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Okay, here's my thought: "Why is 'Colorless' colorless?" Is it colorless because it is actually colorless, or simply because we cannot comprehend the full spectrum of mana? According to the research team, the cities provide Purple mana, but unfortunately this idea was discarded during production. (Imagine the effect this would have on a plane like Ravnica!)

For instance: what color mana would a Canyon provide? What color does the Sky provide? (Remember, Islands provide blue mana.) What colors of mana exist in the Blind Eternities? What color is AEther? Why are we restricted to five colors of mana in our world, and why must a plane even posess colored mana? What would happen if a plane were to exist without the 'Core' five colors? Would it come to be unstable due to the lack of conflict, or would it find stabily in the lack of chaos from the colors clashing? 




How would that world fare, and what colors would replace the core five?


Thoughts? 

Okay, the Eldrazi have transcended color alighnment (for the most part, there are several colored Eldrazi) Most artifacts are also colorless due to a neutral aligance, but this is due to utility. (Also, not all artifacts are machines. Fieldmist borderpost is an artifact. not only is it not a machine but it's colored and is naught but a stone slab)

 But this is less a discussion on how Colorless is portrayed, and more on how it isn't portrayed. Why is colorless mana colorless? Are there other colors of Mana in the multiverse? (Again, the Magic design team has already kicked around a one-time-around run of "Purple" mana, provided by Cities, but tossed the idea due to a lack of a common niche in the color pie.

What other colors could there be? What provides Orange mana? What provides, dare I say it, Pink mana? What provides Yellow? Or Brown?

And again, what would happen if a plane were to exist where and were absent? How stable would that plane be? Even Mirrodin has the core five, though it has the "Glimmervoid" in between each segregated area of color.  Would the lack of conflict between the colors allow the entirety of the plane to exist in harmony, or would the lack of colored mana create something so unstable that it collapses shortly after coming into existance? And in the absence of "wubrg" what colors would take their place?

These are the things I wonder about, and have since I got into the game. 

OP: hey guys let's talk about color philosophy
response: no.

guys if you don't want to talk about it, just don't post.

OP has a good point. Eldrazi mean we can no longer just say "colorless is artifice" ( really, we never could ) so the question is, what does colorlessness mean? (beyond the snarky "not having a color".) beyond that, the fact that we represent them as colors means we can compare them to the visible light spectrum, where what we perceive as colors is only a tiny fraction of what exists, and everything else our observations just link into one big blob of not-color. your eyes can't see the difference between infrared and ultraviolet. similarly, maybe other types of mana exist that we're just not capable of detecting? considering a real-world comparison to our understanding of the universe, and how much there is that we know we don't know, it seems unlikely that in-world planeswalkers have a full idea of how their multiverse functions, and since we view the game through the lens of their observations, why is it out of line to ask if maybe there's things they just can't see?

honestly, it's far too metaflavory a discussion to interest me, but my point is, when someone with 11 posts is actually being smart, don't immediately start hitting him with sticks.

 

Jan 5, 2013 -- 9:23PM, razorborne wrote:

OP: hey guys let's talk about color philosophy
response: no.

guys if you don't want to talk about it, just don't post.

OP has a good point. Eldrazi mean we can no longer just say "colorless is artifice" ( really, we never could ) so the question is, what does colorlessness mean? (beyond the snarky "not having a color".) beyond that, the fact that we represent them as colors means we can compare them to the visible light spectrum, where what we perceive as colors is only a tiny fraction of what exists, and everything else our observations just link into one big blob of not-color. your eyes can't see the difference between infrared and ultraviolet. similarly, maybe other types of mana exist that we're just not capable of detecting? considering a real-world comparison to our understanding of the universe, and how much there is that we know we don't know, it seems unlikely that in-world planeswalkers have a full idea of how their multiverse functions, and since we view the game through the lens of their observations, why is it out of line to ask if maybe there's things they just can't see?

honestly, it's far too metaflavory a discussion to interest me, but my point is, when someone with 11 posts is actually being smart, don't immediately start hitting him with sticks.

 

I like you. I'm the new guy, less than a dozen posts (a dozen as of this actuall >.> ) and these guys that 'seen it all' jump in and immediately try to say "No, you're wrong. get off our forums" while drawing out their tommy guns and attempting to force me to turn tail and run.

then you show up and kneecap 'em both... figuratively that is. 

But I'm glad someone can see my view on this. I'm an artist at heart, and have entered this game as an artificer. (A bad colorless artifact deck was my first dabbling into this game.) But the thought has always entered my head... where's the rest of the palate? There are more than five colors in the world, and it's hard to paint things in full detail without an entire spectrum. As it stands we're missing: Orange, Yellow, Indigo, Violet, Brown, Grey, and all the different tints and shades of our favorable core 5. All of these are possibilities in the range of Mana color.

Also, I'm glad you brought up the subject of the eldrazi. My fiancé has begun to dub colorless mana as "Eldrazi Mana" whenever she drops her Emakrul's Hatcher/Spawning Breath or when referencing my Ulamog's Crusher or Not of this World. The same goes for when she sacks an eldrazi spawn for mana.

Eldrazi may have 'transcended' color alignment, but who's to say that they have managed to escape the color pie? Perhaps they're just using mana that we indeed cannot comprehend.

(By nature of being expys of Lovecraftian/Cthulian horrors which are, by definition, incomprehensible on a mental-physical level down to the fact that the Eldrazi themselves have no physical form and what we view depicted on their card artwork isn't what they even truely look like, just being the simplest thing our minds can comprehend when we gaze upon them as their true forms would shatter our mind to the point that we aren't even left in a vegatable state but are actually cast out of existance in our entirety. But that's just a tangent and holds no real impact on the game, does it?)

But again, I would like to thank you for understanding the view I have taken on the game, and would like to say I wish others could be more open minded and allow newer members to put forth their two-cents on matters without being labled as flat-out wrong or ignorant. Remember, even the maddest of men can devise the greatest plan ever concieved. 

Jan 5, 2013 -- 9:55PM, Haru_Takami wrote:

...and these guys that 'seen it all' jump in and immediately try to say "No, you're wrong. get off our forums" while drawing out their tommy guns and attempting to force me to turn tail and run.

I don't recall anyone saying or doing any such thing. Stop taking things personally. Disagreement does not mean we automatically hate or anything like that, we simply disagree.