Flavor text is a curious and often overlooked quirk of Trading Card Games (TCGs). And why shouldn’t it be? The little italicized afterthought of text at the bottom of a card has no bearing on the game itself. And yet, aside from card art and the occasional mechanic, flavor text is the sole in-game method by which players can learn about the story, world, and characters that separate games like Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic from a game of Bridge.
Like those little-known TCGs, Gem Blenders also has flavor text! Today, as one of the game’s lore contributors working on the upcoming second set, I thought it’d be fun to look at what considerations go into this strange artform: what makes good flavor text, the delights and challenges of writing for the world of Gem Blenders, and my personal philosophy on what makes Gemlandia a fun, conflicting, and sometimes demented narrative playground. Stick around toward the end as I walk through my thought process writing flavor text for a new card from set two of your friendly neighborhood card game, to be announced later this year (or just scroll to the bottom, no one is stopping you)!
What Makes Good Flavor Text?
First, let’s briefly look at some bad flavor text from other card games, both so we can learn what doesn’t work and also so I can poke fun at Magic: The Gathering. I know better than to bite the hand that feeds, but you can be sure Gem Blenders isn’t immune to these mistakes either! TCGs contain hundreds if not thousands of cards; not every line can be a banger (look at Herd Necromancer for what I think is a somewhat lackluster example closer to home). While far from atrocious, I think the below cards fail in different ways to be engaging.
The Yu-Gi-Oh card is simply too obvious and tells us, almost literally, absolutely nothing. “A metal fish with a razor-sharp caudal fin” is a straight description of the card art with absolutely no flash or substance. It isn’t even technically a sentence. The only thing that piques your interest is the word “caudal”, and that’s just because it’s a word you’ve never heard of (it means tail). Early Yu-Gi-Oh is chock full of flavor text like this, to the point that “A [basic description] that attacks using its [adjective noun]” is practically a template. Granted, Yu-Gi-Oh is unique in that the game isn’t actually set in a cohesive world (the cards are literally cards in the lore), but that doesn’t mean it can’t have good flavor text. Magic, on the other hand, makes great efforts to present its setting and lore as rich and deeply important to the game. As a result, we get a lot of flavor text that looks like what you see above. Magic follows the reverse of Yu-Gi-Oh’s example, with flavor text that is frequently overwritten, overbearing, or unmysterious. The flavor text for the card Sol Ring has a lot of information, but none if it means anything to us. It’s completely inaccessible. On top of that, it’s a closed loop, so to speak. There are no lingering questions or evocative phrasings. Similarly, Hatred could do so much more with less, and the fact that it’s a classic example of Magic’s frequent grim-dark fixation and its habit of parading out proper nouns as “lore” doesn’t help.
At its core, flavor text should provide glimpses. A drop from the well of the game’s lore. They work best, in my opinion, when they focus on delivering one thing. That thing could be an interesting idea; a haunting implication; a punchline; a precious bit of context. After all, flavor text is inherently supplementary, like a caption. Some can work as flash fiction (think “For sale: baby shoes, never worn”), but more often a hint is enough. In fact, an incomplete picture works wonders. I won’t remark on them, but here are some fun examples from Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, and my other love, Netrunner.
And above all, never underestimate the joys of a pleasing or cleverly constructed sentence.
Flavor Text in Gem Blenders
Gem Blenders, if you haven’t noticed, also has flavor text (on every hero and blend, plus QWERTY facts), but compared to other TCGs, what’s there might seem deceptively slight or simple. Basic facts about blends, amusing puns, and more or less random events in the Gemlandian timeline are common themes. Where are our Hatred outlives the hatefuls, our in-universe nursery rhymes, our winding speeches from characters with names like “Greven il-Vec”? I bumped up against these concerns repeatedly when I first tried my hand at writing flavor text for the Gourmet Kitchen and Stakes Royale starter decks. It felt like I was in a bit of a narrative straightjacket. But as it turns out, there’s two easy tricks to writing for Gem Blenders: write for a tourist, and embrace all the unsettling dissonance of Gemlandia!
Gemlandia Is WEIRD, Y’all
Gem Blenders occupies an interesting niche in TCGs genre-wise. Riding on Magic’s coattails, most TCGs are straight fantasy (particularly dark fantasy), and if not, they’re usually sci-fi or a genre I can only really describe as “Shonen anime aesthetic”. Gem Blenders, on the other hand, carries a few genres. It’s a bit fantasy, a bit absurdism, a bit surrealism, a bit sci-fi, a bit… slice of life? Far from dark and brooding, it’s optimistic and wholesome— at least, on the outside.
Gemlandia has always struck me as a place that presents itself as very peaceful and unassuming to the outside world (us, the players), but there’s hints of extremes scattered everywhere below the surface— whether that be darkness or slapstick or dystopia or what have you. Everything is styled almost like we the readers are tourists to this land. Like we’re reading the brochure, trying to peek around the carefully manufactured image of Gemlandia. But occasionally, perhaps even often, the mask slips in delightful ways. Many of my favorite flavor texts in Gem Blenders are the ones with strange or even disturbing implications.
In tone and content, I’d describe Gem Blenders’ flavor text as somewhere between “fun fact” and “loading screen tip”. This is rather unorthodox for a TCG, yet it gives the lore of the game a very clear, consistent, and accessible voice. Better yet, it makes supposedly benign “fun facts” like the examples above all the more unnerving. With the same nonchalance of a Wikipedia page, we learn that Gemlandia—a continent where people wear party hats and the national cuisine is pizza—has a strong military-industrial complex, powered in part by “farms” of Bolt Rams (people!). We learn its citizens “poach” and mutilate other blends. We’re presented with the unspoken question of whether Joy Ringer, a seemingly legendary holiday figure like Santa Claus or Krampus, is in fact real (meaning anyone could blend into it), or a kind of “mythic” blend that only exists in stories. Both realities would have fascinating implications.
The deeper you dig, the more you see how Gemlandia, and the premise of blends themselves, is full of tantalizing contradictions. We’re told Gem Blending is a kind of sport, played by children and adults alike. It’s fun! Blends are also like costumes, or cool transformations! But as we know from cards like Cannon Boomer and Sleet Copter, they’re also jobs. And, perhaps worst of all, they’re also objects (Convector, Anchor). Resources. Beasts of burden. This undercurrent of capitalist dystopia and some very clear body horror isn’t the point of Gem Blenders lore, but it is undeniably present. In this world, you can work as a security guard, but you can also work as a space heater. You can be a weapon, or you can be a human cow and get milked on a farm for cold hard Gemlandian dollars. It’s empowering and dehumanizing at different turns, and getting to create and tease out these intentional wrinkles in the logic of the world (dark, funny, or sometimes both) is one of the charms of writing for Gem Blenders. Of course, that’s not to say the Gem Blenders world is actually this grim-dark “dystopia masquerading as utopia” story and we all missed it. No— it’s adorably, refreshingly whimsical and optimistic, but it’s designed such that this baseline level of silly can always be subverted or toyed with for surprising results.
Flavor Text in Practice!
With all of this in mind, let’s walk through my process of pitching flavor text for a new card appearing in set two: Care Provider. If you have a Catalyst Controller’s memory, this blend may sound familiar to you! That’s because it actually appears in the flavor text for the 2024 Valence Angel promo: “Valence Angels assist Care Providers to administer top-notch medical treatment.” This isn’t bad as far as flavor text goes, but let’s see if we can do a little better for Care Provider itself!
As part of the Lore Lab, I have access to a spreadsheet where myself and others can pitch flavor text to the team for each card. In this sheet, I can see the blend’s name, a preliminary sketch by Steve, and, if I’m lucky, an extremely brief summary of the blend’s effect (stuff like “gains HP” or “aquagem = more attack”). I won’t spill every secret, so I’ll just say Care Provider is a blend that moves around. The big round wings and petite boots in the sketch catch my attention, so the first flavor texts I pitch are based on these features. “The squeak of Care Provider boots touching down at the scene of an accident is a comfort across all of Gemlandia.” I like this one because it’s a very pleasant, sensory read, and it paints a snapshot in my mind of angelic first responders descending on a disaster. The wings also remind me of nurses and doctors running between rooms in a hospital, and I imagined the strange, possibly disconcerting architecture that would allow for Care Providers to do this: “Hospitals are commonly built with tall hallways so Care Providers can fly from room to room at top speed.” Nothing too special, but I like the idea of hospitals in Gemlandia having two levels of traffic on the same floor (for walking and flying blends), and it alludes to Care Provider’s movement effect.
When pitching flavor text, I usually try to give a range of topics and tones for the team to choose from, so at this point my mind turns to some of the more serious aspects of the field of medicine as it exists in our world (it helps that I’ve been devouring HBO’s excellent ER series, The Pitt). I think about the strain of the pandemic (“During the first Virus epidemic, the government subsidized the blending of Care Providers, creating an Aerogem surplus when the emergency settled.”), and the idea that Gemlandia might go through periods of “subsidizing” certain blends, which is an interesting premise to me! I think about overworked staff (“Care Providers work tirelessly through the night to keep emergency rooms staffed, only deblending at the end of a long, rewarding shift.”), demanding credentials (“Becoming a Care Provider requires a degree in Blendatory Science and a minimum of 5000 hours practicing blend-based medicine.”), and the failings of the healthcare system, resulting in a fun pun (“Before Gemlandia implemented Universal Basic Gem Income (UBGI), many citizens could be priced out of Care Providers entirely.”). But Gem Blenders is also uncompromisingly silly, so I like to throw in a couple lighter options too. The idea of gummies based off the game’s gems (and which ones would taste the best) has been floated humorously before, and I couldn’t resist the possibility of the idea becoming canon: “Care Providers prescribe vitamins in the form of tasty, gem-shaped gummies for children.” And speaking of The Pitt, I imagined the role Care Providers might fill in Gemlandian medical dramas: “Though they often have contentious, spicy relationships in medical dramas, Care Providers and [Top Secret Blend!] rarely interact in real life.” And finally, a throwaway I found amusing in its anti-joke potential: “A gem a day keeps the Care Provider away. ~ Old nonsensical saying”.
And then, there are my bigger swings— flavor text I write and hope against hope it becomes canon: “Though common during the war, attacking Care Providers is banned under the Gemeva Conventions.” Sometimes, Steve throws me a bone.
With a handful of potential pieces of flavor text in the books, I move onto the next blend or hero (which requires a whole different approach), and wait to see if any of my ideas move from the “Potential Flavor Text” to the “Finalized Flavor Text” column. With promos, alt arts, and misfits, a lot of blends get more than one piece of flavor text, so the chances aren’t bad. You’ll have to find Care Provider in set two to find out if any of these flavor texts make it!
Conclusion
Hopefully this gives you a good idea of my personal philosophy when it comes to understanding Gem Blenders’ lore, and how to write fun flavor text that fits the style established in set one. Be brief, give the player a hint of a world beyond the card text, and, in the case of Gem Blenders, introduce a wrinkle of dissonance between the world we think we know and the much more surprising, much stranger world that is. It’s not a perfect formula, and I’m hoping to see cards in set two take bigger swings when it comes to flavor text that embraces the weirder, dare I say devilish brand of whimsy that I believe the best Gem Blenders lore exemplifies! I’m also excited for players to see a handful of blends in particular that are very important to the lore of Gemlandia. We can’t reveal anything yet, but be on the lookout for more information as we inch closer to the Fall months. Set two can’t arrive soon enough!
Happy blending!