Commentary - We need more female planeswalkers

confessionsofapuzzledwizard:

The Hermitic: We need some more female planeswalkers.

thehermitic:

We have four right now: Chandra, Elspeth, Nissa (who nobody plays) and Liliana. We have nine male planeswalkers, not including Karn (who is masculine): Garruk, Jace, Ajani, Venser, Koth, Sorin, Sarkhan, Nicol and Tezzeret. In card numbers, there are 16 males (plus karn) and 7 females. I’m pretty…

I see what you’re saying, but at the same time, I think those numbers are pretty good. As far as I know Alexis Janson is the only woman working behind the scenes and it is hard for men to consistently design interesting female characters, either because it’s simply not the first thing they thing of, or it’s just harder to do. Also Chandra and Liliana are two of the most compelling planeswalkers around right now (and Liliana’s about to get another card).

It’s sad that so many female premending planeswalkers died in Time Spiral. Freyalise, Jaya (Although a lot of people also see her as a precursor to the planeswalker characters), Jeska and Radha all lost their potential to be planeswalkers. It’s a shame that Glissa never became one either.

Finally, there is a creative/flavour argument that female planeswalkers are less common purely because male characters are more likely to be put in situations of life or death conflict, which is generally what turns a person with a spark into a planeswalker. It is well-known that the number of unawakened sparks largely outnumbers the number of actual planeswalkers, so this does make some sense. Also the fact that in a sword and sorcery setting like magic, there probably is sexism within the worlds themselves (aside from Ravnica I’d say) and this probably results in a lot of families keeping there daughters at home to farm/breed and sending there sons to war or traineeships as wizards or other situations which generally lead to planeswallkery-ness.

That was a type-ful. Anyways, I do hope we get some more cool female planeswalkers (no more whiny Elspeths or unplayable Nissas), usually the most interesting magic characters are women and I’d like to see deeper characters (I’m looking at you Jace “I’m psychic” Beleren). Let’s hope Kiora and Liliana hold up their end of the bargain. Plus with Kiora Atua around, we’ll finally have a female planeswalker in every colour!