I love it so much.
by Cal Jones
Welcome to CASCADE CASCADE!
Be forewarned. This is not extremely polished nor is it something of a treatise on what makes Magic the Gathering great or an editorial vision. Well, maybe it’s a little bit of the latter.
Is it possible to create an island with a safe harbor in the middle of a massive storm? We would like to think so. Welcome to CASCADE CASCADE, what we hope to be a long-living home for the work of our favorite writers. We, of course, being Dan Sheenhan & myself, Cal Jones, two people who have bounced around the Magic: The Gathering sphere is almost every way imaginable up till this point. Published by the Big Websites, had popular podcasts, interacted with events at every level (attendee, tournament participant, creator, vendor), jammed standard FNMs, jammed Commander Gameplay Channels, you name it. If it isn’t “play competitive Magic at a high level,” one of us has probably done it. Actually, Dan has done most of it, I’ve done a wee bit less. Heck, Dan has even written flavor text for the game! Together with some of the first people we talked to about our idea, we came up with a plan.
We want to try doing something different - a website of the sickest written content imaginable about Magic and runs on a collective model, one that directly pays back the writers basically all of the money involved. Not quite like some where a writer HAS to publish something every week, but maybe when they have something to say instead. Yeah, you, the reader, have to pay to get in, sorry. But how else are we gonna pay anyone? We ain’t selling Magic cards and definitely aren’t free-but-ad-driven which represented something close to pivot-to-video levels of consumer-expectation-for-media-being-destroyed. It’s been tough out here.
There have been several major steps of decline for the Magic: the Gathering recent memory alone - SCG laying off all writers save one or three that were on full time staff, the Hipsters of the Coast hiatus (though it has now returned!), and eBay’s acquisition of TCGplayer all come to mind. The latter leading to the slow, slow death of both ChannelFireball’s written content aimed at a competitive audience and TCGplayer Infinite’s stable of freelancers who wrote everything from gratuitous prestige think pieces to money-generating EDH precon upgrade guides still frustrates me to this day. The sites that remain pay, on average, bargain basement rates to people who don’t know what they’re worth or, increasingly, to those who probably shouldn’t be paid to write (sorry) but are happily given a platform as whatever content they create still could generate clicks and sell cards (sorry). This is by no means meant to chronicle the entire history of the rise and decline of the written word concerning Magic, at least as something you can get paid for, but are just a few relatively recent examples in the game’s long history.
As resellers such as TCGplayer and StarCityGames have shifted priorities and strategies, the written word on Magic, already something more of an SEO pursuit than something focused more on artistry (but I digress), has slowly shriveled on what is otherwise often a cash-flush vine. The last time I asked people how much they were getting paid to write about Magic, the average of answers I got back was… wait for it… $20. Come on.
That cuts to a (not the) core of the issue - Writing About Magic has been dying a slow, excruciating, agonizing death. Writing about it well hasn’t been rewarded, monetarily or otherwise, for a long-ass time. If you want to do it for anything more than the love of the game and a hot dog, good luck. You want to get started and make a name for yourself? Good luck, again! It was just our luck that the one independent blogging site that had momentum in the year of our lord 2025 managed to get itself branded a Nazi bar. If there’s one thing that frustrates me the most it’s probably this - there're not great places to “work” any more - but there're not great places to get started either.
Luckily, we can still do things for the Love of the Game. You don’t need to make money doing things that you love, millions of people do stuff just for the sake of doing it. It can be a hobby. I know that’s all it is for me at this point. My frustration lies more in how the institution of MTG writing, once its most prolific bastion, has faltered and shattered.
The problem of passion driving you within the Magic publishing space - editorial expectations, from now until forever, for publications are largely based on a consistent schedule. You gotta publish something every week or every two weeks or whatever, day in and day out, even if there isn’t anything truly interesting or novel that you have to say. I get it, this is a major byproduct of things like Content Websites existing under capitalism. Consistency creates predictability both for the employer and the consumer… and can wear away on a writer like sand on stone.
Do I sound like a huge baby about this whole thing? I’m sure I do. It’s just personal for me. I’ve seen writers I care about, friends and those I admire from afar alike, get trampled on and spit out by the content machine. I personally was on my way to ascending the mountain, living my dream as a consistent Magic writer, and then had the rug pulled out from under me by a huge corporation that doesn’t meaningfully appreciate how high of a return they were getting from their team of freelance writers. Why not spend it on Google Ads instead? I’m a little bitter! Not to anybody who works there but just at… *waves arms everywhere*
At the same time, it was a form of relief because after a rousing two years of writing 1.5 articles a week I was already burnt out, in part thanks to being unhappy with the current direction of the game and also not getting enough time to play it in my personal life (the great inspiration for all great Magic pieces). I envy the people who have more stamina for this than me. But I hope that CASCADE CASCADE can give a bit more of a home to the Real Ones, the people who care to write about Magic when they have something to say, something that has to get out. Something interesting about Magic or related to Magic. And hopefully we can hand them a few bucks (more than $20) for their troubles.
Magic contains so many infinite angles and subcultures and possibilities. I had a short chat with Sam (of Rhystic Studies but much more) about this the last time I saw him. The amount of things you could cover on Magic crushes him every day like a massive boulder he carries on his back. So much that could be shown to people, so little time. If we can collectively explore even a fraction of them with CASCADE CASCADE I’ll be one happy little camper. If I can continue to contribute to the greater patchwork that is the infinite blanket of Writing About Magic: The Gathering, than I'll be even happier.
Welcome in. Thanks for reading.
Cal Jones (he/him) is not a content creator. He’s a Gamecube collector, DanDan fanatic and occasionally, very occasionally, has a thought to share about Magic: The Gathering. Follow his pursuits on Bluesky.