The Magic the Gathering Community

[Ebonic Tutor]

The more I think about it the more I believe it's about not allowing altered cards on stream, mostly to avoid the weeb boob stuff and other dumb things I'd assume. I'd prefer to keep that way so you don't have people slapping political messages on their cards, cause if they allow this then you know somebody else will try it and eventually somebody will have a message on there that pisses everybody off right well.

Of course they'll say if it's a positive message, punching up, blah blah blah that it's okay. But we all know how these people think.

 

[JoseRaulChupacabra]

Ok, so here's what I meant to post before. Warning, this post contains SA.

Look, someone being reasonable in a Magic thread!

Ah yes. A well reasoned debate. This person used to go by Dickeye and was universally hated in the gaming subforums. He's a know it all and now he's trooned out, so he's important and correct 100% of the time.

Rule 1: Don't engage them.

Dickeye then went on to actually join the Magic twitch chat and talked incessantly about trans rights for hours. I looked through the old VODs to confirm this. I had to watch even more Oko for this, I hope you all appreciate it.

This makes me glad I never really got into magic. I test drove a few decks in friendly games, followed the tournament scene, and delved in metagame analysis from the time of Dragonstorm to Cawblade. I could never really justify the cost, seeing this is just icing on the cake.

 

[Woke Capitalism]

The more I think about it the more I believe it's about not allowing altered cards on stream, mostly to avoid the weeb boob stuff and other dumb things I'd assume. I'd prefer to keep that way so you don't have people slapping political messages on their cards, cause if they allow this then you know somebody else will try it and eventually somebody will have a message on there that pisses everybody off right well.

Of course they'll say if it's a positive message, punching up, blah blah blah that it's okay. But we all know how these people think.

Of course they've opened the floodgates. I've seen people tweeting about how they're allowed to put messages on cards now, and tweeting a picture of all their lands having stuff like "trans rights are human lives" and "no human is illegal." Just wait until someone shows up with a "#buildthewall" on their plains.

Also, they are wrong. one human is illegal.

 

[Stoneheart]

The more I think about it the more I believe it's about not allowing altered cards on stream, mostly to avoid the weeb boob stuff and other dumb things I'd assume. I'd prefer to keep that way so you don't have people slapping political messages on their cards, cause if they allow this then you know somebody else will try it and eventually somebody will have a message on there that pisses everybody off right well.

im not sure if that will happen before or after they ban cards for problematic artwork...

Also, they are wrong. one human is illegal.

For very good reasons....

 

[Salt_Merchant]

What the world needs is a real hero to rock up to the next mythic championship with

"shut up Autumn, no body cares"

and

"Just play the damn game Autumn"

scrawled on every single one of their 75.

 

[AnotherPleb]

What the world needs is a real hero to rock up to the next mythic championship with

"shut up Autumn, no body cares"

and

"Just play the damn game Autumn"

scrawled on every single one of their 75.

You know that guy would get way more than a wrist slap for doing that.

 

[Ebonic Tutor]

im not sure if that will happen before or after they ban cards for problematic artwork...

>Jams 4 Earthbinds, an Invoke Prejudice, and anything else with Harold McNeil artwork into his legacy deck.

 

[Salt_Merchant]

>Jams 4 Earthbinds, an Invoke Prejudice, and anything else with Harold McNeil artwork into his legacy deck.

Just think

theres an infinite number of universes out there

and that means that somewhere theres a universe where invoke prejudice is as ubiquitous as brainstorm in legacy.

 

[Liquid Cool]

Autumn is the perfect example of how shit the pro magic scene has become the last few years. I have stopped playing, and supporting WOTC due to their absurd political infusion into the game I love. The constant whining about inclusion and women being somehow oppressed in the community is horseshit. Women have always been included, just greatly outnumbered. WOTC has given up long ago on the vast majority of it's players, the ones that made the game what it is today. I'm ok with playing with old cards and having fun like you're supposed to, but I'm not going to buy any new cards, especially since they will turn into a pringle chip shape in a day or two.

Me at this point. The real issue is tht it's very obvious that they're funneling all their resources into this corporate sponsored inculsionary agenda and they're neglecting the core basics like card materials, game design, customer service, and fucking making a game that even has the semblance of balance and doesn't need to have 40 cards banned every release. When was the last time Standard was in good shape? Theros/KTK Standard? Maybe focus on the game instead of blowing every LGBTQ talking point and hamfisting their agenda into the game.

"Oh, look, this mardu leader is trans."

"Oh look, Chandra is a lesbian."

"Oh look, Narset is mentally ill."

"Oh look, we're killing the Alpha Male Gideon."

"Oh look, we made significant design flaws and now have to ban half the cards in this set. It's definitely not because we're hacks and are focused more on making sure we have 70% POC and 50% LGBTQ inclusion"

 

[Ebonic Tutor]

"Oh look, Narset is mentally ill."

"Oh look, we're killing the Alpha Male Gideon."

Narset has got the 'tism, I'd assume Nahiri is the one that's a bit batshit in the head from what I recall.

Ever notice how Gideon became more and more Mediterranean looking over the years? Dude was pretty much white at one point. Funny, turn him into a POC only to kill him off.

 

[nekrataal]

You know that guy would get way more than a wrist slap for doing that.

Nothing of value would be lost in being permabanned.

 

[Liquid Cool]

Narset has got the 'tism, I'd assume Nahiri is the one that's a bit batshit in the head from what I recall.

That's right. Narset had that whole fucking story which boiled down to "I'm David Sherrat levels of Autism."

Nahiri they're just doing it because her depiction in Stoneforge Mystic turned people on and they went with the manic pixie girl trope.

Ever notice how Gideon became more and more Mediterranean looking over the years? Dude was pretty much white at one point. Funny, turn him into a POC only to kill him off.

The Gideon stuff really irritates me. Ever since he broke on the scene it was really obvious that he was Roman-inspired. He was supposed to be the gladiator, the strong muscle that the spellcasters could hide behind. I think his early art really shows this off well:

Spoiler: Gideon 1

As you can see, he has strong Roman features, square jaw, light skin and an aquline nose. The nose, in particular, is really the key to his evolution, as we'll see.

His first planeswalker card also shows off these features.

Spoiler: Gideon 2

This is the art from his first planeswalker card. He looks full blown Roman in this. Even not looking at his obviously Roman inspired gear, note the nose, large and thin. Furthermore, check the brow and forehead. Dude looks like Julius Ceasar came back from the dead to wipe out more Gauls.

Finally, we get another piece of art that shows his original form:

Spoiler: Gideon 3

Still consistent with the above two.

Now here's the thing, all 3 of those pictures were drawn during the Return to Ravnica block, We're talking around 2012-2014. MTG had a huge shift in thinking that became very visible directly after this block. But without poisoning the well too much, I'll just show you what Gideon is drawn like now:

Spoiler: New Gideon 1

The nose is flatter, the skin is significantly darker and the jaw is less square and the lips are thicker. This is no true Roman.

Speaking of pouty lips:

Spoiler: New Gideon 2

And they also drew him like a slender Jason Mamoa at some point:

Spoiler: New Gideon 3

Because we all know that tough, strong men aren't allowed in our MTG safe spaces. We need to make sure that all men are effeminate in some way.

Lastly, I'll leave with one final card. It depicts a young Gideon when he was living on Theros. He's the one in the middle. I'm not kidding. Look at his original art and then look at this and tell me that there wasn't an officicial memo sent out telling everyone to make him look more ethnic:

Spoiler: New Gideon 4

TL: DR - Gideon was retconned from being a Roman inspired gladiator to being half Turkish and Half Black.

 

[Woke Capitalism]

We literally cannot go another week without more stupid shit.

For those of you who don't follow Magic, they had an ambitious story arc that has been going on for something like 5 years. It finally concluded in the spring with War of the Spark. This followed the dragon planeswalker, Nicol Bolas in his attempts to gain godhood.

Pictured: A scheming dragon

The opposition was the Gatewatch, a group of marketable superheroes planeswalkers that have been featured as the main face of Magic for quite a while, to mixed results.

Pictured: The gatewatch, consisting of Jace, Gideon, Nissa, and Chandra. In this, they are killing essentially a C'thuluian lovecraftian god. Actually, two of them. At once. Seriously, they kill gods. With fire. This is where the writing is starting from, people.

Anyways, War of the Spark was a big event set with a ton of planeswalkers in it. Wizards wanted to have a novel to go along with this big finale, so they contracted some random author who has no experience writing novels. He then proceeded to butcher it.

Pictured: A pile of dogshit

Anyways, after fucking up their grand finale by having the story in the cards and the story in the novel not matching up and killing off a fan favorite planeswalker (and there are only two planeswalker deaths in the entire novel featuring 36 of them) Wizards decides to have the same author write a sequel. It just came out.

I mentioned this whole thing because the community is up in arms over Nissa and Chandra. For those who are unaware, Chandra is a red mage "quirky" girl who had a thing for Gideon, but then they decided to pair her up with Nissa, a green elf who was retconned from being Literal Elf Hitler to a shy uwu elf princess that loves nature.

In the end of the War of the Spark novel, they said that they loved each other. Everyone stands up and applauds.

Now, in the new novel, apparently they walk that all back. Chandra says that she was into Nissa but, y'know, not really and the whole "I love you" thing was platonic. Queue the outrage:

Twitter

archived 12 Nov 2019 18:31:48 UTC

archive.li

r/magicTCG - Wizards just killed off their only realistic and interesting romantic subplot - RIP Chandra & Nissa

1,539 votes and 1,031 comments so far on Reddit

www.reddit.com

Wizards just killed off their only realistic and interesting romantic…

archived 12 Nov 2019 18:42:52 UTC

archive.li

I swear, between Oko, this thing with Autumn, and now this, Wizards is batting 1000.

 

[Stab You in the Back]

Greg Weisman is well known and well loved for his work on Gargoyles and Young Justice. He may not have written a novel before, but the decision to hire him to write a book that'll appeal to a wide audience is a sound one.

That said, trying to appeal to a wide audience is a mistake when the only people who read the novels are cosplaying tumblerites. WotC should be pandering the shit out of the only demographic lame enough to read Magic tie-in novels, not hiring a guy who primarily works in boy's entertainment.

 

[Woke Capitalism]

Greg Weisman is well known and well loved for his work on Gargoyles and Young Justice. He may not have written a novel before, but the decision to hire him to write a book that'll appeal to a wide audience is a sound one.

That said, trying to appeal to a wide audience is a mistake when the only people who read the novels are cosplaying tumblerites. WotC should be pandering the shit out of the only demographic lame enough to read Magic tie-in novels, not hiring a guy who primarily works in boy's entertainment.

True, but here is their progression for magic story:

1) Have it written in house by whoever draws the short straw that week. Uncharted Realms is inconsistent and usually pretty bad but inoffensive.
2) Hire better writers, the stories improve somewhat
3) Hire outside writers to do the stories
4) Hire a person who, while they have written stuff that's liked, has not written a novel, and make him do the finale for an arc they have been working on for years.

I mean, Wizards is proven to be a bunch of people just randomly stumbling about (see the current Standard environment, where they hired a bunch of former pros to Play Design to prevent what is currently happening) but it doesn't make sense.

Then again, you get thing like this happening, so it's kind of funny. People are currently angry that Wizards is pro-TERF and anti-lesbian despite trying their hardest to pander.

 

[Polyboros2]

Greg Weisman is well known and well loved for his work on Gargoyles and Young Justice. He may not have written a novel before, but the decision to hire him to write a book that'll appeal to a wide audience is a sound one.

That said, trying to appeal to a wide audience is a mistake when the only people who read the novels are cosplaying tumblerites. WotC should be pandering the shit out of the only demographic lame enough to read Magic tie-in novels, not hiring a guy who primarily works in boy's entertainment.

Weisman sat in on MegaSped and head of R&D Mark "Maro" Rosewater's Drive to Work Podcast to talk about writing the book. It inadvertently ended up being a demonstration of Wizard's incompetence. Weisman had very little direction, and when requesting reference on how to portray characters he was told to essentially read all of Magic's story, to a degree that the book had to be delayed,

What worse is that the previous story setting up this conclusion was even more delayed. To the point it was released after the finale. We had a character resurrected who we never saw die, a character who was a secret (to herself) double agent and we didn't see her memories being restored and switching back to the good guys side.(Vraska's face turn cause of her ladyboner for Jace was terrible throughout).

They didn't even represent them on the cards, we had very little.

I fucking hate the Gatewatch, they were clearly building a cast for the movie that seems to be dead. They were a bunch of incompetents who stumbled their way through victories they didn't earn. They killed two Eldritch gods that couldn't be killed by Planeswalkers a thousand times more powerful than them, locked the other up, got embarrassingly curbstomped by Bolas (who was literally bouncing Gideon like a super ball) after stumbling clumsily through every step of his plan, then coming back a beating him a couple months later.

Bolas was cool, their set up for him being a major threat was cool, he went out like a bitch. Not only that, they completely cockteased the ending. You have a tower with stain glass of a bunch of the Planeswalkers, with a bunch of candles inside that go out one by one until one remains. They have 36 Walkers in the set (instead of the usual Max of 5-6), we have depictions of Bolas noming dozens of Sparks, and in the end two named walkers die, one that was a noncharacter from over previous set, and the protagonist from a failed comic line that also got a single printing and didn't appear on any cards at all.

They forced these shit bags down our throats for years, the only good they did was building up the villain they unceramoniously chucked out at the ending, and then just bailed on the whole thing like it was a gas station bathroom they just destroyed.

All we have left are the Phyrexians, and I hope Karma's plan to take the Sylex mcguffin bomb, the powerful artifact which when last detonated fucked not only Dominaria, but the entire multiverse, and to set it off in New Phyrexia blows up in all of realities face, because they all deserve it.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Greg Weisman is well known and well loved for his work on Gargoyles and Young Justice. He may not have written a novel before, but the decision to hire him to write a book that'll appeal to a wide audience is a sound one.

That said, trying to appeal to a wide audience is a mistake when the only people who read the novels are cosplaying tumblerites. WotC should be pandering the shit out of the only demographic lame enough to read Magic tie-in novels, not hiring a guy who primarily works in boy's entertainment.

It would've helped if 1) Wizards wasn't a bag of cucks to a point where a Blacked.com subscription is part of your onboarding package and 2) the entire novel hadn't read like a first draft. When you have Rakdos bloodwitches talking like valley girls, a character subplot that runs through the entire story and never gets resolved, weird dissonance between the cards and the story, Domri getting a bizarre accent that he's never had before (seriously, don't they have a style guide on this shit?), and trying to cram 36 named characters into one novel-length book, you'd have had to try to write a more dissonant, disorganized mess.

 

[Double Dee]

protagonist from a failed comic line that also got a single printing and didn't appear on any cards at all.

Dack did get shown or speaks on a few cards. That's also barring the fact his comic line came with alternate art promo cards with him on it, but I don't know if that counts.

Chandra says that she was into Nissa but, y'know, not really and the whole "I love you" thing was platonic.

Honestly, that's a retcon I'm fine with. Yeah, I imagine Chandra would be bi (fire does eat whatever can burn in its path), but the Channel Fireball ship always felt... forced? To me, at least; there's no real chemistry between Nissa and Chandra as characters.

 

[Salt_Merchant]

True, but here is their progression for magic story:

1) Have it written in house by whoever draws the short straw that week. Uncharted Realms is inconsistent and usually pretty bad but inoffensive.
2) Hire better writers, the stories improve somewhat
3) Hire outside writers to do the stories
4) Hire a person who, while they have written stuff that's liked, has not written a novel, and make him do the finale for an arc they have been working on for years.

I mean, Wizards is proven to be a bunch of people just randomly stumbling about (see the current Standard environment, where they hired a bunch of former pros to Play Design to prevent what is currently happening) but it doesn't make sense.

Then again, you get thing like this happening, so it's kind of funny. People are currently angry that Wizards is pro-TERF and anti-lesbian despite trying their hardest to pander.

they should have remembered why they stopped printing novels in the first place, the vast majority of their audience doesnt give enough of a shit about the overarching story to make paying an author to shit out a novel financially viable,

hell it wasnt financially viable for them to pay someone to shit out short stories for them to put on their website, so i assume the interactions on the story pages were pretty dire.



Really the lesson companies should taker from this is, dont pander, because nothing will ever be good enough and yoru only one sped author fucking up a novel away from being literally hitler.

 

[Maratus volans]

Man, Nissa.

Nissa might be the poster child for how WotC has mishandled the story since...well, since nuwalkers became a thing.

She first appeared in the original Zendikar, which was only the third set to have planeswalkers, and she was the second mono-green character. Garruk was a kind of druid / fighter mashup so Nissa was your standard "racist fantasy elf" who was basically painted as being Elf Hitler (as was mentioned) but also immediately dropped out of story relevance without really doing anything of note. Garruk was supposed to be the "face" mono-green walker but after making a bunch of iterations of him they decided to have Liliana curse him, making him black-green and thus ineligible to continue to be the mono-colored entrant for green.

So now the story splits: you have a hole left by Garruk, and Garruk. The hole was filled by Nissa, since she was the available option at the time for a green planeswalker. She got retconned into being a shy, softhearted nature mage so she'd be easier to slot into different settings, which made her more versatile but also a lot more bland. She joins the Avengers the Gatewatch as the feminine voice of care and nurturing, a counterpart to Chandra's instability and impulsiveness and Liliana's selfishness and snark. She gets shipped with Chandra despite having no chemistry with her because the shy, notionally straight person awakening to same-sex love is a classic trope of homosexual erotica, and we gotta tick those boxes. She tags out of Infinity War War of the Spark because...I don't know, really, I didn't read those books because I'd stopped giving a shit and the reviews didn't rekindle my interest. She's basically gone from the story now.

Garruk, meanwhile, went off and killed some random no-name planeswalker, roughed up Jace a little to advance a random plotline, had a cameo on cards in Avacyn Restored that led to accusations that Wizards was promoting violence against women, and then disappeared from the plot completely. After the Gatewatch defeated Thanos Bolas, he finally shows up again in Eldraine as a huntsman-type character. Finally! Here is a chance to have your murderous psychopath be the next Big Bad. Oh wait, what's that? Oko has made him his bitch off-screen? He gets magically - and completely - cured of his Homicidal Maniac curse by a couple of magical YA novel expys at the end of the story as basically a throwaway so everyone can have a happy ending and live happily ever after? You mean to tell me WotC ruined a potentially interesting character to create a storyline for another character that got resolved as ceremoniously as a wet fart?

Wow...I mean, Magic stories have always been kind of shit, but damn. Poor Nissa, and poor Garruk.