Bloomburrow, which comes out for Magic: The Gathering on August 2 is about more than just cute anthropomorphized creatures. It also boasts a great story.
For years, Valerie Valdes has been a prolific writer of fantasy and science fiction. She also co-hosts the Escape Pod science fiction podcast. In the past, she has helped contribute to Magic the Gathering by writing episodes one through six of The Lost Caverns of Ixalan. This time around, she wrote the entire Bloomburrow story.
She was also kind enough to lend Magic Untapped a few minutes of her time to answer some questions about Bloomburrow.
Magic Untapped: In writing the Bloomburrow story, what were your main touchstones and influences?
Valerie Valdes: Having not read Redwall (gasp!), I leaned more on adventure fantasy media in writing the Bloomburrow story. It can be hard to pull apart all the components of my writerly DNA, but the most obvious influence for this would be The Hobbit. But there are so many things beyond that touchstone that are embedded in the work somewhere: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Frog and Toad, Howl’s Moving Castle, The Hero and the Crown, Robin Hood, The Sword in the Stone, Kiki’s Delivery Service... even some of the mannerly bits and turns of phrase from Regency romance novels worked their way in.
I grew up reading and watching a lot of fantasy and I think it shows. Even stuff I don’t remember very well is lurking in my subconscious.
MU: Did you have a favorite character while writing this? A favorite animal?
VV: I usually try to give all my characters something I love, because it makes them easier to write, and for some this means pulling my soul out and rubbing it all over the keyboard like a cat marking things with its scent. It’s probably obvious how much I loved writing both Helga and Mabel because of this, but I also super enjoyed writing Gev.
He and Hugs have their secretive history and deep camaraderie and love for each other, and I enjoyed exploring that through the lens of someone who has been through a lot of tough times, but makes up for it with exaggerated tales, gentle nagging and an exuberant joie de vivre. He serves also as a casual reminder that there’s stuff outside of Valley, and it’s not as idyllic.
MU: Who was the hardest character to write for?
VV: In one sense, the hardest characters for me to write are the ones that have a long history in the stories, Ral in this case.
I wanted to do a good job representing who he is, to capture his voice and make sure he acted in ways that matched how he’s been portrayed in the past. It’s a whole different level of challenge from creating internally consistent new characters, and if I messed up, I’d be disappointing a lot of people who already love him. Thankfully, the story team is on hand to be the net that catches me when I fall down there!
Helga was also difficult for me because so many of her feelings came from my own experiences, while also being unique to her own life and background and the world of Bloomburrow. Digging into her emotions meant poking my own bruises and reopening scars and exposing parts of myself that aren’t easy to deal with, and that level of honesty and self-examination can be brutal. It was also important to me that I not show her being magically fixed or cured, that her arc wasn’t so much about her fundamentally changing herself as it was about overcoming some of her negative self-talk, and learning coping strategies that would help her be her best self going forward.
MU: How did you go about writing for Calamity Beasts and how they fit into the world?
VV: The world guide I was given had a great explanation and examination of how the Calamity Beasts function, as both natural, seasonal sorts of powers as well as sudden disasters. They’re fantasy manifestations of climate experiences similar to our own, but wilder, more chaotic, more inscrutable in a lot of ways. We have figured out a lot about how our planet works through scientific study, and we’ve come up with explanations and principles that govern all of it. In Bloomburrow, however, there isn’t the same kind of logical underpinning, and the Beasts can be far more unpredictable, seeming to have their own goals and desires and lives that the animalfolk can’t comprehend.
I leaned into that while writing them, such that on the one hand you have Maha with her unknown quest engaging in what seems to be random destruction but is actually intentional and targeted, and on the other you have something like the Flood Gar wreaking havoc for no apparent reason because that’s simply its nature. Either way, I wanted them to feel a bit like cosmic horrors in the sense that to the folk of Valley, they’re enormous and life-altering and overwhelming, and they don’t care one way or the other what effect they have on their surroundings.
Ral, who has no experience with them, is totally ready to fight the Flood Gar as his first reaction, where the others are like, you’re going to what? There’s only so much you can do to literally battle forces of nature.
MU: Ral Zarek becoming an otter has proven to be an extremely popular decision amongst fans. How did you go about handling that and dealing with his feelings and response to it?
VV: Other people may have their own thoughts on this, but me? I felt immediately and instinctually that he would hate it.
Ral strikes me as someone who is very comfortable in his own skin, possibly because he doesn’t think about it much since he has science to do instead. Maybe this is me projecting my ADHD on him, but I feel like he’s the kind of guy who gets focused on projects and forgets to do essential things like eat and sleep and go to the bathroom until his irksome meat suit compels him to pay attention to it. He no doubt finds his body very, ahem, useful for particular intimate purposes, especially now that he’s married, but I think he mostly lives in his brain, so to speak.
If the animal shift were happening to someone else, he would probably find it interesting and want to study it, but for him it’s a major inconvenience. His hands are different! He has a tail! Everything smells so much! His body used to do what he told it to do without him having to pay attention to it, and now here he is, with an extra part that keeps messing with his balance and hitting things.
Rude, inconvenient, and don’t you dare call him adorable or you’ll get zapped.
MU: There are many themes running throughout the Bloomburrow storyline, such as family and community. How did you go about integrating them in?
VV: One way I think about theme is that it’s like a rug that ties the room together. This means that all the other elements in the room—the furniture, the paint on the walls, the decorations—are going to match the rug in some way, by incorporating the same colors or having the same style and so on.
So as I’m writing a story, I try to make sure that the plot and setting and characters all work together to incorporate the themes. In this case, it means Helga feeling isolated from her community even as she wants to help it, and Mabel being an integral member of her village as well as deeply devoted to her family, and the other characters supporting the fundamental impulse to figure out what has happened to their fellow animalfolk and fix it. It also means making sure that all the places they go and individuals and groups they meet have similar guiding principles as shown through their homes and lives and actions, except for the villains, who are instead undermining them.
It’s all in the choices characters make and the specific details used to illustrate the world and bring it to life, as well as the broader narrative.
MU: In coming up with the story, were you able to see any of the art beforehand to help integrate into your story?
VV: Absolutely! I got a massive world guide with art, so much great art, although I didn’t always have specific images connected to particular characters or locations. Many parts, though, were clearly labeled, so I was able to study them and do my best to describe what I saw as well as expanding on the pieces to add what wasn’t shown. One of the most challenging things to describe was Cruelclaw’s outfit; I am not a fashion person!
I did such a deep dive into clothing terminology to try to find the right words for his extremely excellent coat, without relying on verbiage that only makes sense with context from our own world. But perhaps most importantly, the art helped give me a strong foundation not only in the specific details I could include, but the overall tonal approach to the setting.
MU: On the Magic Story podcast, the designers said that they had to keep thinking about it from an animal perspective, like what life meant with a shorter lifespan than humans and how the world looked from a smaller perspective. Did you look at these and other similar questions when writing?
VV: I did! Setting aside the lifespan stuff, I did a ton of research into animal scale as compared to each other and the various plants growing around them. I also checked into animal behaviors and sensory experiences, though I ultimately decided to balance accuracy with what would be more accessible to human readers instead of going deeply immersive.
And, of course, I did a lot of work to figure out their diets, what they could and couldn’t eat, what plants bloomed and fruited when and what parts of them were edible and how they could be prepared. My husband is vegan, so a plant-based diet is familiar to me, and I had a lot of fun taking the natural things animals eat and turning them into more intentional crafted meals and treats.
MU: The response to the story has been very positive from fans. What has it been like from your perspective?
VV: I’ve had a lot of people reach out to tell me how much they liked it, which has been so nice! I got some feedback on The Lost Caverns of Ixalan, but not nearly as much. It’s also been awesome seeing fan art and even people creating recipes to make the food in the story.
So much of what I do as a writer is trying to channel what the story team wants to see, to make sure I’m bringing their vision to life in a satisfying way as part of the group effort of making the set. This means when the responses start coming in, it’s not for me and my story so much as the immense amount of hard work that so many people have done along the way, and the fan contributions become a part of that. Community! It’s the best.
MU: If you were visiting Bloomburrow, what animal species would you be and why?
VV: My husband assures me I would be a birdfolk because I’m an idealist, and stubborn, and my feathers get extremely ruffled by injustice. On the other hand, I’m not super concerned with my appearance, so maybe raccoonfolk is a better fit? I can also be naïve like mousefolk, but I’m not quite as brave. So who knows?
I definitely would love to be able to fly, though.
Thanks to Valerie for the interview!
