While I was sorting through my card collection I read the flavor text for Mad Prophet back in Avacyn Restored, then his reprint (Mad Prophet) in Shadows over Innistrad, followed by Prophetic Ravings.
"A Five Legged Shrew with a voice like whispering thunder" sounds an awful lot like Emrakul when you interpret "shrew" as a term for a cruel woman. Emma identifies as female. In Shadows he refers to "The End" as a distinct "Transcendence". Emrakul is the "Promised End". Finally he claims that the moon speaks to him. Considering Emma is stuck in time-out up there, she's probably still trying to mess with the denizens of Innistrad.
I think our little friend here was on to something. If this was a deviously hidden story arc over the course of four years... Well that's pretty impressive.
I think it's pretty obvious that Maro's blogatog answers involved him getting confused about what people were asking (Shadows Over Innistrad-Innistrad vs. Innistrad-Innistrad) and incorrectly implying that they knew Emrakul was going to visit Innistrad back when they were making the original set Innistrad.
That idea wouldn't just be surprising, it's also been contradicted every time he's clearly laid out the timeline for creating Shadows Over Innistrad, most thoroughly in his most recent article. He reads and answers questions very quickly in between other things he's doing and there are mistakes and misunderstandings all the time (especially on creative/story questions). Not that I blame him, I think it's incredible that the head designer of a game is making himself so accessible to fans, but you have to take any information with Blogatog as its sole source with an enormous, monolithic grain of salt.
Consider the article version (someone pitched cosmic horror with Emrakul on Innistrad some time after the original block, but before BFZ was decided) to be what actually happened.
Well that settles it. Though I didn't know the 2 set paradigm was just to give the titans a set. I find that a bit silly. To me the 2-set change is going to affect the story-driven aspect a lot. Innistrad already felt very abrupt because of it. Giving Emma a middle set to properly spaghettify Innistrad before being sucked into the moon would have been much better IMO. With Eldritch Moon she sort of just appears for a couple days before just being locked away. For a reality warping behemoth her story arc was a bit underwhelming.
Funnily enough, When I first saw Emrakul spoiled in Eldritch Moon, my first thought was "Ach! Hans, Run! It's Zendikar's missing third set!"
Well that settles it. Though I didn't know the 2 set paradigm was just to give the titans a set. I find that a bit silly.
You got it the wrong way around. They wanted to give each titan its own set, which would have been no problem in the old model. But in the current model, it hard to distribute three titans across two sets, so they had to move one titan to a set some time after Battle for Zendikar.
They didn't come up with the 2 set paradigm to be able to spread the titans across two blocks. Rather they had to spread the titans across two blocks, because they had already decided on the 2 set paradigm.
"A Five Legged Shrew with a voice like whispering thunder" sounds an awful lot like Emrakul when you interpret "shrew" as a term for a cruel woman. Emma identifies as female. In Shadows he refers to "The End" as a distinct "Transcendence". Emrakul is the "Promised End". Finally he claims that the moon speaks to him. Considering Emma is stuck in time-out up there, she's probably still trying to mess with the denizens of Innistrad.
I think our little friend here was on to something. If this was a deviously hidden story arc over the course of four years... Well that's pretty impressive.
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Curse Premiumhttp://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/146824287208/how-much-of-current-story-was-already-decided-when#notes
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That idea wouldn't just be surprising, it's also been contradicted every time he's clearly laid out the timeline for creating Shadows Over Innistrad, most thoroughly in his most recent article. He reads and answers questions very quickly in between other things he's doing and there are mistakes and misunderstandings all the time (especially on creative/story questions). Not that I blame him, I think it's incredible that the head designer of a game is making himself so accessible to fans, but you have to take any information with Blogatog as its sole source with an enormous, monolithic grain of salt.
Consider the article version (someone pitched cosmic horror with Emrakul on Innistrad some time after the original block, but before BFZ was decided) to be what actually happened.
That idea came much later after Innistrad had come out and was a huge success.
Then creative team member Adam Lee (he works on D&D now) suggested Emrakul showing up and making Innistrad a body horror story at a wotc seminar where anyone from the company could pitch ideas for new stories, products and designs.
Further corrorboration:
https://twitter.com/norrytt/status/753757010554818561
Maro specifies the idea solidifed when they switched to the 2 set block model, as a way of giving each of the titans their own set.
#TheMoreYouKnow
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I write flavor articles for RoxieCards.
I play and judge at Giga Bites Cafein Marietta, Georgia.
Funnily enough, When I first saw Emrakul spoiled in Eldritch Moon, my first thought was "Ach! Hans, Run! It's Zendikar's missing third set!"
You got it the wrong way around. They wanted to give each titan its own set, which would have been no problem in the old model. But in the current model, it hard to distribute three titans across two sets, so they had to move one titan to a set some time after Battle for Zendikar.
They didn't come up with the 2 set paradigm to be able to spread the titans across two blocks. Rather they had to spread the titans across two blocks, because they had already decided on the 2 set paradigm.