Magic The Gathering is a great game---I've said so before. What is more, I am lucky to have converted my wife into a casual Magic player. So all those booster packs I buy is for us and not just for me. Or at least that's the excuse. A few weeks ago, we drafted with a couple of new sets we were unfamiliar with, and Strixhaven's Go Blank got my attention:

The flavor text says:

The only feeling worse than not knowing the answer is the uncertainty you once did.

When I showed that card to Kristien, she immediately said "Hey, that's just like me!". She's been struggling with the devastating consequences of a major burn-out for almost two years now, and its effects are is still not completely gone. She regularly forgets small things and still has trouble concentrating---complex board states and big combos in Magic are clearly not her thing. But for her, it's really frustrating, as she is fully aware that before the burn-out, forgetfulness and concentration issues were never a problem.

I started paying more attention to the printed flavor text on Magic cards. The game can call forth a lot of emotions, and not only during play: also when reading texts on cards such as Go Blank. Wizards of the Coast regularly prints alternate---and of course, more expensive---versions of cards so that players can identify with any piece of stunning art present on the card. But it suddenly struck me that the flavor text is also a big part of the game.

And it can trigger a lot of emotions.

When I was poking around in Commander Spellbook's database this morning, I stumbled upon a combo with Blood Artist:

The flavor text resonated with me, as I struggle to keep my doctoral work---and my motivation for it---on track:

Great art can never be created without great suffering.

It almost feels like reading the daily philosophical quote from a traditional almanac! Not all texts go that deep though. Some are equally funny. Even the rule text of Seven Dwarves is funny:

Seven Dwarves gets +1/+1 for each other creature named Seven Dwarves you control.
A deck can have up to seven cards named Seven Dwarves.

Paul A. Crutcher wrote an interesting piece on Magic The Gathering, calling it A Literary Text. He noted that Magic has been given scholarly attention to study (a) ethereal or fantastic communities and identities, (b) a source for understanding economic principles, and of course (c) mathematically-sorted collecting and deck-building, including a bunch of contemporary neural networking analysis. But the game has never been taken up as a text itself.

Magic's expansion sets usually revolve around central themes which are further expanded with fantasy fiction. Multi-dimensional worlds called planes connect, so-called planeswalkers regularly make an appearance, and the global story does evolve. Or at least it should: the last few years feel more like milking the cash cow than carefully expanding the universe. Still, the global story in itself also creates some kind of emotional attachment: Gideon died while protecting Liliana, time to shed those tears! Some flavor texts, like the ones above, are disconnected from the central story and simply offer a few moments of contemplation.

Enough for us to think, hey, I should write that down.

Opponent casts Go Blank.

What was I doing again? I knew it was something relevant!