I'm staunchly opposed to the idea of burying this or censoring it. Partly because, while these specific cards getting binned doesn't bother me so much, once you start, it's going to be easier to do again. And this kinda thing works on a sliding scale. What happens in the future when something innocuous is no longer acceptable? And then even later? mobdro
Regards, tubemate

Censorship adjusts to the values of the censorer, and in the case of corporations executing censorship they're typically acting according to the value of their consumers. Morality is ultimately subjective and in the future something currently innocuous may no longer be innocuous as a result. I think that clarifying what sort of morals you follow is an appropriate stance to take as a company. They could have accomplished this by condemning the cards in question rather than by delisting them, but they do say that actions speak louder than words. At tthe end of the day its really just a symbolic action and I don't think it affects anything much. They did a similar thing back in the 90s when they stopped printing demons in the interest of appealing to a christian moral stance and they'll probably pander to different moral perspectives in the future. I don't think it will affect the game appreciatively at any point.

Also, how come these slippery slopes only go one way? I could just as well say that not removing offensive material now paves the way for creating more offensive material in the future. In fact, what's to keep Magic art from being nothing but depictions of racially motivated violence in a few years!?

If you think that argument is absurd because people would most likely regulate themselves after what is considered acceptable under their current standards, then please apply that to your own argument.

The "slippery slope" argument is, in general, not a good one.

Censorship is always bad

then why do you censor things on your discord server

Censorship, like any tool, can be good or bad depending on the person using it and/or how something is being censored.

^You can literally say that about anything.

Depictions of racism aside, I think what this gets to the core of is a split in the fanbase on whether the dark, "satanic" imagery is an intrinsic part of magic or not. I'll say that it is, that magic minus the creepy factor is just pokemon or yu-gi-oh. Other players feel differently. But statements like "I don't think it will affect the game appreciatively at any point" beg the question of what would it take to "appreciatively" affect the game? Would you be cool with blank cards with no flavor and just bland descriptions of card mechanics? If not, then you have the burden of proving to what extent art/flavor aspects do or don't affect the game.

magic still has a lot of dark aspects and a even a lot of racism. The shadowmoor elves still exist and their design is heavily based around racism, which is reflected in their names, art, mechanics, and flavour text. All of the cards wizards banned were cards that specifically had connections with real life races or racially sensitive eventts. My impression is that wizards is probably comfortable, at least for now, with at least their past explorations of dark themes including racism as long as they're explored squarely within a fantasy setting.

I haven't followed the story much since gatewatch happened but I wouldn't be surprised if wizard's had decided to cut back moderately on the depiction of evil within magic, although my impression from keeping half an eye on things is that its still there.

Yeah, they put a bunch of Lorwyn elves in Commander Legends, and Kaldheim is full of demons (and one of the main antagonists is a freaking devilman), so I don't think we have much to worry about. They are not afraid of the darker sides of their flavor, and probably never will be.

They massively scaled back in the likes of elvish bigotry with the return to Dominaria as well as the total overhaul of Nissa.
They straight up tried to erase that part of her history because they couldn't square that a protagonist might have bad beliefs, even if reformed.

There's still bad stuff, but it's very clearly separated from the good stuff. The moral ambiguity is gone. Slave-abusing demon lords are okay, but WOTC draws a clear line between them and the noble acts heroes-by-default. #DropNissa

It's rather funny really, because that kind of wishful moralizing is a much more dangerous sort of fantasy than the existence of elves and casting of spells. It harkens back to the pressure early D&D faced, and how that probably moved the game's ethos in a much darker direction. Cult leaders and moral pundits raised a hue and cry about "Satanic influences" and TSR responded by doubling down on the alignment system, righteous paladins and brutish-by-nature orcs. The criticisms D&D's faced lately might actually have their roots in the early games attempts to appease the moral crusaders of yesteryear. They bowed to pressure and made the politically correct changes, and now they're stuck in an ethically incorrect position and facing political pressure over it. I have to laugh. Otherwise I'd scowl.

Let me tell you how I know you never held a red box in your hand or checked a thAC0.

There's nothing to suggest that the person imprisoned in the art had to be dark-skinned; presumably anybody could be chained up like that. Nothing points to anything specifically from real world history.

i don't think the art is necessarily racist but its certainly racially insensitive. In this case the effect it has on people is probably more important than the intent of the author.

The effect on the individual is irrelevant in art.

That may be true for personal art--as in art created for the sole benefit of the artist--but this is public art we are talking about here. As in art created specifically to influence an individual or groups of individuals aside from the original artist, in this case to captivate and intrigue potential customers so that they are enticed to purchase more product with similar art. The key difference here is a matter of time and how that time effects the context of the art.

To give a few examples:

The earliest pottery would have surely been groundbreaking when it was first mastered, but nowadays I doubt anyone but an archaeologist would bat an eye at a clay bowl.

A tapestry depicting the fall of King Louis XIV would have certainly been taboo prior to the French Revolution.

i think the effect art has on an individual is probably of great relevance to most artists, art distributors, and art consumers.

I recall hearing that Imprison was banned due to it referring to a real world torture device - the mask (spanish, italian, south american? I don't remember) - not because it has what could be seen as a dark-skinned humanoid in captive.

This is the classic "Martha Steward effect" in place btw. Let's be honest, basically nobody gave two **** about a card like Cleanse but oh boy do they now. They have been basically put on top of a extra special pedestal by WotC. These are getting a lot attention and awareness - secondary market prices getting up, increasing in collectible value, all that - things I would consider to be the very opposite of desirable and a lot of people are going to be just generally pissed about cards getting blacklisted for "deemed culturally offensive in the contemporary perspective". It's not like "Crusade" as a word isn't used in nonhistorical context, the kneejerk with lack of nuance is almost despicable. Time to take all those Deus Vult memes with the utmost seriousness what they most definitely don't deserve but is certainly going to bring attention to them and feed the trolling.

These cards are now inversely glorified instead of people shrugging them to be the same kind of strangeness as it is having an "Aladdin" card, the original Presence of the Master depicting Einstein and Eureka having mc2 scribbled on it while Earthbind has some serious BDSM vibes to it (how long will that survive this book burning purge? perhaps they are saving that up for some proper #MeToo event or such where they can blacklist to signal that they "condemn sexual assault" or whatever). All of those old MTG cards people tend to not even notice how "problematic" connotations they might if you really go looking for them or have a laugh about since obviously the game is past those and they are hilariously out of touch - which is what makes them funny. Retroactively hand-picking and condemning these is virtual signaling which has the opposite of desired effect with its divisiveness but I think that isn't relevant to WotC as they are indeed just looking to snatch up those virtue points.

/rant

I was looking at Drannith Healer The artist painted him black to contrast the white heal he's holding.

Im not really sure if the art or me is being low key racist.