I don't really like how the newly revealed card Frilled Deathspitter is based on the fictional version of Dilophosaurus from Jurassic Park. The real dinosaur didn't have a frill and couldn't spit poison. I'm fine with fictional dinosaur characteristics based on general tropes, or new fictional characteristics you think up yourself, but it just seems wrong to lift a specific fictional creature from another property like that.
Resonance is based not on reality but on audience expectation. Theros has a Kraken in it not because actual Greek mythology has Krakens (it’s Scandinavian, I believe) but popular culture created an expectation of Krakens in a Greek mythology setting.
this still makes me mad. there’s literally one source for kraken tied to greek anything, and it’s a garbage claymation film no one cares about. super lame explanation for a complete flavor fail.
I’m still really frustrated by the post-Kamigawa decision that people are only excited by the pop-culture version of things. I don’t think anyone would have been put off if the krakens in Theros had been the more geographically appropriate Cetea instead. It’s not like Magic doesn’t otherwise have just random sea monsters. I think this forced pop-culture resonance just makes it less likely to use more marginalized cultures and make stories that borrow from those cultures weaker and more problematic. The forced mashing of pirates and vampire conquistadors into Ixalan is a great example of this. (Although I will say that I am really impressed with how the creative team wrote those elements, even if I feel like they shouldn’t have been there.
I think this is a really great example of something that Lindsay Ellis talks about in her video essay ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Genres Tell No Tales’. When a corporation makes a bad product (in this case the Kamigawa block) they tend to claim that the audience isn’t interested in a wide genre (sets based on world mythology) rather than admit that the product was designed poorly. I have no doubt that the flavor of Kamigawa was as poorly-received as Wizards says, but I think it’s probably because Wizards did a poor job with Kamigawa’s world-building and story, not because Japanese mythology is inherently unmarketable.
I have to admit, I can’t say how because I did not play when the set came out. But, just look at something like Avatar: the Last Airbender. I don’t want to claim it was perfect, but it tried hard to stay true to the cultures it represented and was fantastically received. Resonance comes from when we see ourselves in the story, not some Ready Player One vomit of pop culture references. There are universalities of human existence that allow us to see ourselves in stories regardless of the culture they are inspired by.
WOTC never said they were against doing another Japan themed plane. In fact they said it’s more likely then going to Kamigawa again. It is exactly as you said, Kamigawa’s poor top down design (it managed to be both innacurate AND not resonant) doesnt mean wotc think’s japan themed worlds are a bad idea. Heck Kamigawa itself came out around the time Yugioh and Duelmasters did, two massivly popular tcgs. I also find it odd people still dont get why Conquistadors and pirates are on the same plane. The Golden Age of Piracy was literally built on the back of Spanish imperialism in what’s now Latin American. Conquistadors, Pirates and fantasy Mesoamericans is literally the closest wotc has come to recreating actual history and folks find it “random.” You bring up Pirates of the Carribean, did you not notice how often Spain and/or the Spanish empire cropped up in that franchise?
Well it’s more that the current Wizards attitude seems (to me, at least) to be that we can only ever do pop culture versions of things, which severely limits their ability to look towards sources that don’t get much (or any) pop culture representation. I have absolutely nothing against Wizards taking a source material and making it more Magic-y, you could argue that most good art is ultimately about looking at what came before and putting some of yourself into it. But, you can still do that and make it engaging without necessarily referring to pop culture tropes.
Really, that is what makes the pirates and conquistadors so...”random” with regards to Ixalan. It’s not that pirates and conquistadors have nothing to do with mesoamerica, obviously there were huge historical connections. It’s that they were put in because pirates and conquistadors is most of what western-dominated pop culture knows about. It really feels to me like what Wizards creative really wanted to do was a mesoamerican inspired set, but then felt like they had to add conquistadors and pirates to make it marketable. Are there historical reasons to group these people? Absolutely. But the way it was done seems a bit forced and disconnected and that sort of thing is often the result of meddling from the business side.
It really baffles me how often the business side of things just assumes that that set of meddling is imperceptible. Then again, when my dad worked as an engineer in industry he was repeatedly asked to design machines that violated physical laws and told to find a way around it so *shrug*
There’s also the issue of how pop culture often presents a revisionist and whitewashed image, especially for depictions of non-Western people. Was it ok to present mesoamericans with pirates and conquistadors without a discussion of the horrors of colonialism? Can a card game even be an ppropriate medium to discuss these sorts of matters? For what it’s worth I was actually impressed with how well the creative team handled it, all things considered. But when you limit yourself to pop-culture depictions you definitely make it harder to subvert harmful tropes and stereotypes.
Also, in general, people are smarter and more curious than corporate culture gives them credit for, goddamnit. Just make something good and most people will engage.
