One of the more important documents from Magic’s history is the mortifying style guide that was published in 2005. It’s since been scrubbed from the official site and archive.org doesn’t have a snapshot for dates when it was posted, but John Dale Beety, a decade ago, noted that it included a list of governing words for Magic’s ethos, which were: “active, aggressive, cool, wicked, edgy.” I don’t mind that as a part of Magic’s aethestic–I’ve read enough splatterpunk and bizarro fiction that edginess doesn’t turn me off–but the Bush era, the era in which that style guide was drafted, was an age that wallowed in edginess and aggression. To me, Magic was supposed to be a corrective to that, rather than aligning with the zeitgeist. More than that, Magic had, for over a decade, a wide variety of art styles, from the sunny yellows and ochres of Mirage’s Jamuraa to the oppressive gloom of Rath to the silliness of Mercadia and the self-referential wackiness of Unglued. After the maximalism of Onslaught and the spiky edginess of Mirrodin, it felt as though Magic was being drained of its whimsy to cater to an audience of edgy teenagers, a feeling the style guide supported in exactly those terms.
Whimsy is a somewhat archaic word–it’s been replaced by “whim” for the most part and we tend to see it in the adjective form of “whimsical” most frequently. We get it from “whimwham” or “whim-wham,” which first was deployed in 1500 to describe a fanciful device or ornament. The shortened form “whimsy” first popped up in 1605, before being abbreviated itself to “whim” by the 18th century. Perhaps the word “whimsy” was itself a bit too whimsical, too childish. There’s something arch and twee about saying “he was given to flights of whimsy” rather than “he was whimsical,” but sometimes it’s nice when words or phrases take on the connotation of what they describe, in the same way that it’s nice when a dog resembles its owner.
Magic’s history with whimsy has been scattered but whimsy has been a part of Magic since the beginning—the Foglios’ quadtych of Mishra’s Factory includes a wintry Factory decorated for Christmas, with red and green lights wrapped around the smokestacks and a snowflake tchotchke over the door. Julie Baroh’s Goblin Artisans, Amy Weber’s Dragon Whelp, Justin Hampton’s Juxtapose, Phil Foglio’s Killer Bees, all demonstrate that the assertion amongst the more grognardy players that Magic was an exercise in sword-and-sorcery edginess is a canard. Microprose’s 1997 video game Magic: the Gathering even gave us a “card” called Whimsy, which used the benefit of digital technology to deliver randomized “fast effects” or abilities two decades before Arena’s Alchemy cards Not all whimsy is childish or cartoonish–some is absurdist or escapist, an immune response to one of Magic’s perilous worlds that lacks joy or security. Magic’s Goblins can be seen as whimsical, from the Onslaught’s cheerfully expendable Goblins (Siege-Gang Commander) to Lorwyn’s hedonist-masochist Boggarts (Sensation Gorger) to the clever but maligned Akki of Kamigawa. One thing that adds pathos to the whimsy of Magic’s goblins: no matter the plane or the tribe, the life of a Goblin is short.
One of the more unexpected moments of the Lorwyn Eclipsed release-hype cycle was the “A Boggart Ballad” video produced and puppeteered by the Jim Henson Company. A goblin, Squen/Cragg, goes about their day in both Lorwyn and Shadowmoor, each bifurcated side pining for the experiences of the other. It’s a simple “grass is always greener” narrative and it set the whimsical/grim tone for Lorwyn Eclipsed while providing an early metric of how successful the set would end up being among both the general audience and our specific, Hipsters crew–as of February, the official video posted to YouTube stands at just over four million watches and 1,900 comments. Wizards has spun out the characters into more marketing for the set, adding Squen and Cragg into a fake podcast, to further audience appreciation; I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see plushes and a Secret Lair by spring. Jim Henson’s whole aesthetic and ethos was whimsy, the imagination of childhood and its outsized emotions made felt. Puppetry is an incredibly durable and important art form, even though it has been relegated to children’s media in European and New World art, and the response to the “Boggart Ballad” underlines that whimsy still connects with Magic’s at-times jaded audience. Lorwyn Eclipsed was originally planned for 2025, which is surprising–that feels very close to the release of Bloomburrow, which covers a lot of the same “high stakes but high whimsy” territory of our return to Lorwyn/Shadowmoor. “Whimsy” doesn’t equate to “cute,” of course, and Bloomburrow is much more on the “cute animals in peril” side of the continuum, a la Redwall and Mouseguard, while the current-day Lorwyn/Shadowmoor dyad is closer to the high-stakes fairytale world of Eldraine. Whimsy isn’t all butterfly wings and soft fur–it can also be the crude effigies and seductive sirens of folk horror. Indeed, Duskmourn was home to a twisted kind of whimsy; the Razorkin were having more fun than almost any other faction in Magic’s multiverse and the Hot Topic porcelain dolls and jumpscare spiders are more whimsical Halloween decor than body horror.
A little whimsy can go a long way. If you go too far, you get the meaningless Unfinity. Too little whimsy, and you get the self-serious Darksteel. Lorwyn’s whimsy isn’t purposeless. It exists to define Lorwyn as a distinct ecosystem and to define Shadowmoor when that same ecosystem is corrupted. The whimsy and the grimness are a dialectic, as we watch the curiosity of the amateur naturalist (Boggart Harbinger) become the curiosity of the sadist (Tattermunge Maniac). If we get “whimsy” from “whimwam,” I suppose we could call Shadowmoor’s form of whimsy “grimgram,” and it’s a perfect foil to Lorwyn’s almost twee collection of whims. Having the ability to call back beloved cards while simultaneously reinterpreting them to their own light/dark mirror is a powerful too in Magic’s design palette, and doing so in resonantly whimsical ways is a force multiplier–Mutable Explorer is a perfect synthesis of “comfortingly familiar” and “excitingly different” while also being absurd cute.
As a father, I find myself pretty well surrounded by whimsy these days. For my daughter’s first birthday, a friend gave my family a copy of Phoebe Wahl’s Little Witch Hazel. I wasn’t family with Wahl as an artist, so this was my introduction—and led to a later welcome surprise when her Secret Lair was announced. Wahl’s showcase version of Grub’s Command is gorgeously rendered, and a great exemplar of how much whimsy I appreciate in Magic—it’s still distinctly Magic, but created with Wahl’s primary colors and soft, round shapes. Now that my daughter is three, she’s fully into the Disney catalog and all the sugar-frosted, fairies and princess aesthetic that comes with that–I’m cutting her media intake with Laika and Miyazaki, just to balance out the cloying whimsy with a little grime. It’s all about balance; it’s all about the dialectic. This is why Lorwyn Eclipsed is such an unvarnished success–rather than repeat the original Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block, which attempted a transition, Lorwyn Eclipsed is a fusion. The tension has been resolved by including everything in a single environment and allowing them to shift at predictable intervals, like Trystan, Callous Cultivator. In some cases, we can control when we’ll see the Lorwyn or Shadowmoor side of things, and in others, we can see whimsical Treefolk like Pete Venter’s Forest Druid in the same pack as Carl Critchlow’s withered and gnarled Doran, Beseiged by Time. The “booster fun” aspect of modern Magic has also helped address the dissonance between Lorwyn and Shadowmoor–the mythic Elementals can show up as Lorwyn forms in the standard card frame, or as the Shadowmoor form in the borderless treatment.
We’ve come a long way in the twenty years since the infamous “magepunk” style guide, which would have been published right around Lorwyn/Shadowmoor’s initial pitch and planning meetings. We’ve had Lisa Frank-inspired cards, Rat Fink-inspired cards, storybook-style art in Wilds of Eldraine’s Enchanting Tales, and cute little guys galore, from Fblthp to Loot to Ms. Bumbleflower. The cultural edginess of the oughts has given way to the new sincerity of the teens to the fash aesthetics of the 2020’s. Magic is trying to appeal to the maximum number of players–and potential players–that it can and is trying all sorts of strategies to do so. If they can’t hook you with cuteness, they’ll hook you with a crossover. But as Magic evolves, and as it draws in new audiences and reintroduces itself to lapsed players, it’s great to see that there’s still a space for whimsy, for the Foglios and Guays of the world and for all the doomed Squens and Craggs of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor.
Rob Bockman (he/him) is a native of South Carolina who has been playing Magic: the Gathering since Tempest block. A writer of fiction and stage plays, he loves the emergent comedy of Magic and the drama of high-level play. He’s been a Golgari player since before that had an official name and is never happier than when he’s able to say “Overgrown Tomb into Thoughtseize,” no matter the format.