#mtg fan characters

[commander-ben]

My take on the MTG card “Heartless Hidetsugu” .

I really wanted to convey the massive amount of damage that he can unleash reducing every players live by half with each swing.

I wanted to keep as much as I could from his original design like the girdle with the bones. But move him more to an oni look.

[allhailklisz]

decided to finally jot down my half baked phyrexian oc concepts and also give them names (which I made basically by just ramming random phyrexian phonemes together, seeing what syllables I liked, and then trying to anglicize them by vague analogy to the praetor names and to the correspondence of φyrx-phyrexian itself)

Iphiqua (^’yφq.)

Formerly a priest of the Machine Orthodoxy, the sort who could recite the entire Argent Etchings from memory. Became disillusioned with the Orthodoxy for [reasons to be decided later, it’s not like there aren’t options] and has defected, and is now the sort of jaded ex-religious type who never misses an opportunity to make a jab at their former faith (frequently quoting the Etchings right before flagrantly violating the quoted verse, that sort of thing). Has deep-seated self-hatred because of having once been a tool of Norn’s, but is simultaneously in deep denial of this.

Chovex Parsk (^čovx-paʁsk.)

Dissident Gitaxian, who has come to emphasize the whole “anyone can become anything they want to be” bit of blue’s ethos – still wanting everything to progress in the process of perfection, but also believing that perfection itself is fundamentally subjective, and thus opposed to involuntary compleation purely for monoblue reasons (rather than the red-based empathetic reasons that Urabrask and his sort have for their own distastes for such).

[leafdrake-haven]

Fandom Friday

*dusts of my prompts and taps microphone* Hello? Is this thing still on? It’s been a minute or two since I’ve done one of these, but I’ve been wanting to step back in for awhile now and I’ve been feeling it lately. So with a big smile I wish you a welcome to Fandom Friday! A day for the MtG community to come together and talk about our OCs, fanplanes, and favorite aspects of MtG in general!

Ok so you know the drill, I’ll give a prompt and you can respond to it by answering directly, doing a doodle, making a custom card, a little flash fic, or whatever feels right and most fun for you! (Heck, do multiples if you want, this is just for fun!)

Happy Friday!

Ok we saw this one coming since we saw the beginning of previews. If your character went to Bloomburrow, what creature would they be? (I know it’s a little tricky since we don’t know the archetypes yet and we don’t know a size limit on creatures before they become the scary elemental big creatures, but shhh it’s fun we can do a serious one later)

[threewaysdivided]

Hey ! i'm a longtime follower of your blog and I've read a lot of your YJ analysis and why the latter seasons totally flopped. I haven't seen you comment on Young Justice Phantoms, although I guess your opinion remains the same. However I'd love to read it one day.

PS : I do think Greg Weisman is a decent writer, but not that good at characterization and desperatly needs editors and not enablers *sigh*

Hey nonnie!

Glad you’ve found my YJ writing critiques interesting. 

The reason why I haven’t commented on Young Justice: Phantoms (or the final Targets comic) is that I haven’t watched it, haven’t read a synopsis and have no plans to ever do so.  My interest in the series went pretty cold as far back as Invasion but at the time I was willing to give the showrunners good faith on their claims that they had a plan to bring things together and that the problems were mostly production issues.  However, after how bad Outsiders was (and having seen similar awfulness from Greg Weisman in other franchises) I don’t have any good faith or trust left to give them.

I talked at length about how Outsiders left the show with no compelling narrative as part of this big Invasion breakdown (grumpier TL:DR version here), but here are the most relevant sections:

In terms of the Central Conflict, the Light are proved utterly correct: by Outsiders the Original Team are callous, hollow husks of their former selves, who have replicated a worse version of the same status quo the Team originally formed in response to. Dick, Kaldur and M’gann’s Anti-Light are a new upper echelon of older heroes who keep even more secrets from the next generations, who exclude the new generations far more strongly from knowing their plans, who give them even less reason to trust or communicate with them, and who do so for less just, less honest and less narratively justified reasons than their own mentors’ understandable (if condescending) desire to shield the proteges from the parts of the Life they may not yet have been equipped to face. Not only that but their constant lying with the intent to control others, and refusal to hold themselves accountable for those actions goes directly against both the League’s stated heroic ideals of “Truth, Liberty and Justice” and Red Tornado’s conclusion that caring is “the human thing to do”. By the end of Outsiders, even the existence of the Team itself is undone; decommissioned into the exact kind of safe training space that the Season 1 characters were desperate for it never to be. […] With Outsiders, any actual narrative set by Young Justice Season 1 is over. By their own standards the Team have lost, and lost entirely.

The meta-narrative of Young Justice Animated is that of a show that started with a promising initial season and strong sense of narrative identity, only to discard every part of that identity.  With Invasion the show discarded its original characterisations, themes and ideologies; replacing them with contradictory and often antithetical ones.  Outsiders would then shed even the surface trappings of its aesthetic (in favour of the more generic “modern DC” art-style) and mission-based narrative structure.  There is nothing left, save for some superficial proper nouns and call-back references: the textbook definition of an In Name Only Sequel.

I didn’t bother with Phantoms (and am frankly a little artistically insulted by its existence) because I knew it was doomed from the start to be a narrative stillbirth.  Having actively abandoned its original identity, Young Justice was left desperately scrambling to forge a new one, by clawing at the one thing it had left: people’s nostalgic attachment to the Season 1 iterations of the cast.  But this could never work because every season since has been engaged in a performative pretense of not acknowledging the character-breaking contradictions and hypocrisies forced upon the original cast by the poor writing decisions.  Phantoms would have to thread an impossible needle: wanting to be about the “journey” of the original cast for nostalgia reasons, while not being able to acknowledge that the last two seasons (and attaché comics) have resulted in all of them either actively failing or being tragically soft-locked out of their explicit character arcs without breaking that kayfabe of performative ignorance.  And, in trying to tell a story without engaging with that story's content or how broken it had become, what would they have left but to fall back yet again on canonical filler, sidequests and references held loosely together by contrivance? 

It could only ever be a zombie-fic of itself: having long-since concluded or abandoned any remaining character or plot threads, driven forward solely by the stream-of-consciousness compulsive-writing of a production team desperate to remain present, relevant and profitable.  And from the feedback I’ve heard from the general community and fandom friends who kept watching, it seems like Phantoms did indeed pull down the curtain on that empty, directionless, hollow-automaton-filled narrative for a lot of people.

As for Greg Weisman himself, while I agree that he is a particularly poor character-writer, I will respectfully but firmly disagree that he’s otherwise decent.  I think the fact that we have to caveat “he’s a decent writer” with the condition “so long as he’s surrounded by a team of strong editors and directors to keep him from being awful” kind of reveals that he isn’t.   I also don’t really accept the premise that the main fault lies with the people around him for not stopping that.  They certainly haven’t helped but he’s a grown adult who can make his own decisions. Enablers don’t generally induce behaviours; they simply amplify or become complicit in the behaviours that are already there.

In the video Plagiarism and You(tube), Hbomberguy did a great job of laying out the difference between “honest mistakes” – which can be easily cleared up by good-faith apologies and explanations – and “dishonest behaviour” – where the person(s) is aware that what they are doing is not appropriate and falls back on reputation-protecting deflections and “non-apologies” to avoid consequences when caught.  Weisman would not so-frequently disrespect his colleagues’ work with contradictions, or write patterns of misogyny, queerphobia, casual racism/ableism and abuse apologism into his stories if he did not fundamentally feel entitled to do so, was not comfortable and in agreement with those beliefs, or did not think he could get away with it.  And the way he has routinely responded to even gentle, good-faith comments by fans expressing frustration/confusion with inconsistent characterisation/structure indicates someone who knows he has done the wrong thing but resents being questioned or held accountable.  And then we see him continuing the same behaviours.  A “decent writer” should not need an editor to hold their hand and explain why directly contracting explicitly-stated characterisation is bad practice.  A “good ally” should not need someone to tell them that disproportionately subjecting queer/non-white characters to shock-value violence, writing minority characters to be dirty/dangerous/less valid in their identities, erasing/demonising/misgendering AFAB trans and bisexual identities, rewriting strong female characters to need motherhood or men to “tell them who they are”, writing gay men to be secretly misogynistic/racist, and framing victims as being equally responsible for their abuse is offensive.  All of which he has either directly done or tacitly allowed under his lead.  Multiple times.  Across multiple series.

These are not isolated incidents of “good-faith mistakes” from a newcomer learning the ropes (if they were, it wouldn’t bother me like this).  Weisman has had multiple seasons - multiple franchises even - and decades to show himself to be the kind of sincere ally and visionary artist of integrity that myself and his fans wanted him to be… and that he has so benefited from presenting himself as.  He has chosen not to. Say what you want about their stories, but you can’t claim that marginalised creators like ND Stevenson, Rebecca Sugar, Dana Terrace and allies like Neil Gaiman didn’t push back hard against their own publishers and make a lot of careful compromises in order to tell those stories in a way they felt was respectful. Weisman is in a very privileged position, with a resume that carries a decent amount of clout. He could have held himself to the creative standards he publicly expresses; could have worked improve his craft, could have examined his own biases and actually learned from the communities his stories speak about/over.  But he didn’t – because obviously it's easier and more comfortable to keep being lazy, keep relying on his colleagues to carry him, to not question his own biases/privileges and then lie when caught.  And with the money he makes, and all the second chances and new jobs he keeps getting handed, what incentive does he have to change that behaviour? 

So, personally I don’t buy his attempts to position himself as an UwU Nice Guy Ally whose haters are taking him out of context and whose nasty publishers keep forcing him to do incoherent bigotry.  He’s a grown-up, who can own his own behaviour.  And, even with a generous reading, this is at best the behaviour of a fair-weather sell-out who is willing to abandon his principles at the slightest hint of pressure from above.  That is not what respect looks like.  I wanted to give him good faith, but in light of all this, I find I can no longer trust him to keep his word or be honest about his intentions.

This is kind of the other reason why I choose not to support or engage with YJ Phantoms (or the revival in general): on top of being utterly disinterested, I just don’t want to incentivise this kind of creative behaviour with more money or attention.  I also can’t ignore what could be a pattern where Weisman makes grand promises that he likely never has a plan or intent to fulfill, then deliberately leaves holes/timeskips/inconsistencies in his narratives in order to generate ongoing demand for separate-purchase side content which promises to “fill those gaps”… but which never does because there isn’t actually a plan to facilitate that (thus creating an endless cycle of demand and profit).  To me that cuts a little too close to the potential for a privileged creator to be exploiting their clout and the good-faith belief of their fanbase in order to grift those fans out of their time and money.  I don’t find that acceptable.

So, yeah.  Not to deploy the GIF again but:

It'll be a big, fat doughnut on YJ Phantoms content from me 🍩. Sorry!

[evydraws]

I’m open for one more character art commission in December, thanks to the unpredictability of life and a cancelled family visit... Commission Info

Mostly focusing on DnD character portraits, but I’m a huge nerd and familiar with all kinds of settings and always happy to tackle new things. Originals will be shipped after the holidays, as I ship internationally and want to make sure everything has enough time to dry, be varnished, and then not get caught in the holiday shipping chaos.

I’d love to hear about your character if you’re interested!

[starlit-mansion]

i think it was obvious that the mh3 prerelease was not important to us because we didn't even think about self-quarantining for 2 weeks like we did do for otj

(not that we were going to go sick, i mean we would have not been bothered having to miss it if we got sick while we would have been devastated not going to otj)

[gelatosushix]

Custom Mishra’s Warform token reimagined in a cyberpunk ghost-in-the-shell inspired art style ^^

[teanewton]

I made some phyrexian friends.

[inudono]

Fellas, is it cringe to draw your OCs defeating canon characters?

[teaspoonarts]

Commissions are open for Nerdy Valentines Day cards! Please DM me if you’re interested or email me at teaspoonarts@gmail.com . Prices range starting at $60 .

[mariourza]

I did a character study of Jace Beleren a little while ago. I made it when I didn't have a Tumblr account during the time, so it felt like a good idea to post it here. It turned pretty good when I finished drawing him.

[thehamwarrior]

Drawn for a dude on instagram.

Phyrexian Prophet?

Yeah, that.

[michaelkatchan]

Urza + Mishra x Suicideboys

[leafdrake-haven]

Fandom Friday

Welcome to Fandom Friday! A day for the MtG community to come together and talk about our OCs, fanplanes, and favorite aspects of MtG in general!

Ok so you know the drill, I’ll give a prompt and you can respond to it by answering directly, doing a doodle, making a custom card, a little flash fic, or whatever feels right and most fun for you! (Heck, do multiples if you want, this is just for fun!)

Happy Friday!

This is a design challenge day! It also contains story spoilers (which I assume most people know about now but hey just in case).

So we’ve got lots of walkers losing their sparks. Whether or not you’re going to actually do it for any of your fanwalkers, make a card (or a what-if card) for a creature design for your character(s).

[icysebzero]

Izoni

[bryanfrosadoart]

Gideon Jura [KHM] - Magic: the Gathering Fan Art, 2020. Gideon, Kaldheim © WotC

PORTFOLIO Website Artstation DeviantArt

PRINTS

SOCIALS Twitter Instagram Facebook

YOUTUBE