ok horseshoe crab posting lets go

what i love about horseshoe crab is the juxtaposition of the big and small. we're contrasting this giant Disaster with . crabs. just standard nonmagical crabs. but then the crabs are made giant themselves through this mass migration, this event that contextualizes the disaster itself as cosmic, powerful enough to influence the natural world to act unnaturally. but then once again the crabs are made tiny through this note that no one noticed this.

i'm obsessed with stories where the world is fundamentally influenced and changed - this card actually reminds me a lot of ponyo, in which the ocean and aquatic life start acting unnaturally in a cosmic fashion. but horseshoe crab adds a spin on things with this detail that no one notices this mass migration. it makes the world feel so much bigger - this whole thing happens that no one notices. its so wild!!

i wanna take a sidebar to talk about the craft of this. what takes this flavor text from a 9/10 to a 10/10 for me is the sentence structure. the first sentence is this long explanatory sentence that feels very Flavor Texty. but then it HITS YOU with "No one took note", a punchy four word emotional twist. the words are all monosyllabic, which contrasts with sentence one and makes it punchier - "no one noticed" is also four syllables, but doesn't get that gut punch in the way four short sharp words do.

punchiness makes or breaks magic flavor text. take hand that feeds: "In the darkness, Lana reached for Shay’s hand and squeezed it for comfort. Then she heard Shay call to her from the next room." i think this is fun flavor, and it's a shirley jackson reference which is absolutely my shit, but the Twist isn't very well written - it drops the reveal too early in the sentence ("from the next room" is a disappointing end to the sentence that already gave you the twist) and is phrased pretty wordily. horseshoe crab's Twist knows how to catch you by surprise and not overstay its welcome; the sentence is over as soon as your reaction hits.

so what does this DO as a magic card? how does my analysis fit into the world of magic? well, the first thing i notice looking at this card is Huh, That's Just A Crab. i got into magic via duskmourn; i'm used to sets where everything is very notable and otherworldly. and yeah, fantastical cards are generally more interesting, but i think it's thematically important that horseshoe crab is just a crab. "No one took note" implies something about the narrator of magic - they can see parts of the world no one else can. they can tell us about the Temporal Rift of Tolaria and they can also tell us about the unnoticed migration of crabs. horseshoe crab could depict a Fantastical Magical Crab, something more Magic The Gathering, give us a visual of a weird colorful world, but there's something beautiful about, in a story about an era-defining event, zooming in to a regular crustacean.

in horseshoe crab, we see the big and the small at once, orbiting around each other; a regular crab tells us about this whole world, and the whole world is made to wait for a crab that no one noticed. its really beautiful. i adore the way that storytelling in magic happens through commons, through small parts of the world all coming together. its like another part of magic im drawn to, the myriad ways cards can interact with each other - sure, the Big Players get their rares and mythics, but playing a game (espc in limited) you're gonna get out your horseshoe crabs, your savannah lions, your young wolves, and once they're in your game they matter, they influence the world of the game, they might even win you the thing. and horseshoe crab, narratively visually thematically, is about that, is about the big within the small and the small within the big. the individual card in a giant game. the calamity of tolaria told through a horseshoe crab.

And you can make it dance.

(Posted by u/Vazkii in r/BadMtgCombos)