"Urza returned to Serra's Realm with the newly-built Skyship Weatherlight, rescuing many Serran refugees before finally collapsing the plane into the ship's powerstone core, giving it enough power to travel the planes." - From the wiki, because I can't be bothered to dig out my book.
Anyway, it doesn't take much rewriting at all.
"As Jace struggled to keep the spell going, he lost mental contact with Tamiyo. Where she had been in his mind, there was now just a cloud, a dark gray fog he could not penetrate. Tamiyo pulled out another scroll, a long scroll, a scroll with iron bands, and began reading a second spell.
Energy flowed into Jace. He was in a wide river of mana, more magic, more energy than he had ever felt before. It felt wonderful. He took the magic, shaped it, each point on the glyph attaching itself to a node on Emrakul that Jace created on the fly. Jace unleashed the full power of the spell."
All that needed to be done was emphesize this part of the story and not the destruction. Sure, you could wonder why Emrakul would know about all this in the first place, but then again she's the closest thing to a true god we've seen in Magic. The way both the Raven Man and the Onakke absolutely feared her was fantastic. She reminds me more of Yog-Sothoth than Cthulhu anyway.
Jace is now both the Guildpact and the Weatherlight. Rejoice, people!
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"Urza returned to Serra's Realm with the newly-built Skyship Weatherlight, rescuing many Serran refugees before finally collapsing the plane into the ship's powerstone core, giving it enough power to travel the planes." - From the wiki, because I can't be bothered to dig out my book.
Anyway, it doesn't take much rewriting at all.
"As Jace struggled to keep the spell going, he lost mental contact with Tamiyo. Where she had been in his mind, there was now just a cloud, a dark gray fog he could not penetrate. Tamiyo pulled out another scroll, a long scroll, a scroll with iron bands, and began reading a second spell.
Energy flowed into Jace. He was in a wide river of mana, more magic, more energy than he had ever felt before. It felt wonderful. He took the magic, shaped it, each point on the glyph attaching itself to a node on Emrakul that Jace created on the fly. Jace unleashed the full power of the spell."
All that needed to be done was emphesize this part of the story and not the destruction. Sure, you could wonder why Emrakul would know about all this in the first place, but then again she's the closest thing to a true god we've seen in Magic. The way both the Raven Man and the Onakke absolutely feared her was fantastic. She reminds me more of Yog-Sothoth than Cthulhu anyway.
Jace is now both the Guildpact and the Weatherlight. Rejoice, people!
This has been my take on the events. Emrakul didn't (and didn't need to) rewrite Tamiyo's scroll, she merely needed to alter its focus from the destruction event to the power infusion event.
"Urza returned to Serra's Realm with the newly-built Skyship Weatherlight, rescuing many Serran refugees before finally collapsing the plane into the ship's powerstone core, giving it enough power to travel the planes." - From the wiki, because I can't be bothered to dig out my book.
Anyway, it doesn't take much rewriting at all.
"As Jace struggled to keep the spell going, he lost mental contact with Tamiyo. Where she had been in his mind, there was now just a cloud, a dark gray fog he could not penetrate. Tamiyo pulled out another scroll, a long scroll, a scroll with iron bands, and began reading a second spell.
Energy flowed into Jace. He was in a wide river of mana, more magic, more energy than he had ever felt before. It felt wonderful. He took the magic, shaped it, each point on the glyph attaching itself to a node on Emrakul that Jace created on the fly. Jace unleashed the full power of the spell."
All that needed to be done was emphesize this part of the story and not the destruction. Sure, you could wonder why Emrakul would know about all this in the first place, but then again she's the closest thing to a true god we've seen in Magic. The way both the Raven Man and the Onakke absolutely feared her was fantastic. She reminds me more of Yog-Sothoth than Cthulhu anyway.
Jace is now both the Guildpact and the Weatherlight. Rejoice, people!
This has been my take on the events. Emrakul didn't (and didn't need to) rewrite Tamiyo's scroll, she merely needed to alter its focus from the destruction event to the power infusion event.
But now I wonder...just what exactly was that scroll that Tamiyo used and Emrakul corrupted?
This one is easy. It was the scroll about Serra's Realm. It told a story about a planeswalker (Urza) collapsing a plane and channeling the energy released to jump start a spell. (The Weatherlight's planar drive) Originally, the scroll was supposed to collapse a plane when used, but Emeria tweaked it to release the prodigious amount of mana liberated by the collapse.
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"You say 'learn from history,' but that does not mean 'learn the same bull***** the people in history learned alongside phrenology and alchemy.'" - The Blinking Spirit
Mana can't be created from nothing, but it can be created from other forms of energy (e.g. the mechanical/thermal/electric energy of a machine, the "life energy" of a powerful spellcaster). I don't think Emrakul can simply create mana from nothing either, since she admitted that even she can't reverse entropy, merely stall it. But she can probably draw mana directly from the Blind Eternities in massive quantities, which would make it seem like she's creating something from nothing.
Regardless, in this case, the energy came from the scroll. Tamiyo confirmed that part. Emrakul merely changed the way that the energy was used: instead of being released in a huge destructive explosion, it was used to fuel a containment spell instead. It's the equivalent of using a nuclear bomb to power a generator, it might seem impossible by human standards but it doesn't technically violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Also, the writers made a very clever choice in having the iron scroll tell the story of Serra's Realm. It's a story that could be interpreted as being about the destruction of a world (since the plane in question was destroyed), but it could also be interpreted as being about the containment of a massive force (since the energy was used to power the Weatherlight's engine). Emrakul simply changed the story to focus on the latter interpretation, rather than the former. It's a good Easter Egg for people familiar with the old lore, and I like that the writers left it for the readers to figure out on their own, instead of spelling it out for us.
A lot of comments say the scroll has something to do with Serra's realm, but where is that in the story? Also what happened to Arlinn? In Shadows, she said something like you will need us in the battles to come. In Moon, all she does is kill an angel. What happened to her story, where was she and the werewolves in the final battle?
A lot of comments say the scroll has something to do with Serra's realm, but where is that in the story? Also what happened to Arlinn? In Shadows, she said something like you will need us in the battles to come. In Moon, all she does is kill an angel. What happened to her story, where was she and the werewolves in the final battle?
In one of the stories about the battle at Thraben two white werewolves where mentioned, so both Arlinn and Urlich were present. But there part in helping the world was thrown into the bin as they got the npc treatment, the same as Thalia, the Cecani necromancers Gisgalf (would have been a funny meld card) and every other defends Innistrad could muster.
That's the sad thing about the whole story, while I liked the ending I thought it was too rushed. After the story about Emrakul rising I wanted more stories about the effect of her on the world, like we had in shadows but now with even more madness.
A story about the two kids looking at a walking ooze full of their families, loved ones and neighbors
A story about a boar hunter and the decimator of provinces
A story on how a fisher turned into an angler fish
A story about Runo and the various cults
A story about the Lunarch Inquisition on the transformation of Ormendahl
A story about the tentacle child and her teddy
And so on…
They could have made those stories along the way, while we were following the gatewatch to Thraben, with a story about the village that was mentioned in the artbook or somewhere that Chandra burned down because of all those horrors. Have all meet up in Thraben and battle alongside each other, form unlikely alliances (like the escalate mechanic wanted to show) and then have Liliana enter. I wanted it to be more fleshed out, have the gatewatch get a better glimpse of Innistrad along the way, have them fight for a world which sufferings they have seen, instead of fighting for a world that just happened to have a tentacle mushroom up in the clouds.
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A lot of comments say the scroll has something to do with Serra's realm, but where is that in the story? Also what happened to Arlinn? In Shadows, she said something like you will need us in the battles to come. In Moon, all she does is kill an angel. What happened to her story, where was she and the werewolves in the final battle?
There was an earlier story where we learned of Tamiyo's scroll magic. She possesses three iron-bound scrolls that she vowed to never use. And Jace had seen, when their minds were linked, that one of the scrolls was of the disaster on Serra's Realm. And in the latest story, since Tamiyo stated that the scroll used was supposed to be able to destroy the plane, well. One can infer.
I finished reading the story today and I pondered if I should share my thoughts or not. I've seem most of what the initial reactions were and some of the post reactions. I disagree with almost all of it, which is the reason why I was pondering if I should share my thoughts or not. I know it is annoying to have someone as the constant voice of dissent, and I didn't say anything about the previous short article that we had because it was so clearly terrible that I couldn't care less about it.
I will say this: the Sorin x Nahiri storyline was 100x times more interesting in this block than the eldrazi storyline ever was. Even though I found the writing on their last chapter atrocious, the overall conclusion and the deep moral debate it instigated were, to me, a testimony of its effectiveness. Enter the gatewatch. They were deeply disappoiting. It took 2 stories to beat Emrakul, and 3 paragraphs to seal it. They were out of place and out of theme, they didn't fit, and this whole ending to me just seemed like someone calling the mop-up crew to take care of the titan because the writers wrote themselves into a corner.
I saw a lot of praise in this last story as to how well done Emrakul was a true eldritch monstrosity. I disagree with that as well. Cosmic monstrosities don't talk, they don't reveal intentions, they don't get personified, they just are. Once they show up, it is over. Emrakul shouldn't have registered Liliana's presence even with the chain veil's boost if he was true to the meaning of cosmic monsters. The only way to stop a cosmic monstrosity is to avoid it to get in your world in the first place. Once it gets in your world, it should be doomed. Magic certainly is doing a different thing, and because of that I can say that this is not true to the meaning of cosmic horror. Cosmic horror is the fear of the unfathomable, fear of things you can't describe or compreheend. Protagonists in such stories usually go mad or barely survive an horrifying revelation. In fact, the whole story is usually focused on hints of things going wrong and in the slowly descent into madness of many characters instead of the Old One per se. The articles in SOI/EMN failed that multiple times in so many levels. The cards, oddly enough, worked much better in sending these hints and suspicions to us, much better than the stories ever did.
Backtrack for a moment. Jace was investigating. We never saw how he was investigating or what were the results of his investigation. We were just told about his investigation, and in the end it was so badly implemented in the story that I almost felt bad for it. We didn't see more of what happened to the legendary creatures. Did they survive Emrakul's mind attack? No clue. And this writing with the quips and jokes Jace kept making to himself completely and utterly ruined any terror the scene could have. It literally looked like an Avengers scene, despite some people being uncomfortable with the gatewatch being compared to super heroes. Liliana's writing was okay-ish, despite how bothered I was that she could actually harm Emrakul. Anyhow... my thoughts are scattered and not thoroughly organized, because there is just so much I find wrong in the story that it amazes me.
I think if I had to point out what ruined most of the eldrazi storyline for me, I'd say it was the theme. Creative couldn't maintain the theme, they just don't know how to make cosmic horror. The sorin/nahiri debacle, despite ups and downs, was so much more interesting as whole that I whished they never had brought up the eldrazi. To me the nail in the coffin was Emrakul sealing itself. It seems like an excuse for people not to get mad of having another titan so easily defeated, and it undermines even more the concept of eldritch monstrosities. Anyway, there, I said it. I disliked this ending and can only hope that we move on from eldrazi for now.
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It took 2 stories to beat Emrakul, and 3 paragraphs to seal it.
Emeria kicked their asses, then sealed herself. Perhaps you missed that.
I understand your complaints, and I mostly agree. However, I've already bemoaned the ***** out of all those things. I'm trying to focus on the good things here. This story was better than most of the rest in the block, especially the one before it. It was fun and entertaining, which is seriously more than can be said for a lot of the other articles. It was the conclusion to a bad and disappointing arc, but as a stand-alone, I think it's great. As I said in one of my first posts on the subject, it doesn't redeem the BFZ/ENM fails, but it's a good start towards such.
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"You say 'learn from history,' but that does not mean 'learn the same bull***** the people in history learned alongside phrenology and alchemy.'" - The Blinking Spirit
I saw a lot of praise in this last story as to how well done Emrakul was a true eldritch monstrosity. I disagree with that as well. Cosmic monstrosities don't talk, they don't reveal intentions, they don't get personified, they just are. Once they show up, it is over. Emrakul shouldn't have registered Liliana's presence even with the chain veil's boost if he was true to the meaning of cosmic monsters. The only way to stop a cosmic monstrosity is to avoid it to get in your world in the first place. Once it gets in your world, it should be doomed. Magic certainly is doing a different thing, and because of that I can say that this is not true to the meaning of cosmic horror. Cosmic horror is the fear of the unfathomable, fear of things you can't describe or compreheend. Protagonists in such stories usually go mad or barely survive an horrifying revelation. In fact, the whole story is usually focused on hints of things going wrong and in the slowly descent into madness of many characters instead of the Old One per se.
I don't really understand this particular complaint. I mean, yes the Eldrazi are inspired by cosmic horror and have some elements of it, but they're not some paper-cutout cosmic horror, and that's a good thing. They're Magic's own take on "otherworldy monsters". While I do agree that the Eldrazi shouldn't talk and shouldn't be comprehensible, I also don't think that creative has to run down a checklist of what is supposed to happen. I like the Eldrazi because they're not cthulhu clones, not despite of it.
While I don't think Zendikar should have been an all-out war against the Eldrazi, they still need a bit more "agency" and "presence" than your run-of-the-mill cosmic horror, which never makes itself seen. They can't have a set entirely about three mythic rare Eldrazi titan cards.
A couple of other thoughts I had after reading the story:
1) Emrakul could have locked herself in the Silver Moon for two possible reasons: One might be that she knew that the Gatewatch destroyed Kozilek and Ulamog via mind-probing Jace, that's how she knew about chess and that stuff, she was peering and poking inside Jace's mind, and thus decided that she had to become even stronger to defeat them, lest she would risk being pulled completely into the physical realm and be destroyed as it happened with her brothers (The full power of the Chain Veil hurt her presence after all), this way she could feed off Innistrad's mana until completely depleting it and become more powerful. The second reason might be that she forced the Gatewatch's hands to seal her, taking what they considered their only way to deal with her, and now she has time to plot how to defeat them, specially overpowering the Chain Veil and the Mana-Genkidama from Chandra and Nissa. I'm really glad that the Gatewatch won't be capable of using the same super-powered flamethrower trick again, because the only plane whose leylines were so trong and aligned to be useful for Nissa was Zendikar.
2) Tamiyo got mind raped, and hard, the metaphor's shown when Jace watches how her mind is almost completely consumed by Emrakul (also, freaking damn flavor win there, the writer completely nailed the mindslaver effect from the physical card in the story), and also the moonfolk lost more than just the control over herself for a brief time, we don't know what was the promise she made, and why the scroll shouldn't be exactly opened, which leaves us the possibility for a story hook in her home plane Kamigawa.
3) Emrakul's mutation assimilation powers will affect the victims first on their minds, and if their minds fail, then the physical changes occur later.
4) We have seen the Eldrazi as mindless idiot juggernauts that were just manipulated by being pointed in a direction by the planeswalkers (Bolas orchestrated their release, Ob Nixilis directed Kozilek against the Zendikari, and Nahiri brought Emrakul to Zendikar) But, having seen the extent of Emrakul's powers, I begin to wonder, if wasn't it the REVERSE? Could it be that Emrakul influenced the planeswalkers to take such choices that brought the story to this point? After all, Nahiri was about five thousand years besides them, Emrakul could've worked her mind for enough time to make it so frail that it resulted in the triggering of her omnicidal overreaction against Sorin. And most ominous and scary, could Emrakul have been able to influence BOLAS (AKA the most powerful planeswalker by this point) to plot what eventually became their release because SHE wanted to take revenge on the Three???
Remember, part of Emrakul is now locked, not resting, not asleep, and much less dead, within the Silver Moon, she's completely aware from all of the stuff happening around. She could decide to "insert" another portion of her within Innistrad to destroy the Silver Moon later, we don't know for sure.
I finished reading the story today and I pondered if I should share my thoughts or not. I've seem most of what the initial reactions were and some of the post reactions. I disagree with almost all of it, which is the reason why I was pondering if I should share my thoughts or not. I know it is annoying to have someone as the constant voice of dissent, and I didn't say anything about the previous short article that we had because it was so clearly terrible that I couldn't care less about it.
I will say this: the Sorin x Nahiri storyline was 100x times more interesting in this block than the eldrazi storyline ever was. Even though I found the writing on their last chapter atrocious, the overall conclusion and the deep moral debate it instigated were, to me, a testimony of its effectiveness. Enter the gatewatch. They were deeply disappoiting. It took 2 stories to beat Emrakul, and 3 paragraphs to seal it. They were out of place and out of theme, they didn't fit, and this whole ending to me just seemed like someone calling the mop-up crew to take care of the titan because the writers wrote themselves into a corner.
I saw a lot of praise in this last story as to how well done Emrakul was a true eldritch monstrosity. I disagree with that as well. Cosmic monstrosities don't talk, they don't reveal intentions, they don't get personified, they just are. Once they show up, it is over. Emrakul shouldn't have registered Liliana's presence even with the chain veil's boost if he was true to the meaning of cosmic monsters. The only way to stop a cosmic monstrosity is to avoid it to get in your world in the first place. Once it gets in your world, it should be doomed. Magic certainly is doing a different thing, and because of that I can say that this is not true to the meaning of cosmic horror. Cosmic horror is the fear of the unfathomable, fear of things you can't describe or compreheend. Protagonists in such stories usually go mad or barely survive an horrifying revelation. In fact, the whole story is usually focused on hints of things going wrong and in the slowly descent into madness of many characters instead of the Old One per se. The articles in SOI/EMN failed that multiple times in so many levels. The cards, oddly enough, worked much better in sending these hints and suspicions to us, much better than the stories ever did.
Backtrack for a moment. Jace was investigating. We never saw how he was investigating or what were the results of his investigation. We were just told about his investigation, and in the end it was so badly implemented in the story that I almost felt bad for it. We didn't see more of what happened to the legendary creatures. Did they survive Emrakul's mind attack? No clue. And this writing with the quips and jokes Jace kept making to himself completely and utterly ruined any terror the scene could have. It literally looked like an Avengers scene, despite some people being uncomfortable with the gatewatch being compared to super heroes. Liliana's writing was okay-ish, despite how bothered I was that she could actually harm Emrakul. Anyhow... my thoughts are scattered and not thoroughly organized, because there is just so much I find wrong in the story that it amazes me.
I think if I had to point out what ruined most of the eldrazi storyline for me, I'd say it was the theme. Creative couldn't maintain the theme, they just don't know how to make cosmic horror. The sorin/nahiri debacle, despite ups and downs, was so much more interesting as whole that I whished they never had brought up the eldrazi. To me the nail in the coffin was Emrakul sealing itself. It seems like an excuse for people not to get mad of having another titan so easily defeated, and it undermines even more the concept of eldritch monstrosities. Anyway, there, I said it. I disliked this ending and can only hope that we move on from eldrazi for now.
I'll try not to touch too much on the Eldrazi topic, at one point of time I had the same expectations as you (mainly during ROE), but when OGW concluded, I already gave up on that expectations. I know you're criticizing the Eldrazi as a whole and don't know whether your expectations have changed between OGW to EMN, but post-OGW, I decided to just tilt my expectations instead of just getting disappointed from something I already know won't happen because UlaKozi were already dead.
What I don't agree was the Sorin-Nahiri story was more interesting. Or to be more exact, I don't even approve of oldwalkers in particular being associated with the same levels as the newer planeswalkers/non-planeswalkers and their societal standards. We were given so much emphasis on how-much-more-than-mortal/humans the oldwalkers were that they had to be powered down and the insanity that came with the powers that were granted back then that I find it most ironical that we bound/judged their actions on societal standards of those they already surpassed. In their madness and power, there was no true society of oldwalkers to determine a "code of conduct and morality" for oldwalkers and in that aspect, they were closer to the Eldrazi then they were to anything else.
Do we judge Ulamog as "evil" for the destruction he caused? I think most of us will say that Ulamog would be above the entire concept as a whole. Likewise, I think the oldwalkers were all above those concepts as well - they've seen generations of living beings/planes perished for various reasons, after all. I don't think "sapience" is a valid reason - technically the Eldrazi should have them too (just not understandable to us by right).
Just like how you thought the Eldrazi were done a disfavor by being killable/understandable, I think the whole Sorin-Nahiri storyline was one to oldwalkers as well. To me, the entire story seemed like two mini-Eldrazi that were fighting each other over petty matters that beings far below their caliber should care about instead.
In the same vein of the Eldrazi, I think both "disappointed" because they tried to make them "relatable" to us. Just like you think the Eldrazi should't be so, I also think the same of oldwalkers, despite having sapience similar to ours, I felt like the description of oldwalkers should have made them "unrelatable" as much as the Eldrazi were. At least with the Eldrazi, I could tilt my expectations because they were "new" to the storyline, whereas well, a large chunk of Magic's history was dealing with insane oldwalkers already.
I at least judge Ulamog as evil for the destruction he causes. And I haven't seen much to indicate that the oldwalkers are alien in terms of understanding, just in terms of power levels. Although it might be easy to write them off as "too difficult to grasp" because of how powerful they are, it hasn't seemed like that so far to me, and I haven't really seen a good example that is that way. But I'd probably first have to have examples of something that is too alien to really understand first.
I do agree that the Sorin/Nahiri plotline wasn't more interesting than the Eldrazi one though. Outside of Nahiri showing off an interesting fighting style (and really that was only because of the fine leyline control), it was kind of... boring. SoI Sorin at least had Avacyn to deal with, but that was about it as well. Though I'm going to be pretty heavily biased when the Gatewatch side has my current favorite Planeswalker, even if they aren't the focus. I'm hoping that future side stories are a bit more interesting, kind of curious what that will be in Kaladesh. It's kind of hard to feel like there is a legitimate side story in BfZ given the scope of the threat, but Shadows at least had one, even if it wasn't that good.
Jace was the only one affected by the scroll that Emrakul rewrote. She seems to have a thing for him.
He is the MtG poster boy, so why wouldn't she? The way WotC just has to involve him I'm fully expecting "Jace, Messiah on the Cross", as a card in "Return to Ravnica...Again".
Still, I enjoyed the ending, if not the journey in this block's story.
Because conservative bias is a far, far worse thing. Liberal bias doesn't, statistically speaking, make people stupid. Conservative bias (or at least Fox's version of it) does.
Cosmic monstrosities don't talk, they don't reveal intentions, they don't get personified, they just are.
i disagree with that, although i agree that the conflict between Sorin and Nahiri was far more interesting. seems like the Gatewatch and Emrakul were on Innistrad only as an excuse to feature Wizard's Superfriends.
anyway, personification of cosmic beings can be great storytelling. the Endless from DC Comics are a bunch of "siblings" that personifies various aspects of the universe. they are as old as time, more powerful than gods (but it is hinted that there are powers that are beyond even them). and yet Neil Gaiman managed to write a compelling series of comics about their lives.
i like the idea that Emrakul can apparently communicate and yet her personality and motivation are still largely unknown.
now that i thought about it, i find the Titans oddly similar to a man destroying an ant hill. the ants likely don't know what they did to deserve such destruction upon their home, and they fight to protect it. the man - with no way to communicate - just wishes there were no ants on the spot where he would plant seedlings, but he has no option but to destroy the ant hill to create a plot for his plants.
So, lots of people replied, I will make a general statement:
I'm not saying magic should or should not do its own thing with cosmic horror, I'm saying they're not being true to the genre by creating personified entities. People may find personified entities like the Endless more interesting, but the point of cosmic horror was never to focus on the entities, but more on the effect that their influence from outter space might have on common people. It is much more about the horror that they evoke once you get in touch with the 'truths' that they revealed than about the entitites themselves. Yes, there were exceptions like Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos, but he doesn't invalidate the rule (and it is debatable if he could be put in the same pantheon as the Great Old Ones or if he acted more as an emissary).
To me the focus of using the eldrazi is all wrong. They shouldn't be beatable or defeated. And trust me, there are good stories to tell even knowing that a cosmic entity is in the brink of destroying your plane. I realized that they're not going for the same approach when... well... Ulamog and Kozilek got defeated. Personifying Emrakul is just another step towards ignoring the whole point of that genre, and that's what makes me pissed. I understand the criticism of failing to do justice to oldwalkers as well, but I can't relate to that because I never really read old lore. To me the conflict Nahiri/Sorin was more interesting, spawned more debate and was more relatable to the community as a whole. To people that found it boring, I ask: was this rushed over the top conclusion of the eldrazi arc better? I will give to them that the initial mistery of not knowing what was happening with Avacyn and the angels was curious, but I'd say that once we reached half of SOI it was clear that they wouldn't progress with the mystery, just keep saying that it was a 'mystery'. Not only that, but once we reached the next set, the mystery is completely thrown out of the window and it becomes crystal clear that everything was eldrazi. This "mystery" story is an offense to everything with its name, because there was no story at all. There were some hints in the cards, but Jace's 'investigation' didn't matter at any point whatsoever.
So yeah, between a terrible mystery story, a rushed presentation and sealing of Emrakul (with a bonus unnecessary personification) I was much more intrigued by the background story of Sorin and Nahiri going at each other.
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So, lots of people replied, I will make a general statement:
I'm not saying magic should or should not do its own thing with cosmic horror, I'm saying they're not being true to the genre by creating personified entities. People may find personified entities like the Endless more interesting, but the point of cosmic horror was never to focus on the entities, but more on the effect that their influence from outter space might have on common people. It is much more about the horror that they evoke once you get in touch with the 'truths' that they revealed than about the entitites themselves. Yes, there were exceptions like Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos, but he doesn't invalidate the rule (and it is debatable if he could be put in the same pantheon as the Great Old Ones or if he acted more as an emissary).
To me the focus of using the eldrazi is all wrong. They shouldn't be beatable or defeated. And trust me, there are good stories to tell even knowing that a cosmic entity is in the brink of destroying your plane. I realized that they're not going for the same approach when... well... Ulamog and Kozilek got defeated. Personifying Emrakul is just another step towards ignoring the whole point of that genre, and that's what makes me pissed. I understand the criticism of failing to do justice to oldwalkers as well, but I can't relate to that because I never really read old lore. To me the conflict Nahiri/Sorin was more interesting, spawned more debate and was more relatable to the community as a whole. To people that found it boring, I ask: was this rushed over the top conclusion of the eldrazi arc better? I will give to them that the initial mistery of not knowing what was happening with Avacyn and the angels was curious, but I'd say that once we reached half of SOI it was clear that they wouldn't progress with the mystery, just keep saying that it was a 'mystery'. Not only that, but once we reached the next set, the mystery is completely thrown out of the window and it becomes crystal clear that everything was eldrazi. This "mystery" story is an offense to everything with its name, because there was no story at all. There were some hints in the cards, but Jace's 'investigation' didn't matter at any point whatsoever.
So yeah, between a terrible mystery story, a rushed presentation and sealing of Emrakul (with a bonus unnecessary personification) I was much more intrigued by the background story of Sorin and Nahiri going at each other.
Ok, I couldn't disagree more with you. As someone else said, in the original genre, you COULD talk to eldritch abominations (at least certain ones like Nyarlhotep (he was not "just an exception" by the way, I remember other outer gods like Yog-Sototh interacting with humans too, it even had a son with one)) and you could even sometimes grasp some of their agencies (both of which was not good for your mental and physical health though). In "The Dunwich Horror" one such abomination was clearly destroyed before it could destroy the whole world (although I admit it was uncommon). Cthulu was beaten by a boat if I remember correctly. The most important part of Cosmic Horror is the fact that the universe is a cold, desolate place in which our own lives are pretty much worthless and uncomprehensible and uncaring godlike beings rule. We can delay the inevitable or even to a degree fight against it, but in the end it is pointless, which was a feeling this story and the whole of SOI both delivered reasonably well in my opinion. The people of Innistrad slowly lose everything they hold dear to the spreading influence of Emrakul and their only hopes, the angels and the church are corrupted from the get go. Emrakul wasn't defeated, she wanted to be sealed because she couldn't do what she wanted to do. Even the Innistradis weak resistance would have been crushed if Emrakul hadn't done what she did.
And the story makes it very clear that Emeria WASN'T Emrakul, but a hallucination that was forced upon Jace by Emrakuls madness indirectly. She might have revealed a few things of Emrakuls goals that Jace could understand, but she wasn't Emrakul herself, nor was she her whole personality. And yes, outer gods and other lovecraftian entities do have personalities as well, even Azatoth is at one point described as an idiot.
I don't know what you want out of a mystery story. A mystery has to be lifted at some point and that was at the beginning of EMN. Yeah, many of us considered that it was Emrakul, but quite frankly I know a whole bunch of people who were quite surprised by it. Jace's investigation wasn't pointless. He found Tamiyo, he stirred up Liliana, his beginning madness made him vulnerable to Emrakuls influence, he persuaded Tamiyo into helping him... without his investigation, Emrakul wouldn't have had the means to seal herself, perhabs even influencing both him and Tamiyo from the start. And the plot twist was genuinely surprising (and as far as I can see you are in the minority if you think it was badly implemented).
While I admit that I am unhappy about the deaths of Kozilek and Ulamog too, this last part of the whole Eldrazi story redeemed it wholly for me. Just think about it: Now that Emrakul is in the moon, Innistrad is even more hopeless: They can rebuild the church and their civilisation all they want, in the end Emrakul will one day return to finish her job and there is nothing they can do about it. If that's not Cosmic Horror, I don't know what is.
The writing may have been subpar sometimes, but the plot of the SOI block was quite good in my opinion.
I also think, more broadly, that trying to do "pure" cosmic horror wouldn't be a good idea for MtG. Things being hopeless is fine, there being zero chance of victory for eternity not so much. In general Eldritch Moon and Shadows still felt like cosmic horror enough that it should be counted as such, even if it wasn't an exact replica of Lovecraft's stories.
Cosmic monstrosities don't talk, they don't reveal intentions, they don't get personified, they just are.
Yeah that's been true since... never. That's actually never been true. Even Lovecraft's monsters were fairly personified. All stories that involve any real interaction with cosmic horror involve some kind of revelation about its nature or intention. Now maybe all of those are bad stories in your eyes but hey whatever.
I'm not saying magic should or should not do its own thing with cosmic horror, I'm saying they're not being true to the genre by creating personified entities. People may find personified entities like the Endless more interesting, but the point of cosmic horror was never to focus on the entities, but more on the effect that their influence from outter space might have on common people.
None of the stories in SOI/EMN can reasonably be said to "focus on the entities". Emrakul has one brief, semicoherent conversation with Jace and that's it. Everything else is about the horrifying effects of Emrakul's presence. Moreover the Eldrazi have always been more Godzilla with some styling from Lovecraft then strict cosmic horror (and you seem to insist on VERY strict rules for cosmic horror).
It is much more about the horror that they evoke once you get in touch with the 'truths' that they revealed than about the entitites themselves.
Like the truth that Emrakul is so beyond them that she made all their power and brilliance completely worthless? Much like Cthulu sleeping (PERSONIFICATION! THATS PERSONIFICATION! LOVECRAFT DIDNT UNDERSTAND COSMIC HORROR!) in Ryhle the Gatewatch have no idea how long it is until Emrakul emerges and Jace and Tamiyo (at least) know that they cannot possibly stop her.
I'm sure you'll find reason to loathe whatever comes next.
Comments like these is what makes me just not want to post here anymore. Listen man, I'm not a mindless hater. I've explained my points regarding why I think the story is bad, and everyone has their free reign to disagree with me. If you will just make a mockery out of my criticism, I will probably just leave the forum for good. I post here my opinion despite of it being different of everyone else, because I think a forum is more productive when you can dispute your ideas with others instead of just being an echo chamber of itself. If the story is naturally bad, as is the case for a lot of the articles, most people that dislike it will just stop reading it and what is left is just people that appreciate it. If you go to the rumor mill you'll see people shivering to the mention of the Magic Story, and I honestly think it doesn't need to be like that. However, if you want to think everything is fine and make jokes about people who think the story is bad then sooner or later there will be no one left for you to make jokes. People will leave, because it is not worth it.
And look it up more on the internet. Yes, I can't account for all the stories of cosmic horrors that ever existed. Sometimes people will personify or give intentions to cosmic entities, but the point of their concept is that they don't. The story is not about the entity themselves, that's why they don't need personification. And Cthulhu wasn't "beat by a boat", he was regenerating when there was seismic activity and he was sealed back into R'lyeh. You guys think this story did justice to the cosmic horror trope, I think it failed miserably. There were but shreds of the realization of how insignificant and small the humans were when facing Emrakul. As a matter of fact Liliana was actively convinced that she could beat Emrakul, together with the other members of the gatewatch. Jace's jokes also don't help instigate any fear of hopelesness. It is very artificial, poorly written, badly developed.
I will say again: there was no mystery. Jace went around stumbling into people that told him what was happening. He didn't really put pieces of clues together, and if your argument is 'he went mad', then don't sell it as mystery story.
"He found Tamiyo, he stirred up Liliana, his beginning madness made him vulnerable to Emrakuls influence, he persuaded Tamiyo into helping him... without his investigation, Emrakul wouldn't have had the means to seal herself, perhabs even influencing both him and Tamiyo from the start
This is not an investigation. He could've found these things just by being a character in a world. We didn't see him gathering clues, developing a framework, coming to a conclusion. Basically when the eldrazi hit it had NOTHING to do with Jace's investigation, he didn't find it ahead of time, so there was literally no need to pretend he was looking for something. His ultimate plan was to segregate a part of himself... why that would stop Emrakul from sealing herself? This is just pure speculation. The gatewatch might have gone mad and Emrakul could've controlled them to seal herself anyways, she didn't need them sane to seal her.
The eldrazi as a whole received and actively bad treatment, from start to finish.
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Comments like these is what makes me just not want to post here anymore. Listen man, I'm not a mindless hater.
I'm sorry Ashiok. I'm sure this is true in real life, but I find it very hard to take you seriously, because everything you post here seems to be a declaration of how you think the story/card/company pardigim is absolutely awful. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to troll you or prevent you from posting here. Your opinions are your own, and if you don't like anything Wizards does, that's your prerogative. I just don't see why you still follow Magic, if you don't really like anything they do.
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"You say 'learn from history,' but that does not mean 'learn the same bull***** the people in history learned alongside phrenology and alchemy.'" - The Blinking Spirit
Well, Ashiok, if it means anything, I agree with you. It's why I don't usually waste my time posting in this thread (though I scan it every now and again). In my experience, it's best just to enjoy MTG for the gameplay, and ignore the drivel that Creative farts out.
I'm sorry Ashiok. I'm sure this is true in real life, but I find it very hard to take you seriously, because everything you post here seems to be a declaration of how you think the story/card/company pardigim is absolutely awful. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to troll you or prevent you from posting here. Your opinions are your own, and if you don't like anything Wizards does, that's your prerogative. I just don't see why you still follow Magic, if you don't really like anything they do.
This is simply not true. Sorry, but it is simply not. I have on more than one occasion praised individual stories of the Magic articles. It just so happens that my praises are rare and my negative criticism is constant because, well, the quality of Magic Story articles overall is very low to me. Poor writing most of the time, with some decent to good writing from time to time. In SOI there were two stories that I found particularly interesting: a Gaze blank and pitiless and Games. From EMN I enjoyed Stone and Blood and actually found interesting Emrakul Rises. Two from each set, which is what I usually expect. I follow the story because I play Magic and I always liked to know the background of the characters.
Yes, most of what I post is a complain, because the stories mostly just give me reasons to complain. I was waiting for this whole eldrazi arc mess to be over to see how it will develop from now on in Kaladesh, and that is probably the last I will bother with the storyline. If I don't think it has had any change or improvement I will take your suggestion and just leave the forum, for I don't want to sour everyone else's experience. Simply put: the story still looks bad, and it could be better. Some think it is adequate given the medium, some think we should be thankful that we even get stories, and some have lowered their expectations. I don't agree with any of the postures, therefore I complain.
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Would you like to read Commander stories? Check my latest stories, coming from Lorwyn and Innistrad: Ghoulcaller Gisa and Doran, The Siege Tower! If you like my writing, ask me to write something for your commander as well!
"Urza returned to Serra's Realm with the newly-built Skyship Weatherlight, rescuing many Serran refugees before finally collapsing the plane into the ship's powerstone core, giving it enough power to travel the planes." - From the wiki, because I can't be bothered to dig out my book.
Anyway, it doesn't take much rewriting at all.
"As Jace struggled to keep the spell going, he lost mental contact with Tamiyo. Where she had been in his mind, there was now just a cloud, a dark gray fog he could not penetrate. Tamiyo pulled out another scroll, a long scroll, a scroll with iron bands, and began reading a second spell.
Energy flowed into Jace. He was in a wide river of mana, more magic, more energy than he had ever felt before. It felt wonderful. He took the magic, shaped it, each point on the glyph attaching itself to a node on Emrakul that Jace created on the fly. Jace unleashed the full power of the spell."
All that needed to be done was emphesize this part of the story and not the destruction. Sure, you could wonder why Emrakul would know about all this in the first place, but then again she's the closest thing to a true god we've seen in Magic. The way both the Raven Man and the Onakke absolutely feared her was fantastic. She reminds me more of Yog-Sothoth than Cthulhu anyway.
Jace is now both the Guildpact and the Weatherlight. Rejoice, people!
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This has been my take on the events. Emrakul didn't (and didn't need to) rewrite Tamiyo's scroll, she merely needed to alter its focus from the destruction event to the power infusion event.
As I said earlier...
"You say 'learn from history,' but that does not mean 'learn the same bull***** the people in history learned alongside phrenology and alchemy.'" - The Blinking Spirit
Regardless, in this case, the energy came from the scroll. Tamiyo confirmed that part. Emrakul merely changed the way that the energy was used: instead of being released in a huge destructive explosion, it was used to fuel a containment spell instead. It's the equivalent of using a nuclear bomb to power a generator, it might seem impossible by human standards but it doesn't technically violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Also, the writers made a very clever choice in having the iron scroll tell the story of Serra's Realm. It's a story that could be interpreted as being about the destruction of a world (since the plane in question was destroyed), but it could also be interpreted as being about the containment of a massive force (since the energy was used to power the Weatherlight's engine). Emrakul simply changed the story to focus on the latter interpretation, rather than the former. It's a good Easter Egg for people familiar with the old lore, and I like that the writers left it for the readers to figure out on their own, instead of spelling it out for us.
In one of the stories about the battle at Thraben two white werewolves where mentioned, so both Arlinn and Urlich were present. But there part in helping the world was thrown into the bin as they got the npc treatment, the same as Thalia, the Cecani necromancers Gisgalf (would have been a funny meld card) and every other defends Innistrad could muster.
That's the sad thing about the whole story, while I liked the ending I thought it was too rushed. After the story about Emrakul rising I wanted more stories about the effect of her on the world, like we had in shadows but now with even more madness.
A story about the two kids looking at a walking ooze full of their families, loved ones and neighbors
A story about a boar hunter and the decimator of provinces
A story on how a fisher turned into an angler fish
A story about Runo and the various cults
A story about the Lunarch Inquisition on the transformation of Ormendahl
A story about the tentacle child and her teddy
And so on…
They could have made those stories along the way, while we were following the gatewatch to Thraben, with a story about the village that was mentioned in the artbook or somewhere that Chandra burned down because of all those horrors. Have all meet up in Thraben and battle alongside each other, form unlikely alliances (like the escalate mechanic wanted to show) and then have Liliana enter. I wanted it to be more fleshed out, have the gatewatch get a better glimpse of Innistrad along the way, have them fight for a world which sufferings they have seen, instead of fighting for a world that just happened to have a tentacle mushroom up in the clouds.
Thanks to DarkNightCavalier from Heroes of the Plane Studios for this sick Signature.
There was an earlier story where we learned of Tamiyo's scroll magic. She possesses three iron-bound scrolls that she vowed to never use. And Jace had seen, when their minds were linked, that one of the scrolls was of the disaster on Serra's Realm. And in the latest story, since Tamiyo stated that the scroll used was supposed to be able to destroy the plane, well. One can infer.
I will say this: the Sorin x Nahiri storyline was 100x times more interesting in this block than the eldrazi storyline ever was. Even though I found the writing on their last chapter atrocious, the overall conclusion and the deep moral debate it instigated were, to me, a testimony of its effectiveness. Enter the gatewatch. They were deeply disappoiting. It took 2 stories to beat Emrakul, and 3 paragraphs to seal it. They were out of place and out of theme, they didn't fit, and this whole ending to me just seemed like someone calling the mop-up crew to take care of the titan because the writers wrote themselves into a corner.
I saw a lot of praise in this last story as to how well done Emrakul was a true eldritch monstrosity. I disagree with that as well. Cosmic monstrosities don't talk, they don't reveal intentions, they don't get personified, they just are. Once they show up, it is over. Emrakul shouldn't have registered Liliana's presence even with the chain veil's boost if he was true to the meaning of cosmic monsters. The only way to stop a cosmic monstrosity is to avoid it to get in your world in the first place. Once it gets in your world, it should be doomed. Magic certainly is doing a different thing, and because of that I can say that this is not true to the meaning of cosmic horror. Cosmic horror is the fear of the unfathomable, fear of things you can't describe or compreheend. Protagonists in such stories usually go mad or barely survive an horrifying revelation. In fact, the whole story is usually focused on hints of things going wrong and in the slowly descent into madness of many characters instead of the Old One per se. The articles in SOI/EMN failed that multiple times in so many levels. The cards, oddly enough, worked much better in sending these hints and suspicions to us, much better than the stories ever did.
Backtrack for a moment. Jace was investigating. We never saw how he was investigating or what were the results of his investigation. We were just told about his investigation, and in the end it was so badly implemented in the story that I almost felt bad for it. We didn't see more of what happened to the legendary creatures. Did they survive Emrakul's mind attack? No clue. And this writing with the quips and jokes Jace kept making to himself completely and utterly ruined any terror the scene could have. It literally looked like an Avengers scene, despite some people being uncomfortable with the gatewatch being compared to super heroes. Liliana's writing was okay-ish, despite how bothered I was that she could actually harm Emrakul. Anyhow... my thoughts are scattered and not thoroughly organized, because there is just so much I find wrong in the story that it amazes me.
I think if I had to point out what ruined most of the eldrazi storyline for me, I'd say it was the theme. Creative couldn't maintain the theme, they just don't know how to make cosmic horror. The sorin/nahiri debacle, despite ups and downs, was so much more interesting as whole that I whished they never had brought up the eldrazi. To me the nail in the coffin was Emrakul sealing itself. It seems like an excuse for people not to get mad of having another titan so easily defeated, and it undermines even more the concept of eldritch monstrosities. Anyway, there, I said it. I disliked this ending and can only hope that we move on from eldrazi for now.
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
I understand your complaints, and I mostly agree. However, I've already bemoaned the ***** out of all those things. I'm trying to focus on the good things here. This story was better than most of the rest in the block, especially the one before it. It was fun and entertaining, which is seriously more than can be said for a lot of the other articles. It was the conclusion to a bad and disappointing arc, but as a stand-alone, I think it's great. As I said in one of my first posts on the subject, it doesn't redeem the BFZ/ENM fails, but it's a good start towards such.
"You say 'learn from history,' but that does not mean 'learn the same bull***** the people in history learned alongside phrenology and alchemy.'" - The Blinking Spirit
I don't really understand this particular complaint. I mean, yes the Eldrazi are inspired by cosmic horror and have some elements of it, but they're not some paper-cutout cosmic horror, and that's a good thing. They're Magic's own take on "otherworldy monsters". While I do agree that the Eldrazi shouldn't talk and shouldn't be comprehensible, I also don't think that creative has to run down a checklist of what is supposed to happen. I like the Eldrazi because they're not cthulhu clones, not despite of it.
While I don't think Zendikar should have been an all-out war against the Eldrazi, they still need a bit more "agency" and "presence" than your run-of-the-mill cosmic horror, which never makes itself seen. They can't have a set entirely about three mythic rare Eldrazi titan cards.
1) Emrakul could have locked herself in the Silver Moon for two possible reasons: One might be that she knew that the Gatewatch destroyed Kozilek and Ulamog via mind-probing Jace, that's how she knew about chess and that stuff, she was peering and poking inside Jace's mind, and thus decided that she had to become even stronger to defeat them, lest she would risk being pulled completely into the physical realm and be destroyed as it happened with her brothers (The full power of the Chain Veil hurt her presence after all), this way she could feed off Innistrad's mana until completely depleting it and become more powerful. The second reason might be that she forced the Gatewatch's hands to seal her, taking what they considered their only way to deal with her, and now she has time to plot how to defeat them, specially overpowering the Chain Veil and the Mana-Genkidama from Chandra and Nissa. I'm really glad that the Gatewatch won't be capable of using the same super-powered flamethrower trick again, because the only plane whose leylines were so trong and aligned to be useful for Nissa was Zendikar.
2) Tamiyo got mind raped, and hard, the metaphor's shown when Jace watches how her mind is almost completely consumed by Emrakul (also, freaking damn flavor win there, the writer completely nailed the mindslaver effect from the physical card in the story), and also the moonfolk lost more than just the control over herself for a brief time, we don't know what was the promise she made, and why the scroll shouldn't be exactly opened, which leaves us the possibility for a story hook in her home plane Kamigawa.
3) Emrakul's mutation assimilation powers will affect the victims first on their minds, and if their minds fail, then the physical changes occur later.
4) We have seen the Eldrazi as mindless idiot juggernauts that were just manipulated by being pointed in a direction by the planeswalkers (Bolas orchestrated their release, Ob Nixilis directed Kozilek against the Zendikari, and Nahiri brought Emrakul to Zendikar) But, having seen the extent of Emrakul's powers, I begin to wonder, if wasn't it the REVERSE? Could it be that Emrakul influenced the planeswalkers to take such choices that brought the story to this point? After all, Nahiri was about five thousand years besides them, Emrakul could've worked her mind for enough time to make it so frail that it resulted in the triggering of her omnicidal overreaction against Sorin. And most ominous and scary, could Emrakul have been able to influence BOLAS (AKA the most powerful planeswalker by this point) to plot what eventually became their release because SHE wanted to take revenge on the Three???
Remember, part of Emrakul is now locked, not resting, not asleep, and much less dead, within the Silver Moon, she's completely aware from all of the stuff happening around. She could decide to "insert" another portion of her within Innistrad to destroy the Silver Moon later, we don't know for sure.
Fan of Both old and new Slivers (But the new ones are still better anyway)
C Call of Emrakul - G vs R DD: Elves vs. Goblins - W vs B DD: Divine vs. Demonic - WUB Esper Artifice - RGW Aura Dancers
WUBRG Wrath of the Reaper King - WB Men of Faith - B Mercenaries - UB Phyrexian Assault 2.0 - WU Artifacts of Empires
BR Skeleton Warriors - RG Night of The Howlpack - B Bog Murderers - BR Eldrazi Assault - BGU Ulamog's Swarm
I'll try not to touch too much on the Eldrazi topic, at one point of time I had the same expectations as you (mainly during ROE), but when OGW concluded, I already gave up on that expectations. I know you're criticizing the Eldrazi as a whole and don't know whether your expectations have changed between OGW to EMN, but post-OGW, I decided to just tilt my expectations instead of just getting disappointed from something I already know won't happen because UlaKozi were already dead.
What I don't agree was the Sorin-Nahiri story was more interesting. Or to be more exact, I don't even approve of oldwalkers in particular being associated with the same levels as the newer planeswalkers/non-planeswalkers and their societal standards. We were given so much emphasis on how-much-more-than-mortal/humans the oldwalkers were that they had to be powered down and the insanity that came with the powers that were granted back then that I find it most ironical that we bound/judged their actions on societal standards of those they already surpassed. In their madness and power, there was no true society of oldwalkers to determine a "code of conduct and morality" for oldwalkers and in that aspect, they were closer to the Eldrazi then they were to anything else.
Do we judge Ulamog as "evil" for the destruction he caused? I think most of us will say that Ulamog would be above the entire concept as a whole. Likewise, I think the oldwalkers were all above those concepts as well - they've seen generations of living beings/planes perished for various reasons, after all. I don't think "sapience" is a valid reason - technically the Eldrazi should have them too (just not understandable to us by right).
Just like how you thought the Eldrazi were done a disfavor by being killable/understandable, I think the whole Sorin-Nahiri storyline was one to oldwalkers as well. To me, the entire story seemed like two mini-Eldrazi that were fighting each other over petty matters that beings far below their caliber should care about instead.
In the same vein of the Eldrazi, I think both "disappointed" because they tried to make them "relatable" to us. Just like you think the Eldrazi should't be so, I also think the same of oldwalkers, despite having sapience similar to ours, I felt like the description of oldwalkers should have made them "unrelatable" as much as the Eldrazi were. At least with the Eldrazi, I could tilt my expectations because they were "new" to the storyline, whereas well, a large chunk of Magic's history was dealing with insane oldwalkers already.
I do agree that the Sorin/Nahiri plotline wasn't more interesting than the Eldrazi one though. Outside of Nahiri showing off an interesting fighting style (and really that was only because of the fine leyline control), it was kind of... boring. SoI Sorin at least had Avacyn to deal with, but that was about it as well. Though I'm going to be pretty heavily biased when the Gatewatch side has my current favorite Planeswalker, even if they aren't the focus. I'm hoping that future side stories are a bit more interesting, kind of curious what that will be in Kaladesh. It's kind of hard to feel like there is a legitimate side story in BfZ given the scope of the threat, but Shadows at least had one, even if it wasn't that good.
He is the MtG poster boy, so why wouldn't she? The way WotC just has to involve him I'm fully expecting "Jace, Messiah on the Cross", as a card in "Return to Ravnica...Again".
Still, I enjoyed the ending, if not the journey in this block's story.
i disagree with that, although i agree that the conflict between Sorin and Nahiri was far more interesting. seems like the Gatewatch and Emrakul were on Innistrad only as an excuse to feature Wizard's Superfriends.
anyway, personification of cosmic beings can be great storytelling. the Endless from DC Comics are a bunch of "siblings" that personifies various aspects of the universe. they are as old as time, more powerful than gods (but it is hinted that there are powers that are beyond even them). and yet Neil Gaiman managed to write a compelling series of comics about their lives.
i like the idea that Emrakul can apparently communicate and yet her personality and motivation are still largely unknown.
now that i thought about it, i find the Titans oddly similar to a man destroying an ant hill. the ants likely don't know what they did to deserve such destruction upon their home, and they fight to protect it. the man - with no way to communicate - just wishes there were no ants on the spot where he would plant seedlings, but he has no option but to destroy the ant hill to create a plot for his plants.
Fan of Both old and new Slivers (But the new ones are still better anyway)
C Call of Emrakul - G vs R DD: Elves vs. Goblins - W vs B DD: Divine vs. Demonic - WUB Esper Artifice - RGW Aura Dancers
WUBRG Wrath of the Reaper King - WB Men of Faith - B Mercenaries - UB Phyrexian Assault 2.0 - WU Artifacts of Empires
BR Skeleton Warriors - RG Night of The Howlpack - B Bog Murderers - BR Eldrazi Assault - BGU Ulamog's Swarm
I'm not saying magic should or should not do its own thing with cosmic horror, I'm saying they're not being true to the genre by creating personified entities. People may find personified entities like the Endless more interesting, but the point of cosmic horror was never to focus on the entities, but more on the effect that their influence from outter space might have on common people. It is much more about the horror that they evoke once you get in touch with the 'truths' that they revealed than about the entitites themselves. Yes, there were exceptions like Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos, but he doesn't invalidate the rule (and it is debatable if he could be put in the same pantheon as the Great Old Ones or if he acted more as an emissary).
To me the focus of using the eldrazi is all wrong. They shouldn't be beatable or defeated. And trust me, there are good stories to tell even knowing that a cosmic entity is in the brink of destroying your plane. I realized that they're not going for the same approach when... well... Ulamog and Kozilek got defeated. Personifying Emrakul is just another step towards ignoring the whole point of that genre, and that's what makes me pissed. I understand the criticism of failing to do justice to oldwalkers as well, but I can't relate to that because I never really read old lore. To me the conflict Nahiri/Sorin was more interesting, spawned more debate and was more relatable to the community as a whole. To people that found it boring, I ask: was this rushed over the top conclusion of the eldrazi arc better? I will give to them that the initial mistery of not knowing what was happening with Avacyn and the angels was curious, but I'd say that once we reached half of SOI it was clear that they wouldn't progress with the mystery, just keep saying that it was a 'mystery'. Not only that, but once we reached the next set, the mystery is completely thrown out of the window and it becomes crystal clear that everything was eldrazi. This "mystery" story is an offense to everything with its name, because there was no story at all. There were some hints in the cards, but Jace's 'investigation' didn't matter at any point whatsoever.
So yeah, between a terrible mystery story, a rushed presentation and sealing of Emrakul (with a bonus unnecessary personification) I was much more intrigued by the background story of Sorin and Nahiri going at each other.
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
Ok, I couldn't disagree more with you. As someone else said, in the original genre, you COULD talk to eldritch abominations (at least certain ones like Nyarlhotep (he was not "just an exception" by the way, I remember other outer gods like Yog-Sototh interacting with humans too, it even had a son with one)) and you could even sometimes grasp some of their agencies (both of which was not good for your mental and physical health though). In "The Dunwich Horror" one such abomination was clearly destroyed before it could destroy the whole world (although I admit it was uncommon). Cthulu was beaten by a boat if I remember correctly. The most important part of Cosmic Horror is the fact that the universe is a cold, desolate place in which our own lives are pretty much worthless and uncomprehensible and uncaring godlike beings rule. We can delay the inevitable or even to a degree fight against it, but in the end it is pointless, which was a feeling this story and the whole of SOI both delivered reasonably well in my opinion. The people of Innistrad slowly lose everything they hold dear to the spreading influence of Emrakul and their only hopes, the angels and the church are corrupted from the get go. Emrakul wasn't defeated, she wanted to be sealed because she couldn't do what she wanted to do. Even the Innistradis weak resistance would have been crushed if Emrakul hadn't done what she did.
And the story makes it very clear that Emeria WASN'T Emrakul, but a hallucination that was forced upon Jace by Emrakuls madness indirectly. She might have revealed a few things of Emrakuls goals that Jace could understand, but she wasn't Emrakul herself, nor was she her whole personality. And yes, outer gods and other lovecraftian entities do have personalities as well, even Azatoth is at one point described as an idiot.
I don't know what you want out of a mystery story. A mystery has to be lifted at some point and that was at the beginning of EMN. Yeah, many of us considered that it was Emrakul, but quite frankly I know a whole bunch of people who were quite surprised by it. Jace's investigation wasn't pointless. He found Tamiyo, he stirred up Liliana, his beginning madness made him vulnerable to Emrakuls influence, he persuaded Tamiyo into helping him... without his investigation, Emrakul wouldn't have had the means to seal herself, perhabs even influencing both him and Tamiyo from the start. And the plot twist was genuinely surprising (and as far as I can see you are in the minority if you think it was badly implemented).
While I admit that I am unhappy about the deaths of Kozilek and Ulamog too, this last part of the whole Eldrazi story redeemed it wholly for me. Just think about it: Now that Emrakul is in the moon, Innistrad is even more hopeless: They can rebuild the church and their civilisation all they want, in the end Emrakul will one day return to finish her job and there is nothing they can do about it. If that's not Cosmic Horror, I don't know what is.
The writing may have been subpar sometimes, but the plot of the SOI block was quite good in my opinion.
Yeah that's been true since... never. That's actually never been true. Even Lovecraft's monsters were fairly personified. All stories that involve any real interaction with cosmic horror involve some kind of revelation about its nature or intention. Now maybe all of those are bad stories in your eyes but hey whatever.
Creative maintained the theme. You just wanted the theme to be something else.
I'm sure you'll find reason to loathe whatever comes next.
None of the stories in SOI/EMN can reasonably be said to "focus on the entities". Emrakul has one brief, semicoherent conversation with Jace and that's it. Everything else is about the horrifying effects of Emrakul's presence. Moreover the Eldrazi have always been more Godzilla with some styling from Lovecraft then strict cosmic horror (and you seem to insist on VERY strict rules for cosmic horror).
Like the truth that Emrakul is so beyond them that she made all their power and brilliance completely worthless? Much like Cthulu sleeping (PERSONIFICATION! THATS PERSONIFICATION! LOVECRAFT DIDNT UNDERSTAND COSMIC HORROR!) in Ryhle the Gatewatch have no idea how long it is until Emrakul emerges and Jace and Tamiyo (at least) know that they cannot possibly stop her.
For you and Chris, read this:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EldritchAbomination
http://allthetropes.wikia.com/wiki/Eldritch_Abomination
And look it up more on the internet. Yes, I can't account for all the stories of cosmic horrors that ever existed. Sometimes people will personify or give intentions to cosmic entities, but the point of their concept is that they don't. The story is not about the entity themselves, that's why they don't need personification. And Cthulhu wasn't "beat by a boat", he was regenerating when there was seismic activity and he was sealed back into R'lyeh. You guys think this story did justice to the cosmic horror trope, I think it failed miserably. There were but shreds of the realization of how insignificant and small the humans were when facing Emrakul. As a matter of fact Liliana was actively convinced that she could beat Emrakul, together with the other members of the gatewatch. Jace's jokes also don't help instigate any fear of hopelesness. It is very artificial, poorly written, badly developed.
I will say again: there was no mystery. Jace went around stumbling into people that told him what was happening. He didn't really put pieces of clues together, and if your argument is 'he went mad', then don't sell it as mystery story. This is not an investigation. He could've found these things just by being a character in a world. We didn't see him gathering clues, developing a framework, coming to a conclusion. Basically when the eldrazi hit it had NOTHING to do with Jace's investigation, he didn't find it ahead of time, so there was literally no need to pretend he was looking for something. His ultimate plan was to segregate a part of himself... why that would stop Emrakul from sealing herself? This is just pure speculation. The gatewatch might have gone mad and Emrakul could've controlled them to seal herself anyways, she didn't need them sane to seal her.
The eldrazi as a whole received and actively bad treatment, from start to finish.
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
I'm sorry Ashiok. I'm sure this is true in real life, but I find it very hard to take you seriously, because everything you post here seems to be a declaration of how you think the story/card/company pardigim is absolutely awful. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to troll you or prevent you from posting here. Your opinions are your own, and if you don't like anything Wizards does, that's your prerogative. I just don't see why you still follow Magic, if you don't really like anything they do.
"You say 'learn from history,' but that does not mean 'learn the same bull***** the people in history learned alongside phrenology and alchemy.'" - The Blinking Spirit
-- The Gatewatch
Yes, most of what I post is a complain, because the stories mostly just give me reasons to complain. I was waiting for this whole eldrazi arc mess to be over to see how it will develop from now on in Kaladesh, and that is probably the last I will bother with the storyline. If I don't think it has had any change or improvement I will take your suggestion and just leave the forum, for I don't want to sour everyone else's experience. Simply put: the story still looks bad, and it could be better. Some think it is adequate given the medium, some think we should be thankful that we even get stories, and some have lowered their expectations. I don't agree with any of the postures, therefore I complain.
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).