Not that I really go into detail, but Wizards can feel free to use any card ideas I voice. Not like it should be a problem, but you know, best safe.
It’s a generally regarded idea, in our modern era, with its reliance on relativism and the modernized Christian perspective that seems to underlie a significant fraction of the English-speaking population that empathy is good. In the sixteenth century, the public burning of cats was considered sport; executions were spectacles for the masses, and the Fox Hunt was such a day out for all the family. Now, cruelty to animals will earn you prosecution, execution is a serious and somber affair (well, except when it’s rushed into action by dorks in leather jackets with balaclavas… that was just a great political move), and Foxhunting is the specific interest of small groups. It’s certainly not a spectator sport. All this seems to be borne from a core idea that, cribbed from aphorism, runs Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You.
By this measure, it seems that empathy is one of the great cores of the moral centers we use in our day-to-day lives. Before its unfortunate revolution, The True Meaning Of Life (awesome site, sniff sniff sob) once summarized “all religion” under the banner of a central idea of Be Nice To People. There are some religious tendencies that don’t take that angle, but on average, it seems that most moral direction is derived from treating other people reasonably like we wish to be treated ourselves. But closed societies quickly become insular. For this reason, a lot of Magic writers (who are, almost universally, male) seem to think that women are these mystical creatures, wild and free, like unicorn fairies.
That’s why when they try to design a powerful female character, we get things like Radha.
Radha, whose flavor text screams badass. Radha, whose rage itself was enough to turn a Bear into a Baloth, whose hatred outlived the hateful. Radha, who was going to smash faces and take names in the realms of Teferi’s broken world. For once, I thought, we’d get a female character who actually kicked ass, instead of a female character who existed to be upstaged by better, tougher, cleverer male characters, or worse, would be there to be Destined. Being Destined is even more insulting, incidentally. Destiny means it doesn’t matter what a useless, stupid, cowardly creature you are, it’s all okay, because, well, Destiny is taking care of it all. Another hallmark of sloppy writing is using Destiny to bail yourself out of a written-in corner.
But then we look at the card itself. She’s a 2/2.
A 2/2 for two. And this is our badass. This is the inheritor of Keld. This is the woman who dies in combat with every other Keldon creature. In what might be a reference, she also dies to the Keldon Necropolis. Odd that the barbarian tribes want someone who can’t outwrestle a bear as their leader. She is the badass. She is… something we’re supposed to look at and actually want.
Continuing their trend of being unable to design a Green/Red creature, Wizards have decided to staple one legacy of crashing failure to another — designing a strong woman. I could bollocks on about how we’re going to delve into a mysterious territory here. But honestly, it’d be stupid, and the kind of ostentatious trapping that leads to people nodding and laughing and saying “Dat’s right!” A joke repeated often enough being regarded as fact.
Today, we’re going to talk about women. And we’re going to start… with boobs.
There are Fundamental Biological Differences Between Men And Women
Yeah, this one seems like a real hard idea to grip (ho ho ho), doesn’t it? I mean, as basically any male who’s old enough to surf the Internet on his own probably knows, women have a few major differences to men (I assume that the women already know). These are the kind of differences that occupy a lot of our thinking time, certainly in the middling years. I know that the differences between men and women spurred many an artist into action during their adolescence. And yet, these same artists fail to consider, well, those very differences. So let’s address something right now.
Breasts need support. Okay? If your job, pastime, or even day-to-day activities require even a slight bit of vertical movement (like, say, standing up or sitting down a few times, or walking around for more than a few steps at a time), you need a damn bra already. Also, and this is what spurred me to do this article, let us quickly pull up a few female Magic characters. I’m deliberately picking combative ones — characters who fight, with big sharp pointy things.
So, can someone explain to me what part of exposing your navel makes you a better fighter? How about going with unarmored shoulders, bare thighs, and helmets designed to make you look silly? And I hear now, the typing sound of people winding up to make excuses…
“Well, in Glissa’s case, she has metal under her skin!”
”Well, in Razia’s case, she’s an Angel, so she doesn’t have the organs, you see (but she does have the breasts, because well, uh, churchmen are perverts).”
”Well, in Radha’s case… Radha’s case… Uh…”
The rule seems to run thusly: If a female character is combative, she shows more skin than a character that is restrained. Azami, Lady of Scrolls? Dressed head to foot. Radha, who routinely puts herself in the path of people with big, sharp swords? Well, she can flaunt her arms, her navel, and most of her neck! But hey, what’s good for the goose, right? Is that armor relevant at all? Or is the armor just there to look badass?
Oh, and for everyone who’s going to claim that they fight that way because “men will be distracted by their bodies *giggle*,” end yourself. That lowers the approach of these women to combat as that of prostitution (to use sex appeal to obtain something they can’t otherwise get), and doesn’t bear up in even the real world. If that worked, the army would be recruiting women more aggressively, to use their “feminine wiles.” That kind of “Ian Fleming” thinking is … well, ignoring that it’s preposterous, we have to account for gay men or that vast slab of men who, believe it or not, actually go their whole lives without being entirely ruled by their jockstraps. I know, it’s hard to imagine that such guys exist, but if they do, I will lay odds that it’s because they’re the kind of guys who can go around kicking ass and maybe get some strange on their own time because they didn’t get themselves killed by staring at a woman’s cleavage instead of at her sword.
Seriously, what the hell, people.
I could go on, but since I’m neither the artist nor the creative director of Magic, and I doubt they read me, I’m just going to have to advocate something they can do, a tidbit of advice that might get passed on. Go talk to an actual woman, for god’s sake. I’m not saying the Magic art crew are sad spods sitting in their basements. Indeed, by observation, they’re generally attractive, pleasant, socialized people who happen to have a job that involves making awesome artwork. Paolo Parente, by observation, could kick my ass*. But the art continues in this vein. Either someone in the style guide isn’t clued in, or they are clued in and it’s deliberate.
Myself, I adhere to the theory that, between a stuff-up and a conspiracy, assume the stuff-up every time.
This is not to say Radha’s outfit is too silly; we’ve at least progressed to a top that looks like it could contain the breasts therein. Once more, not a bad bit of artwork, though I feel the character design is lacking by exposing her navel.
Women In Magic
It’s very easy to assume anyone talking about this issue is being shrill, or unnecessary, or, well, just making a bigger deal out of something than it really is. That’s not really a hard ask, since we do live in an age of extreme opinions clashing unchecked. This is better than how it used to be — extreme opinions subjugating and smashing every other opinion. So, to make sure I had some empirical evidence, I wanted to address the raw numbers for female legends in Magic.
On a raw statistics note, it should be noted that your average male is only a small amount larger than your average female. The statistical average female legend is a 2.79 / 2.83, which might lose in combat, or might not, to a 2.68 / 2.9. Fractional power / toughness always makes my head hurt. Unfortunately, this number doesn’t quite gel, though, because we’re comparing a sample size of 25 to a sample size of 69 — which is telling right there. Statistically, things work out. Males aren’t that much better than females, and females have about as much in the stats department as the men. Big men are about as common, amongst men, as big women are amongst women. The largest male character in this sample is Borborygmos at 6/7, compared to the 7/5 that are the Sisters of Stone Death. Not an awful showing, per se.
But there are spikes to be observed. The number of really tourney-caliber female cards is much lower than the number of equally playable male cards. Proportionally, each represents their gender about as much — but then we have the unfortunate note that 50% of the population is represented on 25% of the cards. Females are rare on most cards too (go and check how many people realize that Moriok Scavenger was an exceptionally busty lady). This is not a major admonition — I mean, we can’t go about with a ruler demanding a 50/50 split, because we’re not dealing with a perfect representation of a population here. We’re dealing with that population’s heroes, their champions, and their badasses.
So the unspoken message is that girls aren’t as badass as guys, and that when they are, they do it by dressing stupidly, or by being slinky and clever, or in some way that beats you, the reader, about the head that they’re a girl. The idea that a girl can do anything a guy can do is one that many people voice support for, but seem to have a hard time embracing.
Akroma and Razia, as chief badasses and beatsticks, are a step in the right direction. They are. They’re powerful and iconic and they smash face. We know you can make a card that’s a good, powerful, mechanical option, and you’ve even tied an iconically powerful creature type to a single gender (Angels). So why oh why must they be dressed so stupidly? Why must we see more than half of Razia’s skin?
Back To Character
This brings us back to Radha. We know Wizards can render a badass. We know they can render it well. So why, when they give us Legendary creatures, do they feel so very… cast-off? So grab-bag? Those legends that are impressive, that are badass, are disconnected from the story? Consider, if you will: Toshi and Michiko were the two most important characters in the Kamigawa storyline. Konda was also important. Now, how many decks played them? Ever? At all?
Now, consider that Meloku never got a line in the entire novels and was barely mentioned. The Kodama of the North Tree didn’t show up at all. Uyo was a central antagonist. The Myojin of Life’s Web was a terrible force that had to be kept away. There are structural problems all over, but this just makes the Legendary Creature type a curious oddity. Supposedly, because a Legendary Creature is an iconic type, Wizards can make them far better than they “should” be. One only has to look at the stupendous success of Meloku in his time in Standard to see that. Yet, from whence does that coolness come? It seems that Wizards engage in a bit of chicken-and-egg theorizing here. Meloku is cool because he’s a legend, but he gets to be a legend because he’s cool. It seems more and more that Legendary exists as a rules patch (Krark’s Thumb), a toss-away flavor benefit (Kodama of the Center Tree), or an excuse that lets them put fantastic creatures wherever they want, regardless of good sense (Meloku).
I posit that Radha is as Kodama Center; she simply had to have a card, but thought was not given to making this card an appropriate badass. Not a lot of effort went into the card of Radha, which is a shame — her flavor text and art are awesomely well-done, even if I disagree with the sense of her outfit.
On Magic Novels
Radha is supposed to be an amazing combative badass, but she doesn’t even make a speed bump on Teferi. She dies to a grizzly bear, an elephant, or even something as timid as a pair of squirrels. Akroma is supposed to be an amazing force of combative wrath, and yet she’s too stupid to protect her navel. Glissa, well, Glissa basically existed to get saved whenever combat broke out by Bosh (real strong showing there for the woman character — out-clevered by Slobad and out-toughed by Bosh). I haven’t read the Planar Chaos novels, but that’s because the Kamigawa and Ravnica novels were that bad. I mean, seriously, why bother?
It’s a hallmark of good fiction writing that you manage to progress past the point where all the characters you like sound like smart-assed teenagers. I will note that many Magic writers have not yet progressed past this point.
Oh, and as a final word, to reinforce what I’ve already said: Radha’s flavor is good. She has, barring for the stupidity of her outfit, good artwork, she has very impressive, very badass flavor text, and she’s obviously got a lot of the badass I was hoping to see. But the guys who actually designed and developed the card? You want to make this kind of thing exciting? Let’s see her be a 4/4 who Heartbeat of Springs. Let’s see an Upwelling on legs who has power equal to the amount of floating mana. Let’s see something other than a throwaway set of abilities.
As it is, she’s just a fighting two-drop whose storyline and style write checks she simply cannot cash. Shame, too, to use such a neat and new ability on a character for whom so many other things would have been appropriate.
Hugs and Kisses
Talen Lee
talen at dodo dot com dot au
The List Bit
Just to provide you all with my numbers…
My field to research was the period from Mirrodin through to Time Spiral. I did not include Planar Chaos (since I don’t have access to all the cards yet). In this sample, we have 25 female legendary creatures in Magic. This was when the flavor department stepped truly away from the original ideal of the Old Storyline, of Gerrard and Hannah, and started out on their own direction, obtaining the first “clean break,” or at least the closest they could manage to it.
First, some parameters and corner cases. I count any characters with no clear gender (Erayo) as neither male nor female. If flavor text refers in the feminine, then okay, I’ll add that one. In the corner cases where a female character forms part of a group, I don’t count it, because it’s really stupid to try and determine how male something is. Isperia the Inscrutable is tricky; she’s not referenced in any flavor text, and Sphinxes are traditionally female, but at the same time, I’m not so sure how much she “counts,” as it were. Anyway, she and Lumia are both corner cases, and shouldn’t really affect the general trend. The Myojin of Night’s Reach was referred to as female in the novels, as was the Myojin of Life’s Web, but the Myojin of Infinite Rage has a beard. I’ve left off most of the Spirits, because gender seems rather immaterial to them, given they don’t really breed per se. Chorus of the Conclave seem to be entirely female, so we’ll take a punt at them counting too.
The big ambiguous characters were Kaho, Minamo Historian and Opal-Eye. I can’t really tell on either. Opal-Eye could be a flat-chested woman binding her chest (as is Samurai style), but it’s likely that Opal-Eye is male. I also left out many dragons, and spirits, presuming that even spirits with a male avatar (like Kiyomaro and Masumaro) aren’t really male by any definition we’d use.
Now, the list:
Female Characters (24)
Kiku, Night’s Shadow
Saffi Eriksdotter
Azusa, Lost But Seeking
Shidako, Broodmistress
Masako the Humorless
Lyzolda, the Blood Witch
Shizuko, Caller of Autumn
Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
Teysa, Orzhov Scion
Shisato, Whispering Hunter
Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker
Savra, Queen of the Golgari
Glissa Sunseeker
Sachi, Daughter of Seshiro
Fumiko the Lowblood
Lovisa Coldeyes
Azami, Lady of Scrolls
Ink-Eyes, Servant of the Oni
Sakiko, Mother of Summer
Uyo, Silent Prophet
Garza Zol, Plague Queen
Sisters of Stone Death
Razia, Boros Archangel
Chorus of the Conclave
Male Characters (69)
Agrus Kos, Wojek Veteran
Tok-Tok, Volcano Borne
Ben-Ben, Akki Hermit
Borborygmos
Brothers Yamazaki
Dokai, Weaver of Life
Kenzo the Hardhearted
Circu, Dimir Lobotomist
Dosan the Falling Leaf
Eight-and-a-Half-Tails
Godo, Bandit Warlord
Heartless Hidetsugu
Higure, the Still Wind
Hisoka, Minamo Sensei
Homura, Human Ascendant
Iizuka the Ruthless
Goka the Unjust
Isamaru, Hound of Konda
Isao, Enlightened Bushi
Ishi-Ishi, Akki Crackshot
Iwamori of the Open Fist
Tomoya The Revealer
Kentaro, the Smiling Cat
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
Autumn-Tail, Kitsune Mystic
Konda, Lord of Eiganjo
Kumano, Master Yamabushi
Kuon, Ogre Ascendant
Maga, Traitor to Mortals
Marrow-Gnawer
Meloku the Clouded Mirror
Nagao, Bound by Honor
Nighteyes the Desecrator
Stabwhisker
Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind
Raksha Golden Cub
Reki, the History of Kamigawa
Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant
Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant
Sensei Golden-Tail
Seshiro the Anointed
Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer
Sosuke, Son of Seshiro
Tobita
Szadek, Lord of Secrets
Takeno, Samurai General
Tolsimir Wolfblood
Toshiro Umezawa
Zo-Zu the Punisher
Arcum Dagsson
Dralnu, Lich Lord
Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder
Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
Heidar, Rimewind Master
Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician
Ith, High Arcanist
Kaervek the Merciless
Lim-Dul the Necromancer
Mangara of Corondor
Mishra, Artificer Prodigy
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Norin the Wary
Sek’Kuar, Deathkeeper
Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
Thelon of Havenwood
Tivadar of Thorn
Zur the Enchanter
* A pointless comparison, I suppose. I mean, find me a Magic artist who couldn’t kick my ass. I wouldn’t even give myself even money against Pat Lee.