I want to speak out against the whole push towards DEI. I feel that ever since you made the push to make identity the forefront of a character it has hurt the stories you tell. Captain Sisay's race was never the focus of her character and she was a complete badass! And I fear if you did it over again Gerrard would be trans, black and disabled just because. It also cheapens the stories of world devastation when characters worry more about their gender than Bolas destroying everything.
The reason I started this blog is so we can have frank conversations about things, so please letās talk about this.
Imagine if every time you turned on the TV or watched a movie, no one looked like you. For some of us, thatās never happened. We see ourselves constantly, so itās hard to truly understand what not seeing yourself represented in media is like.
I do have a personal window to this experience. While I am white and male, thereās an area where I am the minority - my religion. Jews are just under two and a half percent of the US population. I have had many experiences where Iāve been in situations where everything is geared towards a group I do not belong to, and zero consideration is given that not everyone at that event is part of the majority.
You just feel invisible and like an outsider. Itās not a great feeling. And I just experience it a tiny portion of time, only things that are geared specifically towards something religious. Most minorities have this feeling all the time, whenever theyāre outside their personal community.
Now imagine, after years of not seeing yourself ever, you finally see someone that looks like you, but nothing about the character rings remotely true. They donāt sound like you, they donāt act like you, the facts about their day-to-day life are just wrong. Itās clear whoever wrote the character didnāt truly understand the lived experience of the character, so the character feels fake.
You bring up Sisay. Michael Ryan and I didnāt technically create Sisay (she played a small role in the Mirage story), but we did do a lot to flesh out her character as the creators of the Weatherlight Saga. We turned her from a minor character into a major one.
And while Iām proud, in general, of our work on the Weatherlight Saga, I donāt think we did justice to Sisay as a character. Neither Michael nor I have any knowledge of what itās like to be a black woman. Nor did we ever talk to someone who did.
And if youāre someone like us that has no knowledge of that experience, you probably didnāt notice. But that doesnāt mean itās a good thing.
Imagine if we made a movie about your life, and we just made everything up. We invented people you never knew, we gave you a job you never had, and we had you say things youād never say. The movie might even be a good movie, but your response would be, but thatās not my life - thatās not me.
Now imagine we put the movie out, and people that never met you assumed that was what you were like. When people met you for the first time, they assumed things, because, you know, theyād seen the movie.
Thatās what misrepresenting people does. It not only makes them feel not seen, it falsely represents them, spreading lies, often stereotypes, making people believe things about them that arenāt true.
Our move towards diversity is just us trying to better reflect the world and the people in it. Weāre trying to do to everyone else what a certain portion of people get every day without ever having to think about it.
But why are we āmaking it the forefront of their characterā? Weāre not. Weāre making it a part of their character. But in a world where youāre not used to ever seeing it, it feels louder than it is. Things that are a natural part of the world that youāre used to feel like the background of the story because you understand the context to it.
If a man kisses his wife before going off to a battle, thatās not a big deal. Itās just a thing a husband might do to his wife when he leaves. Itās not the forefront of his character. Itās just part of his life. But youāve seen it hundreds of times, so it feels normal.
When someone does something that isnāt your lived experience it pulls focus. It seems like a big deal, but only because itās new to you. Itās just as mundane a thing to that character as the man kissing his wife is to him.
Even the turn āpushingā implies that itās unnaturally here, that weāre forcing something that naturally shouldnāt be. But why? That thing exists naturally in the real world, and it doesnāt make the real world any less. Maybe youāre less aware of it, but is making you aware of how others live their life āpushingā something on you?
How you live your life is represented constantly, everywhere. Why isnāt over-representing your experience at the expense of everyone elseās āpushingā it? Why is media only being the experience of those in power the āproper wayā?
Having more depth and variety doesnāt lessen stories. It makes them deeper, more rich, more nuanced. In short, it makes them better stories. In my former life, I was a professional writer. I took a lot of writing classes. One of the truism of writing is āspeaking truth leads to better storiesā.
Thereās another famous quote: āWhen youāre accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.ā Youāre used to being over-represented, so being a little less over-represented feels like something has been taken from you. But really it hasnāt. Having a better sense of the rest of the world comes with a lot of benefits.
Iāll use food as an example. Letās say all you were ever exposed to was the food of your heritage. Yeah, that food is really good, but sometimes isnāt it nice to eat foods of other nationalities? Isnāt your life better that you have a choice? Isnāt your exposure and access to the food of other nationalities a positive in your life?
Exposure to variety is a positive. It allows you to learn about things you didnāt know, experience things things youāve never experienced, and get a better sense of understanding of your friends and neighbors.
Our actions are not to harm anyone, and if you think thatās what weāre doing, please take a minute to actually absorb what Iām saying. Youāve spent your whole life metaphorically eating one type of food, and weāre just trying to show you how much youāve missed out on.
And while this might not impact you directly, weāre making a whole bunch of people felt seen. Weāre bringing joy. Think of it this way. We make a lot of cards. Not every card is for you. But if it makes someone else happy, if they get to include it in a deck, and it makes Magic better for them, how is it harming you that we include it? You have so many cards that you can play.
To this poster or people that share their viewpoint, the narrative that a gain for someone else is an attack on you is just not true. As I just pointed out above, you play a game all about personal choice, about players getting to choose how they play and enjoy the game. Why should life be any different than Magic?
Thanks for reading.
