It's largely that I never felt the chemistry between Nissa and her was genuine, or hell, even present. Particularly as she was STILL demonstrating an attraction to Gideon while the supposed seeds of her Nissa preoccupation were supposedly sown. It's not that I don't believe she's bisexual. It's that she hemorrhaged mixed signals and those supposedly directed at Nissa sucked.

I genuinely don't believe they had any chemistry and I think most of those pulling for that ship were just hungry for representation and got baited. But they should demand better than the garbage that got dumped on them with the gruul friends. Something, let's start with, believable.

No its both. Wizards has made many positive strides in certain area for representation but much of it is in the background and support cast. Which is nice and needed but really feel shallow when the most recurring characters are mostly white and and default-ly straight and cis.



Ya this queer baiting 101. The only reason its not worse is members of creative have come out and said the intention when putting together the Bolas arc was to have a slow burn friends into lovers storyline with Chandra and Nissa but that changed when the new Franchise team join/took around Ixalan/Dominaria.

So is there any confirmation on exactly what happened here? Like, it was pretty clearly a very deliberate collective brand decision to create that narrative, not just one writer's lark, but then they pulled the rug out from under it all of a sudden with no foreshadowing, and they've been backpedaling on it since release. Which means one of the following happened:

1: one author decided unilaterally to axe one of the major plot threads, and everyone with editorial oversight either didn't notice or thought it was a small enough creative decision to leave to him.

2: it was a deliberate decision from higher up to axe it because they didn't think there'd be this much backlash, and are now trying to do a takesy-backsies

3: it was a deliberate decision from higher up that they expected a backlash to and don't regret, and the backpedaling is window-dressing until people forget about it.

This whats been said;

From Michael Yichao who had been a creative team member during the start of the Bolas arc, left Wotc and recently came back;
https://twitter.com/michaelyichao/statu ... 3695288325

From someone they hired as a consultant on queer representation
https://twitter.com/ReclusiveWizard/sta ... 6395884544

Doug Beyer reaction, it seem he didn't get to read the final novel head of time, even as a senior member of creative.
https://twitter.com/omnidoug/status/1194664180399296513

The author of the War of the Spark book;
https://www.s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg/se ... p?rid=1231

And again around Ixalan/Dominaria they formed a new team called the franchise team lead by a man named Nick Kelmen who work together with the old creative team (now called the world building team) as the new creative department and seem to be the ones who work most with the outside authors.

And its worth noting around this time Chandra was becoming (and still is I believe) really popular and they have/been phasing out Jace some in the marketing with her. She was getting all kinds of spin off stuff like the comics (rip) and Netflix show so most people are thinking they tried to retcon her to be marketable in other countries.

So Yichao is pointing the finger at Weisman, Weisman is pointing the finger at WotC, Beyer is claiming he had nothing to do with it, the consultant doesn't know what's going on but he's mad as hell and he isn't going to take it anymore, and we still have no way of knowing what actually happened.

We don't know what happened for sure, this all we can piece together. Yichao wasn't working at wotc during War of the Spark so him pointing the finger at Weisman as he said was just speculation. The point of linking him and the consultant was more to show that it was intended and write that Chandra and Nissa where into each other. Weisman if you notice made his post about 10 days after the book had been out, was in reaction to the community blaming him for it. I'm not too familiar with his work but from people who are they said they don't feel as if he's homophobic and don't believe he'd break Nissa and Chandra up like that. So when you take Weisman and Beyers statements (neither of which anyone else at wizards has contradicted) together and again it looking like the franchise team (as they and Kelmen are cited by the authors as the wizards person they work with on the novels).

Now whether this was malicious or incompetence we don't know, but not a good look either way when your a company trying to boast on how diverse they are.

Yes, Greg Weisman has been pushing for LGBT rep in animated series since the early 2000's. I seriously doubt this is on him.

WotC has a spotty record but I'll give them this: they sure know how to put together an intriguing mystery plot. Maybe the next set can take place on a publishing house plane, where Nissa investigates the mysterious forces behind why she's single.



I mean, I don't think this is a conclusion you can necessarily draw. There's a long way between Westboro Baptist and problematic representational treatments of LGBT narratives, and there are plenty of people who aren't capital H homophobic who are perfectly capable of doing the latter. People with good intentions can still end up making **** decisions.

Considering he's the guy that made Gargoyles and Young Justice, I doubt it. He's word of God said Lexington was gay and Aqualad has a husband in the show. He's done legit representation in the past.

That and his headcannon for Irma in the animated version of W.I.T.C.H. is a lesbian. I seriously doubt he's the mastermind behind why Chandra likes manly men only.