I don't think this really does anything to fight real world racism nor does it do anything to solve the societal issues of police brutality and our problems in the criminal justice system as a whole. It feels like mostly pointless grandstanding to me. Fantasy trading card games aren't responsible for real world racism.
You're right that a card game isn't responsible for racism, but as a component of the media, it can serve to uphold or reinforce it. And consequently, it can assist in loosening the knots, so to speak. Representation in media and media companies themselves taking an anti-racism stance can and do contribute to address racism on a societal level.
For instance, Will & Grace and Ellen in the 90s both shifted public sentiment about LGBTQ2S+ people in a positive direction. By exposing non-LGBTQ2S+ people to those concepts and characters they could empathize with, those shows were effective and pulling people in a progressive direction. Did either show solve homophobia? Not even close. They did, however, create opportunities for conversation, for exposure, for learning, and for bigotry to be challenged more purposefully. And those opportunities did have observable impacts on the way queer issues were seen.
Will this move by WotC do the same on that large a scale? I doubt it, but it will create those opportunities for conversation, exposure, learning, and challenging bigotry. It may open some players up to better understanding their privilege and/or ignorance, it may make some play spaces rethink their anti-racism policies to be better, it may make BIPOC players feel more at home in the fandom. And these things may be small in the greater picture of things, but they still hold meaning. Every little bit helps when it comes to issues this big and this systemic. It requires a great many areas of our society to engage with it, including games and media.
yes! you get it, and you explained it really well, thank you for that. a lot of people don't, or won't, understand it.
i mean, even this announcement today has sparked conversation regarding racism among everyone in my play group where we've never really discussed it before. its a good move and a step in the right direction.
Plenty of intelligent people at Wizards, yet didnt want to ban these three weeks / months / years ago.
.
Corporation and government are reactive agency, they change when there's "need" to change. If not, they proceed until they hear a complaint that would damage them. Aside from Invoke Prejudice's art, the ID# is too intentional to be a coincident, someone at WotC wanted it to happen.
I confess I'm a little confused about some of these. Cleanse destroys all black creatures, what makes Virtue's Ruin more acceptable when it destroys all white creatures?
I cannot tell the problem with Stone-Throwing Devils. Was the background building in Devil representing an African cultural style?
Imprison has a dark skin individual, but if the story happened in Jamuraa where most residents are dark skin, would it still be an offense?
Crusade/Jihad by themselves are real world religious reference so it's understandable to avoid them, while "crusader" would be more... acceptable, I guess.
I confess I'm a little confused about some of these. Cleanse destroys all black creatures, what makes Virtue's Ruin more acceptable when it destroys all white creatures?
It's because 'cleanse' is too evocative of ethnic 'cleansing', especially when that's also true of what the card does.
I cannot tell the problem with Stone-Throwing Devils. Was the background building in Devil representing an African cultural style?
I think that one is actually more about the middle east and stereotypes about stoning.
Imprison has a dark skin individual, but if the story happened in Jamuraa where most residents are dark skin, would it still be an offense?
I think Imprison was a bit creepy looking. Like, there's some weird mask thing the guy is wearing? He looks kinda malnourished? It has the vibe of persecution about it.
Plenty of intelligent people at Wizards, yet didnt want to ban these three weeks / months / years ago.
.
I guess since slavery was in place for hundreds of years in America they shouldn't have bothered to get rid of it, was very hypocritical of them.
/s
Better late than never. What are you complaining about exactly?
Cleanse also seems an exaggerated reaction to me. "Destroy all black creatures." has in no way anything to do with violence against African-Americans or any other colored people... And I actually really looked at the artwork for the first time, noticed it's Phil Foglio and actually slightly amusing, as per his usual style (there seems to be a devil wearing jeans...).
"CLEANSE". Name~Effect interaction, thats the problem. Cleanse also means "Purify something" or "make (something, especially the skin) thoroughly clean" (google).
Plenty of magic art is either sexualized, has religious meaning, displays very explicit violence and people dying.
Theres literally a card called MURDER and Armageddon , and everyone should see them as what they are, fantasy.
Banning these cards provides them with even more exposure.
People will collect these cards explicitly because they are banned, they will be more sought after, just like the Death Corona Godzilla card was hyped up.
This stupid decision is pandering to the current media and nothing else.
Its a pathetic move, and it doesnt solve anything and doesnt do any good at all, even worse, it makes matters even worse, and so much art could be put in the very same category and if we fill the banned list with hundreds and hundreds of cards for THAT reason, it becomes a joke, and this just makes it entirely stupid.
Imagine 1 person in a shop playing with a card that is banned for racist reasons, some lunatics will claim they are racists, will hate them and even attack them, or throw them out of the store ; and people will celebrate that nonsense.
Its absolutely stupid, current events tit or tat, banning art that is 20+ years old for that kind of reasoning is dishonest and produces way more damage to the game in the foreseeable future.
Just imagine someone will see Incinerate or Disintegrate which very clearly and graphically displays a human being getting burned to crisps, or Suffocating Fumes which someone might associate that with the Holocaust, which gassed and burned human beings, the entire idea of poisoning and Phyrexia turning people into machine horrors is a nightmare fantasy.
There is literally a card called Torture, does that mean we are ok with torture ? We really think that card should be banned too, as we do not like torture ?
Slaughter Games displays the view of the victim of human eating cannibals. Are we ok with that too ? We need to ban that art too right ? As cannibalism is wrong. Theres literally Cannibalize.
Innocent Blood shows human sacrifice, are we cool with that ? Hope not ...
We then suddenly need to ban all cards with such a display ? Really ? We either need to be consistent with our morals or we dont get down that path and allow all art as what they are, pictures of a fantasy world.
Wake up people, these actions are absolute nonsense.
Seriously...
Slippery slope here - army of Allah, jihad, invoke prejudice - involve real world religious names or obvious illusions to real world groups. Anything beyond that is just pandering to the BLM movement in a way that seems condescending and laughable. There are 100s of cards that could fall into this ill conceived Pr stunt.
Og urborg- remove first strike? Obviously first strike is a white privilege.
Terror - black(i thought we were supposed to use African American, seems political correctness lost that fight when BLM came into being) people can't be afraid?
Hellfire- why stop with the white creatures?
The list goes on...well I guess we should also ban all faeries and queens because those are sexual derogatory. Thank god we still have bears, fish, cats and dogs and hazoret the pervert.
This is a thought provoking and intelligent way of looking at this. I'm just glad there aren't any faults in logic here or anything that may be perceived as insensitive
Its a start. A lot of this was brought up on twitter about the racist practices at WoTC* and this is the smallest thing they could do. Its nice but its meaningless unless they address the other issues there are.
*Not the people, the company. The poster outright says he knows people can't change much within.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
What. A. Joke. I can see it with the invoke prejudice. That ones on the nose. The others are all far reaching. You’ve got to make multiple assumptions in order to feel upset by any of these cards. You’ve got to literally be seeking out a reason to be upset about the card. Let alone the fact that the very vast majority of today’s players wouldn’t even know these cards existed before this stunt.
Plenty of magic art is either sexualized, has religious meaning, displays very explicit violence and people dying.
Theres literally a card called MURDER and Armageddon , and everyone should see them as what they are, fantasy.
Works of fantasy do not exist within the fantasy world they create, they exist in the real world.
Banning these cards provides them with even more exposure.
People will collect these cards explicitly because they are banned, they will be more sought after, just like the Death Corona Godzilla card was hyped up.
Maybe so. But exposure here isn't necessarily bad. The silence of prejudice is not the presence of equality.
This stupid decision is pandering to the current media and nothing else.
The goal of a protest is to encourage people to do things because of the protest.
Its a pathetic move, and it doesnt solve anything
WotC best get onto solving racism I guess.
and doesnt do any good at all
Media depictions matter. People are influenced by media. Will this make a significant difference? Does it matter? Have to start somewhere, and every little bit eventually starts to add up.
even worse, it makes matters even worse,
I doubt that.
and so much art could be put in the very same category
Is this supposed to be a defence of not banning art?
If there is a ton of art that is objectionable, would that not indicate this is a very real problem?
I would question how much art is actually very problematic though if you are performing a good-faith analysis (and I don't mean good faith as in giving the artist's credit for 'good intentions').
and if we fill the banned list with hundreds and hundreds of cards for THAT reason, it becomes a joke, and this just makes it entirely stupid.
My god, where does it stop?
Somewhere. The answer is somewhere. You know, it is possible to actually draw reasonable lines. But you know that.
Imagine 1 person in a shop playing with a card that is banned for racist reasons, some lunatics will claim they are racists, will hate them and even attack them, or throw them out of the store ; and people will celebrate that nonsense.
Imagine the police killing an unarmed black person.
I can play this game too.
Its absolutely stupid, current events tit or tat, banning art that is 20+ years old for that kind of reasoning is dishonest and produces way more damage to the game in the foreseeable future.
Dishonest?
I mean, does WotC really care about racism? Maybe not that much, but I'd wager somewhat. I imagine not all the higher-ups are horrible racists or complete psychopaths. Maybe they should hire more PoC like people have been asking. That might help.
Just imagine someone will see Incinerate or Disintegrate which very clearly and graphically displays a human being getting burned to crisps, or Suffocating Fumes which someone might associate that with the Holocaust, which gassed and burned human beings, the entire idea of poisoning and Phyrexia turning people into machine horrors is a nightmare fantasy.
There is literally a card called Torture, does that mean we are ok with torture ? We really think that card should be banned too, as we do not like torture ?
Slaughter Games displays the view of the victim of human eating cannibals. Are we ok with that too ? We need to ban that art too right ? As cannibalism is wrong. Theres literally Cannibalize.
Innocent Blood shows human sacrifice, are we cool with that ? Hope not ...
We then suddenly need to ban all cards with such a display ? Really ? We either need to be consistent with our morals or we dont get down that path and allow all art as what they are, pictures of a fantasy world.
Wake up people, these actions are absolute nonsense.
Spot the difference between Birth of a Nation and The Avengers.
I'll wait.
Magic isn't a game for little chldren. It's PG-13, it does depict "fantasy violence" and "evil" beings and practices. Even in colors other than black (think Kamigawa where the Big Bad was White!).
However, how high are the instances of [X] in the Western world, especially in the US?
For X, insert: Cannibalism, torture, immolation, even murder.
Sure, the US should probably not open it's mouth too widely when it comes to torturing people... And murder is not something extremely rare - but it is clearly a bad thing and leads to extreme punishment. As do, you know, cannibalism and incinerating people.
Systemic racism, however, is all too commonplace. and as we have seen way to often, it does, sadly, NOT lead to consequences.
Another thing I'm just thinking of is drugs. Right now, I can't come up with any cards depicting drug use beyond maybe some people getting drunk. Is there any card with anyone/thing smoking something?? Maybe a pipe here or there. I guess "SAY NO TO DRUGS!" was a louder message back when this card game came into existence than in these days of marijuana legalization.
Along these lines, when does Wizards change the names of the colors to "purple" and "yellow"?
All of these bannings make sense with the exception of Crusade.
Cleanse has nothing racist about it unless you force it into a particular dialog. Virtue's ruin as was pointed out is equally as "racist" and the flavor text is inflammatory if you read it as such. Invoke prejudice I can stand behind. Even Jihad and army of allah I can embrace because of sensitivity to Islam and the negative portrayal of Muslims. Once you get past those 3 you dilute the message to the point of ridiculousness.
As an unfortunate aside, I had poor timing to make a heliod deck last month - aka "devotion to white deck" and I had jihad and crusade. When I say it like that it sounds like a bigot. Did I have the slightest intention to be insensitive? Absolutely not. I just wanted white pips.
Trying to force a narrative where none exists is ridiculous, destructive and dilutes/muddles actual instances of racial/cultural/sexual insensitivity.
Along these lines, when does Wizards change the names of the colors to "purple" and "yellow"?
All of these bannings make sense with the exception of Crusade.
Cleanse has nothing racist about it unless you force it into a particular dialog. Virtue's ruin as was pointed out is equally as "racist" and the flavor text is inflammatory if you read it as such. Invoke prejudice I can stand behind. Even Jihad and army of allah I can embrace because of sensitivity to Islam and the negative portrayal of Muslims. Once you get past those 3 you dilute the message to the point of ridiculousness.
As an unfortunate aside, I had poor timing to make a heliod deck last month - aka "devotion to white deck" and I had jihad and crusade. When I say it like that it sounds like a bigot. Did I have the slightest intention to be insensitive? Absolutely not. I just wanted white pips.
Trying to force a narrative where none exists is ridiculous, destructive and dilutes/muddles actual instances of racial/cultural/sexual insensitivity.
The narrative of white superiority and black subordination is one of the most, if not the most, utterly existent narratives in all of American history and culture.
Your personal scruples about whether this or that example is problematic aren't really the point. Less than a lifetime ago, it was widely acceptable to do all manner of horribly, overtly racist things in media depictions, and I'm sure a good number of the people doing those things would have claimed innocent intent as well. I can't blame WotC for being cautious. We should all be. If people do not question their own judgement, then nothing will really change.
It's a great failure of priorities if we shed more tears over the tournament playability of Stone-Throwing Devils than over what more we can do to combat the deeply and widely entrenched history of racism in the US, and in many other countries around the world.
You can always still play these cards outside of sanctioned tournaments.
Invoke Prejudice - Looks like KKK
Cleanse - Because it kills black creatures
Stone-Throwing Devils - Because its a black creature throwing stones
Pradesh Gypsies - Im not sure
Jihad - Makes white creatures better
Imprison - Black card with the word imprison on it
Crusade - Makes white creatures better
Along these lines, when does Wizards change the names of the colors to "purple" and "yellow"?
All of these bannings make sense with the exception of Crusade.
Cleanse has nothing racist about it unless you force it into a particular dialog. Virtue's ruin as was pointed out is equally as "racist" and the flavor text is inflammatory if you read it as such. Invoke prejudice I can stand behind. Even Jihad and army of allah I can embrace because of sensitivity to Islam and the negative portrayal of Muslims. Once you get past those 3 you dilute the message to the point of ridiculousness.
As an unfortunate aside, I had poor timing to make a heliod deck last month - aka "devotion to white deck" and I had jihad and crusade. When I say it like that it sounds like a bigot. Did I have the slightest intention to be insensitive? Absolutely not. I just wanted white pips.
Trying to force a narrative where none exists is ridiculous, destructive and dilutes/muddles actual instances of racial/cultural/sexual insensitivity.
The narrative of white superiority and black subordination is one of the most, if not the most, utterly existent narratives in all of American history and culture.
Your personal scruples about whether this or that example is problematic aren't really the point. Less than a lifetime ago, it was widely acceptable to do all manner of horribly, overtly racist things in media depictions, and I'm sure a good number of the people doing those things would have claimed innocent intent as well. I can't blame WotC for being cautious. We should all be. If people do not question their own judgement, then nothing will really change.
It's a great failure of priorities if we shed more tears over the tournament playability of Stone-Throwing Devils than over what more we can do to combat the deeply and widely entrenched history of racism in the US, and in many other countries around the world.
You can always still play these cards outside of sanctioned tournaments.
Exactly this. We're in the midst of a culture shift, and transitory moments such as this aren't clean, simple, or linear. WotC may make bad calls in the pursuit of the ideal calibration, so to speak. We should all remember the weeks immediately following the #MeToo movement's big explosion. A lot of time was spent on think pieces analyzing numerous examples to see how bad they really were, many men were screaming bloody murder about being unable to interact with women anymore, and people were just messy as they had to really grapple with sexism for the first time. And yet things settled, and though there's still a lot of work to be done, society moved forward a few steps and the people who resisted by and large realized it wasn't so hard to change. Or stop making it an issue.
A lot of people are just now realizing how bad racism is. As ridiculous as that is to me, that's what's going on, and that process is chaotic. People trying to figure out which of their behaviors are racially biased, companies trying to figure out how to stabilize their business models after the sea change, and a large portion of society is essentially trial and erroring their way to being more anti-racism. Are a couple of these bans less clearly justifiable than others? Yeah, sure. I think because I'm not expecting perfect allyship from a company that just discovered it this week, I'm willing to forgive them for not having their calibration correct as long as they're making an effort. It's a token, and probably one that's more bothersome than meaningful for many posters here, but it wasn't exactly for those posters, was it? There are players who will take this gesture as intended.
I do hope WotC follows through in other ways, but I'm not going to fault them when they've just taken their first shaky step.
And its name is 'cleanse'. As in, 'ethnic cleansing'. Not a good combo, intentional or not.
Pradesh Gypsies - Im not sure
Gypsy is a slur.
Various horrible stereotypes associated with it. The Romani/Roma have Indian ancestry, but people used to think they had Egyptian ancestry (hence 'gypsy'). They weren't seen as 'real' Europeans, they were suspicious foreign infiltrators. They were among the targets of the Nazis.
Jihad - Makes white creatures better
The card is literally called Jihad.
Imprison - Black card with the word imprison on it
I think it's because the art is kind of evocative of torture and persecution.
Crusade - Makes white creatures better
The crusades were openly racist and resulted in genocide.
i guess now they get more attention than they would have gotten without the ban. i bet some will increase in price just because of this, which was surely not the intention.
I checked Invoke Prejudice on Cardmarket some hours ago. 87 in total, cheapest (at €120) was actually "good", a guy selling two of them. After some mulling, I decided to buy it* - and they were gone. Indeed, there were nw only 65 copies available, amounting to a buyout already. A while later, luckily, a seller in the country I'm in right now listed another "good" one for €150. I grabbed it immediately, thanks to the country difference in shipping cost, in the end, I paid just €18 more. Phew, this is the most expensive card I ever bought... Now don't hit me for doing it.
Anyway, I had one other thought, especially considering I kind of overlooked the whole "banned in sanctioned tournament play" thing which is weirdly ancillary to the artwork removal on Gatherer. Invoke Prejudice is a pretty powerful card but obviously highly restricted in sanctioned play. The others probably play no role at all... except for maybe Crusade?? It's likely outclassed by other cards today, but still, might be seen in white weenie builds.
Also, I had a look at the comment section of Stone-Throwing Devils on Gatherer now that it is up again. The very first praises the art for its old-school quality. I did not see a single word on the card being racist...
* Not because I'm a racist, foo, but because I'm collecting Legends and am missing just 17 cards...
Banning art is comparable to book burning, ironically an action taken by the Nazi's.
I guess the more you try to avoid the thing you hate, the more you become that very thing.
Oddly enough D&D and early Magic were criticized for Satanic imagery from outside sources, now it's the company censoring itself from within. Really strange.
Also, I had a look at the comment section of Stone-Throwing Devils on Gatherer now that it is up again. The very first praises the art for its old-school quality. I did not see a single word on the card being racist...
Okay? People who experience racism don't make it a habit of pointing out every minor racist thing they come across in a day, largely because they likely wouldn't have time to do much else (microaggressions and other "minor" examples of bigotry are a constant for people that are marginalized). Not to mention, fandoms like MtG's aren't always safe environments to point out minor racist connotations of things. Take a look at this thread, if it's anything to go by, the hypothetical person pointing out an issue with Stone-Throwing Devils would have to defend themselves against a lot of gaslighting and accusations of being too sensitive. Sometimes the juice ain't worth the squeeze.
And even if no player ever complained, that doesn't make WotC's reasoning faulty. Sometimes problematic things can be addressed without there having to be complaints. That's the ideal state of things, honestly.
Banning art is comparable to book burning, ironically an action taken by the Nazi's.
I guess the more you try to avoid the thing you hate, the more you become that very thing.
Oddly enough D&D and early Magic were criticized for Satanic imagery from outside sources, now it's the company censoring itself from within. Really strange.
No, WotC is not like the Nazis for voluntarily removing some arts from their site and banning relatively unused cards from sanctioned play in order to make a token action of solidarity with the anti-racism movement. They aren't using the power of the state to seize all copies of the cards, they aren't rounding up people who defend these cards as no big deal, they aren't using their power to oppress.
Companies self-censor their works all the time, Disney is a great example. It's okay for companies to acknowledge that culture has changed and that things that didn't raise (the right) eyebrows years ago may not be considered appropriate now.
My god, where does it stop?
Somewhere. The answer is somewhere. You know, it is possible to actually draw reasonable lines. But you know that.
Slightly ridiculous example, maybe, but note a card not included in this list is Tivadar's Crusade.
- contains the word "Crusade"
- depicts an actual crusade being carried out.
- wipes out an entire race!
- shows a creature, dead, crucified, and eviscerated
But no one is banning it because we all know Goblins are filthy scum that deserve to be eradicated.
/s
No, actually, because it is qholly in the realm of fantasy, there are no goblins until. Shadowrun becomes real.
The code of Invoke Prejudice is way too blunt to be a coincidence.
That was my first thought, as well. I cringed so hard when I read that because I'm not sure I can believe that was simple coincidence. But it matters that they were transparent about that, hopefully if it was not simple coincidence they are equally transparent.
The code of Invoke Prejudice is way too blunt to be a coincidence.
That was my first thought, as well. I cringed so hard when I read that because I'm not sure I can believe that was simple coincidence. But it matters that they were transparent about that, hopefully if it was not simple coincidence they are equally transparent.
The code of Invoke Prejudice is way too blunt to be a coincidence.
Can't check right now as it is down again, but I'd be interested to see which cards have 1481/2/3 ... 5/6/7... If they're all blue Legends cards that are, say, in alphabetical order around Invoke Prejudice, then it has to be sheer crazy chance. Anyway, claiming it was on purpose insinuates that at least back then, at least one deeply racist person was working at Wizards (or a VERY irreverent prankster) who also happened to be exactly the person who set up these numbers... "Bit of a" stretch to me.
Incidentally, completely discounting his background, I actually quite like McNeill's style. Nether Void for example is totally awesome imho.
Finally: If only they just showed this much enthusiasm in getting the login/rating/comment functionality back up in Gatherer!!! I used to be very active there and I've been sorely missing it for years now.
It's a really bad coincidence. 1487 is In the Eye of Chaos and 1489 is Juxtapose. The problem is WotC has been told about this since around 2012 (based on the Gatherer comments). The cleanest fix is to put all those early cards (arranged in Artifact-Blue-Black-Green-Red-White-Gold-Lands order), but with all the problems of Gatherer already that would probably break the entire site.
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yes! you get it, and you explained it really well, thank you for that. a lot of people don't, or won't, understand it.
i mean, even this announcement today has sparked conversation regarding racism among everyone in my play group where we've never really discussed it before. its a good move and a step in the right direction.
.
Corporation and government are reactive agency, they change when there's "need" to change. If not, they proceed until they hear a complaint that would damage them. Aside from Invoke Prejudice's art, the ID# is too intentional to be a coincident, someone at WotC wanted it to happen.
I confess I'm a little confused about some of these. Cleanse destroys all black creatures, what makes Virtue's Ruin more acceptable when it destroys all white creatures?
I cannot tell the problem with Stone-Throwing Devils. Was the background building in Devil representing an African cultural style?
Imprison has a dark skin individual, but if the story happened in Jamuraa where most residents are dark skin, would it still be an offense?
Crusade/Jihad by themselves are real world religious reference so it's understandable to avoid them, while "crusader" would be more... acceptable, I guess.
Oh damn, Forced March does remind me of Nazi marching the Jewish people to camps (many died on the way), but it's not as obvious.
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest WUR Voltron Control
Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun WU Unblockable Mirror Trickery
Ra's al Ghul (Sidar Kondo) and Face-Down Ninjas
Brudiclad, Token Engineer
Vaevictis (VV2) the Dire Lantern
Rona, Disciple of Gix
Tiana the Auror
Hallar
Ulrich the Politician
Zur the Rebel
Scorpion, Locust, Scarab, Egyptian Gods
O-Kagachi, Mathas, Mairsil
"Non-Tribal" Tribal Generals, Eggs
It's because 'cleanse' is too evocative of ethnic 'cleansing', especially when that's also true of what the card does.
I think that one is actually more about the middle east and stereotypes about stoning.
I think Imprison was a bit creepy looking. Like, there's some weird mask thing the guy is wearing? He looks kinda malnourished? It has the vibe of persecution about it.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
I guess since slavery was in place for hundreds of years in America they shouldn't have bothered to get rid of it, was very hypocritical of them.
/s
Better late than never. What are you complaining about exactly?
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
All of these bannings make sense with the exception of Crusade.
Emille, Seven-Sting Dancer Shalin Nariya
"CLEANSE". Name~Effect interaction, thats the problem. Cleanse also means "Purify something" or "make (something, especially the skin) thoroughly clean" (google).
Banning art is stupid.
Plenty of magic art is either sexualized, has religious meaning, displays very explicit violence and people dying.
Theres literally a card called MURDER and Armageddon , and everyone should see them as what they are, fantasy.
Banning these cards provides them with even more exposure.
People will collect these cards explicitly because they are banned, they will be more sought after, just like the Death Corona Godzilla card was hyped up.
This stupid decision is pandering to the current media and nothing else.
Its a pathetic move, and it doesnt solve anything and doesnt do any good at all, even worse, it makes matters even worse, and so much art could be put in the very same category and if we fill the banned list with hundreds and hundreds of cards for THAT reason, it becomes a joke, and this just makes it entirely stupid.
Imagine 1 person in a shop playing with a card that is banned for racist reasons, some lunatics will claim they are racists, will hate them and even attack them, or throw them out of the store ; and people will celebrate that nonsense.
Its absolutely stupid, current events tit or tat, banning art that is 20+ years old for that kind of reasoning is dishonest and produces way more damage to the game in the foreseeable future.
Just imagine someone will see Incinerate or Disintegrate which very clearly and graphically displays a human being getting burned to crisps, or Suffocating Fumes which someone might associate that with the Holocaust, which gassed and burned human beings, the entire idea of poisoning and Phyrexia turning people into machine horrors is a nightmare fantasy.
There is literally a card called Torture, does that mean we are ok with torture ? We really think that card should be banned too, as we do not like torture ?
Slaughter Games displays the view of the victim of human eating cannibals. Are we ok with that too ? We need to ban that art too right ? As cannibalism is wrong. Theres literally Cannibalize.
Innocent Blood shows human sacrifice, are we cool with that ? Hope not ...
We then suddenly need to ban all cards with such a display ? Really ? We either need to be consistent with our morals or we dont get down that path and allow all art as what they are, pictures of a fantasy world.
Wake up people, these actions are absolute nonsense.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
This is a thought provoking and intelligent way of looking at this. I'm just glad there aren't any faults in logic here or anything that may be perceived as insensitive
*Not the people, the company. The poster outright says he knows people can't change much within.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
This is so typical of modern WOTC.
Works of fantasy do not exist within the fantasy world they create, they exist in the real world.
Maybe so. But exposure here isn't necessarily bad. The silence of prejudice is not the presence of equality.
The goal of a protest is to encourage people to do things because of the protest.
WotC best get onto solving racism I guess.
Media depictions matter. People are influenced by media. Will this make a significant difference? Does it matter? Have to start somewhere, and every little bit eventually starts to add up.
I doubt that.
Is this supposed to be a defence of not banning art?
If there is a ton of art that is objectionable, would that not indicate this is a very real problem?
I would question how much art is actually very problematic though if you are performing a good-faith analysis (and I don't mean good faith as in giving the artist's credit for 'good intentions').
My god, where does it stop?
Somewhere. The answer is somewhere. You know, it is possible to actually draw reasonable lines. But you know that.
Imagine the police killing an unarmed black person.
I can play this game too.
Dishonest?
I mean, does WotC really care about racism? Maybe not that much, but I'd wager somewhat. I imagine not all the higher-ups are horrible racists or complete psychopaths. Maybe they should hire more PoC like people have been asking. That might help.
Spot the difference between Birth of a Nation and The Avengers.
I'll wait.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
However, how high are the instances of [X] in the Western world, especially in the US?
For X, insert: Cannibalism, torture, immolation, even murder.
Sure, the US should probably not open it's mouth too widely when it comes to torturing people... And murder is not something extremely rare - but it is clearly a bad thing and leads to extreme punishment. As do, you know, cannibalism and incinerating people.
Systemic racism, however, is all too commonplace. and as we have seen way to often, it does, sadly, NOT lead to consequences.
There are other areas where Magic has been more careful art-wise. Think rape and sexual violence. Yeah, there was a lot of discussion about Triumph of Ferocity (mostly ignoring that, as far as I know, Triumph of Cruelty happens immediately afterward, and no one criticizes that one...) and Earthbind has always been pretty pervy-creepy, but I don't think there are any outright depictions of that.
Another thing I'm just thinking of is drugs. Right now, I can't come up with any cards depicting drug use beyond maybe some people getting drunk. Is there any card with anyone/thing smoking something?? Maybe a pipe here or there. I guess "SAY NO TO DRUGS!" was a louder message back when this card game came into existence than in these days of marijuana legalization.
Cannabism not Cannibalism! Learn the difference.
Cleanse has nothing racist about it unless you force it into a particular dialog. Virtue's ruin as was pointed out is equally as "racist" and the flavor text is inflammatory if you read it as such. Invoke prejudice I can stand behind. Even Jihad and army of allah I can embrace because of sensitivity to Islam and the negative portrayal of Muslims. Once you get past those 3 you dilute the message to the point of ridiculousness.
As an unfortunate aside, I had poor timing to make a heliod deck last month - aka "devotion to white deck" and I had jihad and crusade. When I say it like that it sounds like a bigot. Did I have the slightest intention to be insensitive? Absolutely not. I just wanted white pips.
Trying to force a narrative where none exists is ridiculous, destructive and dilutes/muddles actual instances of racial/cultural/sexual insensitivity.
The narrative of white superiority and black subordination is one of the most, if not the most, utterly existent narratives in all of American history and culture.
Your personal scruples about whether this or that example is problematic aren't really the point. Less than a lifetime ago, it was widely acceptable to do all manner of horribly, overtly racist things in media depictions, and I'm sure a good number of the people doing those things would have claimed innocent intent as well. I can't blame WotC for being cautious. We should all be. If people do not question their own judgement, then nothing will really change.
It's a great failure of priorities if we shed more tears over the tournament playability of Stone-Throwing Devils than over what more we can do to combat the deeply and widely entrenched history of racism in the US, and in many other countries around the world.
You can always still play these cards outside of sanctioned tournaments.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Cleanse - Because it kills black creatures
Stone-Throwing Devils - Because its a black creature throwing stones
Pradesh Gypsies - Im not sure
Jihad - Makes white creatures better
Imprison - Black card with the word imprison on it
Crusade - Makes white creatures better
I think is why they banned each card
Exactly this. We're in the midst of a culture shift, and transitory moments such as this aren't clean, simple, or linear. WotC may make bad calls in the pursuit of the ideal calibration, so to speak. We should all remember the weeks immediately following the #MeToo movement's big explosion. A lot of time was spent on think pieces analyzing numerous examples to see how bad they really were, many men were screaming bloody murder about being unable to interact with women anymore, and people were just messy as they had to really grapple with sexism for the first time. And yet things settled, and though there's still a lot of work to be done, society moved forward a few steps and the people who resisted by and large realized it wasn't so hard to change. Or stop making it an issue.
A lot of people are just now realizing how bad racism is. As ridiculous as that is to me, that's what's going on, and that process is chaotic. People trying to figure out which of their behaviors are racially biased, companies trying to figure out how to stabilize their business models after the sea change, and a large portion of society is essentially trial and erroring their way to being more anti-racism. Are a couple of these bans less clearly justifiable than others? Yeah, sure. I think because I'm not expecting perfect allyship from a company that just discovered it this week, I'm willing to forgive them for not having their calibration correct as long as they're making an effort. It's a token, and probably one that's more bothersome than meaningful for many posters here, but it wasn't exactly for those posters, was it? There are players who will take this gesture as intended.
I do hope WotC follows through in other ways, but I'm not going to fault them when they've just taken their first shaky step.
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
And its name is 'cleanse'. As in, 'ethnic cleansing'. Not a good combo, intentional or not.
Gypsy is a slur.
Various horrible stereotypes associated with it. The Romani/Roma have Indian ancestry, but people used to think they had Egyptian ancestry (hence 'gypsy'). They weren't seen as 'real' Europeans, they were suspicious foreign infiltrators. They were among the targets of the Nazis.
The card is literally called Jihad.
I think it's because the art is kind of evocative of torture and persecution.
The crusades were openly racist and resulted in genocide.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Anyway, I had one other thought, especially considering I kind of overlooked the whole "banned in sanctioned tournament play" thing which is weirdly ancillary to the artwork removal on Gatherer. Invoke Prejudice is a pretty powerful card but obviously highly restricted in sanctioned play. The others probably play no role at all... except for maybe Crusade?? It's likely outclassed by other cards today, but still, might be seen in white weenie builds.
Also, I had a look at the comment section of Stone-Throwing Devils on Gatherer now that it is up again. The very first praises the art for its old-school quality. I did not see a single word on the card being racist...
* Not because I'm a racist, foo, but because I'm collecting Legends and am missing just 17 cards...
I guess the more you try to avoid the thing you hate, the more you become that very thing.
Oddly enough D&D and early Magic were criticized for Satanic imagery from outside sources, now it's the company censoring itself from within. Really strange.
Okay? People who experience racism don't make it a habit of pointing out every minor racist thing they come across in a day, largely because they likely wouldn't have time to do much else (microaggressions and other "minor" examples of bigotry are a constant for people that are marginalized). Not to mention, fandoms like MtG's aren't always safe environments to point out minor racist connotations of things. Take a look at this thread, if it's anything to go by, the hypothetical person pointing out an issue with Stone-Throwing Devils would have to defend themselves against a lot of gaslighting and accusations of being too sensitive. Sometimes the juice ain't worth the squeeze.
And even if no player ever complained, that doesn't make WotC's reasoning faulty. Sometimes problematic things can be addressed without there having to be complaints. That's the ideal state of things, honestly.
No, WotC is not like the Nazis for voluntarily removing some arts from their site and banning relatively unused cards from sanctioned play in order to make a token action of solidarity with the anti-racism movement. They aren't using the power of the state to seize all copies of the cards, they aren't rounding up people who defend these cards as no big deal, they aren't using their power to oppress.
Companies self-censor their works all the time, Disney is a great example. It's okay for companies to acknowledge that culture has changed and that things that didn't raise (the right) eyebrows years ago may not be considered appropriate now.
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
Slightly ridiculous example, maybe, but note a card not included in this list is Tivadar's Crusade.
- contains the word "Crusade"
- depicts an actual crusade being carried out.
- wipes out an entire race!
- shows a creature, dead, crucified, and eviscerated
But no one is banning it because we all know Goblins are filthy scum that deserve to be eradicated.
/s
No, actually, because it is qholly in the realm of fantasy, there are no goblins until. Shadowrun becomes real.
It's a really bad coincidence. 1487 is In the Eye of Chaos and 1489 is Juxtapose. The problem is WotC has been told about this since around 2012 (based on the Gatherer comments). The cleanest fix is to put all those early cards (arranged in Artifact-Blue-Black-Green-Red-White-Gold-Lands order), but with all the problems of Gatherer already that would probably break the entire site.