So ever since Nissa was first introduced in duels of the planeswalkers and Zendikar, she was known to have been influenced by the elves of Lorwyn after her spark ignited. Thus, it made sense that early descriptions of her showed that she shared the ruthless philosophies of Lorwyn's elves. On the official site, there's still the description shown here saying that while she's "Beautiful, proud, and ruthless, this nature mage believes elves are the rightful heirs of all planes of the Multiverse—and she’s determined to make it so." Furthermore, her back history during her trip to Lorwyn was well emphasized now that Magic Origins is practically out. However, I noticed that her quote on Eyeblight Massacre seemed to be a bit incongruous with what I believed to be her philosophy.
Thus, my question is whether Nissa still shares the "elves only rule" philosophy while Eyeblight Massacre is simply saying "okay, I agree with you Dwynen, but maybe I just wouldn't take it THAT far," or if her character is possibly being reworked as a whole. For the latter case, I could conjure up a theory that they may have wanted to make her more mono-green than green-black because she's pretty much become Garruk's replacement as green's poster child as he's become all cursed with black magic (and having her also be green-blackish will seem kind of redundant). And note that I'm relatively unfamiliar with the initial Zendikar story, and wiki summaries aren't the best at giving me an idea of where her philosophies stand.
Most likely a retcon because they don't want a character that can be considered racist to be a face of the game.
They could have introduced a different green planeswalker, but they are avoiding creating too many characters and instead focus on the ones we already have, which also explains why they changed Gideon's ethnicity and name rather than introducing a new character to fill the racial diversity quota.
There's still time for her to develop those characteristics and then find her way out of them by the time the story Worldwaker occurs. As for that line from the story that became Eyeblight Massacre's flavor text you have to remember that she had literally just come from a face to face encounter with the Eldrazi Titans. After experiencing that I wouldn't want to see a bunch of people killing some others either.
How superior did Nissa carry herself in Teeth? I'll dig up my copy later; I recall that she hated vampires, but did she have the elves-are-the-best characteristic in the novel? Or just in her original Planeswalker biography?
Nissa is still an elementalist at heart—she summons a friend on her Planeswalker side—but her front side sells her more as the Joraga Scout, searching for new land when she happens upon Emrakul in the Akoum mountains, and transforms into a Planeswalker.
The scout part is a bit of an incongruity given her Uncharted Realms article; Creative has been rather careful so far in making these iterations of the plot consistent, so this was sad to see.
However, I love Sam's recognition that their original Gideon design wasn't planned for a kid until he saw the art and that caused them to go back to redesign! We won't have to worry about another Emmara mismatch!
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Dominian Scholar of the Old Guard, specializing in pre-revisionist (Armada comics) and revisionist (Brothers' War through Apocalypse)history
The UR didn't devote much time to her role within her tribe but she did seem to know her area well so I don't find it unbelievable that she was a scout.
Gutterstorm, I get that Creative can do no wrong in your eyes, but stop telling people not to criticize them when they flub things up. The have faith lolgument doesn't work when they can't plan 6 months ahead and have retconned things both in and out of the novels THEY printed. Creative's lazy, and as long as they remain lazy, they'll be called out on it.
In the novel she had friends that were merfolk, but intensely hated vampires. Her disdain for the other species of the plane wasn't pronounced; she just cared about Elves more than others.
Creative has been rather careful so far in making these iterations of the plot consistent
This is hardly an accomplishment, considering there have been literally no new URs or other story snippets since the origin stories. Give it a few months (or weeks, if we're pessimistic) and the inconsistencies will likely pile up like dead bodies at a Rakdos party.
@Flish--I know that that the more URs we get the more likely inconsistencies may arise, but I meant the consistency between cards, art, flavor, game, and URs so far for Origins materials. This consistency--and prevalence of story--is a good move.
When I was highly participative in the Storyline community, it was cool to know that I was one of a small percentage who knew the story because I chose to read the novels. The proliferation and accessibility of the story currently is great--now they need to tighten up their processes to continue telling a cohesive, non-contradictory story.
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Dominian Scholar of the Old Guard, specializing in pre-revisionist (Armada comics) and revisionist (Brothers' War through Apocalypse)history
@Flish--I know that that the more URs we get the more likely inconsistencies may arise, but I meant the consistency between cards, art, flavor, game, and URs so far for Origins materials. This consistency--and prevalence of story--is a good move.
Well, if they managed to get inconsistencies in the same product/story, that'd be a new low in history of mankind. It's not a very high bar to set.
Gutterstorm, I get that Creative can do no wrong in your eyes, but stop telling people not to criticize them when they flub things up. The have faith lolgument doesn't work when they can't plan 6 months ahead and have retconned things both in and out of the novels THEY printed. Creative's lazy, and as long as they remain lazy, they'll be called out on it.
I most certainly don't think they can do no wrong. Do I acknowledge that they have made changes, even mistakes? Yes. Do I think that they should have come forward end explained themselves by now, particularly with the focus of the panel being on the story? I sure do. Do I think that the changes are serious enough to warrant the backlash from folks like you? I most certainly don't. There is no disconnect created by Nissa being a scout. In the story there was all of a few paragraphs that have ANYTHING to do with the way she interacts with her tribe. Once she left she knew the area very well and was smart enough and talented enough to cover her tracks with her magic. Seems like she would make a pretty good scout. However discussing that is not the purpose of the story. I'm not saying have faith. I'm just saying that you should probably stop assuming you know what they're doing.
If you think they're lazy and not producing good content then just stop reading it. All of your criticism is based on a single mistake they made while their department was in upheaval and a whole lot of jumping to conclusions. Personally I'm enjoying the stories and I think the changes are so small that the differences created are not worth getting so worked up about.
Gutterstorm, I am in agreement with you. I only pointed out the scout business as it was the only instance of an inconsistency between Magic Duels, UR, cards, art, articles, flavor, etc. I'm all for their edits, revision, new direction, and proliferation of plot across various forms of media.
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Dominian Scholar of the Old Guard, specializing in pre-revisionist (Armada comics) and revisionist (Brothers' War through Apocalypse)history
Thanks everybody for all the information. So it sounds like the popular consensus is that Nissa's character was being tweaked similar to the way lots of characters in TV shows get reworked within the first few episodes. It's not very uncommon in those settings to change a character early on in order to make them a bit more likeable (and personally, the removal of her elf-supremacist ideologies was a welcome change to me as well). In the meantime, I'm interested in the fact that it seems like there are still some inconsistencies regarding her pre-ignition origins as I'm not familiar with the UR article. Does anybody remember the title to that story or give me a link?
Thanks everybody for all the information. So it sounds like the popular consensus is that Nissa's character was being tweaked similar to the way lots of characters in TV shows get reworked within the first few episodes. It's not very uncommon in those settings to change a character early on in order to make them a bit more likeable (and personally, the removal of her elf-supremacist ideologies was a welcome change to me as well). In the meantime, I'm interested in the fact that it seems like there are still some inconsistencies regarding her pre-ignition origins as I'm not familiar with the UR article. Does anybody remember the title to that story or give me a link?
Nissa was young in her origin story.
What I got out of it is later on she went to a bunch of other planes to learn about elves living there as well as returning to Lorwyn.
She probably developed her elvish elitism during her travels.
Most likely a retcon because they don't want a character that can be considered racist to be a face of the game.
Possibly. It actually would make sense, if we didn't know about Nissa before. You could have her start as a xenophobe, but watch Eyeblight Massacre and, well, elvish supremacy is a bit of an embarrassment now, isn't it? (This is actually one reason overt racism was no longer tenable after World War II.)
The problem is, she needs a bit of racism to explain her actions in Worldwake.
I also noticed that apparently she's the last Joraga? Also, she knows about the Eldrazi before meeting Sorin now.
I like how one of the other planes she visited (even though she didn't like it there) is green in Origins.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
I think their removal of Nissa's racist tendencies has less to do with not wanting a racist character and more to do with her mechanics shifting from elves to lands and elementals.
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I think their removal of Nissa's racist tendencies has less to do with not wanting a racist character and more to do with her mechanics shifting from elves to lands and elementals.
I think so too.
Perceiving a racist character as a problem is ridiculous when you have black characters committing atrocities regularly and nobody is even bothered by it.
I think their removal of Nissa's racist tendencies has less to do with not wanting a racist character and more to do with her mechanics shifting from elves to lands and elementals.
I think so too.
Perceiving a racist character as a problem is ridiculous when you have black characters committing atrocities regularly and nobody is even bothered by it.
It IS a problem if the character becomes the poster boy/girl for their respective color. About racism being bigger problem then murder/robbery, the reason is that murder/robbery is not a political issue and racism is.
About the change being made for the sake flavor or mechanics, I believe it was both. WotC concluded that they need the poster boy green walker being about lands/ramp (the way the main red walker is about burn and the blue one is about CA) and Garruk did not fit the bill as a beast master. They could either make a new walker or recycle a old one and that was a opportunity to save Nissa who was hated both for her flavor (race supremacist) and her mechanics (narrow elf tribal).
If they wanted to make a political statement (and let's be fair, they DID by retconning her) they could have made her realize the error of her ways throughout the story by using *gasp* character development.
That one UR where she became Worldwaker was a first step into this direction, but...
It's like rewriting Elspeth from having the "running away" attitude to being a badass who doesn't afraid of anything [sic]. Elspeth underwent character development to get from "zombies uguu~" to "I'm gonna kick some phyrexian ***". Why they couldn't do the same for Nissa is beyond me.
If they wanted to make a political statement (and let's be fair, they DID by retconning her) they could have made her realize the error of her ways throughout the story by using *gasp* character development.
That one UR where she became Worldwaker was a first step into this direction, but...
It's like rewriting Elspeth from having the "running away" attitude to being a badass who doesn't afraid of anything [sic]. Elspeth underwent character development to get from "zombies uguu~" to "I'm gonna kick some phyrexian ***". Why they couldn't do the same for Nissa is beyond me.
They didn't want to make a statement at all. If they wanted they would indeed develop her character in that direction. What they made was simply avoid the horrible move of making a racist character a hero of their stories (because that's what Nissa is shaping up to be in Battle for Zendikar).
The difference between Nissa and Elspeth is that Nissa only appeared 'once' and she was on a creative limbo ever since. Changing her is not remotely like changing Jace, Elspeth, Ajani, Liliana, etc... She was sort of a tertiary character.
I'm also not huge fan of these sudden character changes. It's not great to invest on lore that suffer discontinuities but it's something people who reads any series that are written by different authors are used to.
What they made was simply avoid the horrible move of making a racist character a hero of their stories (because that's what Nissa is shaping up to be in Battle for Zendikar).
Easy fix: Don't make her a hero then. Or make her a hero by accident, similarly to how Liliana freed Avacyn by accident.
Thus, my question is whether Nissa still shares the "elves only rule" philosophy while Eyeblight Massacre is simply saying "okay, I agree with you Dwynen, but maybe I just wouldn't take it THAT far," or if her character is possibly being reworked as a whole. For the latter case, I could conjure up a theory that they may have wanted to make her more mono-green than green-black because she's pretty much become Garruk's replacement as green's poster child as he's become all cursed with black magic (and having her also be green-blackish will seem kind of redundant). And note that I'm relatively unfamiliar with the initial Zendikar story, and wiki summaries aren't the best at giving me an idea of where her philosophies stand.
They could have introduced a different green planeswalker, but they are avoiding creating too many characters and instead focus on the ones we already have, which also explains why they changed Gideon's ethnicity and name rather than introducing a new character to fill the racial diversity quota.
Commander Decks
WDarien, King of KjeldorW - WYomiji, Who Bars the WayW - UIxidor, Reality SculptorU
BPhage the UntouchableB - BShirei,
Shadowborn Ap-Shizo's CaretakerB - RZirilan of the ClawR(W/U)Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper(W/U) - (2/G)Phelddagrif Politics(W/U) - (U/B)Mishra, Artificer Prodigy(U/R) - Karona, God of Voltron
And speaking of Nissa, here is an interesting comment from Sam Stoddard in his "Developing Double-Sided Planeswalkers" article from Friday:
The scout part is a bit of an incongruity given her Uncharted Realms article; Creative has been rather careful so far in making these iterations of the plot consistent, so this was sad to see.
However, I love Sam's recognition that their original Gideon design wasn't planned for a kid until he saw the art and that caused them to go back to redesign! We won't have to worry about another Emmara mismatch!
In the novel she had friends that were merfolk, but intensely hated vampires. Her disdain for the other species of the plane wasn't pronounced; she just cared about Elves more than others.
Your mods are terrified of me.
This is hardly an accomplishment, considering there have been literally no new URs or other story snippets since the origin stories. Give it a few months (or weeks, if we're pessimistic) and the inconsistencies will likely pile up like dead bodies at a Rakdos party.
When I was highly participative in the Storyline community, it was cool to know that I was one of a small percentage who knew the story because I chose to read the novels. The proliferation and accessibility of the story currently is great--now they need to tighten up their processes to continue telling a cohesive, non-contradictory story.
Well, if they managed to get inconsistencies in the same product/story, that'd be a new low in history of mankind. It's not a very high bar to set.
I most certainly don't think they can do no wrong. Do I acknowledge that they have made changes, even mistakes? Yes. Do I think that they should have come forward end explained themselves by now, particularly with the focus of the panel being on the story? I sure do. Do I think that the changes are serious enough to warrant the backlash from folks like you? I most certainly don't. There is no disconnect created by Nissa being a scout. In the story there was all of a few paragraphs that have ANYTHING to do with the way she interacts with her tribe. Once she left she knew the area very well and was smart enough and talented enough to cover her tracks with her magic. Seems like she would make a pretty good scout. However discussing that is not the purpose of the story. I'm not saying have faith. I'm just saying that you should probably stop assuming you know what they're doing.
If you think they're lazy and not producing good content then just stop reading it. All of your criticism is based on a single mistake they made while their department was in upheaval and a whole lot of jumping to conclusions. Personally I'm enjoying the stories and I think the changes are so small that the differences created are not worth getting so worked up about.
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What I got out of it is later on she went to a bunch of other planes to learn about elves living there as well as returning to Lorwyn.
She probably developed her elvish elitism during her travels.
Possibly. It actually would make sense, if we didn't know about Nissa before. You could have her start as a xenophobe, but watch Eyeblight Massacre and, well, elvish supremacy is a bit of an embarrassment now, isn't it? (This is actually one reason overt racism was no longer tenable after World War II.)
The problem is, she needs a bit of racism to explain her actions in Worldwake.
I also noticed that apparently she's the last Joraga? Also, she knows about the Eldrazi before meeting Sorin now.
I like how one of the other planes she visited (even though she didn't like it there) is green in Origins.
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Cōnservātum album delenda est.
I think so too.
Perceiving a racist character as a problem is ridiculous when you have black characters committing atrocities regularly and nobody is even bothered by it.
It IS a problem if the character becomes the poster boy/girl for their respective color. About racism being bigger problem then murder/robbery, the reason is that murder/robbery is not a political issue and racism is.
About the change being made for the sake flavor or mechanics, I believe it was both. WotC concluded that they need the poster boy green walker being about lands/ramp (the way the main red walker is about burn and the blue one is about CA) and Garruk did not fit the bill as a beast master. They could either make a new walker or recycle a old one and that was a opportunity to save Nissa who was hated both for her flavor (race supremacist) and her mechanics (narrow elf tribal).
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That one UR where she became Worldwaker was a first step into this direction, but...
It's like rewriting Elspeth from having the "running away" attitude to being a badass who doesn't afraid of anything [sic]. Elspeth underwent character development to get from "zombies uguu~" to "I'm gonna kick some phyrexian ***". Why they couldn't do the same for Nissa is beyond me.
They didn't want to make a statement at all. If they wanted they would indeed develop her character in that direction. What they made was simply avoid the horrible move of making a racist character a hero of their stories (because that's what Nissa is shaping up to be in Battle for Zendikar).
The difference between Nissa and Elspeth is that Nissa only appeared 'once' and she was on a creative limbo ever since. Changing her is not remotely like changing Jace, Elspeth, Ajani, Liliana, etc... She was sort of a tertiary character.
I'm also not huge fan of these sudden character changes. It's not great to invest on lore that suffer discontinuities but it's something people who reads any series that are written by different authors are used to.
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Easy fix: Don't make her a hero then. Or make her a hero by accident, similarly to how Liliana freed Avacyn by accident.
The near annihilation of her plane humbled her, imagine that.
Being a character with a real flaw growing beyond that flaw was an inspiration, but now that's apparently going out the damn window.
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