I just want to say croaking counterpart might be my favorite card since werebear. Please distribute virtual high-fives accordingly.

Will do.

One of the things I miss about modern magic is a lack of comedy in names and, in particular, flavor text. (E.g. Werebear's "bear arms" pun, Firebolt's "Reach out and torch someone", etc.) What are the odds we get more of these? In supplemental expansions? Standard-legal ones?

I’d check out Unstable. : )

Which flavor text are you more proud of, werebear, or hidden gibbon?

Hmm… Were 🐻or Hidden 🙉? I’m 😀to say I wrote the first and 😥 to say I didn’t write the second, so Were 🐻gets the 👍.

towel-guy asked: Do you have any list with all the flavour text you have written?? Didn't you do the flavor texts for Odyssey block? Or did you not exercise your rights to bear arms?

I oversaw the flavor text for Odyssey block and wrote a decent amount of flavor text for it. I’m not sure if I wrote the Werebear flavor text, but I was definitely the person who chose to put it on the card.

I thought you had to sign off on all sets after some color pie breaking cards in commander. I refuse to believe you would sign off on that horrible Wearbear reprint without the old flavor text. Also, when did Werebear become a human?

I have no control over flavor text. That should be clear from the low percentage of puns. : )

I would like to express my severe disappointment in the new flavor text for Werebear.

As the author of that flavor text, I feel your pain.

Hey Maro, could we please have some werebear trivia?

I was in charge of the flavor text for Odyssey. I wrote Werebear’s and it was the first flavor text in the file.

Does surrak ever punch werebear?

Different plane.

from a chilean player, I must say it's a little wall-breaking when you read a flavor text and go "Well that doesn't make any sense. Must be a pun in english." Werebear being a perfect example.

Translators aren’t just supposed to change over the words but also to shift the flavor text to make sense. Sometimes that means the flavor text in other languages is completely different.

A lot of puns aren't immersion breaking. In Werebear's case, 'right to bear arms' quotes the second amendment and that can't be separated from the controversial political and historical trappings associated with it. Root Greevil's flavortext makes a double entendre on a well known idiom, but that idiom isn't associated with one specific cultural unit. For a native speaker, idioms are natural and go unnoticed. The devil's in the details. I also want to say thanks for designing Magic (and puns)!

Idioms come from somewhere. “The lesser of two evils” is from the writings of a German monk. Why is writing from one real world source fourth wall breaking and the other not?