The character in this image kills 'ghosts' for a living

what if it ain't no thang?

wizardsmagic.tumblr.com/post/148459722916/if-you-read-yesterdays-magic-story-laid-to-rest

LOL

How the hell do you kill a ghost?
If you can answer that, I guess that's what she does. The closest thing I can think of would probably be banishing them to the afterlife/whatever.

You know what is sad?

That you use /asp/ bread and butter to create a thread, with no substance or originality. You could substitute the picture with Undertaker or Rock and I would feel right at home.

someone introduce this girl to Konda, i think he might have a plan for her

Jesus fucking christ.

>Here's why we made a black woman character.
>But now you can't get mad if we offend you, because of reasons!

if that's what you took away from that I think you're really trying to be angry here. I mean, hiring a racial cliche avoidance consultant sounds fucking crazy, but the message is clearly "hey look, we're trying to be both sensitive and engaging, please like us"

That's hilarious. And it guess it gives a little more insight into why she looks like some random chick from san fran with magic knives just kind of slapped there

Just because she's a black woman doesn't mean she has to be anything like real black women. Do you think Jace and Gideon are similar to you?

>It's a post about another post where people sperg out about other people sperging out and someone was actually called in to consult about black females in a story
To be honest, if I could consult anyone about how a character that shares traits with them would act without looking like a pissant, I'd do it on a regular basis, because I want to write characters correctly and it's always cool to learn about how an airplane pilot or a general actually thinks about stuff.

severely underrated.

another nigger ghostbuster

just what we need

The difference is an occupation vs skin color.

It means she kills spooks.

Usually you can just Murder them.

Well, I mean, if I wanted to write a story about a male character that was attractive to women, I'd look like a desperate asshole if I asked women, "Hey, what kind of dudes do you like?".
'I have a book I'm writing' can be the preface to some creepy-ass questions.
Like, trying to write a story about the suffering of child sex slaves could put you on a government watch list.

I love how the subtext to the dev post is they're so white, privileged and utterly sheltered they simply don't know how black women operate.

As you said, they're literally doing the equivalent of "hey what do women like?"

>I love how the subtext to the dev post is they're so white, privileged and utterly sheltered they simply don't know how black women operate.

Not even a black woman, just a woman that happens to be black.

They simply can't fathom how that kind of creature would operate.

...

What's really dumb is that they're using a real world example for this character in a setting that doesn't have any appropriate history. There's no cultural background for a sassy african-american expy because there's no africa and none of the historical events that helped shape the sassy black lady cultural norm.

Isn't that supposed to be a med-fan setting?
She looks way modern.

MTGS is so neutered by it's SJW mods that all it took was someone saying she was underdesigned to get her reveal thread locked.

>Shut up about Innistrad having black people, this isn't the real world!
>We need to bring in a black woman consultant because we want this woman to act like a black woman!

Oh hey look! Wizards is clearly doing this for diversity and progressivism! Their previous defenses were obviously bullshit!

The plane she is present on is basically Renaissance Italy.

I don't care about her being black.
I care about her being based on modern IRL concepts instead of something that could actually fit in the setting.

No no, I agree that her being black isn't a problem.

I'm simply highlighting the hypocrisy of the developers that have for *years* defended blackening up planes by saying it "shouldn't be based on the real world."

And yet they make a black woman and they explicitly state they were trying to keep her accurate to real-world American black women.

>a planeswalker, a character inherently foreign doesn't fit in the setting she is presented in

It means you're gonna have to call her.

And the result was an underdesigned and bland as fuck person that looks like a real girl in winter clothing with some bad renfaire prop in her arms.
Look up real hitmen, headhunters and bounty hunters. People were flamboyant as fuck specially those from the late renaissance-baroque period that fit the cultural level of Innistrad/Fiora/Kaladesh/Ravnica most.

She's famous, she's known for her work, she's not exceedingly sublte, she can become immaterial, she's proud of what she does and she can planeswalk away if anything goes too sour.
Why does she look like she's trying to be as inoffensive as possible? That's not a character thing, that's a "we're afraid to be called out by real world whiney tumblr faggots things."

And what's worse is that tumblr will find a way to complain about it anyway.

She also doesn't fit in any other setting shown. She only really fits in a modern IRL setting.

We don't know if she's foreign, the have the extremely bad tradition of introducing planeswalkers in their home plane as if we'd stay here if we could move on to other fantasy words at will...

I don't get why they can't just create cool people and cool heroes instead of always cool [color] heroes.

some of your points are fair, and some of them I disagree with but my point is, WotC isn't trying to squelch any suggestion of insensitivity, they're desperate to appease any potential detractors. They aren't champions of the SJW cause, they're terrified of being the victims of PC outrage and are just showing their work in the hopes that an A for effort will avoid it in the event that someone is still offended (and yes, I agree, someone will be).

I agree that in some ways the result is worse for their efforts, but I think what they're trying to do isn't inherently flawed and may be improved by their efforts to resonate with part of their audience, what we've seen is a shallow view of the character that could go either way.

The story did have her referring to "home" as if it were separate from her current world. also the last conspiracy walker, Dack, was not from Fiora either.

>And the result was an underdesigned and bland as fuck person

desu I feel that's more of an overall trend in things as opposed to the fault of being racially sensitive.

I've been noticing a big move to make things more "realistic" and "down to earth" even in crazy fantasy settings

It's both her profession and a clever play on words.

desu I have no idea what this even means.

Eh, give it 4, maybe 5 years. As soon as the fad of diversity (and probably capeshit too) ends, they'll get their filthy, money grubbing hands on the dick of the Next Big Thing.

Actually, it's expressly mentioned in her story that she's not from the plane she's currently in.

It's why she's ticked off at the royalty in this place. Back home they have much less shitty royalty and wouldn't put up with this pissant.

why are all of you so racist?

Are you aware eternal masters had a sub plot sir?

Literally kills ghosts.

wtf I hate WOTC now

I don't think it's a matter of being realistic, but of being relatable, at least in some respect. part of the reason WotC has stated for the overhaul to what a planeswalker is was because it's difficult to get invested in a story about nearly omnipotent god-beings, there's just nothing to draw personal connections to. They may be playing it too safe with some decisions, this is still supposed to be fantasy, but it makes sense from the perspective of a busibess, and of trying to get personal investment from an audience.

In this context, "realistic" is how they are defining relatable.

Also the only one I ever heard about that was doing insane shit was Urza, were the other ones reconstructing their forms facing the other way because it was easier than turning around?

And the Greeks drew plenty of personal connections to their gods (and that's not getting into all the other pantheons of the world) so I don't buy this whole "superpower people are unrelatable" bullshit. That may be how they are justifying it but it's a dumb as hell call.

it's a little dumb, yeah, but in some ways it's true. the greek gods were flawed and petty, and had relatively small scope of influence. oldwalkers had no reason to give a shit, and usually only gave a shit about personal obsessions. freyalise decided llanowar was the bestest place ever, she was trans elf, and is personally responsible for the zealotry that lead to the rule in old llanowar elves' flavor text. also she wore an eyepatch despite having no real corporeal form capable of sustaining pemanent injury.

leshrack spent most of his time as a screaming fire demon. he gave lim-dul ram horbs as a joke, making his skull so heavy it strained his neck, then he gave him more neck muscles to support his stupid goat horns, because leshrack was a bored asshole.

tecash zat was a dragonkin before sarkhan even existed in the timeline that doesn't exist anymore. when he wasn't transformed into an actual dragon, he still looked like some creepy version if a dragonborn, before they existed either.

commodore guff had a book that contained the full accounting of all of history, past and present, and literally retconned destiny.

good or bad, it has to be admitted that oldwalkers were fucking crazy assholes.

...

> usually only gave a shit about personal obsessions

Sounds pretty human to me

I'm not too worked up about the 'walker change cuz it probably wound up being a lot easier for writers to make stories cuz art is weird and shit but it's just sooo laaaaaaame

>Sounds pretty human to me
not when it's to the exclusion of everything else. everything including entire worlds, species, physics. "I really like the woods, and will commit to defendin them with all my power" is human. "I really like the woods so I will cultivate a culture over generations that each live hundreds of years set on murdering any outsider without exclusion" is insane.

I reserve my judgement on Kaya until we have further info on her background and we get a couple more stories at least.

It's all too easy to have a character ruined in the hands of a shoddy writer and Kelly's is frankly quite deficient. For all you know next week Ken Troop could handle her and suddenly she really IS pretty awesome.

Well I'm certain it seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.

I'd also like to believe that the stories involving these characters didn't meta-analyze the insanity of the planeswalkers and focused on them being people who act in ways that make sense to them.

Still, I must say that the whole 'rogue' and 'assassin' thing where horribly done. I get the point is that she's 'an assassin of the dead', but since when is killing the dead assassination or even illegal on the first place?, as Kaya herself said, she's an exorcist at most, what brings her closer to a priestess than a rogue.

From there her character just falls appart. Its easy to see the reason why she isn't depicted as a priestess is that she isn't a religious person herself, but that does not justify her being a rogue, not without doing proper rogue things like thieving and actually assassinating. Specially since she seems so squeamish about the later. If anything yesterday's story cemented her character as lawful, which is exactly the opposite to what a rogue is meant to be.

Then there's the whole duelist thing. But if there's something remotely rogue-like about Kaya that's her combat style, which is pretty damn different from how a duelist fights. Her weapons clearly aren't that of a duelist either.

But the worst so far is the whole royal thing. Simply because it doesn't show. Like at all. Which means there's little to no point about it. Having her be of royal blood without showing any sign of her privileged upbringing just convolutes her story and makes her being a rogue even less believable.

Overall it feels like she has too much going on, and that she was created by people that couldn't make their minds about who the character was supposed to be and just threw a bunch of character traits and a mix of backgrounds to pass them as those of a complex character to disguise their total lack of creativity.

As a black woman I also feel that they even need a consultant insulting. Is it so hard to grasp that, before everything else, we are people?, Doubly so in a magical universe where our cultural backgrounds aren't applicable. Do they think she HAS to act black for us to relate?

>since when is killing the dead assassination or even illegal
Since ghosts existed and started doing shit? If this is a planeswalker we're talking about, think of Ravnica, where ghosts run a major organization.

Fair enough, I get how killing some ghosts like the Obzedat or Brago could be considered assassination since tey are actually valuable members of society (though the former are more of a leech), but what about wrathful ghosts like yesterday's?, Who could truly claim slaying one of those is worse than killing any given beast?

Which also brings the question of why is she above killing people but not good ghosts?, Specially when good spirits tend to be the best of people.

She's very self-righteous for someone who'd prolly wouldn't think twice about killing Saint Traft.

>Which also brings the question of why is she above killing people but not good ghosts?

Inb4 ghosts enslaved her ancestors and she wants reparations

So what you're proposing is that she's definitely from Ravnica.

Who gives a shit if she's black or not? Or a woman for that matter? I'm as much of a druggo neonazi as the next guy on here but I get the feeling some people are much more eager to find flaws in a character if the character happens to be coloured, just so they can point their finger at the SJW shoehorning boogeyman

Look at her bland urban wear clothing.

She looks like she could have been taken out of a photo of New York in the past decade.

OF COURSE she's from Ravnica.

That's the most recognizable special snowflake setting WotC has.

Her outfit looks like 'Most rogue outfits all the way back to TSR'.

Why are real world cliches and racial stereotypes even relevant in a fantasy world....like just make a character how u want. I don't remember them caring when they made all the asian characters in Kamigawa block.

That was back when you only got attacked by your actual fanbase.

Nowadays WotC is afraid of extortionists who don't even play their games, hence preemptively paying protection racket bux to a SJW black womyn so they can virtue signal and not get attacked.

It's weird.

Back in the day, we could just say the joke and move on.

She kills ghosts. Ghosts are white. She kills white people, ha ha, how racist, how silly. Then we could move on.

Now, we have to drag all this weird agenda oriented business around us, and any chance for humor is devoured and shat out.

Too jaded for jokes at this point. I want SJWs out of the things that interest me

The problem is that magic is too popular now, I think. As organizations get bigger and bigger they have to appeal to broader and broader user bases - now, that base is the SJW/diversity/twitter activist base. They never had a problem creating black characters before - I liked Koth of the Hammer and Teferi, even Sisay (not a walker) was fine. But WotC needs more shekels. I don't really blame them, all companies want more money and to grow, but it really dumbs down the game over time. I don't really see how people who have played the game for a while don't see it too - the art is much more bland than it used to be, gameplay is less unique, and the themes are dull at best. Kaya is only the latest manifestation of the dumbing down of the game (not to say lore/characters have always been great, but the recent walkers have really been terrible).

I don't really buy magic product anymore - I play legacy and modern and pretty much nothing else. I kind of liked Return to Ravnica but feel like everything after Lorwyn has brought down the creativity of the game, not increased it. I could care less about the race wars/sjw/black lives matter-sphere, but you're kidding yourself if you think that this Kaya thing isn't anything but an attempt to appeal to a new player base. If it wasn't, they wouldn't have blown their own horn so loudly about "Hire a consultant and pay them!"

I used to read all the Magic books - I have a huge box of them still sitting at home, everything from the Brothers War Cycle through Kamigawa. They were kitschy and trite but fun as a kid and young adult. The writing now is god-awful, especially from Digges. If the art and worlds made it for it I wouldn't really care, but bland story and setting after bland story and setting has me looking for new games.

I don't really have any issue with Kaya, save for her design, and her "laid to rest" story was fine. That said, whole thing reeks of "playing it too safe", and we already have seen how bad everything turns in Magic the Origins when you play it too safe with your characterization.

It's great and all that they have consultants for making this character, but why write a whole article justifying it and trying to bring attention to it? It's not even a general "we use consultants in our work" type of blog entry either, it's simply "look how progressive we are." It's meaningless and serves nothing to advance the game's narrative, save for rattling closet racists for no reason. Then again, WOTC seem to be very interested in copying the comic book industry as much as they can.

Sorry for my drunken rabble.

All the cool lads left the chan long ago.

I like the cut of your jib.

Here's my personal take on the whole situation.

>story didn't seem to indicate she was black, or a woman aside from saying "she" instead of "he"
>Kaya looks a little underdesigned, but only compared to the other planeswalkers, and I've felt for ages that they look overdesigned; if anything, she dresses practically, and the flourish the others have is excessive
>the article was meant to portray more that they were trying to avoid snafus than "hey look we have a black woman telling us how to write a black woman"; it's fair to assume there's certain things to avoid in their stories, and having a consultant who already deals with the subject was able to help them write without worrying so much

Dack is a fioran though, right?

Also before someone ask why not-afircans are in not- Renaissance Italy, search up Moors.

So it was them going "hey look at this black woman in our ip who totally isn't an example of 'hey look at this black woman ip'"

Yes.

Add to this:

>Bruce Jenner planeswalker

>Khans characters who are literally a transsexual and autistics.

>ghost quarter on ravnica is a thing
>shes a former noble
>her spooky energy doesnt match ravnican spooky energy colors
No shes gunna be from a new plane, ravnica had a senate and is a pro ghost plane. Its supposed to be the new york plane of magic where anything goes and all are welcome somewhere for the right price, not the racism factory. Ghosts on ravnica are bound to serve the living so when she goes there and joins the jacetice league she'll be cool with them for the most part.

It's a big multiverse. We're going to run into one or two of those from time to time.

Innistrad had black humans?
I thought they we're all werewolves and vampires, because WOTC clearly thought that wouldn't have unfortunate side effects.

I demand an obese hispanic planeswalker, then.

Wait, so Freyalise was the MTG equivalent of some jackass that wears glasses without lenses just to look hip? That's hilarious.

It's a big multiverse. We'll probably run into someone very much like that eventually.

.......

>hispanic

>Spain

>????????????

We've got not-italy, not-greece, not-asia, not-...serbia, I think?, not-germany, why the fuck wouldn't we have not-spain eventually?

Or they've already experienced the insanity of PC culture (see Garruk) and just don't want to have to deal with that bullshit again, so they hired a black woman so the SJW retards won't shriek at their social media accounts.

Alot of Planeswalkers are like that, user. Almost all of them were petty assholes with god-like powers and too much free time on top of that.

I'm more curious why the sheathes are on her arms like that. Her daggers could only be drawn in the most awkward way.

I'm married to an obese hispanic woman who admittedly doesn't walk between planes or walk much period and I'm not sure you want this, for the simple reason that fat ladies are insecure and sad as fuck generally.

Picture the Single Office Lady series. Now give her magic powers. Do you want to be depressed?

And black women aren't insecure as fuck?

Does anybody else care that Kaya's power set is Danny Phantom, minus flight? Are we going to find out that her parents are ghosthunters too? Did her spark ignited when an experimental portal device malfunctioned with her inside it?

Whites are a majority on Innistrad but there is a not insignificant population of black people. Maybe they come from some spooky island or something. It gets more noticeable with SOI and EMN. Hell, the black Thalia's lancer even has a big dumb afro too

My issue is:
>They could have kept this private, this is blatant pandering to the max
>They put so much time and effort into this, but not into MTGO or the high school level writing of Uncharted Realms.

I don't give a fuck about a (add tumblr BS) plainswalker, in matter of fact their is a Black girl at my LGS that is super happy about this (good for her) my issues is the one sided SJW PC bullshit. You want to put """diverse""" characters, ok. But you still need to keep my scantly clad busty white women. That's real equality.

I know the dress technically covers all of her, but doesn't Liliana kinda fit that?

>(good for her)

You don't need to virtue signal here.

The PC feminism police aren't going to try and dox you for saying something like you appreciating big-titted white women.

Because American culture is fucking insane.

Didn't he come from that backwards ass plane who got fucked by the vampire bitch? Or something like that