It seems that Eldraine runs on a "divine merit system" and not hereditary. Algenus and Linden (both born in the peasant class) where picked by the Questing Beast to go on the High Quest to gain knighthood of the 5 courts and implies that Rowan and Will (as well as Hazel and Erec) would need to be picked by the beast as well. Linden also mentions the last rulers abused thier rule privilege and thats the reason they lost power.
Funny enough its bright up by the people if she is up to ruling while the king is missing even thought most people have 1 knighthood and Linden had 4 knighthoods.
This, exactly. I'm not sure why there's so much questioning of her ability to rule (actually, I think we know why so many posters assume she can't be a rightful ruler). It's spelled out right in the story, and if I'm not mistaken it's actually a fairly relevant plot point given her failure to secure her fifth knighthood and subsequent rule upon the High King's disappearance is directly tied into the plot.
I'm really bummed her card is so bleh. It's just not that good at all, and definitely underwhelming for an important character. In fact, the white legends in Eldraine are both rather disappointing. I guess, if we count it, The Circle is alright if you're doing a Knight tribal thing but the critical mass of legendary Knights requires at least three colors and even then, a lot of the options are not ideal. To bring it full circle, were Linden a Human Noble Knight, it would have improved her quite a lot. Not enough to be competitive, mind you, but at least enough to make her desirable to casual tribal players.
the famous black queen of medieval european tales and her all female knights army. yeah, sure wotc..
Yeah! And while we are at it, the cow in Jack in the beanstalk wasn't a cursed person it was just a cow. Crystal slippers don't make Cinderella faster, if anything they slowed her down until she lost one. and last I checked Zombies were not a common creature in any european tale I ever heard of, also Goldilocks wasn't a hunter and pretty sure there are no mention of planeswalkers in any european myth or folklore.
Sarcasm aside, why does it matter? It's Wotc's world, they can populate it with whatever people and armies they want. It does not take away from the fact it is still obviously based on european folklore. Plus just look at the knights of the round table, Sir Morien was not white, the green knight was not white. People of color existed in the world of European myths so why not have a queen of color?
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Commander: UBG Tasigur, the lab enabler UR Planeswalker Control UBRW Breya's personal box of combos BRW Vampire beats, by Dre 1 Karn, where all lands are command towers UBR Inalla's Venser lock UBRGW Atog Atog contraption tribal WUB Xur's second chance UGW Derivi, bird tribal R Brother's Yamazaki BRG Prosh, the scourge of multiplayer GW Capt. Sisay's Deck Dumping Service UB All Your Spells do Belong to Me UG Tapioca Pearl BG Meren's grinder
actually id prefer to stick to the source material if you "steal" it. its not wotc world.
and there are no "people of color" in grimms. i hate that in your face sjw bull*****. maybe rewrite european history completely to be pc? maybe then nobody will notice how liberal society actually became.
but leave politics out of the fcking game. it completely destroys my immersion.
Wrong. This isn’t Arabian Nights. This IS WotCs world. Inspired by fairy tales and Arthurian myth. It’s not sjw ***** it’s just the story they wanted to tell with the characters they wanted to use. This isn’t medieval Europe. It’s Eldrain.
actually id prefer to stick to the source material if you "steal" it. its not wotc world.
and there are no "people of color" in grimms. i hate that in your face sjw bull*****. maybe rewrite european history completely to be pc?
It is not just Grimms world though. There are clearly Knights of the round table references in here and that story does have non-white people. Also as much as it is influenced by grimm's fairy tales. This is not just grimm's tales stuck to cards. They are references. The world of Eldraine is wotc, they can do with it what they want. I still don't know why a female army and a Queen of color are so insulting/upsetting.
It's only political if you read it to be. I personally see no political statement from these cards. I don't see anything that takes me out of the world, from what I can tell they are still fantasy based and on theme.
Commander: UBG Tasigur, the lab enabler UR Planeswalker Control UBRW Breya's personal box of combos BRW Vampire beats, by Dre 1 Karn, where all lands are command towers UBR Inalla's Venser lock UBRGW Atog Atog contraption tribal WUB Xur's second chance UGW Derivi, bird tribal R Brother's Yamazaki BRG Prosh, the scourge of multiplayer GW Capt. Sisay's Deck Dumping Service UB All Your Spells do Belong to Me UG Tapioca Pearl BG Meren's grinder
It’s not political to have female knights. It’s not political to be a PoC who is a ruler. Both of those have existed in our world, let alone a fictional world.
It’s not political to have female knights. It’s not political to be a PoC who is a ruler. Both of those have existed in our world, let alone a fictional world.
To be fair, it *is* pretty explicitly political, which makes it a culturally relevant artistic choice for the game. Hardly anything in the world related to human beings can be totally divorced from politics, which makes the forum policy against discussing it a little overweening imo.
I would say that this issue shouldn't be *controversial*, but it evidently, sadly, is.
To be fair, it *is* pretty explicitly political, which makes it a culturally relevant artistic choice for the game. Hardly anything in the world related to human beings can be totally divorced from politics, which makes the forum policy against discussing it a little overweening imo.
I would say that this issue shouldn't be *controversial*, but it evidently, sadly, is.
There is no forum policy against discussion of themes and representation on cards or in art.
There is a forum policy against racism, hate speech, flaming, personal attacks, etc.
For some reason, so far, no conversation has managed to have the first, without the second.
For example, a comment such as "I find it interesting that Wizards has chosen to have a much stronger abundance of female and minority characters this set's theming", and the following polite, on topic, discussion about the art and themes of spoiled cards would be acceptable.
As a second example: "Women can't be knights, why are all the women taking men's roles? Why is Wizards making everything so gay? This isn't the Magic I signed up for. GG, this game suxks with these changes" - is not acceptable. Comments such as that will be infracted on sight.
I agree with you that this topic should not be so controversial. And yet... it is.
To be fair, it *is* pretty explicitly political, which makes it a culturally relevant artistic choice for the game. Hardly anything in the world related to human beings can be totally divorced from politics, which makes the forum policy against discussing it a little overweening imo.
I would say that this issue shouldn't be *controversial*, but it evidently, sadly, is.
There is no forum policy against discussion of themes and representation on cards or in art.
There is a forum policy against racism, hate speech, flaming, personal attacks, etc.
For some reason, so far, no conversation has managed to have the first, without the second.
For example, a comment such as "I find it interesting that Wizards has chosen to have a much stronger abundance of female and minority characters this set's theming", and the following polite, on topic, discussion about the art and themes of spoiled cards would be acceptable.
As a second example: "Women can't be knights, why are all the women taking men's roles? Why is Wizards making everything so gay? This isn't the Magic I signed up for. GG, this game suxks with these changes" - is not acceptable. Comments such as that will be infracted on sight.
I agree with you that this topic should not be so controversial. And yet... it is.
I think what upsets many of us "alt-right Nazis" is the double standards exhibited by WOTC and the MTG community. It's perfectly fine for an editor of MTG Salvation to publish an editorial implicitly calling for right-wingers to literally be burned alive in the streets, but any criticism of WOTC's heavy-handed far-leftism is labelled racism/trolling.
It's perfectly fine for Medieval-Europe-inspired planes to be populated with dark-skinned people, but no one questions why Amonkhet or Kamigawa are devoid of Caucasian natives.
It's perfectly fine for the WOTC community to complain about a picture of Garruk threatening to punch Liliana in the face, but no one questions when we have pictures of women like Massacre Girl standing over the bloodied bodies of her victims.
It's perfectly fine for Jeremy Hambly to be physically beaten and ejected from the community because he wrote some mean things about some people online, but no one questions why the MTG community harassed and doxxed Terese Nielsen online due to her not following the same childish SJWism as the rest of the community.
And before the tendentious mods of this website label this post as hate speech/racism/flaming/trolling, bear in mind that, since you care so much about increasing the presence of brown people in the game, I am a brown-skinned Indian, and my message is this: If diversity is so important to you, then perhaps you should allow diversity of thought. And if you wish to keep politics out of MTG, then perhaps you shouldn't try to sneak it in.
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"For the sake of Hasbro's half-year financial report, we will keep watch."
-- The Gatewatch
That's all that people like you ever do, which is why you'll never understand the arguments against which you speak.
Can you boil that argument down a little because all I'm seeing is "wow one thing is bad, and another thing is good! How strange" repeated over and over.
I think what upsets many of us "alt-right Nazis" is the double standards exhibited by WOTC and the MTG community. It's perfectly fine for an editor of MTG Salvation to publish an editorial implicitly calling for right-wingers to literally be burned alive in the streets, but any criticism of WOTC's heavy-handed far-leftism is labelled racism/trolling.
It's perfectly fine for Medieval-Europe-inspired planes to be populated with dark-skinned people, but no one questions why Amonkhet or Kamigawa are devoid of Caucasian natives.
It's perfectly fine for the WOTC community to complain about a picture of Garruk threatening to punch Liliana in the face, but no one questions when we have pictures of women like Massacre Girl standing over the bloodied bodies of her victims.
It's perfectly fine for Jeremy Hambly to be physically beaten and ejected from the community because he wrote some mean things about some people online, but no one questions why the MTG community harassed and doxxed Terese Nielsen online due to her not following the same childish SJWism as the rest of the community.
And before the tendentious mods of this website label this post as hate speech/racism/flaming/trolling, bear in mind that, since you care so much about increasing the presence of brown people in the game, I am a brown-skinned Indian, and my message is this: If diversity is so important to you, then perhaps you should allow diversity of thought. And if you wish to keep politics out of MTG, then perhaps you shouldn't try to sneak it in.
I don't think this is the argument though.
I am arguing that one should not get upset there is representation of one race or another. If you want to say Amonkhet had no white people that is fair, it didnt have really any apart from the planeswalkers, which i think is fine repsentation. But for every set that has few white people you can find a handful or more that are a majority white or all white. But again not really the point.
The issue started because they said the source material does not have people of color and this apparently was upsetting. I pointed out in fact the source material does have people of color in the likes of the knights of the round table. Yes the left is not without fault, yes people are hyprocrites. Regardless of any of that, no one should be upset if a set has a person of any race or identity. Period.
Commander: UBG Tasigur, the lab enabler UR Planeswalker Control UBRW Breya's personal box of combos BRW Vampire beats, by Dre 1 Karn, where all lands are command towers UBR Inalla's Venser lock UBRGW Atog Atog contraption tribal WUB Xur's second chance UGW Derivi, bird tribal R Brother's Yamazaki BRG Prosh, the scourge of multiplayer GW Capt. Sisay's Deck Dumping Service UB All Your Spells do Belong to Me UG Tapioca Pearl BG Meren's grinder
I think what upsets many of us "alt-right Nazis" is the double standards exhibited by WOTC and the MTG community. It's perfectly fine for an editor of MTG Salvation to publish an editorial implicitly calling for right-wingers to literally be burned alive in the streets, but any criticism of WOTC's heavy-handed far-leftism is labelled racism/trolling.
It's perfectly fine for Medieval-Europe-inspired planes to be populated with dark-skinned people, but no one questions why Amonkhet or Kamigawa are devoid of Caucasian natives.
It's perfectly fine for the WOTC community to complain about a picture of Garruk threatening to punch Liliana in the face, but no one questions when we have pictures of women like Massacre Girl standing over the bloodied bodies of her victims.
It's perfectly fine for Jeremy Hambly to be physically beaten and ejected from the community because he wrote some mean things about some people online, but no one questions why the MTG community harassed and doxxed Terese Nielsen online due to her not following the same childish SJWism as the rest of the community.
And before the tendentious mods of this website label this post as hate speech/racism/flaming/trolling, bear in mind that, since you care so much about increasing the presence of brown people in the game, I am a brown-skinned Indian, and my message is this: If diversity is so important to you, then perhaps you should allow diversity of thought. And if you wish to keep politics out of MTG, then perhaps you shouldn't try to sneak it in.
The reason most people do not bother addressing the comments you called 'arguments' is that they lack that format structure, especially in this instance. But let us try and extract that together, shall we? Based on the anecdotes which have been selected in the quoted message, you seem to be attempting to lead the reader to a conclusion somewhere in the ballpark of 'WotC and the community around MtG are unjustly biased against value conservative people'. Because I am not familiar with the details of the cases to which you are alluding with regard to a MTGS editorial or Teresa Nielsen, I will refrain from commenting on those outside stating that the first one is extremely hyperbolic. Calling WotC 'far-left' - let alone ideologically motivated in said respect, as the use of 'ism' implies - based on their representation of members of disempowered groups as parts of their fictional works is the usual online conflation of 'everything I disagree with' with extremism and a label binarily opposed to whichever one oneself identifies with. This form of hyperbole signals utter lack of nuance which colours whether the take is considered worth spending the time to analyse, whether justifiedly or not.
So, firstly - the alleged disparity in representation between worlds modelled after different historical contexts. I checked every 'human' card in Amonkhet to see the variety of shades in terms of skin colour and as Bloodlust Inciter, Glory-Bound Initiate, Honored Crop-Captain, True-Heart Duelist, and Vizier of Remedies show, there is variation in various directions (including lighter tones well within the range Caucasians exhibit). I mostly focused on the lighter hues because of your argument here. Now, interestingly, that form of variation would have occurred in historical Egypt, too, because of its relatively active trade (and other forms of interactions) with other Mediterranean nations. Similarly, people of various skin tones have been a part of European culture throughout history. While he is a fictional example, the eponymous Othello in Shakespeare's play is a Moorish general of the Venetian army and traditionally gets depicted with deep dark skin. Yet people tend to act as though representations of different identities are a uniquely modern phenomenon and somehow reduce the artistic integrity of the works in question. Rome was an extremely multi-cultural empire despite the city being in Italy. The crusades and similar historical contingencies having made parts of Europe hostile to people of other ethnicities is not something which needs to be represented in fictional works because that period is the exception rather than the rule in the grand scheme of things.
As for depictions of gendered violence - the example you brought up being Triumph of Ferocity - the issue people observe mainly lies in some depictions using imagery associated with real trauma such as domestic abuse. In essence, those experiences are being turned into symbols which then become dissociated from their original contexts and the impact such events truly have. I believe WotC had intended the complementing nature of Triumph of Cruelty to balance such associations out. However, the framing of the two images is very different: one focuses on Garruk's suffering and leaves Liliana in the background; the other focuses on Garruk's anger and uses signs of domestic abuse like choking, Liliana's relatively passive pose, and punching (in the face). The two thus end up not being symmetrical since Garruk is the focus of both. We can also relatively easily imagine alternative depictions of Garruk having the upper hand over Liliana which do not apply these signifiers. Off the top of my head, he could be sending wolves after her, approach her with his axe in hand while she is struggling against vines that are depicted in a non-bondage fashion, and so on. These are still depictions of violence against a woman by a man but not of gendered violence. For the record, Massacre Girl's picture shows a woman lying there dead. However, the bigger difference there is that she is a depiction of generic violence by a woman rather than 'feminine violence'. Assuming that WotC ever made a card where a woman was participating in a form of 'feminine violence' like castrating a man in his sleep, it would likely be problematic but there would be less overall impact since instances of such violence are considerably rarer and do not constitute a systematic societal issue.
I hope you are content at having had your points be addressed to the best of my ability to try and explain the thought processes behind what you dismissed as just 'far-leftism'.
It's perfectly fine for [medieval Europe] to be populated with dark-skinned people, but no one questions why [ancient Egypt] or [medieval Japan] are devoid of Caucasian natives.
speaking of double standards - I've edited your "argument," applying the filter of your own wish that Wizards' fantasy worlds should stick to their source material/inspiration more. hope this helps.
It's perfectly fine for [medieval Europe] to be populated with dark-skinned people, but no one questions why [ancient Egypt] or [medieval Japan] are devoid of Caucasian natives.
speaking of double standards - I've edited your "argument," applying the filter of your own wish that Wizards' fantasy worlds should stick to their source material/inspiration more. hope this helps.
who am I kidding, you're beyond help.
As you can probably see from my above comment, I am not sympathetic to the position they presented but I prefer them not being able to use this misunderstanding as ammunition, either: It appears the point they were making was about (supposed) hypocrisy rather than a demand that Caucasians get inserted into those contexts. Basically, that whichever standard gets used should be applied to all demographics in all settings instead of some demographics getting 'special treatment'. However, as pointed out above, the premise that people of colour are getting special treatment is mistaken since Europe and Africa have highly intertwined history and thus far, all examples of such supposed 'insertions' have been about dark-skinned people in settings using European history as inspiration.
I think what upsets many of us "alt-right Nazis" is the double standards exhibited by WOTC and the MTG community. It's perfectly fine for an editor of MTG Salvation to publish an editorial implicitly calling for right-wingers to literally be burned alive in the streets, but any criticism of WOTC's heavy-handed far-leftism is labelled racism/trolling.
I understand that many people on this forum perceive "double standards," but double standards are only a problem under the condition of all other things being equal. The examples you provide don't meet this condition.
Also, while I would agree that the themes of Throne of Eldraine are perhaps heavy-handed, it's simply inaccurate to characterize those themes as "far-leftist." Throne of Eldraine is basically a bourgeois, romanticist take on feminism--it's centrist and liberal, not far leftist.
It's perfectly fine for Medieval-Europe-inspired planes to be populated with dark-skinned people, but no one questions why Amonkhet or Kamigawa are devoid of Caucasian natives.
Those two examples are not equivalent. Why is this an issue to be discussed?
It's perfectly fine for the WOTC community to complain about a picture of Garruk threatening to punch Liliana in the face, but no one questions when we have pictures of women like Massacre Girl standing over the bloodied bodies of her victims.
Probably we should steer away from depictions of violence against women for the same reason that, say, child pornography is not allowed. Is it an unfair "double standard" that other forms of pornography are legal?
And before the tendentious mods of this website label this post as hate speech/racism/flaming/trolling, bear in mind that, since you care so much about increasing the presence of brown people in the game, I am a brown-skinned Indian, and my message is this: If diversity is so important to you, then perhaps you should allow diversity of thought. And if you wish to keep politics out of MTG, then perhaps you shouldn't try to sneak it in.
I for one am in favor of diversity of thought. Although maybe not so diverse that it includes interlocutors who make bad arguments and maintain their position even after being refuted. Diversity of thought cannot come at the expense of rationality of thought.
It's perfectly fine for [medieval Europe] to be populated with dark-skinned people, but no one questions why [ancient Egypt] or [medieval Japan] are devoid of Caucasian natives.
speaking of double standards - I've edited your "argument," applying the filter of your own wish that Wizards' fantasy worlds should stick to their source material/inspiration more. hope this helps.
who am I kidding, you're beyond help.
As you can probably see from my above comment, I am not sympathetic to the position they presented but I prefer them not being able to use this misunderstanding as ammunition, either: It appears the point they were making was about (supposed) hypocrisy rather than a demand that Caucasians get inserted into those contexts. Basically, that whichever standard gets used should be applied to all demographics in all settings instead of some demographics getting 'special treatment'. However, as pointed out above, the premise that people of colour are getting special treatment is mistaken since Europe and Africa have highly intertwined history and thus far, all examples of such supposed 'insertions' have been about dark-skinned people in settings using European history as inspiration.
this is exactly what I mean to convey in my post, albeit using fewer words and more sarcasm. the only hypocritical party in this exchange is Bhogal83.
Oh my gosh people - our perceptions of these historical "inaccuracies" are due specifically to...historical inaccuracies!! In the 700s AD Spain was conquered by Muslims - commonly referred to as Moors here. The same goes for Sicily and parts of Italy. Dark skinned individuals were EXTREMELY POPULOUS in Medieval Europe. In Arthurian lore Sir Palamedes was an Arab muslim converted to Christianity. Late 20th century retellings of Robin Hood often has an African Muslim in his troop of merry men - why? To accentuate the historicity of the melding and bleeding of ethnic groups in Europe at the time. If you go to the Met and look at old paintings, you will see that there were numerous individuals of color depicted in court scenes. People of color were not absent from Medieval Europe - Europeans are NOT an Aryan race. Europeans are a diverse group of ethnicities of varying skin colors whose origins stem from both the North AND the South (i.e. Africa and the Middle East).
This, exactly. I'm not sure why there's so much questioning of her ability to rule (actually, I think we know why so many posters assume she can't be a rightful ruler). It's spelled out right in the story, and if I'm not mistaken it's actually a fairly relevant plot point given her failure to secure her fifth knighthood and subsequent rule upon the High King's disappearance is directly tied into the plot.
I'm really bummed her card is so bleh. It's just not that good at all, and definitely underwhelming for an important character. In fact, the white legends in Eldraine are both rather disappointing. I guess, if we count it, The Circle is alright if you're doing a Knight tribal thing but the critical mass of legendary Knights requires at least three colors and even then, a lot of the options are not ideal. To bring it full circle, were Linden a Human Noble Knight, it would have improved her quite a lot. Not enough to be competitive, mind you, but at least enough to make her desirable to casual tribal players.
Archatmos
Excellion
Fracture: Israfiel (WBR), Wujal (URG), Valedon (GUB), Amduat (BGW), Paladris (RWU)
Collision (Set Two of the Fracture Block)
Quest for the Forsaken (Set Two of the Excellion Block)
Katingal: Plane of Chains
Yeah! And while we are at it, the cow in Jack in the beanstalk wasn't a cursed person it was just a cow. Crystal slippers don't make Cinderella faster, if anything they slowed her down until she lost one. and last I checked Zombies were not a common creature in any european tale I ever heard of, also Goldilocks wasn't a hunter and pretty sure there are no mention of planeswalkers in any european myth or folklore.
Sarcasm aside, why does it matter? It's Wotc's world, they can populate it with whatever people and armies they want. It does not take away from the fact it is still obviously based on european folklore. Plus just look at the knights of the round table, Sir Morien was not white, the green knight was not white. People of color existed in the world of European myths so why not have a queen of color?
UBG Tasigur, the lab enabler UR Planeswalker Control
UBRW Breya's personal box of combos BRW Vampire beats, by Dre
1 Karn, where all lands are command towers UBR Inalla's Venser lock
UBRGW Atog Atog contraption tribal WUB Xur's second chance
UGW Derivi, bird tribal R Brother's Yamazaki
BRG Prosh, the scourge of multiplayer GW Capt. Sisay's Deck Dumping Service
UB All Your Spells do Belong to Me UG Tapioca Pearl
BG Meren's grinder
<snip>
whats next? Little Red Riding Hood identified as wolf and never got eaten in the first place?
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Wrong. This isn’t Arabian Nights. This IS WotCs world. Inspired by fairy tales and Arthurian myth. It’s not sjw ***** it’s just the story they wanted to tell with the characters they wanted to use. This isn’t medieval Europe. It’s Eldrain.
It is not just Grimms world though. There are clearly Knights of the round table references in here and that story does have non-white people. Also as much as it is influenced by grimm's fairy tales. This is not just grimm's tales stuck to cards. They are references. The world of Eldraine is wotc, they can do with it what they want. I still don't know why a female army and a Queen of color are so insulting/upsetting.
It's only political if you read it to be. I personally see no political statement from these cards. I don't see anything that takes me out of the world, from what I can tell they are still fantasy based and on theme.
UBG Tasigur, the lab enabler UR Planeswalker Control
UBRW Breya's personal box of combos BRW Vampire beats, by Dre
1 Karn, where all lands are command towers UBR Inalla's Venser lock
UBRGW Atog Atog contraption tribal WUB Xur's second chance
UGW Derivi, bird tribal R Brother's Yamazaki
BRG Prosh, the scourge of multiplayer GW Capt. Sisay's Deck Dumping Service
UB All Your Spells do Belong to Me UG Tapioca Pearl
BG Meren's grinder
sure they could also just print another eldrazi into "their" world. but i was as offended by them in innistrad 2.0
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To be fair, it *is* pretty explicitly political, which makes it a culturally relevant artistic choice for the game. Hardly anything in the world related to human beings can be totally divorced from politics, which makes the forum policy against discussing it a little overweening imo.
I would say that this issue shouldn't be *controversial*, but it evidently, sadly, is.
Magic: corrupting your children into realizing that male corsets and black women exist, since 2011.
There is no forum policy against discussion of themes and representation on cards or in art.
There is a forum policy against racism, hate speech, flaming, personal attacks, etc.
For some reason, so far, no conversation has managed to have the first, without the second.
I agree with you that this topic should not be so controversial. And yet... it is.
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Thank you, I appreciate the clarification.
It's perfectly fine for Medieval-Europe-inspired planes to be populated with dark-skinned people, but no one questions why Amonkhet or Kamigawa are devoid of Caucasian natives.
It's perfectly fine for the WOTC community to complain about a picture of Garruk threatening to punch Liliana in the face, but no one questions when we have pictures of women like Massacre Girl standing over the bloodied bodies of her victims.
It's perfectly fine for Jeremy Hambly to be physically beaten and ejected from the community because he wrote some mean things about some people online, but no one questions why the MTG community harassed and doxxed Terese Nielsen online due to her not following the same childish SJWism as the rest of the community.
And before the tendentious mods of this website label this post as hate speech/racism/flaming/trolling, bear in mind that, since you care so much about increasing the presence of brown people in the game, I am a brown-skinned Indian, and my message is this: If diversity is so important to you, then perhaps you should allow diversity of thought. And if you wish to keep politics out of MTG, then perhaps you shouldn't try to sneak it in.
-- The Gatewatch
That's all that people like you ever do, which is why you'll never understand the arguments against which you speak.
-- The Gatewatch
Can you boil that argument down a little because all I'm seeing is "wow one thing is bad, and another thing is good! How strange" repeated over and over.
I don't think this is the argument though.
I am arguing that one should not get upset there is representation of one race or another. If you want to say Amonkhet had no white people that is fair, it didnt have really any apart from the planeswalkers, which i think is fine repsentation. But for every set that has few white people you can find a handful or more that are a majority white or all white. But again not really the point.
The issue started because they said the source material does not have people of color and this apparently was upsetting. I pointed out in fact the source material does have people of color in the likes of the knights of the round table. Yes the left is not without fault, yes people are hyprocrites. Regardless of any of that, no one should be upset if a set has a person of any race or identity. Period.
UBG Tasigur, the lab enabler UR Planeswalker Control
UBRW Breya's personal box of combos BRW Vampire beats, by Dre
1 Karn, where all lands are command towers UBR Inalla's Venser lock
UBRGW Atog Atog contraption tribal WUB Xur's second chance
UGW Derivi, bird tribal R Brother's Yamazaki
BRG Prosh, the scourge of multiplayer GW Capt. Sisay's Deck Dumping Service
UB All Your Spells do Belong to Me UG Tapioca Pearl
BG Meren's grinder
The reason most people do not bother addressing the comments you called 'arguments' is that they lack that format structure, especially in this instance. But let us try and extract that together, shall we? Based on the anecdotes which have been selected in the quoted message, you seem to be attempting to lead the reader to a conclusion somewhere in the ballpark of 'WotC and the community around MtG are unjustly biased against value conservative people'. Because I am not familiar with the details of the cases to which you are alluding with regard to a MTGS editorial or Teresa Nielsen, I will refrain from commenting on those outside stating that the first one is extremely hyperbolic. Calling WotC 'far-left' - let alone ideologically motivated in said respect, as the use of 'ism' implies - based on their representation of members of disempowered groups as parts of their fictional works is the usual online conflation of 'everything I disagree with' with extremism and a label binarily opposed to whichever one oneself identifies with. This form of hyperbole signals utter lack of nuance which colours whether the take is considered worth spending the time to analyse, whether justifiedly or not.
So, firstly - the alleged disparity in representation between worlds modelled after different historical contexts. I checked every 'human' card in Amonkhet to see the variety of shades in terms of skin colour and as Bloodlust Inciter, Glory-Bound Initiate, Honored Crop-Captain, True-Heart Duelist, and Vizier of Remedies show, there is variation in various directions (including lighter tones well within the range Caucasians exhibit). I mostly focused on the lighter hues because of your argument here. Now, interestingly, that form of variation would have occurred in historical Egypt, too, because of its relatively active trade (and other forms of interactions) with other Mediterranean nations. Similarly, people of various skin tones have been a part of European culture throughout history. While he is a fictional example, the eponymous Othello in Shakespeare's play is a Moorish general of the Venetian army and traditionally gets depicted with deep dark skin. Yet people tend to act as though representations of different identities are a uniquely modern phenomenon and somehow reduce the artistic integrity of the works in question. Rome was an extremely multi-cultural empire despite the city being in Italy. The crusades and similar historical contingencies having made parts of Europe hostile to people of other ethnicities is not something which needs to be represented in fictional works because that period is the exception rather than the rule in the grand scheme of things.
As for depictions of gendered violence - the example you brought up being Triumph of Ferocity - the issue people observe mainly lies in some depictions using imagery associated with real trauma such as domestic abuse. In essence, those experiences are being turned into symbols which then become dissociated from their original contexts and the impact such events truly have. I believe WotC had intended the complementing nature of Triumph of Cruelty to balance such associations out. However, the framing of the two images is very different: one focuses on Garruk's suffering and leaves Liliana in the background; the other focuses on Garruk's anger and uses signs of domestic abuse like choking, Liliana's relatively passive pose, and punching (in the face). The two thus end up not being symmetrical since Garruk is the focus of both. We can also relatively easily imagine alternative depictions of Garruk having the upper hand over Liliana which do not apply these signifiers. Off the top of my head, he could be sending wolves after her, approach her with his axe in hand while she is struggling against vines that are depicted in a non-bondage fashion, and so on. These are still depictions of violence against a woman by a man but not of gendered violence. For the record, Massacre Girl's picture shows a woman lying there dead. However, the bigger difference there is that she is a depiction of generic violence by a woman rather than 'feminine violence'. Assuming that WotC ever made a card where a woman was participating in a form of 'feminine violence' like castrating a man in his sleep, it would likely be problematic but there would be less overall impact since instances of such violence are considerably rarer and do not constitute a systematic societal issue.
I hope you are content at having had your points be addressed to the best of my ability to try and explain the thought processes behind what you dismissed as just 'far-leftism'.
speaking of double standards - I've edited your "argument," applying the filter of your own wish that Wizards' fantasy worlds should stick to their source material/inspiration more. hope this helps.
who am I kidding, you're beyond help.
As you can probably see from my above comment, I am not sympathetic to the position they presented but I prefer them not being able to use this misunderstanding as ammunition, either: It appears the point they were making was about (supposed) hypocrisy rather than a demand that Caucasians get inserted into those contexts. Basically, that whichever standard gets used should be applied to all demographics in all settings instead of some demographics getting 'special treatment'. However, as pointed out above, the premise that people of colour are getting special treatment is mistaken since Europe and Africa have highly intertwined history and thus far, all examples of such supposed 'insertions' have been about dark-skinned people in settings using European history as inspiration.
I understand that many people on this forum perceive "double standards," but double standards are only a problem under the condition of all other things being equal. The examples you provide don't meet this condition.
Also, while I would agree that the themes of Throne of Eldraine are perhaps heavy-handed, it's simply inaccurate to characterize those themes as "far-leftist." Throne of Eldraine is basically a bourgeois, romanticist take on feminism--it's centrist and liberal, not far leftist.
Those two examples are not equivalent. Why is this an issue to be discussed?
Probably we should steer away from depictions of violence against women for the same reason that, say, child pornography is not allowed. Is it an unfair "double standard" that other forms of pornography are legal?
I for one am in favor of diversity of thought. Although maybe not so diverse that it includes interlocutors who make bad arguments and maintain their position even after being refuted. Diversity of thought cannot come at the expense of rationality of thought.
this is exactly what I mean to convey in my post, albeit using fewer words and more sarcasm. the only hypocritical party in this exchange is Bhogal83.
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