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Quote from Flamebuster »Wow eh...someone fell asleep at the quality control wheel this time around because they took too many shortcuts.
'buster
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Quote from Flamebuster »For those saying it's not Harry Potter influenced...it looks pretty Harry Potter influenced here if you ask me.
'buster
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Quote from Warforged Canuck »Quote from Cranky »Quote from Warforged Canuck »Tragic the pandering. More woke dollar milking for people to virtue signal with.
Really bruh? All of the proceeds are going to charity and the art so far is pretty damn slick. This is what the last charity box should've been, why you hating?
It's not really hating to point out where companies just shill out a product because 'special group x' has an event, event with a double standard. I've bought a bunch of the secret lairs so far and for most of it have enjoyed the products, but tokenism is still sickening.
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Quote from Werewolf_Rawr »So much woke in Magic: the Gathering where escapism should be at it's peak. Glad to see so many woke people on this forum too. Glad y'all have a place to remind everyone how with it you are. Product is 100% pandering. Could've released this at any time - but it wasn't, it was done now. And that's why it's off. It has nothing to do with the product itself and some of you can't see that. That being said, this is nothing to be surprised about from WOTC.
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Quote from OrzhovPlaneswalker »Quote from mikeyG »Wait, WotC is doing a great thing for Black girls, and your first thought was "what about me?" Yikes.
At this point it's kinda bread and butter to the MO of some of these regular naysayers.
All we can do is speak out, block, and/or report.
There's a persistent pattern here of particular users always going out of their way to problematize greater inclusivity for marginalized folks and folx.
Are there any good online MtG communities that don't put up with this kinda stuff that one can join?
The Vorthos community on this here website is still pretty small, and I'd be willing to join other sites and help build a Vorthos/Timmie community there if its user base is a little more progressive than MtGsalv.
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Quote from mikeyG »Wait, WotC is doing a great thing for Black girls, and your first thought was "what about me?" Yikes.
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Quote from cyberium_neo »Was Shalai suppose to be black?
Quote from Dusque »I love products like this because they get all the right people super upset lol.
Quote from LilianaxChandra »This is the old question "Why isn't there a White History Month?" rephrased. There are tons of products that target or glorify men in Magic's history. It's called "Virtually every set".
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Quote from Tiro of Meletis »Has WOTC ever done anything for men? Young men? Men of color, even? Just curious. There's all this criticism of "toxic masculinity" but no attempts to cultivate healthy male development. More men are in prisons, dying in wars, expected to pay the bill on dates, have their abuse and emotional turmoils dismissed and told to "man up" and here we are.
That said, I like the art for Ponder, especially featuring known legends, and I'm not going to knock something for charity during an appropriate month. I can understand some frustration with how one-sided WOTC has been, but look no further than White in EDH to understand why. They get wrapped up sometimes in linear thinking. Basri is our only Arabic character so... there's more on the racial spectrum guys. But again, it's Black History Month.
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Rather like removing cards such as Chaos Orb removed a physical element to the game they didn't want in official play didn't magically prevent people from playing those cards at home, but did remove a potential physical barrier from people from official events in a game that otherwise does not require explicitly physical skills to play. You can still play with those types of cards at home, just not at any officially-sanctioned events. And the history of those cards being in the game remains intact.
Rather like removing ante cards doesn't in any way prevent people at home from playing for ante or with those cards, but does prevent you from having cards permanently taken from you in official events without your consent, as well as removing an explicit gambling element from the game. You can still play with those cards and for ante, just not at any officially-sanctioned events. And the history of those cards and the ante mechanic being in the game remains intact.
In the same way that removing a statue isn't erasing history, it's just removing a memorial to someone from public spaces. Somehow, magically, we can look at post-WWII Germany, not see anymore publicly displayed fascist statues or imagery, yet have deep, complex, nuanced, and THOROUGH histories of that time intact, without a single need to maintain officially-sanctioned public imagery commemorating the acts or the people involved.
This is nothing more than taking some problematic combinations of imagery, words, and effects that have a profoundly negative context to those historically or currently harmed by the aforementioned (and no, no one else gets to tell the marginalized they are not being harmed, and that somehow intent or the lack thereof negates that harm), and removing them from officially-sanctioned public events. The end.
When WotC decides they can take your cards away from you and destroy them, or otherwise utterly erase their existence from the game as a whole instead of merely at official events, then there might be a leg to stand on in terms of accusing them of trying to actually erase history.
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The goddess of fate on Theros, then, embodies both the natural order of the progression of life and time and the destiny such things invariably bring with them. But she is also the embodiment of the unpredictable nature of fate.
While Calix is explicitly--per previous descriptions of the character himself--fate's agent of order in the world, and thus green/white, the goddess of fate herself, being the embodiment of fate itself, is far more chaotic and unpredictable (a thoroughly red trait). But she still has profound use for agents who pull the strands of fate into an ordered weave, pulling order from chaos to guide specific destinies.
So red/green is quite understandable as destiny. Destiny is something that comes to everyone, whether they wish it or not, and that destiny is very often indeed unpredictable, bringing chaotic upheaval to life, both personal and in the multitudes.
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I think this card very, very successfully encapsulates a classic trope of many a story of such monsters of the deeps. Where you only see a hint of it, at first. However, as the narrative progresses, you begin to see more and more of the truth. First one tentacle grasps a person and pulls them under. Then, more and more tentacles slowly appear, wrapping around more people, around the ship, multiple ships, a whole fleet. As it rises to the surface more over the course of the story, the true danger lurking below grows more and more terrifying.
That's what this card appears to be going for. And for that reason, this card is chock full of flavor win, to me. And also might very well be playable in constructed? Heck, yeah.
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The gingerbread house is from Hansel and Gretel.
The whole story is about kids getting abandoned then lost within a forest. Their stepmother decides to take them out in the forest and then leave them there, but Hansel, the brother, initially leaves a trail of white pebbles he'd collected after overhearing the parents agree to abandon the children the previous night, the father reluctantly pushed into it by the stepmother so they don't have to pay to feed them anymore, the family is so poor.
The kids come back, and their stepmother locks them up so they can't collect more pebbles, but Hansel instead leaves a trail of breadcrumbs from the meager bread meal they had and he saved when their stepmom does the same thing to them. Birds, however, had eaten the breadcrumbs so they are lost deep in the woods.
They wander for DAYS, starving. Eventually, they happen upon a house made of gingerbread and candy within the forest, which they start to eat ravenously, then the whole witch thing happens, yadda yadda, cannibal, oven, kill the witch, escape, etc.
The story has always been about a gingerbread house quite specifically hidden deep within a FOREST. It's kind of the entire reason the kids get lost and stumble on it to begin with, because if it weren't a dense forest, they would have made their way home pretty easily.
Therefore, having the gingerbread house tied to a forest fits the flavor of the fairy tale it's highlighting perfectly. Just perfectly. It's a hugely important part of the story.
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Huh, is she? I'm afraid I hadn't noticed that. Nor other people of color mixed in.
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Must utterly disagree. Part of normalizing things like racial diversity is... you know... not bringing up things like "why was she married to a white man?"
Straight up, pointing out that there simply must be reasons for these details, that there has to be significance to justify its inclusion, flat out continues to other marginalized people. It's very much akin to pointing out that a marriage is interracial or that a couple has a "gay marriage" instead of, you know, just... these two people are married, no more context needed, that continues to highlight them as other, and not simply people who are existing as people doing things people do all the time.
By not explaining it as being something that requires a reason in any way, it's far more inclusive and presented as simply a normal part of this world. Women are knights, a black woman is married to a white man. None of it is explained, because it's all just a normal part of life on Eldraine. You know, like fairies flying around and giants stomping about and food coming to life and having sentience is just a normal part of life on this world.
The wildest part is... guess what virtually never needs an explanation for why it is in stories and worlds like this? Fairies, and giants, and living, sentient food. They're allowed to be just a normal part of this world, to simply exist within the world, without any explanation needed. But gender and racial diversity? Nah. That simply must have an explanation to justify it existing.
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This may come as a shock, but a queen, even the highest queen in a realm, often did NOT have all the powers of the king, especially if the king had a living oldest heir (in the real world usually male heir), and especially if she was not the blood mother of the heir(s). Such a queen would act, at best, as a regent, and answerable to the Lords and to the Crown Prince, without anything near the full powers of the monarchy herself. This is not always the case, but often enough. And we do not know what the laws and courtly rules of Eldraine are, so we still cannot say that Linden herself had the same power over the other Courts of Eldraine, simply because she's the High King's wife.
In a huge number of societies, Will and/or Rowan would have the power of the throne, and NOT a stepmother queen. So really, it's not at all unreasonable to think Kennreth's abilities represent his power as the High King alone, and having nothing to do with the knightly quests he and Linden apparently undertook in younger days, nor that anyone who's not the High King would NOT have such abilities.
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Being his wife doesn't necessarily give her the authority of the High King. Really depends on the laws of the land, so it can't be assumed the wife of the High King has the same authority over the five courts as the High King.
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Ah, okay. That makes some sense, I suppose.
That being said, is that what the five color-activated abilities on Kennreth for sure represent? Or is that simply supposition?
Because--without reading the novel, granted--it makes 100% perfect sense that the High King of the realms has those five different color-based abilities simply because he is the monarch in control of all five mana-color-based Courts of Eldraine. As in, he quite literally has the political authority over and the power to command the use of all five courts of the realm with his word alone by virtue of being the High King, and those activated abilities represent his bringing to bear the power of a given court and its associated virtue (so loyalty for the white court, knowledge for blue, persistence for black, courage for red, and strength for the green court).
Not because he's undergone all the trials, but simply due to his political position. If the king of another court was the High King, I suspect they, too, would have five colored abilities to represent that authority over the five courts of Eldraine feudalism.
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Why is everyone mentioning her "needing" to be four colors? Isn't she quite literally the queen of the White Court of Ardenvale, as opposed to the
Black Court of Lochthwain, the Blue Court of Vantress, the Green Court of Garenbrig, and the Red Court of Embereth? So like... she actually represents the monarchy in control of the literally-white-mana-associated court of loyalty within the feudal structure of Eldraine. Why would she be four colors?