@Enchanted:
Oh wow, that's a pretty intricate rhyme scheme. Good job! And I always love it when they explore the metaphysics of how magic works and how particular cards would translate in a story, and your poem is no exception. For me at least, duelling wizards and planeswalkers will always be the very core of Magic's brand identity, not a bunch of wannabe-superheroes with retconned backstories. The voice of the poem fits really well, I like the smug taunt that comes with the subject matter (reminds me of the one you wrote about Fellwar Stone for example). And since the poem deals with old-school wizards having an old-school duel with an old-school card reference, I automatically pictured Verduran Enchantress as the opponent.

@The Library at Shadow’s Ford:
Hey, that's really descriptive, I think you haven't done something like that in a while. And heck, you do it well! It really feels like it tells the story of that place, and the language in this is really good in general. Is this a specific place from the M:EM or something, or did you just make it up for this poem? To make a deep Vorthosian cut, it kinda reminds me of "the seven planes of Parnash" that are mentioned in The Cursed Land.* Those are apparently a collection of planes, and each of those planes has dungeons and torture chambers more terrible than the last.



*Don't read it, it's awful. Unless you alredy have, in which case you probably know what I'm talking about.

Also:

I’ve seen the best of worlds, I’ve seen the worst

Cool, I didn't know Charles Dickens was a planeswalker!

Thanks! This is what is known around these parts as a Raikervennian sonnet (sometimes just Vennian sonnet). To the best of my knowledge, I created the form back in 2014 in this thread: Here, although if we're being fair, I'm sure somebody else has done this before I did, given the long and storied history of the sonnet. In-world, the form is a creation of the Multiverse's preeminent poet, Raiker Venn, and is one of his favorite forms.


Yeah, I feel the same way about the heart and soul of Magic being the duels. One of my favorite things to do in writing, whether it is poetry or prose, is to take a card (or more) and think about how it would work if translated to a flavorful use. The smug taunting voice definitely comes from Raiker, but I like the thought of the Enchantress being the poem's listener.


Thanks! As you say, it's been a while since I've done something quite like this, so I thought I'd give it a go. Once I came up with the idea of placing The Rack in a Library, which amused me to no end, I wanted to establish the sort of place that would have a library with a Rack.


I just made it up for the poem, although who knows, it might be a place that works into future M:EM pieces, if there winds up being a place for it. I do not currently have any plans to reuse or revisit the town, but hey, if you do, go right ahead!


I have a copy of the book, but I have not read it. Actually, I have all of the books except for the most recent one, because I have yet to decide if my completionist streak runs deeper than my distaste for the current product or not...


There is a comic strip called Pearls before Swine that I was really into for a few years that did a great bit about that. One of the character is reading the first few lines of The Tale of Two Cities, and after two or three of them, the character says to another one something to the effect of "This book really needed a good editor." I love that.

Anyway, thanks for reading, Pavor! I always appreciate it.

Cool!

Looking back at my own history with Magic's sets and storyline, you could almost say I was conditioned to expect Magic to be about cool wizard battles. I got into the game around 2001, so I was around for the Otaria sets with all their pit fighting, but by a remarkable coincidence the first Magic books I ended up reading were Arena and the Greensleeves trilogy. IIRC, I continued with the Mirrodin cycle, but then I went right back and picked up the Otaria novels to read about some more arena battles... Oh, and I got into the old Shandalar Microprose computer game around that time, too. Wizard battles as far as the eye could see

I had that idea ages ago for a story about a 'walker casting Shahrazad in a battle with her opponents, and it invoked a kind of weird dream state that gave her access to story magic so she could make the stories of 1,001 Nights come to life, like casting Drop of Honey and stuff like that. I think I might try to turn that into a poem one day...

What, me? You know, I've always thought it was a shame that I've never found the time to write anything for the M:EM, or even read more of it than a few snippets (and I find writing prose texts in English kinda straining due to a lack of practice, I'm more used to writing English poems or academic texts). In fact, I took a very similar approach to my own MtG fanfic ideas when I was in my teens (original characters and planes, not interfering with the actual canon but only hinting at it and drawing inspiration from it etc.), but those ideas never really got off the ground. I recycled some of it for a homebrew pen and paper Magic RPG that I played with friends ten years ago, but even that petered out after a while.

To be fair to The Cursed Land (and it's been years since I read it), it starts off okay, but there's a lot of plot convenience, and then the pacing gets to this weird place where it drags on forever and makes the book a chore to read, only to rush to the ending and forget about a plot thread or two in the process. The characterisation of the protagonist and the main villain is terrible as well. The only real value the novel has for me personally lies in the atmosphere of the setting and the references to obscure 'walkers and planes.

As for your distaste for the current product, oh boy, yes. I'm not touching that new book or anything to do with the current "storyline" with a ten foot pole. Reviews are devastating, and I actually have a great deal of schadenfreude for that. They've hyped up their New Era of Storytelling so much, only to show the world that the emperor is naked and they just can't tell good stories anymore by releasing that book.

I googled it, it's pretty awesome!

Edit: Oh, and I've been wanting to share this with you for quite some time, so here it is:

https://pokeinthe.io/stories/magic/batt ... ities-war/

I don't know if you saw it the first time I posted it (in the Dominaria Flavor Thread), but it details the coventions of traditional Argivian poetry, so if you're looking for a new (and pretty long) form to cut your teeth on, you could try this one

The rhyme scheme of this one is based on the Leonard Cohen song "Closing Time." That's just a bit of trivia for you!

Today's random card is...Plains.

Okay, let's do this.

@Tombstone Stairwell: Cool! This rhyming pattern forms a singsong rhythm in my brain, contrasting nicely the deathly trudge it describes. I also like the "chillness of the grave" worn like it was a literal garment, almost a conceptual shroud.

My only question is: why "in pairs", rhymes aside? The card makes a zombie for each creature in a graveyard, meaning the number being even or odd is completely random. Is it because the card's effect is symmetrical, so each player gets zombies? Regardless of the answer, the pairing aspect adds a disturbing symmetry in this scene of macabre conscription, which is a plus for me.

Thank you for sharing!

Thanks for reading. This is one of the more singsong-y poems I've done, and I was happy with the result. I really liked the "chillness of the grave" line, as well, so I'm glad it worked for you.


Yeah, you hit on what I was thinking while writing it, specifically that it would apply to both players, therefore essentially in pairs. I know it's not strictly true (as you say, the actual number is dependent on how many creatures are in the graveyard), but I liked the image. It was also, at least partially, meant to convey a sense that there are a lot of them, as "pairs" suggests more than one pair, so a lot of them.


And thank you for commenting!

Ha! Misrepresentation is a bitch.