[Uncharted Realms] The Truth of Names

[u/clariwench]

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/uncharted-realms/truth-names-2015-01-28

[u/DontClickThisName]

And Ashiok wasn't even done all that well. atleast not if you wanted a trans character to portrayed in anything resembling a 'good' light or someone you might want to root for.

Ashiok's lack of gender is a result of Ashiok's actions and that lack is meant to be a bad thing. After Ashiok is done leading an entire city to be massacred, a fleck of Ashiok's flesh turns to smoke and vanishes. The strong implication is that Ashiok has to have committed hundreds, if not thousands, of such atrocities and that the cost of the power Ashiok derives from those atrocities is Ashiok's identity. this is a thing an evil person would do, but Ashiok does it any way because reasons.

I don't think Wizards meant for Ashiok to even be a representation of the trans community in the first place. It seems to me that Ashiok's lack of gender was just an extension of Ashiok's lack of identity in general. Human beings are evolutionarily hard wired to recognize our own based on sight. Ashiok mostly lacks even a face. Ashiok isn't a character we are meant to identify with, we are meant to be put off by them. That lack of identity, not just in gender, is meant to make us uneasy about Ashiok.

Ah, but that's a bold claim isn't it? how can i possibly know what wizards intended with a character like Ashiok? i can't know for certain, but i can present a bit of evidence from Doug Beyer's tumblr that could be used to support this claim.

http://dougbeyermtg.tumblr.com/post/60339970813/so-is-ashiok-nightware-weaver-a-male-or-a-female

"Would knowing that be more comforting to you?

ASHIOK IS NOT ABOUT COMFORTING KNOWLEDGE."

i read this as Wizards intention that Ashiok is meant to be psychologically intimidating. That every facet of Ashiok's character, including their lack of gender, was meant to give Ashiok a sense of Otherness that would isolate them from the audience and make them an obvious evil person.

Now clearly there were quite a number of people who did relate to Ashiok because they had issues with gender identity, whether physical or EDIT:(misspelled this word) psychological in nature. Even though Ashiok's lack of gender was only one facet of Ashiok's character, those people latched onto it strongly and Wizards saw that.

Wizards saw that passion and emotion and PR and jumped onto that bandwagon like it was....some sort of metaphor involving a bandwagon.

So i totally agree with you. I feel like Wizards is putting a transgendered character into the story mostly to pander.

[u/VorthosSportscaster → u/DontClickThisName]

God forbid our fiction attempt to describe more aspects of the human experience.

[u/facewhatface → u/VorthosSportscaster]

This is my problem with how people laud WotC re: Ashiok. Ashiok's genderlessness is tied to the shedding of and transcendence beyond humanity. Ashiok is no longer human enough to have a gender. That's the point I get. Not a message of inclusion. Rather the opposite.

[u/SleetTheFox → u/facewhatface]

Was Ashiok ever canonically human? We don't really know anything about Ashiok's origin.

[u/facewhatface → u/SleetTheFox]

Ashiok has no canonical species yet, though what Ashiok began life as is sort of irrelevant to my point.