules of math and that’s not considered a “neurodivergence”. I’m not too good at picking up on things people are implying or trying to “say without saying”, but you know what? People can say what they mean just fine. Having intense interests in things? That’s called a thing being interesting. I’m only really considered to have a neurodivergence because I have different strengths and weaknesses than everyone else, and I’m not ashamed of my interests.
Same. "I don't have an overinflated sense of justice. YOU ALL have disturbingly _atrophied_ senses of justice! Why do I care about the bad things happening? Why don't YOU care MORE!?"
I have often said "In a world full of autistic people we would be just fine. It's the the fact there's so many of you non-autistic folks that's the problem."
Love the example of autism being only sometimes disabling. Only in certain situations and ahem, around certain unsupportive people. The neurotypical brain, while prevalent, is far from perfect, and only gets treated as “healthy and normal” because it describes a population that acts with privilege in all things. Using the same medicalized language to describe that brain type, reveals the one thing we all have in common: we don’t like being talked about that way! “So, uh, when did you find out that you were… like that?” “Would you consider yourself PROFOUNDLY typical or only MILDLY typical? Asking for a friend.” “You’re such an inspiration! I could never pursue a graduate degree with YOUR challenges. You’re so brave. Good for you!” Like wow, yikes. Not super helpful, is it? Final footnote: autistic people are very good at communicating amongst ourselves, same as neurotypical people. It’s just that we ALL have trouble communicating across that divide, and guess who gets blamed for that? Autistic people only! Who’da thunk it? If you are also an autistic anti-capitalist genderweird former “gifted kid,” and YOU are also now a burned-out and quasi-impoverished adult, just remember: you don’t lack empathy. Empathy is not what the rest of the world wanted from you in the first place. They wanted you to already BE the same, which is 100 percent luck and no skill. We are not broken. We are getting ratio’d to hell and back, but ultimately, we haven’t done anything truly wrong. Trust your instincts, my lovely autists. They are not as shitty as everyone told you they were.
@@Spice8Rack what's funny about this is i had a bunch of youtube tabs open, over several days, (as i had to catch up on content), and when i got to a new chapter i thought the buffering was natural as the tab was open eating processor resources for however long. it wasn't until the last one that i figured out it was intentional. great video btw!
"Viper's Nest of Contradiction" is the name of my Sakiko snake tribal deck that looks like green ramp to hydras but is actually a blue stax deck in a ghillie suit
Hey Rack, may I call you Rack? So long time watcher, I normally stay quiet. But.... And this is happening everywhere, it's so amazing how the universal consciousness works.... I wanted to say thank you I love your work, and I have always enjoyed your incredibly well thought out opinion on life and my favorite card game. I got BPD and ASD. And when you spoke on mental illness and mass media I cried because one of the people I respect understood why it took me 38 years to seek help for my issues. You do far more than you think for people. Thank you so much.
@@Spice8Rack how do you think I feel I just had a hero respond to me?! If your ever in Texas I'd love to play some Jank EDH. Impossible for this to happen but felt I'd lose my shot if I didn't take it. Hope you have an amazing day cause you just made mine.
@@KatoBloodsoul hope youre still doin good man, glad the game i love is still helping people and bringing them together despite all the oko's in the world. Cheers man!!!
@@darthbahnsen3832 Thank you so much for the, oddly gratifying and randomness of this digital check in! Uhm, I'm well enough, one day at a time, all those other inspirational phrases for making it. Lol. I hope you're doing well too! Cheers!
@@KatoBloodsoul we're all in it together. whether we realize that fact, are ignorant of it, or willingly deny it. When you snuff out all the social fiction of the human experience, you're left with one beautifullly interlocking yet undefined moment of the universe contemplating itself, and sustaining its ability to continue to do so. I often compare the common interpretation of eldrazi to the way we percieve each other as people and animals. The old analogy: "Imagine a person catching a fish with both their bare hands. To the fish, unable to percieve what's above the surface of the water, there are two entities trying to catch him." In reality the two hands still somehow represent one entity, the person above the water. When considering the dimensionality of reality and the limitations of sensory perceptions, it's easy to see how all life on earth could be percieved in the same way as the fish likely interprets the two hands. We appear to have this independence in the way we exist, though there could be some underlying dependency upon one another much the same way the eldrazi represent some source-entity in the blind eternities. What does any of that mean? You decide. But there's definitely hope for the future, and there's good reason to put our lives in each other's hands and believe we can become something unimaginably capable if we give each other a chance. We simply need to just be forgiving and generous to one another, not just as humans but as little pockets of the universe that find themselves selfaware in a particular 'place' and 'time.' We very may well be infantile on a scale of potentiality for intelligence (and i would vehemently argue this is indeed the case), imagine if we can take care of ourselves well enough to give the human mind, our technology, and our understanding of our existence another million years or so to evolve. With that, I'll conclude my existential philoso-babble ramble fest, take care my friend.
I like the parallel between having to start over again and again as an expression of mill/discard. If the hand is your ability to express one’s self and being forced to discard is a disassociation then each reset could be seen as Spice playing down to no cards in hand. Starting again, the ideas are connected but different. The ‘deck’ has more cards, more facets of self and expression, but they are not the same cards. The essay becomes a metaphor for deck synergy as deck is self expression and concept.
You know I can’t help but feel like I saw this a few days before. Sure, it’s because of Patreon, but it’s thematically relevant. Also, it’s a phenomenal video and I eagerly await rewatching it dozens of times.
I always kinda felt like Ashiok would be the catty, overly domineering, but ultimately supportive friend we all need. Congrats, Spice. This was incredible.
When I first started playing Magic the Gathering, I was immediately attracted to mill as a wincon. This concept was so powerful to me as someone who has seen a few generations of my family succumb to the loss of memory or fall into mental illness. Specifically Alzheimer's and ALS oriented dementia. I loved mill because I love horror. Losing memory or my sense of self is my greatest fear. This was such a hard video to watch at points because it taught me that I failed people. Those points where a family member was issued a notice that they were losing memory, or worse still where I noticed first hand, were the points where I gave up on them. I sincerely hope to grow from this and will be looking into your references here. Spice you seemed to waiver at the concept of yourself as an artist, but as I have been so moved by this, waiver no more. A fantastic piece of horror, a humorous jaunt, and a catalyst for introspection on my greatest fears. Mill Vs. Discard was worth the wait. Big thankies.
ITS THE ONE! THE ONLY MILL AND DISCRD VIDEO! PRAISE THE SPICE! EDIT: The way this video is structured, the way it quite literaly is madness and memory. Bravo, Spice. Bravo.
I have always found the distinction between mill being heavily found in blue and discard to be primarily black, a fascinating point in terms of color philosophy.
I think this is the only channel on the Internet putting out master thesis length, high-quality analyses of my favourite card game. Im so glad the person doing it also has a great sense of humour alongside their analytic abilties. Keep doing what youre doing Spice.
Spice, this video has not only entertained me for hours, but has made me fundamentally examine how I will interact with “madness” as a future medical professional. Thank you, genuinely
A strange British TH-camr explaining that my depression and anxiety are based on the hopelessness of the world and not because my brain doesn’t have enough goo in it is definitely not something my therapist will like to hear
How: brain doesn’t have enough goo in it Why: hopelessness of the world there i put it in a way so that I don't feel as if the idea of chemical imbalance is invalidated
This is exactly why so many therapists are quitting the profession, actually. They realize that nothing they can do will help in the face of late-stage capitalism, and so they stop trying.
It's finally Mill vs Discard! Unfortunately, as happy as I am for see this, it does mean that the Era of spice constantly joking about wanting to make a mill vs discard video is over.
Even without considering how GOOD this video Is, the sheer amount of effort that has been put into this piece of content Is leaving me astounded and pleasantly shook. Also, as an italian, the added challenge of following your videos through a language barrier makes the viewing experience even more exciting!
Spice, in doing this kind of in-depth analysis into mill vs discard, you've inadvertently also made a primer on the ludonarrative links between gameplay mechanics seeking to create a sense of self-dissociation and self-destruction. I imagine this is super useful for anyone trying to make that sort of thing in a game, what those kind of mechanics entail, and what could be improved from Magic's embodiment of it in mill & discard. It's excellent!
I feel like that one is right in the name: it's an impulse. If the cards are knowledge, and drawing them into your hand is remembering them, then impulse draw is acting on knowledge that you haven't actually remembered. You're acting on impulse. Like, I don't know the password to my laptop without thinking about it for a while, but my hands do, so I don't have trouble typing it. It's like that, except instead of pressing the correct symbols to wake up the lightning-powered information machine, you're making the right magical gestures to summon a lightning bolt .
Absolutely blew it out of the water with this one SpicyBB. Beautiful work as always. I knew it would get deep but still wasn't quite prepared for that wild ride, truly touching. Thank you for all that you do. I will surely be revisiting this video periodically so I can further explore these ideas. I also want to say thank you for playing a role in my recent self discovery. I came out as trans back in September of last year, and I don't know if I would've came to that self realization without content creators such as yourself, or it would've taken me much longer. Again, Thank you for making such wonderful content and just generally being a beautiful person
I laughed at being healed by being greeted by a big cat. And then I remembered how wonderful cats are. Really wonderful job all around here. This hit some great notes and some of them close to home too. Well worth the wait.
I beg your pardon! Peace of Mind is not ONLY an absolute flavor WINDMILL SLAM but is also one of the best self-discard cards in white! Also that Ashiok cosplay is actually very creative. The more I noticed about the details on the "head" the more impressed I was.
Oh boy! The long-awaited Mill vs. Discard video! I can't wait! **sees content warning; checks run time** OH BOY this is going to be an *a d v e n t u r e !*
I choose to believe that Ashiok had all the lost memories sequestered away somewhere, and was so impressed by Spice bunching them in a face when they don't have one that they just gave 'em all back.
I was rewatching this video, during which my internet had a hiccup and I had a moment of second guessing whether this was a real "processing circle" or another gag.
The stuff about dementia and alzheimer's is very interesting. My grandmother passed away last year at 91, and was living on her own with minimal assistance until she was 90, but the last few months of her life were very hard and she repeatedly expressed a desire to pass on rather than continue to decline (though she didn't end up doing so for more complicated reasons). It's very upsetting to realise that many people don't get the opportunity to make their own decisions on this matter.
-Short- long critic: the HDS has been criticized for an overemphasize on quality of sleep and Hamilton himself disapproved of its use for diagnosis. I just have my worries this will discourage people from taking a medication that I, many people around me, and a lot of depressed people as a whole, found very helpful. Though the nuances of medicalizing depression are important and worth exploring, I personally found that giving a concrete, physical description to depression often helped me convince people to get treatment (of any kind) for the hardship they were going through! X
I certainly hope it's not taken that way. I do say multiple times in the video that medicalisation is by no means an exclusively bad thing, and that in many cases the right medication can massively improve the quality of peoples lives. I have many friends on various forms of medication for a number of mental health issues/disorders, and when it works for them it works. What that section was illustrating was how medicalisation doesn't automatically resolves mental health complaints. Further, that the enshrining of it as the silver bullet against such complaints is both scientifically inaccurate, and also allows for the greater depolitisiation of mental health, meaning that the environment & social structures at large avoid critique & questioning.
My personal experience has been that if your depression is primarily caused by chemical imbalances, medication can be really effective. If it's caused by a current shitty situation, it won't. Past trauma is more of a middle ground. I have a very biomechanical depression and meds work great for me. I was able to guess that someone I was talking to who had terrible past experiences with medication was being abused when their parents sought doctors to drug away the resulting problems. I think that for a lot of mental illness diagnoses cover multiple conditions, because they only look at symptoms and assume everyone has it because of the same cause. It's like giving meds for hypotension to someone who has low blood pressure from actively bleeding out and being suprised when it's anything other than a stop gap.
@@AbsolXGuardian This exactly. My brother and I both had depression. His stems from chemical imbalances, so medication works wonders for him. Mine was from systemic self-deprecation due to life circumstances, so antidepressants did little in that regard, but several important life choices (and some pretty terrible ones) ended up improving my quality of life. We both have similar symptoms, but they were from different underlying causes, and so needed to be treated differently. I do want to point out that this is an anecdote with only two participants in a situation that is way more complicated than I could ever be qualified to discuss academically, let alone in youtube comment, so grains of salt all around.
There is also a very strong interaction effect between medication and therapy or other treatments. A chemical imbalance makes it much harder to properly with trauma and stressors. Without medication it can be extremely hard to get to a state where you can utilize these tool or keep up the material improvements. In these cases medication alone will have a have a fairly small effect, but adding medication has a very strong effect on the overall treatment.
@@markmittelbach7975 Exactly. Which is why hopefully we get to the point where we can more directly perceive the chemical imbalance through like brain scans (as well as what the nature of the imbalance is) and combine that with a social history to get the proper diagnosis/course of treatment for the individual situation. Therapy for pure chemical imbalance depression doesn't do much either. I received that, admittedly they never figured out I had depression so they weren't the best therapists, and it's just a bunch of awkward time wasting. Now I can use CBT against my disordered thoughts when my cycle brings back my depression, but that itself is a stop gap.
One of those videos that starts out like "Oh cool, fiction thing dive" and ends with "Am I plural? I might be, i might not have really been able to process it until now." Thanks Spice, this one... this one's special. I'm probably gonna watch it like 3 or 4 more times before the week's out.
Speaking of resolving a fundamental contradiction, I was expecting this to be a full deep-dive into Madness and Memory as concepts in the game, or was Expecting a digital Prank where the video repeats itself with bits getting corrupted. The Fact you were able to blend these two ideas together is fantastic, and While I might not recommend this as someone's first, this is the best video if I would want to explain what the content is that you make. This is, without a doubt, the most Spice8Rack video I watched, and Thanks for all the hard work, it was great.
It makes me very happy you regularly release content. Like it's really been inspiring to me to work on my writing in hopes I'll eventually start publicly releasing art just to share it with people and it's nice to aspire to something again.
Mill: confusing you about your first job and if we worked together so that I can abuse your trust. Discard: distracting the cashier and grabbing bills from the drawer. Edit: discard is losing your keys as we all sometimes do. Mill is forgetting you own a car.
Around three months ago, I woke up for work, went to the restroom, and realized that I didn't recognize my own face in the mirror. This kicked off a crucible of removing masks and attempting to uncover the self (now selves), as I came to terms with some form of dissociative disorder. It's certainly not over, in fact it's getting harder, but I'm adjusting to this "new normal" as best I can, and trying to find balance and joy in this new life. I say all this background to get to the point that this video is fantastic, and made me consider new perspectives on the self, the formation of trauma, and the effects and relations of societal stigma on the mentally ill. This is a masterful video, and I thank you for the care, grace, and nuance it clearly took. Also, it's incredibly witty, you've got a style contemporary with peers in both the video essay and MtG spaces but uniquely your own. Definitely excited to see more of your work.
In rewatching this video I'm reminded of how it resonated and resonates with me. My view of myself is coloured by my depression - a lot of things become out of reach after a low period and this cyclocal annihilation is something that I think about a lot because of it - so a video like this, that not only has something so similar to this but also depicts my experience and my greatest fear is very impactful. Thank you! I enjoy your work, again, and again. I'm also reminded in the talk of the mortality of mill of a moment in the mystifyingly well written Hearthstone Mercenaries solo mode that stuck with me - that of a warlock "killing" her father through mill, destroying his memories in an ultimate act of disavowal. The concept itself combined with the...voice lines of the character begging for it to stop was intensely harrowing - more, even, than if it has been mortal danger. In our modern media death is fairly cheap, so these fates that are The-Death-That-Is-Not-Death can be even more harrowing. Anyway. Have a good one.
SO stoked to watch this. Thank you for conquering this beast Spice. Your content is so wonderful, so happy to be a patron and continue to support all of the joy you bring to us.
51:48 I can't tell if this is an actual, blooper-style, something that happened while filming or supposed to the incessant grinding of the millstone, so to speak. I love it.
I haven't even made it past the first hour of this but it is so well done. Not just as someone who studied psychology and mental health but has also had to wrestle with the complications of my own mental health and that of my family, I find you really have something important to say here regarding it, and bringing it into the context of Magic really got me thinking about this game I love in new, exciting ways. Bravo! I look forward to finishing this quite concise video soon. Thank you for sharing your craft with us, Spice.
This video was a banger and I can’t help but think about the Pokemon card game. Mill and discard exist but essentially without any attempt at creating a ludonarrative through line beyond “disruption”-a player’s deck and hand are so fundamentally abstracted that ties to madness or the psyche are almost nonexistent beyond a general theme of disruption. But your final level of analysis, the mechanical experiences of the player, ring through so much that it finally let me put into words why I’ve been playing the same dang deck for almost a decade. Decks built around discarding the opponents hand (in expanded which is the format I play) have existed and paralleled the destruction of the self, the stripping away of one’s immediate plans but not entropic eradication-that’s why they’ve been banned, as they make the opponent feel powerless while not outright winning and why I haven’t been so attracted to them, as mechanically they also have the fail-case of an opponent top-decking one of the million draw sevens and undoing your gameplan. Stall on the other hand is just one player playing as entropy-a winconless control deck that relies on deck-out while not playing mill cards to expedite that win condition (except in a tournament setting where games need to be kept to an hour, so you typically play one slow mill piece to run the opponent out of cards). As opposed to discard decks which rely on the temporary destruction of the opponent’s plan to buy time for a quick win, stall as an archetype runs nothing but healing and cards that erode at opponent’s resources in play. Since games take that full hour you as the player come to embody entropy in the game and meta-game, your opponent’s deck crumbing to an unrelenting force while their own time to play a best of three beyond the first match runs out. Your game plan is always the same, time, and all that changes is the opponent’s deck’s capacity to cope with that slow infinity with which they are confronted.
As someone who only keeps occasional tabs on the magic story, it is through this video I discovered that Slobad had become an agent of Phyrexia. My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.
@@Metal_Maoist in one of the side stories, he is not only convincing Mirrans to willingly become Phyrexian, but then using those agents to lure more Mirrans
Man starts out with children's trading cards ends with political and psychological analysis of the culture in all seriousness, GG mate. This took a lot of work. Good luck getting to 100k! You're a legend with this video, you made me remember some of my favorite old cards. God bless you
When you said that the video was only in the second third of the video’s runtime at 1:10:45, if you accept the video’s narrative that each section is independent of each other section and that spice was unaware of the other sections when filming, then he would already be in the third third of said “video”, since said section is about 36 minutes long and he was 26 minutes into said section. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
I’ve never watched a Spice8Rack video before. I’ve seen them a bit on other channels playing magic with random people, and I thought “Oh, I’d love to check their channel out”. And now I realize how much I was missing out. Fantastic video, I’m glad I watched this.
Having to watch this in stages, but so far it's so obvious how much love, care and thought went into creating this. I hope you're proud of what you've put together, you should be.
as someone who's favorite strategies in TCGs often revolve around decking someone out or ripping away their resources in hand, I know this video is going to be excellent.
I have not been here since the beginning. I have been here since Yawgmoth's video, so I'm well and truly in touch with this meme. And I have to say. This lived up to the anticipation. I have to imagine this was an absurd task, but congrats on finally producing such a good vid. Also, I'm in nursing school right now, so the treatment of mental issues and the root causes is something that's on my mind (and my exam questions). I've felt this tension before, that it feels as though the 'cause' of someone's problems can, if one kept digging, get traced back to capitalism. Double also, I felt that the Ashiok bit was actually the best way to wrap that up. I'd kinda love to see a Behind the Scenes/ Making of vid for this one.
I never comment and you probably won't see this but I just wanted to express how good it feels to have someone breaching the subject of madness having actually done research for once. It's the first time I see it, and it's the first time I see a big youtuber talk about the links between psychiatrisation and capitalism. As a mentally ill person who calls themselves mad - thank you.
I didn't know that I needed to hear Asiok say "fookin ell" but now I question how I ever got by without it. Also the rest of the video was great so thanks for that, Spice. Take care.
This is the most perfect gift I could have received today. This is sheer perfection! Also as a designer the names of the chapters brings me intense joy. The descent into madness of file naming is something I well know. Thank you Spice for being an absolute genius!
I was dreading the time i would finally watch this. I feel like i had to, eventually - but it left me with this anticipation of dread going in. 2 hours later, and i'm... well. I'm impressive by the artistic soul you pour into all your videos, spice. I always am, when i finally tackle a new upload. I knew this one was gonna be hard. I've lived with mental illness in my private life since i was born, my parents both have serious trauma, my siblings have serious trauma, my grandma died in late-stage dementia and i always blamed myself for not being able to help look after her. She wasn't abandoned - my mom did a lot of work to get her into the best place she could manage. I eventually couldn't stand to visit anymore, it hurt too much. It's been years, and the shame of giving up still stings after years of therapy. It doesn't drag me down like it used to, but depression has been a very difficult factor in my life as long as i can remember. I knew memory loss was going to be involved at some point, from the title. It... It still hurt to listen to the sections on dementia, the Great Confinement, the whole part about artistic paralysis, and the simple need for *people to accept each other*... and i feel like you just *get* it. You say you have no idea what you're talking about and all that, but you sell yourself short in a major way - you are one of only a few people i've seen *at all* who *gets* the full picture of why diagnoses, institutionalization, and all these social forces interact. And it is *such* a relief to see someone else express it. It's so hard to form the right words to say this stuff. I mentioned that my grandma had dementia. I feel, at this point in my life, that there's no way i don't have some of the markers. Just these last few days i've been losing my train of thought, i've been having difficulty regulating, i've been misplacing things. Funny enough, i'm still looking for my Lazav, Dimir Mastermind cuz i wamted to make a mill deck, that's what got me looking in on yoru channel. It was a worthwhile listen. So thank you, for making this video. It's full of soul and it shows. Thank you for your videos and your effort and time.
I came here for funny British man yells at a cardboard fantasy game and was pleasently surprised with a deep dive into the possible harm of our definition of madness all the while keeping a seemingly dull subject intriguing and entertaining throughout
I was driving myself to migraine and madness with a seemingly impossible assembly assignment. This video gave me the motivation to throw the assignment, so thank you(?) (I can still get a low A, and this teacher did surprise curve the grade last semester) And definitely thank you for the dopamine to pull me back from the edge. Edit: I now realize how ironic it is for me to use the term madness colloquially with how this video ended up. I just want to clarify that I used it as a shorthand for "brain fog from fibromyalgia". Which is why I think that some depictions of more stereotypical fantasy madness can actually work, when written by a mentally/nuerologically ill person as happening to the POV character- not as fear of the other or fear of becoming the other but as a fictionalized version of the battle for internal self autonomy that the author struggles with. Same how the irrational fear of crazy people hurting you is different from exploring the fear that your condition will cause you to hurt someone else. Not from the most stigmatized mental illnesses but from stuff like (in my personal experience) hurting other people due to adrenaline seeking and poor impulse control with ADHD and fits of rage from PMDD and sensory processing disorder. I find I relate to depictions of fantasy madness on a personal level that others find insensitive, but that is because of my own personal conditions. A bunch of voices in my head would make me collapse or get really angry, because I can't handle a bunch of voices period. Same how they just happen to be very biomechanical so my problems do fit with the current medical conception of mental illness.
Spiceperor, I hoped this day wouldn't come thinking there was no way any essay would be up to the year long hype... But linking mill and discard to ludonarrative Insanity? You not only lived up to it, you stepped on it and it called you daddyrack 💕 Amazingly researched, developed, and presented, you're such an inspiring person!
Congrats on the pronoun upgrade! Idk how I didn't notice it earlier, but very rad of you. Welcome to the it/them club bestie. But wow... what is there even to say about this video? It's your best work out of a massive group of incredible works, and the fact that the margin is as wide as it is is astounding because of the overall quality of all your pieces. It's so densely packed with witticism, thought-provoking commentary, and intelligent dissection of what is a hugely complicated and difficult body of work and presenting it all in a consumable and understanding format for dummies like me. While I hesitate to call this a 'magnum opus' i have no idea how it gets better than this but I've thought that with very video you've produced and you've always proved me wrong. Incredible work Spice, take a break, and be proud of yourself. This rocked extremely hard.
Yessss… run - DON’T walk! From - THEM!!! Dun dun dunnnnn! But seriously, it’s incredible to be one of Them. ;) happy to have you, Spice8 - and all They who are also gender-rebellious spicy people of the Internet.
I wasn't expecting there to be an answer at the end, and I certainly wasn't expecting the answer to be based on a coherent explanation on the self. Genuinely one of the best videos I've ever watched.
as far as stern constable, I can see it as the hand being the potential knowledge; him refusing to hear the story, refusing that knowledge, in order to just arrest someone
“What does it mean to be discarded?” It means they didn’t love me anymore, Spice! Also, I get the “I like fiddle win conditions.” My first deck was Infect, because it was so different from the rest. I also have a super fun EDH mill deck.
This is genuinely one of your best videos. This was art. It was so worth the wait, and I'm so glad you didn't just put it out earlier for the sake of it
This was fantastic! I appreciate that your descent into madness in the philosophical sense was accompanied by one in the literal sense. Also, “the word on the street if that word was gay” absolutely sent me. Please keep doing what you’re doing, I need more.
I have become a spice8rack fan from this video. The amount of work and research is evident. I felt my brain gain wrinkles from the amount of knowledge sent towards synapses.
Okay, this was straight up amazing. Probably your best video to date, which I hope is a relief considering how much work went to it. I want to point out my favorite point, which was comparing the portrayal of war and that of madness in GoT - I always appreciate someone explaining why something was SO bad, haha!
This is brilliant. It downed on me in the middle what's going on (not the repeating but it's meaning). As mad as it sounds it was worth 2h of my time. Wish somebody could pay for it though.
Great stuff Spice! This was incredible stuff, really entertaining. I was thoroughly impressed with the fact that though we had numerous introductions they still moved the video as a whole forward. That's some skillful work that does not go unnoticed. Banger from beginning to end.
Gods, I love the patron list. Also, just played a mill deck against my mom, who's new to magic. She hated it. I'm definitely sending her this video when I'm done.
I just play mill for fun, and then when this came out and expanding on it philosophically has just made me so giddy. It started talking about madness and I was just like oh boy! There's more! It's expanding on itself in so many fun ways, also I appreciate having another genderqueer icon, and I see a person who analyzes something with this level of scrutiny and silliness and they have the same gender orientation as me, so for everything thanks spice!
I will say that the thing you said about like magic in world building where you just have to say "it just be like that" is also true for real life. There's always gonna be a fundamental set of rules and building blocks that are there because it just be like that
so... about that infect vs damage video...
so... about that "opponent loses life" VS "deal damage to opponent" video...
28 minutes in... that corkboard is gonna get wild huh?
Infect is easy. Nobody dies from Infect. You just stop fighting and join the cult.
Yes please.
OH BOY! A new spice video! Time to go into a vegetative state for the next few hours.
30 minute educational video followed by 2hour melt down is my favourite genre of video.
hbomb would be proud
Followed by 30 minutes of wrap-up explaining why the melt down supported the educational content actually
Its my love language
Me a few minutes ago:
* Sees Spice uploaded a new video*
"Yes!"
*Sees the video title*
"Yeeesss!"
*Sees the video length *
"YEEEESSSSSS!!!!!!"
In all seriousness though, congrats Spice on achieving this long term goal, can only imagine how much hard work it took.
Bless you. It really was a task to put this together but I'm so happu with how it turned out
@@Spice8RackI'm also really Happu !
@@Spice8Rack as far as i'm concerned, you've been working on this video for 2.5 years continuously, which works out to 7300 hours put in. that's dedication! seriously though, your passion for making these and the commitment to still keep your brain churning on it for so long is impressive, and you should be proud of yourself for seeing the project through to the end. Good Show!
I broke my ankle yesterday and about 5 hours ago my brain went “what if mill vs discard came out” F*CKIN CLUTCH THANK YOU
My terrifyingly pessimistic thought was, "...does this mean it's ending the channel? 😨"
“We need to get a tiny bit more complicated, we need to talk about the self” has the same energy as “to answer that, we need to talk about parallel universes”
I love that as soon as spice has finished talking about how a citizen in magic could be driven insane by looking out their window and seeing demons or dragons roaming outside; someone starts doing woodwork outside his own window, annoying him.
kinda a modern millstone isn't it?
Ashiok’s method of keeping your mind “fresh” enough to keep working perfectly encapsulates how you have to discard down to max hand size. Beautiful
Completely underated comment. 100% valued and appreciated
“My good bitch, I live in your walls.”
I will find a way to incorporate that into a real-life conversation or I will die trying
This was a masterpiece by the way
My good bitch, I live in your walls; you lack the _chutzpah_ to work that phrase into a real conversation!
Spice spits some of the most unhinged sass and it gives life
"My good bitch" has been living rent free in my head for about a week and I did not know why or whence it came until I rewatched the video just now.
Anyone got a timestamp? I zoned in and out, cause it's a good video but I got them problems
@@iamnotcameron 2:20:46
"... those who were pathologized with being mad were forced to endure incredibly inhumane punishments and treatments- the line between those two often blurring into non-existence." Banger of a line, gotta commend that writing
once i realized the repetition of this video, it really hit me hard because, as someone who took care of an Alzheimeric grandparent for 14 months straight, it dug up hundreds of collated memories and instantly engrained the flavor point of the video
thank you for this video, only 20% in and it's one of my favorites
The payoff to the "i took this screenshot from the Wayback Machine" was utterly sublime, and also explains why the MTGA client updates lead to 404s. Amazing work Wizards (sarcasm) and amazing work Spice8Rack (genuine)
edit; No mention of the Madness Keyword? Shame on you Spice, shame on you..../s
Discard is like when i puke. Mill is like when i poo. Not going to elaborate.
I... You... *throws dozens of pages of detailed notes in the air*
Having played Magic: the Gathering for decades and knowing it's ludonarrative meaning in context to each flavortext, storyline, and cardname (In that order); it HORRIFIES me that it such description makes perfect sense.
Why does this have so many layers that could actually be contrived as an amazing summary.
"Many players ask..."
Puke/Discard: Getting rid of short-term stuff
Poo/Mill: Getting rid of long-term stuff
I can't believe it took me two hours to realize that I was being baited with a video about my favorite card mechanics to watch an essay on the issues of mental health in today's modern society. Touché, man who embodies what I imagine Vampire Diaries to be about despite having never seen a single episode of that show.
Look at this man, coming up with perfect new intros for Spice to use in his openings
Man, I wish that's what Vampire Diaries were about. Unfortunately it's mostly about sexualising teenagers, glorifying teenage/adult relationships and subliminal homophobia, racism and general right wing messaging.
I was recommended this video by my brother and I can't believe it took me two hours to realize I was being baited with a video about mental health and psychologs to watch an essay on Magic: The Gathering lmao
Thank you for giving me a summation of what this would turn into so I don't have to waste my time with something that would bait and switch me into something I don't care about. Much appreciated.
You must be new to the channel. Lol!
Something I love to tell my friends when I introduce them to magic is that every rule in the game has at least one card that contradicts it.
There should be a silver border...er, I mean acorn card that says "Whenever a card’s text directly contradicts the comprehensive rules, the rules takes precedence. _(Ignore rule 101.1)_"
Same. Especially when they start seeing cards that break several rules. Really helps out.
My favorite is when the card text straight up calls it out, like "The legend rule does not apply."
@@Fealuinix the opposite of the rules lawyer: the rule prosecutor.
Yugioh players: First time?
As a long time depression sufferer, this video was really cathartic to watch. The level of nuance and love here is truly something rare and precious, as are you, the person reading this.
Thank you, Spider Lord that doesn't trigger my Arachniphobia, you are wonderful in your own amazing way.
As a huge fan of both you and Jacob Geller, the “Strictly worse in every way Jacob Geller” joke made me CACKLE. Great vid
Yeah, I found his channel a few months before this one. Both great content creators though I might ironically like Spice more because talking about card/boardgames in a video essay format is something that I've never seen before. Jacob does have a ton of variety mind you
I still laugh at "Welshie was right." Gets me every time.
“Very concise capacity”
*checks runtime*
Me: That’s what I thought
Edit: the section on madness is very interesting to me. I’m autistic, but all of the symptoms I have fundamentally make sense in the framework of a human mind. I’m not good with social rules, but plenty of people are bad with the rules of math and that’s not considered a “neurodivergence”. I’m not too good at picking up on things people are implying or trying to “say without saying”, but you know what? People can say what they mean just fine. Having intense interests in things? That’s called a thing being interesting. I’m only really considered to have a neurodivergence because I have different strengths and weaknesses than everyone else, and I’m not ashamed of my interests.
I had the same exact reaction
Well, there is a thing called dyscalculia which isn't EXACTLY "being bad at math" but does cover a subset of it.
Same.
"I don't have an overinflated sense of justice. YOU ALL have disturbingly _atrophied_ senses of justice! Why do I care about the bad things happening? Why don't YOU care MORE!?"
I have often said "In a world full of autistic people we would be just fine. It's the the fact there's so many of you non-autistic folks that's the problem."
Love the example of autism being only sometimes disabling. Only in certain situations and ahem, around certain unsupportive people.
The neurotypical brain, while prevalent, is far from perfect, and only gets treated as “healthy and normal” because it describes a population that acts with privilege in all things. Using the same medicalized language to describe that brain type, reveals the one thing we all have in common: we don’t like being talked about that way!
“So, uh, when did you find out that you were… like that?”
“Would you consider yourself PROFOUNDLY typical or only MILDLY typical? Asking for a friend.”
“You’re such an inspiration! I could never pursue a graduate degree with YOUR challenges. You’re so brave. Good for you!”
Like wow, yikes. Not super helpful, is it?
Final footnote: autistic people are very good at communicating amongst ourselves, same as neurotypical people. It’s just that we ALL have trouble communicating across that divide, and guess who gets blamed for that? Autistic people only! Who’da thunk it?
If you are also an autistic anti-capitalist genderweird former “gifted kid,” and YOU are also now a burned-out and quasi-impoverished adult, just remember: you don’t lack empathy. Empathy is not what the rest of the world wanted from you in the first place. They wanted you to already BE the same, which is 100 percent luck and no skill.
We are not broken. We are getting ratio’d to hell and back, but ultimately, we haven’t done anything truly wrong.
Trust your instincts, my lovely autists. They are not as shitty as everyone told you they were.
You’d think after the third fake loading screen, I’d stop checking my internet. 😂
Splendid video!
Heheheh I'm a lil stinker ;P
@@Spice8Rack It's such a great choice for this video, if anything you stink like a rose garden in full bloom.
Mine went out for a bit and I got a real one, really confused me for a sec
The best part is that after 2 of the loading screens I got actual ads played on me
@@Spice8Rack what's funny about this is i had a bunch of youtube tabs open, over several days, (as i had to catch up on content), and when i got to a new chapter i thought the buffering was natural as the tab was open eating processor resources for however long. it wasn't until the last one that i figured out it was intentional.
great video btw!
I like green
Dad is that you?
Green is mid
Based
Green is just a support color. Black is where it's at.
Me too
"Magic: the Gathering is a viper's nest of contradiction" should 200% be the new official slogan of the game
"Viper's Nest of Contradiction" is the name of my Sakiko snake tribal deck that looks like green ramp to hydras but is actually a blue stax deck in a ghillie suit
Hey Rack, may I call you Rack?
So long time watcher, I normally stay quiet. But.... And this is happening everywhere, it's so amazing how the universal consciousness works.... I wanted to say thank you
I love your work, and I have always enjoyed your incredibly well thought out opinion on life and my favorite card game.
I got BPD and ASD. And when you spoke on mental illness and mass media I cried because one of the people I respect understood why it took me 38 years to seek help for my issues.
You do far more than you think for people. Thank you so much.
I'm so glad you found my analysis respectful & accurate. I really can't stress how relieved and happy I am to read a message like this xx
@@Spice8Rack how do you think I feel I just had a hero respond to me?! If your ever in Texas I'd love to play some Jank EDH. Impossible for this to happen but felt I'd lose my shot if I didn't take it. Hope you have an amazing day cause you just made mine.
@@KatoBloodsoul hope youre still doin good man, glad the game i love is still helping people and bringing them together despite all the oko's in the world. Cheers man!!!
@@darthbahnsen3832 Thank you so much for the, oddly gratifying and randomness of this digital check in! Uhm, I'm well enough, one day at a time, all those other inspirational phrases for making it. Lol. I hope you're doing well too! Cheers!
@@KatoBloodsoul we're all in it together. whether we realize that fact, are ignorant of it, or willingly deny it. When you snuff out all the social fiction of the human experience, you're left with one beautifullly interlocking yet undefined moment of the universe contemplating itself, and sustaining its ability to continue to do so. I often compare the common interpretation of eldrazi to the way we percieve each other as people and animals. The old analogy: "Imagine a person catching a fish with both their bare hands. To the fish, unable to percieve what's above the surface of the water, there are two entities trying to catch him." In reality the two hands still somehow represent one entity, the person above the water. When considering the dimensionality of reality and the limitations of sensory perceptions, it's easy to see how all life on earth could be percieved in the same way as the fish likely interprets the two hands. We appear to have this independence in the way we exist, though there could be some underlying dependency upon one another much the same way the eldrazi represent some source-entity in the blind eternities. What does any of that mean? You decide. But there's definitely hope for the future, and there's good reason to put our lives in each other's hands and believe we can become something unimaginably capable if we give each other a chance. We simply need to just be forgiving and generous to one another, not just as humans but as little pockets of the universe that find themselves selfaware in a particular 'place' and 'time.' We very may well be infantile on a scale of potentiality for intelligence (and i would vehemently argue this is indeed the case), imagine if we can take care of ourselves well enough to give the human mind, our technology, and our understanding of our existence another million years or so to evolve. With that, I'll conclude my existential philoso-babble ramble fest, take care my friend.
MY DAY HAS BECOME 5000000% BETTER THANKS TO THE SPICE!
I like the parallel between having to start over again and again as an expression of mill/discard. If the hand is your ability to express one’s self and being forced to discard is a disassociation then each reset could be seen as Spice playing down to no cards in hand. Starting again, the ideas are connected but different. The ‘deck’ has more cards, more facets of self and expression, but they are not the same cards. The essay becomes a metaphor for deck synergy as deck is self expression and concept.
You know I can’t help but feel like I saw this a few days before.
Sure, it’s because of Patreon, but it’s thematically relevant. Also, it’s a phenomenal video and I eagerly await rewatching it dozens of times.
I always kinda felt like Ashiok would be the catty, overly domineering, but ultimately supportive friend we all need.
Congrats, Spice. This was incredible.
When I first started playing Magic the Gathering, I was immediately attracted to mill as a wincon. This concept was so powerful to me as someone who has seen a few generations of my family succumb to the loss of memory or fall into mental illness. Specifically Alzheimer's and ALS oriented dementia. I loved mill because I love horror. Losing memory or my sense of self is my greatest fear. This was such a hard video to watch at points because it taught me that I failed people. Those points where a family member was issued a notice that they were losing memory, or worse still where I noticed first hand, were the points where I gave up on them. I sincerely hope to grow from this and will be looking into your references here.
Spice you seemed to waiver at the concept of yourself as an artist, but as I have been so moved by this, waiver no more. A fantastic piece of horror, a humorous jaunt, and a catalyst for introspection on my greatest fears. Mill Vs. Discard was worth the wait. Big thankies.
Most sane Mill player explaining why I'm not allowed to have fun too:
ITS THE ONE! THE ONLY MILL AND DISCRD VIDEO! PRAISE THE SPICE!
EDIT: The way this video is structured, the way it quite literaly is madness and memory. Bravo, Spice. Bravo.
An excellent example of showing and telling.
I have always found the distinction between mill being heavily found in blue and discard to be primarily black, a fascinating point in terms of color philosophy.
YO DICETRY
@@gerdderd8037 YO
The amount of “Spice8rack, AKA-“ moments we got in this video is one of my many favorite parts
AKA the word on the street, if that word was "GAY". XD hahahahhah
I especially loved the Jacob Geller and Noah Samsen comparisons as I watch them too. But Spice should not call itself inferior to them!
I think this is the only channel on the Internet putting out master thesis length, high-quality analyses of my favourite card game. Im so glad the person doing it also has a great sense of humour alongside their analytic abilties. Keep doing what youre doing Spice.
The use of Ashiok as a mentor to keep pushing you, and as a means to bind all these ideas together was brilliant.
Spice, this video has not only entertained me for hours, but has made me fundamentally examine how I will interact with “madness” as a future medical professional. Thank you, genuinely
A strange British TH-camr explaining that my depression and anxiety are based on the hopelessness of the world and not because my brain doesn’t have enough goo in it is definitely not something my therapist will like to hear
I'm a therapist, that question comes up a lot and can lead to a really productive conversation if you have an aware clinician
Huzzah! A man of culture!
How: brain doesn’t have enough goo in it
Why: hopelessness of the world
there i put it in a way so that I don't feel as if the idea of chemical imbalance is invalidated
They're emphatically Welsh, not British
This is exactly why so many therapists are quitting the profession, actually. They realize that nothing they can do will help in the face of late-stage capitalism, and so they stop trying.
It's finally Mill vs Discard! Unfortunately, as happy as I am for see this, it does mean that the Era of spice constantly joking about wanting to make a mill vs discard video is over.
Now he can joke about wanting to make a sequel.
Nonsense. It would be continuing the kayfabe of this video to continue making those jokes.
It seems to me that perhaps its memory of this event can be erased if need be.
Now we can get teased about the release of their Tarkir dive down.
Assuming he REMEMBERS making this video!
Even without considering how GOOD this video Is, the sheer amount of effort that has been put into this piece of content Is leaving me astounded and pleasantly shook. Also, as an italian, the added challenge of following your videos through a language barrier makes the viewing experience even more exciting!
Spice, in doing this kind of in-depth analysis into mill vs discard, you've inadvertently also made a primer on the ludonarrative links between gameplay mechanics seeking to create a sense of self-dissociation and self-destruction. I imagine this is super useful for anyone trying to make that sort of thing in a game, what those kind of mechanics entail, and what could be improved from Magic's embodiment of it in mill & discard. It's excellent!
"Mill vs Discard 2" would have to include impulsive draw. The implications of game mechanics are really interesting.
"wait, I have it at the end of my tongue... aargh I won't remember, never mind"
Impulse draw is one of my favorite mechanics in the game, right next to things take advantage of having cards in your graveyard.
I feel like that one is right in the name: it's an impulse. If the cards are knowledge, and drawing them into your hand is remembering them, then impulse draw is acting on knowledge that you haven't actually remembered. You're acting on impulse.
Like, I don't know the password to my laptop without thinking about it for a while, but my hands do, so I don't have trouble typing it. It's like that, except instead of pressing the correct symbols to wake up the lightning-powered information machine, you're making the right magical gestures to summon a lightning bolt .
You are not a “strictly worse Jacob Geller”
you are the Jacob Geller of Magic: the Gathering.
Reserve list valuation goes up.
EDIT: Just realized that I mixed up Jacob Gellar with Folding Ideas. Oh no, the shame. -_-
We have Jacob Geller at home, but it's actually great stuff
Jacob Geller and Spice8Rack collaborating on a video is the crossover I need for 2023
@@3ndlessL00p That would be the video of the decade
Absolutely blew it out of the water with this one SpicyBB. Beautiful work as always.
I knew it would get deep but still wasn't quite prepared for that wild ride, truly touching.
Thank you for all that you do. I will surely be revisiting this video periodically so I can further explore these ideas.
I also want to say thank you for playing a role in my recent self discovery.
I came out as trans back in September of last year, and I don't know if I would've came to that self realization without content creators such as yourself, or it would've taken me much longer.
Again,
Thank you for making such wonderful content and just generally being a beautiful person
Congratulations on the discovery of the truth of you
@Storm: Welcome to a new world, you beautiful butterfly, you.
I laughed at being healed by being greeted by a big cat. And then I remembered how wonderful cats are.
Really wonderful job all around here. This hit some great notes and some of them close to home too. Well worth the wait.
No they're right, that WOULD fix me
I beg your pardon! Peace of Mind is not ONLY an absolute flavor WINDMILL SLAM but is also one of the best self-discard cards in white!
Also that Ashiok cosplay is actually very creative. The more I noticed about the details on the "head" the more impressed I was.
I run peace of mind in sefris as an emergency discard engine, calming down by way of creating undead. Sorry, I was stimming
Oh boy! The long-awaited Mill vs. Discard video! I can't wait!
**sees content warning; checks run time**
OH BOY this is going to be an *a d v e n t u r e !*
Would we settle for anything less? (Probably)
My partner experiences schizophrenia and I wasn't expecting to be so moved by a video about magic mechanics. This was beautiful, thank you.
I choose to believe that Ashiok had all the lost memories sequestered away somewhere, and was so impressed by Spice bunching them in a face when they don't have one that they just gave 'em all back.
I was rewatching this video, during which my internet had a hiccup and I had a moment of second guessing whether this was a real "processing circle" or another gag.
The stuff about dementia and alzheimer's is very interesting. My grandmother passed away last year at 91, and was living on her own with minimal assistance until she was 90, but the last few months of her life were very hard and she repeatedly expressed a desire to pass on rather than continue to decline (though she didn't end up doing so for more complicated reasons). It's very upsetting to realise that many people don't get the opportunity to make their own decisions on this matter.
-Short- long critic: the HDS has been criticized for an overemphasize on quality of sleep and Hamilton himself disapproved of its use for diagnosis.
I just have my worries this will discourage people from taking a medication that I, many people around me, and a lot of depressed people as a whole, found very helpful.
Though the nuances of medicalizing depression are important and worth exploring, I personally found that giving a concrete, physical description to depression often helped me convince people to get treatment (of any kind) for the hardship they were going through!
X
I certainly hope it's not taken that way. I do say multiple times in the video that medicalisation is by no means an exclusively bad thing, and that in many cases the right medication can massively improve the quality of peoples lives. I have many friends on various forms of medication for a number of mental health issues/disorders, and when it works for them it works. What that section was illustrating was how medicalisation doesn't automatically resolves mental health complaints. Further, that the enshrining of it as the silver bullet against such complaints is both scientifically inaccurate, and also allows for the greater depolitisiation of mental health, meaning that the environment & social structures at large avoid critique & questioning.
My personal experience has been that if your depression is primarily caused by chemical imbalances, medication can be really effective. If it's caused by a current shitty situation, it won't. Past trauma is more of a middle ground. I have a very biomechanical depression and meds work great for me. I was able to guess that someone I was talking to who had terrible past experiences with medication was being abused when their parents sought doctors to drug away the resulting problems.
I think that for a lot of mental illness diagnoses cover multiple conditions, because they only look at symptoms and assume everyone has it because of the same cause. It's like giving meds for hypotension to someone who has low blood pressure from actively bleeding out and being suprised when it's anything other than a stop gap.
@@AbsolXGuardian This exactly. My brother and I both had depression. His stems from chemical imbalances, so medication works wonders for him. Mine was from systemic self-deprecation due to life circumstances, so antidepressants did little in that regard, but several important life choices (and some pretty terrible ones) ended up improving my quality of life. We both have similar symptoms, but they were from different underlying causes, and so needed to be treated differently.
I do want to point out that this is an anecdote with only two participants in a situation that is way more complicated than I could ever be qualified to discuss academically, let alone in youtube comment, so grains of salt all around.
There is also a very strong interaction effect between medication and therapy or other treatments.
A chemical imbalance makes it much harder to properly with trauma and stressors. Without medication it can be extremely hard to get to a state where you can utilize these tool or keep up the material improvements.
In these cases medication alone will have a have a fairly small effect, but adding medication has a very strong effect on the overall treatment.
@@markmittelbach7975 Exactly. Which is why hopefully we get to the point where we can more directly perceive the chemical imbalance through like brain scans (as well as what the nature of the imbalance is) and combine that with a social history to get the proper diagnosis/course of treatment for the individual situation.
Therapy for pure chemical imbalance depression doesn't do much either. I received that, admittedly they never figured out I had depression so they weren't the best therapists, and it's just a bunch of awkward time wasting. Now I can use CBT against my disordered thoughts when my cycle brings back my depression, but that itself is a stop gap.
One of those videos that starts out like "Oh cool, fiction thing dive" and ends with "Am I plural? I might be, i might not have really been able to process it until now." Thanks Spice, this one... this one's special. I'm probably gonna watch it like 3 or 4 more times before the week's out.
Speaking of resolving a fundamental contradiction, I was expecting this to be a full deep-dive into Madness and Memory as concepts in the game, or was Expecting a digital Prank where the video repeats itself with bits getting corrupted. The Fact you were able to blend these two ideas together is fantastic, and While I might not recommend this as someone's first, this is the best video if I would want to explain what the content is that you make. This is, without a doubt, the most Spice8Rack video I watched, and Thanks for all the hard work, it was great.
I have officially cited this in an essay for a college literature class, so congratulations and thank you.
It makes me very happy you regularly release content. Like it's really been inspiring to me to work on my writing in hopes I'll eventually start publicly releasing art just to share it with people and it's nice to aspire to something again.
The real sacrifice made here is burning through so many "Hello Spicy People of the internet" variants. We salute your service.
Spice you’re videos are art and as a fellow trans people you’re overall expression is greatly inspirational
Keep killing it you iconic majestic being
Mill: confusing you about your first job and if we worked together so that I can abuse your trust.
Discard: distracting the cashier and grabbing bills from the drawer.
Edit: discard is losing your keys as we all sometimes do. Mill is forgetting you own a car.
Dude, Where’s My Car vs Dude, What’s a Car
@@itslexactually 😅 exactly!
That one BDG video where the wizard stole his knowledge of what a laptop is.
Around three months ago, I woke up for work, went to the restroom, and realized that I didn't recognize my own face in the mirror. This kicked off a crucible of removing masks and attempting to uncover the self (now selves), as I came to terms with some form of dissociative disorder. It's certainly not over, in fact it's getting harder, but I'm adjusting to this "new normal" as best I can, and trying to find balance and joy in this new life.
I say all this background to get to the point that this video is fantastic, and made me consider new perspectives on the self, the formation of trauma, and the effects and relations of societal stigma on the mentally ill. This is a masterful video, and I thank you for the care, grace, and nuance it clearly took.
Also, it's incredibly witty, you've got a style contemporary with peers in both the video essay and MtG spaces but uniquely your own. Definitely excited to see more of your work.
In rewatching this video I'm reminded of how it resonated and resonates with me. My view of myself is coloured by my depression - a lot of things become out of reach after a low period and this cyclocal annihilation is something that I think about a lot because of it - so a video like this, that not only has something so similar to this but also depicts my experience and my greatest fear is very impactful. Thank you! I enjoy your work, again, and again.
I'm also reminded in the talk of the mortality of mill of a moment in the mystifyingly well written Hearthstone Mercenaries solo mode that stuck with me - that of a warlock "killing" her father through mill, destroying his memories in an ultimate act of disavowal. The concept itself combined with the...voice lines of the character begging for it to stop was intensely harrowing - more, even, than if it has been mortal danger. In our modern media death is fairly cheap, so these fates that are The-Death-That-Is-Not-Death can be even more harrowing.
Anyway. Have a good one.
SO stoked to watch this. Thank you for conquering this beast Spice. Your content is so wonderful, so happy to be a patron and continue to support all of the joy you bring to us.
Long awaited video and it's 2 hours long? Your work is always a pleasure Spice, can't wait to get cozy and watch this with my partner.
Nearly 3 hours long!
Exactly! My gf is sleeping cause third shift grinding but spice is the reason she's gotten into magic hyped to watch.
51:48 I can't tell if this is an actual, blooper-style, something that happened while filming or supposed to the incessant grinding of the millstone, so to speak. I love it.
I haven't even made it past the first hour of this but it is so well done. Not just as someone who studied psychology and mental health but has also had to wrestle with the complications of my own mental health and that of my family, I find you really have something important to say here regarding it, and bringing it into the context of Magic really got me thinking about this game I love in new, exciting ways. Bravo! I look forward to finishing this quite concise video soon. Thank you for sharing your craft with us, Spice.
This video was a banger and I can’t help but think about the Pokemon card game. Mill and discard exist but essentially without any attempt at creating a ludonarrative through line beyond “disruption”-a player’s deck and hand are so fundamentally abstracted that ties to madness or the psyche are almost nonexistent beyond a general theme of disruption. But your final level of analysis, the mechanical experiences of the player, ring through so much that it finally let me put into words why I’ve been playing the same dang deck for almost a decade. Decks built around discarding the opponents hand (in expanded which is the format I play) have existed and paralleled the destruction of the self, the stripping away of one’s immediate plans but not entropic eradication-that’s why they’ve been banned, as they make the opponent feel powerless while not outright winning and why I haven’t been so attracted to them, as mechanically they also have the fail-case of an opponent top-decking one of the million draw sevens and undoing your gameplan. Stall on the other hand is just one player playing as entropy-a winconless control deck that relies on deck-out while not playing mill cards to expedite that win condition (except in a tournament setting where games need to be kept to an hour, so you typically play one slow mill piece to run the opponent out of cards). As opposed to discard decks which rely on the temporary destruction of the opponent’s plan to buy time for a quick win, stall as an archetype runs nothing but healing and cards that erode at opponent’s resources in play. Since games take that full hour you as the player come to embody entropy in the game and meta-game, your opponent’s deck crumbing to an unrelenting force while their own time to play a best of three beyond the first match runs out. Your game plan is always the same, time, and all that changes is the opponent’s deck’s capacity to cope with that slow infinity with which they are confronted.
As someone who only keeps occasional tabs on the magic story, it is through this video I discovered that Slobad had become an agent of Phyrexia.
My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.
His card isn’t even interesting 😭
I mean, he's red, so he might be part of the cool and based Urabrask Phyrexians
Why? He’s gone from being only good to being perfect!
@@Metal_Maoist in one of the side stories, he is not only convincing Mirrans to willingly become Phyrexian, but then using those agents to lure more Mirrans
You could interpret Stern Constable's discard cost as the mental toll and frustration dealing with the guy to ask him to imprison someone takes on you
Man starts out with children's trading cards
ends with political and psychological analysis of the culture
in all seriousness, GG mate. This took a lot of work. Good luck getting to 100k! You're a legend with this video, you made me remember some of my favorite old cards. God bless you
When you said that the video was only in the second third of the video’s runtime at 1:10:45, if you accept the video’s narrative that each section is independent of each other section and that spice was unaware of the other sections when filming, then he would already be in the third third of said “video”, since said section is about 36 minutes long and he was 26 minutes into said section.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
I’ve never watched a Spice8Rack video before. I’ve seen them a bit on other channels playing magic with random people, and I thought “Oh, I’d love to check their channel out”. And now I realize how much I was missing out.
Fantastic video, I’m glad I watched this.
Having to watch this in stages, but so far it's so obvious how much love, care and thought went into creating this. I hope you're proud of what you've put together, you should be.
as someone who's favorite strategies in TCGs often revolve around decking someone out or ripping away their resources in hand, I know this video is going to be excellent.
I have not been here since the beginning. I have been here since Yawgmoth's video, so I'm well and truly in touch with this meme. And I have to say. This lived up to the anticipation. I have to imagine this was an absurd task, but congrats on finally producing such a good vid.
Also, I'm in nursing school right now, so the treatment of mental issues and the root causes is something that's on my mind (and my exam questions). I've felt this tension before, that it feels as though the 'cause' of someone's problems can, if one kept digging, get traced back to capitalism.
Double also, I felt that the Ashiok bit was actually the best way to wrap that up. I'd kinda love to see a Behind the Scenes/ Making of vid for this one.
I naively went into this video thinking: "Oh boy, I know this will make me better at playing mill & Discard."
I never comment and you probably won't see this but I just wanted to express how good it feels to have someone breaching the subject of madness having actually done research for once. It's the first time I see it, and it's the first time I see a big youtuber talk about the links between psychiatrisation and capitalism. As a mentally ill person who calls themselves mad - thank you.
I read all my comments, and I truly do appreciate this lovely compliment. I tried very hard and I'm so glad it's resonated with so many folks.
Spice's content was a big driver in getting me into Magic and starting to think about ludo-narratives critically, so I'm so stoked for this!
I didn't know that I needed to hear Asiok say "fookin ell" but now I question how I ever got by without it.
Also the rest of the video was great so thanks for that, Spice. Take care.
This is the most perfect gift I could have received today. This is sheer perfection! Also as a designer the names of the chapters brings me intense joy. The descent into madness of file naming is something I well know. Thank you Spice for being an absolute genius!
I was dreading the time i would finally watch this. I feel like i had to, eventually - but it left me with this anticipation of dread going in.
2 hours later, and i'm... well. I'm impressive by the artistic soul you pour into all your videos, spice. I always am, when i finally tackle a new upload.
I knew this one was gonna be hard. I've lived with mental illness in my private life since i was born, my parents both have serious trauma, my siblings have serious trauma, my grandma died in late-stage dementia and i always blamed myself for not being able to help look after her. She wasn't abandoned - my mom did a lot of work to get her into the best place she could manage. I eventually couldn't stand to visit anymore, it hurt too much. It's been years, and the shame of giving up still stings after years of therapy. It doesn't drag me down like it used to, but depression has been a very difficult factor in my life as long as i can remember.
I knew memory loss was going to be involved at some point, from the title. It... It still hurt to listen to the sections on dementia, the Great Confinement, the whole part about artistic paralysis, and the simple need for *people to accept each other*... and i feel like you just *get* it. You say you have no idea what you're talking about and all that, but you sell yourself short in a major way - you are one of only a few people i've seen *at all* who *gets* the full picture of why diagnoses, institutionalization, and all these social forces interact. And it is *such* a relief to see someone else express it. It's so hard to form the right words to say this stuff.
I mentioned that my grandma had dementia. I feel, at this point in my life, that there's no way i don't have some of the markers. Just these last few days i've been losing my train of thought, i've been having difficulty regulating, i've been misplacing things. Funny enough, i'm still looking for my Lazav, Dimir Mastermind cuz i wamted to make a mill deck, that's what got me looking in on yoru channel.
It was a worthwhile listen.
So thank you, for making this video. It's full of soul and it shows. Thank you for your videos and your effort and time.
I came here for funny British man yells at a cardboard fantasy game and was pleasently surprised with a deep dive into the possible harm of our definition of madness all the while keeping a seemingly dull subject intriguing and entertaining throughout
I was driving myself to migraine and madness with a seemingly impossible assembly assignment. This video gave me the motivation to throw the assignment, so thank you(?) (I can still get a low A, and this teacher did surprise curve the grade last semester)
And definitely thank you for the dopamine to pull me back from the edge.
Edit: I now realize how ironic it is for me to use the term madness colloquially with how this video ended up. I just want to clarify that I used it as a shorthand for "brain fog from fibromyalgia". Which is why I think that some depictions of more stereotypical fantasy madness can actually work, when written by a mentally/nuerologically ill person as happening to the POV character- not as fear of the other or fear of becoming the other but as a fictionalized version of the battle for internal self autonomy that the author struggles with. Same how the irrational fear of crazy people hurting you is different from exploring the fear that your condition will cause you to hurt someone else. Not from the most stigmatized mental illnesses but from stuff like (in my personal experience) hurting other people due to adrenaline seeking and poor impulse control with ADHD and fits of rage from PMDD and sensory processing disorder. I find I relate to depictions of fantasy madness on a personal level that others find insensitive, but that is because of my own personal conditions. A bunch of voices in my head would make me collapse or get really angry, because I can't handle a bunch of voices period. Same how they just happen to be very biomechanical so my problems do fit with the current medical conception of mental illness.
Spiceperor, I hoped this day wouldn't come thinking there was no way any essay would be up to the year long hype...
But linking mill and discard to ludonarrative Insanity? You not only lived up to it, you stepped on it and it called you daddyrack 💕
Amazingly researched, developed, and presented, you're such an inspiring person!
Congrats on the pronoun upgrade! Idk how I didn't notice it earlier, but very rad of you. Welcome to the it/them club bestie. But wow... what is there even to say about this video? It's your best work out of a massive group of incredible works, and the fact that the margin is as wide as it is is astounding because of the overall quality of all your pieces. It's so densely packed with witticism, thought-provoking commentary, and intelligent dissection of what is a hugely complicated and difficult body of work and presenting it all in a consumable and understanding format for dummies like me.
While I hesitate to call this a 'magnum opus' i have no idea how it gets better than this but I've thought that with very video you've produced and you've always proved me wrong. Incredible work Spice, take a break, and be proud of yourself. This rocked extremely hard.
Yessss… run - DON’T walk! From - THEM!!! Dun dun dunnnnn!
But seriously, it’s incredible to be one of Them. ;) happy to have you, Spice8 - and all They who are also gender-rebellious spicy people of the Internet.
I wasn't expecting there to be an answer at the end, and I certainly wasn't expecting the answer to be based on a coherent explanation on the self. Genuinely one of the best videos I've ever watched.
as far as stern constable, I can see it as the hand being the potential knowledge; him refusing to hear the story, refusing that knowledge, in order to just arrest someone
I require James reading horror stories, mtg lore, or hell even the instruction pamphlet for a power tool.
His voice is so soothing yet enthralling.
“What does it mean to be discarded?”
It means they didn’t love me anymore, Spice!
Also, I get the “I like fiddle win conditions.” My first deck was Infect, because it was so different from the rest.
I also have a super fun EDH mill deck.
This is incredible! Thank you Spice. Thank you Ashiok, the Nightmare Weaver.
Darn ... what a thorough and well made video.
I do like longer videos plus really like your voice.
So ... again :vielen dank
This is genuinely one of your best videos. This was art. It was so worth the wait, and I'm so glad you didn't just put it out earlier for the sake of it
That was the most incredible work of art I have seen. Also Second Thought was in it, which makes it even better.
im so happy my art was featured at the start of this video, thank you so much spice for this absolute masterpiece!!!
The long awaited masterpiece. - TH-cam Comments
5 stars. - Patreon
Your best work yet. -Spice8Rack's Mum
Underrated comment
One of the best (if not the best) video essays I've seen. Always love watching and rewatching your videos
This was fantastic! I appreciate that your descent into madness in the philosophical sense was accompanied by one in the literal sense. Also, “the word on the street if that word was gay” absolutely sent me. Please keep doing what you’re doing, I need more.
I have become a spice8rack fan from this video. The amount of work and research is evident. I felt my brain gain wrinkles from the amount of knowledge sent towards synapses.
The SPICE is here and so are we, thanks for the hard work as always!!!
Okay, this was straight up amazing. Probably your best video to date, which I hope is a relief considering how much work went to it. I want to point out my favorite point, which was comparing the portrayal of war and that of madness in GoT - I always appreciate someone explaining why something was SO bad, haha!
This is brilliant. It downed on me in the middle what's going on (not the repeating but it's meaning). As mad as it sounds it was worth 2h of my time. Wish somebody could pay for it though.
Great stuff Spice! This was incredible stuff, really entertaining. I was thoroughly impressed with the fact that though we had numerous introductions they still moved the video as a whole forward. That's some skillful work that does not go unnoticed. Banger from beginning to end.
Gods, I love the patron list. Also, just played a mill deck against my mom, who's new to magic. She hated it.
I'm definitely sending her this video when I'm done.
3 hours of Spice videos is the exact kind of content I need in my life
I just play mill for fun, and then when this came out and expanding on it philosophically has just made me so giddy. It started talking about madness and I was just like oh boy! There's more! It's expanding on itself in so many fun ways, also I appreciate having another genderqueer icon, and I see a person who analyzes something with this level of scrutiny and silliness and they have the same gender orientation as me, so for everything thanks spice!
I will say that the thing you said about like magic in world building where you just have to say "it just be like that" is also true for real life. There's always gonna be a fundamental set of rules and building blocks that are there because it just be like that
I don't know how it took me so long to discover you and these videos but these are definitely becoming my favorite overall videos on youtube