What's your native language? I'd love to read your thesis, as well as recommend it to several of my students.
Portuguese. Thanks for the interest! Do you teach in the fields of Literature/Narratology/Communications? I can get in contact with you once it's published
Please, do. I really am very interested in the thesis – and I know at least a handful other people who'd love to read it. I actually teach translation studies, but I focus on literary translation and linguistic pragmatics in translation. One of my students is currently working on an analysis of metatextuality of Carcassonne (from Dunsany's Carcassonne) as a thematic element and I believe your thesis will be very helpful to him. For me, it's mostly free time reading, but it's a topic that I love to study, since I deal with Cthulhu mythos a lot. Regarding the language, Portugese is not among my working languages (my main foreign languages are English and Russian), but I have a pretty decent knowledge of Spanish (at least I used to, it did get pretty rusty in the past couple of years) and it wouldn't be the first thing I'd read in Portugese.
Either post your work here specifying where you come to that conclusion or quote your references. Coming here and saying "yeah, I studied this, trust me" ain't gonna cut it. Quote the tropes that are 'so limited' and that were 'so already explored they're worn out'.
While I can't post the thesis because it's getting through publishing (and I doubt you'd be able to read it in my native language, anyway), I can give you some of the references. Mind you, the final thesis had some 580 references, I'll just cut down to some few I'm pretty sure you can find and read by yourself easily:
BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World.
________________. The Dialogic Imagination.
________________. Problems of Dostoyevsky's Poetics.
BARTHES, Roland. Mythologies.
_______________. The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies
_______________. Empire of Signs
BORGES, Jorge Luis. Manual de zoología fantástica
BRUNEL, Pierre. Dictionnaire des mythes littéraires
______________. Mythocritique
______________. Dictionnaire des mythes du fantastique
______________. L'Imaginaire du secret
______________. Dix mythes au féminin
______________. Dictionnaire des mythes féminins
______________. Mythopoétique des genres
CAMPBELL, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces
________________. The Masks of God
________________. Historical Atlas of World Mythology
________________. Myths to Live By
FISHELOV, David. Types of Characters, Characteristics of Types
_______________. Genre Theory and Family Resemblance
_______________. The Structure of Generic Categories: Some Cognitive Aspects
KOCH, Ingedore G.V. A interação pela linguagem.
KRISTEVA, Julia. Séméiôtiké: recherches pour une sémanalyse
_______________. Pouvoirs de l'horreur.
PHILIP, Neil. Mythology
____________. Mythology of the World
____________. Myths and Legends Explained
SAUSSURE, Ferdinand de. Cours de linguistique générale
TODOROV, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre
________________. Mikhail Bakhtin: the dialogical principle
As the corpus I've used about 80 books from the broader fantasy genre (some genre taxonomies include some horror offshoots within fantasy, gothic horror generally being one of them), from Walpole's The Castle of Otranto through Tod Robbins, to Borges, to C. S. Lewis, Lovecraft, Matheson, King up to Hary Potter. A lot of stuff.
Also, I can't "quote" some author saying that because it's one of the central points of my thesis, one of the several hypotheses I was testing. It's an "original" hypothesis, if you will.
What's your native language? I'd love to read your thesis, as well as recommend it to several of my students.
Now, I'd say it's the other way around. People didn't enjoy BfZ too much, to put it mildly. Creative's most likely answer to that is, in my opinion, to off all the Eldrazi as quickly as possible, because we didn't like BfZ means we didn't like Eldrazi and if they get rid of them, we'll be happy.
With the amount of time between releases, there's no way the reception of BFZ affected this story moment. There'd have been no time between BFZ and OGW to set up the titan's fall. If they really wanted to alter course based on BFZ, they might have been able to slip something in SOI or EMN last minute, but I'd have to imagine that'd be tight.
Emrakul being on Innistrad had been seeded since at /least/ DTK, when Sorin was all like "Well, about that..." when Ugin asked where Nahiri was.
Also, I'm not sure I buy that BFZ was poorly received. The worst I heard about it was that Green was sorta bad in limited and a bunch of people that already disliked the Eldrazi still disliked them. Standard is diverse, several of the cards are used in eternal formats, there are fun build-around-mes for casual players and deck tinkerers...
Well, I'm no expert on how quickly they can adapt. Sure, Emrakul most likely (like, 99%) had to be planned for appearance here beforehand. The outcome of the story, however, not so much. I don't really follow every minute detail, but if I recall properly, several people around here said that the BfZ/OGW stories didn't follow the plan stated in the artbook, so Creative probably changed stuff during the publishing. But as I said, I'm not sure if it's true.
Considering the reception of BfZ, I'm only talking from my personal experience, and right now mostly about the story. In my playgroup/people in my area (not counting those who don't even know what's going on in the story and only playing to outspike each other), there are a few who loved the story, but then again, these same people are literally in love with anything that can at least remotely pass for a work of speculative fiction. Most of my friends hated BfZ's guts, though for different reasons.
Now, I'm not saying that EMN is going to be bad that would be serious jumping to conclusions. It seems to be pretty cosmic horror-y, just the way I like my stories. But as I said, Liliana throwing a bunch of zombies at Emrakul and calling it a day doesn't look like the story is about to improve.
I guess its possible for the Gatewatch+friends to destroy Emrakul, but I don't think Wizards will want to do that so soon after OGW.
Most likely: Emrakul is defeated and runs away, we'll see her again somewhere else in a few years.
A little less likely: Emrakul is defeated and somehow sealed in Innistrad. Maybe in the silver moon or whatever.
Much less likely: Emrakul destroys Innistrad.
Least likely: The gatewatch destroys Emrakul.
I can't think of a 5th general possibility.
Now, I'd say it's the other way around. People didn't enjoy BfZ too much, to put it mildly. Creative's most likely answer to that is, in my opinion, to off all the Eldrazi as quickly as possible, because we didn't like BfZ means we didn't like Eldrazi and if they get rid of them, we'll be happy.
Least likely? Innistrad getting destroyed and/or at least one main character dying. Because that might hurt someone's feelings.
-
I just have to get one thing off my chest:
Seriously? Could it have been paced in a worse way? Jacewatch destroy two of the titans back at Zendikar, Jace goes looking for Sorin and not only manages to find him on the first attempt (I don't mind that, that's plausible, Sorin does have strong ties to his home plane), but he runs into the missing titan as well? With the one person able to seal Eldrazi at the same plane at the same time (if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on Nahiri learning what happened on Zendikar, getting remorseful and helping with sealing Emrakul away in the moon, which, coincidentally, is just perfect for the job, with no other known plane having anything similar)?
Yes, I know it all makes sense story-wise. It's just that I don't like it. If they really wanted to surprise us with the big reveal, it could have been anything BUT Emrakul.
And one more thing: I really hated the fact that Jacewatch took on the Eldrazi on a physical level. That just felt wrong, considering they are supposed to be unfathomable eldritch abominations that don't even fully exist physically within the plane. Well, the image of Liliana throwing a bunch of zombies at Emrakul and calling it victorious strategy doesn't get my hopes up too much.
Well, we're not getting any new info any time soon, unless they actually show us the symbol or just give us all the answers in today's story. I'm betting on Liliana/Chain Veil related symbol and nothing can change my mind (until the story progresses). Looking forward to saying "I told you so"
Ok, the bunch of you were right, I admit my defeat
Now, I still don't think that this is the best way to set the story. I actually think this is the worst possible way, but at least Wizards gave us something to complain about until autumn
I put her in basically every UG(x) deck I build, but I admit I might be slightly addicted to certain +1/+1 counters utilizing cards. Anyway, she's quite decent in Animar, but in Ezuri, she's downright broken (do take into consideration I play in a fairly casual group - with said deck, I managed to kill everybody in one turn with seriously buff squirrel tokens). If you are as casual as me, I'd recommend reserving a slot for Bioshift in any deck playing Fathom Mage. It's crazy good, especially since people don't usually expect it.
So, what would we need to do to actually start discussing the format in these forums? I'm a huge fan (also, we call it German highlander where I'm from), but I only take part in a small playgroup, so I'd love to have more people to discuss the format with.
Just a minor tidbits..... Tamiyo mentioned about dissecting a werewolf... but since we all know that werewolves revert to human form upon death, could it be that she's dissecting a Wolfir instead?
No it was the werewolf from the Hanweir Chronicle. It was sent to her because it didn't change back. Something is off with it.
Obviously, the thing that makes it distinct from other werewolves is the latticey growth, it also seems to be the reason why it was bigger than a regular werewolf. Now, what is causing the growths, that we do not know.
---
Regarding the story, it was a mixed bag. I mean, Tamiyo's journal was awesome, Jace talking to the journal was also great, but from the moment he met that woman it just went south. I understand that they wanted to convey some sort of madness, with Jace hallucinating about other planeswalkers involved in the story as fragments of his own personality, but it was a horrible read to say the least.
Regarding Liliana, I said I think she's very much involved in the events several times before, but now, it just feels like another red herring.
This story almost made me agree with the Emrakul crowd. I'm going to stay skeptical, as per usual, but I can understand how something people can't see that's siphoning mana and is huge enough to shift the tidal patterns can be interpreted as Emrakul entering Innistrad.
And to keep my tendency of analyzing the current story through the prism of Lovecraft's influence, I just loved how scientific Tamiyo's descriptions were. What makes it even better for me are you people discussing it in real-life scientific terms - I'm not an expert in the field in question, so I find the medical discussion here very intriguing and informative.
I'm actually suspecting that we're going to return to Shadowmoor / Lorwyn within a year. SOI features scarecrows, a thing I don't believe has been done outside of Shadowmoor block.
I also agree that the block immediately following SOI should be set on a new plane.
This is the same illogical train of thought as the one with next block being Kamigawa because there's a fox in SoI. Scarecrows fit the theme well, so they got used. There's nothing more to it. And there's also been a scarecrow in the original Innistrad: One-Eyed Scarecrow. Also, the first ever scarecrow was, technically, Scarecrow.
Really, that's like saying that there's a nightmare in the block, therefore, Chainer is returning as a planeswalker.
Don't take me wrong, I'd love to see Lorwyn again, but it would need to be a tribal block and I'm damn certain that Wizards are considering Innistrad to be tribal too, just so they don't have to do anything similar for next 5 years. I mean, Maro stated somewhere that tribal was a theme in original Innistrad, so it obviously doesn't matter that the presence of tribal elements wasn't even close to Onslaught or Lorwyn.
what plan do you want next block
i would like kamigawa
Devilthorn Fox is my hint kamigawa is coming back
i would like to see kamigawa done better or dealing with major treat (bolas, elzdrazi, Phyrexia, or more pissy spirits)
People really need to re-read his statement on this. I caused issues because the card can transform back and forth. Both Avacyn and Elbrus can't transform back to the "day" side once transformed and the legendary rule was also different.
Honesty I think the best way is for moon to introduce a few one sided werewolf creatures and have a one sided legendary.
Thanks for the info, I was mistaken on the main issue with DF legendary werewolf (and yet I don't see the issue they are seeing).
On an unrelated note, what do you people think about Liliana's involvement in all of this? You know, Chekhov's gun and all that. The thing is, I noticed certain parallels between the main SoI story and conventional noir detective stories. From such a viewpoint, Liliana is the typical femme fatale (though Jace entered her office at the beginning, not the other way around, all the tropes are there). What are the chances, then, of her being behind the happenings, or at least being involved to a relevant extent? It would fit well into the story, really - we were shown the answer right at the beginning and then given a ton of false leads and now we bicker and argue about who killed who whether that latticework is important and whether Emrakul is involved. I'm just speculating here, but we do know she is relevant to the story - if nothing else, she is among the Origins 5. Also, as I said elsewhere, her being the culprit would explain keeping the EMN expansion symbol secret (if it resembles, let's say, Chain Veil, it would be easily identifiable and a major spoiler).
Yeah, the latticework thing... There's also that talisman or whatnot from Root Out, which could hint at Phyrexia. I'd say repetitions of these things in art are just red herrings.
Here go my two cents:
First of all, I'll just reiterate what others have said – the switch from 3rd person to 1st person narrative was abrupt and aesthetically unpleasant. Considering the fact what we're getting is, in part, a noir story with Jace as the Phil Marlowe character, I would really enjoy a full 1st person treatment. This, however, did not work as intended.
The style itself reminded me of Ex Oblivione and Nyarlathotep (the vignette, not the character), and, once again, the 1st person narration works well here. I was looking for any and all allusions to The Fall of the House of Usher real hard, but I didn't see anything that could be considered intentional. Did I miss it, or do I overestimate Wyatt by even considering the possibility?
What I find surprising is the unexpected order of events. From thet flavortexts of Pore Over the Pages and Markov Manor clue token, I automatically concluded that by the "fate of Markov Manor", Tamiyo meant the destruction, and on the clue token she reminds herself to send Jenrik to investigate. I have never expected that she meant to send Jenrik to the Markov Manor when BEFORE anything happened there, when it was full of Markov vampires, and most probably very much not a safe place for any man to be at all.
Now, the content of the story, that's the main issue here. As Caranthir said, the order of events seems illogical. Tamiyo sent Jenrik to investigate the Markov Manor, but he arrived before the proverbial fall. Does that mean there was something else happening even before Nahiri came? I'm not going to dwell on why did Tamiyo send Jenrik to his death – the more important question is why did he have her journal on him (a metalingual aside: that's a crapload of pronouns going on here). Are we getting an in-story explanation or is it just Creative macguffining their way out of well thought out plot again?
Well, we're not getting any new info any time soon, unless they actually show us the symbol or just give us all the answers in today's story. I'm betting on Liliana/Chain Veil related symbol and nothing can change my mind (until the story progresses). Looking forward to saying "I told you so"
So heres an interesting side point. Uncaged Fury has a quote from Rahilda the alpha of the Vildin howlpack. Do they mean this Vildin-Pack Alpha? If so why not go ahead and name her? With all the clamoring for a legendary werewolf and then recognizing that not including one least time was a mistake why not name her? Or the other way around why call that card the alpha if you're not going to name her after you've given the character a name elsewhere?
The main reason to make a werewolf legend would be to enable werewolf commander decks. Therefore it would have to be a RG card. They tend to run out of space for multi-colored cards, so maybe they just pushed it to the next set for those reasons?
This. Wizards acknowledge that not making a legendary werewolf was a mistake. I think MaRo said there were some dev issues with a DF legendary, but since they printed a DF Avacyn, that's not an excuse anymore. In Monday article, MaRo said that the werewolf walker was already planned for the original Innistrad block but they decided to go with Garruk for story reasons, so they used the design now. And well, there was obviously just one slot for a RG card, so there's that. I am sure we'll get a legendary werewolf in EMN. At least I hope Wizards do learn from past mistakes at least a tiny little bit.
Please, do. I really am very interested in the thesis – and I know at least a handful other people who'd love to read it. I actually teach translation studies, but I focus on literary translation and linguistic pragmatics in translation. One of my students is currently working on an analysis of metatextuality of Carcassonne (from Dunsany's Carcassonne) as a thematic element and I believe your thesis will be very helpful to him. For me, it's mostly free time reading, but it's a topic that I love to study, since I deal with Cthulhu mythos a lot. Regarding the language, Portugese is not among my working languages (my main foreign languages are English and Russian), but I have a pretty decent knowledge of Spanish (at least I used to, it did get pretty rusty in the past couple of years) and it wouldn't be the first thing I'd read in Portugese.
What's your native language? I'd love to read your thesis, as well as recommend it to several of my students.
Well, I'm no expert on how quickly they can adapt. Sure, Emrakul most likely (like, 99%) had to be planned for appearance here beforehand. The outcome of the story, however, not so much. I don't really follow every minute detail, but if I recall properly, several people around here said that the BfZ/OGW stories didn't follow the plan stated in the artbook, so Creative probably changed stuff during the publishing. But as I said, I'm not sure if it's true.
Considering the reception of BfZ, I'm only talking from my personal experience, and right now mostly about the story. In my playgroup/people in my area (not counting those who don't even know what's going on in the story and only playing to outspike each other), there are a few who loved the story, but then again, these same people are literally in love with anything that can at least remotely pass for a work of speculative fiction. Most of my friends hated BfZ's guts, though for different reasons.
Now, I'm not saying that EMN is going to be bad that would be serious jumping to conclusions. It seems to be pretty cosmic horror-y, just the way I like my stories. But as I said, Liliana throwing a bunch of zombies at Emrakul and calling it a day doesn't look like the story is about to improve.
Now, I'd say it's the other way around. People didn't enjoy BfZ too much, to put it mildly. Creative's most likely answer to that is, in my opinion, to off all the Eldrazi as quickly as possible, because we didn't like BfZ means we didn't like Eldrazi and if they get rid of them, we'll be happy.
Least likely? Innistrad getting destroyed and/or at least one main character dying. Because that might hurt someone's feelings.
-
I just have to get one thing off my chest:
Seriously? Could it have been paced in a worse way? Jacewatch destroy two of the titans back at Zendikar, Jace goes looking for Sorin and not only manages to find him on the first attempt (I don't mind that, that's plausible, Sorin does have strong ties to his home plane), but he runs into the missing titan as well? With the one person able to seal Eldrazi at the same plane at the same time (if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on Nahiri learning what happened on Zendikar, getting remorseful and helping with sealing Emrakul away in the moon, which, coincidentally, is just perfect for the job, with no other known plane having anything similar)?
Yes, I know it all makes sense story-wise. It's just that I don't like it. If they really wanted to surprise us with the big reveal, it could have been anything BUT Emrakul.
And one more thing: I really hated the fact that Jacewatch took on the Eldrazi on a physical level. That just felt wrong, considering they are supposed to be unfathomable eldritch abominations that don't even fully exist physically within the plane. Well, the image of Liliana throwing a bunch of zombies at Emrakul and calling it victorious strategy doesn't get my hopes up too much.
Ok, the bunch of you were right, I admit my defeat
Now, I still don't think that this is the best way to set the story. I actually think this is the worst possible way, but at least Wizards gave us something to complain about until autumn
Won't be reprinted:
To be relevant to the topic: farewell, Sensei's Divining Top, you will be missed.
Obviously, the thing that makes it distinct from other werewolves is the latticey growth, it also seems to be the reason why it was bigger than a regular werewolf. Now, what is causing the growths, that we do not know.
---
Regarding the story, it was a mixed bag. I mean, Tamiyo's journal was awesome, Jace talking to the journal was also great, but from the moment he met that woman it just went south. I understand that they wanted to convey some sort of madness, with Jace hallucinating about other planeswalkers involved in the story as fragments of his own personality, but it was a horrible read to say the least.
Regarding Liliana, I said I think she's very much involved in the events several times before, but now, it just feels like another red herring.
This story almost made me agree with the Emrakul crowd. I'm going to stay skeptical, as per usual, but I can understand how something people can't see that's siphoning mana and is huge enough to shift the tidal patterns can be interpreted as Emrakul entering Innistrad.
And to keep my tendency of analyzing the current story through the prism of Lovecraft's influence, I just loved how scientific Tamiyo's descriptions were. What makes it even better for me are you people discussing it in real-life scientific terms - I'm not an expert in the field in question, so I find the medical discussion here very intriguing and informative.
This is the same illogical train of thought as the one with next block being Kamigawa because there's a fox in SoI. Scarecrows fit the theme well, so they got used. There's nothing more to it. And there's also been a scarecrow in the original Innistrad: One-Eyed Scarecrow. Also, the first ever scarecrow was, technically, Scarecrow.
Really, that's like saying that there's a nightmare in the block, therefore, Chainer is returning as a planeswalker.
Don't take me wrong, I'd love to see Lorwyn again, but it would need to be a tribal block and I'm damn certain that Wizards are considering Innistrad to be tribal too, just so they don't have to do anything similar for next 5 years. I mean, Maro stated somewhere that tribal was a theme in original Innistrad, so it obviously doesn't matter that the presence of tribal elements wasn't even close to Onslaught or Lorwyn.
I wouldn't take Devilthorn Fox as a hint - there already was Silverchase Fox in the first Innistrad.
I'd love to see Muraganda - return to Dominaria would be better, but if I recall correctly, MaRo said that next block is a new plane, so that's out.
Thanks for the info, I was mistaken on the main issue with DF legendary werewolf (and yet I don't see the issue they are seeing).
On an unrelated note, what do you people think about Liliana's involvement in all of this? You know, Chekhov's gun and all that. The thing is, I noticed certain parallels between the main SoI story and conventional noir detective stories. From such a viewpoint, Liliana is the typical femme fatale (though Jace entered her office at the beginning, not the other way around, all the tropes are there). What are the chances, then, of her being behind the happenings, or at least being involved to a relevant extent? It would fit well into the story, really - we were shown the answer right at the beginning and then given a ton of false leads and now we bicker and argue about
who killed whowhether that latticework is important and whether Emrakul is involved. I'm just speculating here, but we do know she is relevant to the story - if nothing else, she is among the Origins 5. Also, as I said elsewhere, her being the culprit would explain keeping the EMN expansion symbol secret (if it resembles, let's say, Chain Veil, it would be easily identifiable and a major spoiler).Yeah, the latticework thing... There's also that talisman or whatnot from Root Out, which could hint at Phyrexia. I'd say repetitions of these things in art are just red herrings.
First of all, I'll just reiterate what others have said – the switch from 3rd person to 1st person narrative was abrupt and aesthetically unpleasant. Considering the fact what we're getting is, in part, a noir story with Jace as the Phil Marlowe character, I would really enjoy a full 1st person treatment. This, however, did not work as intended.
The style itself reminded me of Ex Oblivione and Nyarlathotep (the vignette, not the character), and, once again, the 1st person narration works well here. I was looking for any and all allusions to The Fall of the House of Usher real hard, but I didn't see anything that could be considered intentional. Did I miss it, or do I overestimate Wyatt by even considering the possibility?
Now, the content of the story, that's the main issue here. As Caranthir said, the order of events seems illogical. Tamiyo sent Jenrik to investigate the Markov Manor, but he arrived before the proverbial fall. Does that mean there was something else happening even before Nahiri came? I'm not going to dwell on why did Tamiyo send Jenrik to his death – the more important question is why did he have her journal on him (a metalingual aside: that's a crapload of pronouns going on here). Are we getting an in-story explanation or is it just Creative macguffining their way out of well thought out plot again?
This. Wizards acknowledge that not making a legendary werewolf was a mistake. I think MaRo said there were some dev issues with a DF legendary, but since they printed a DF Avacyn, that's not an excuse anymore. In Monday article, MaRo said that the werewolf walker was already planned for the original Innistrad block but they decided to go with Garruk for story reasons, so they used the design now. And well, there was obviously just one slot for a RG card, so there's that. I am sure we'll get a legendary werewolf in EMN. At least I hope Wizards do learn from past mistakes at least a tiny little bit.