Let Ajani Have A Boyfriend

Magic the Gathering's a surprisingly welcoming place for LGBTQ people. Maybe not as much as it COULD or SHOULD be, but more than one might expect a trading card game to be.

Obviously that depends on where you play, and with who, but looking at the community from the internet, and looking at the effects that the people who make the game try to have on it, it's way ahead of the curve as far as geek-type hobbies go.

There's a trans character.

There's a legendary card of a gay couple. This is one of the most popular cards in a certain common play format.

There's a race of non-binary crystal people, and I know that's not perfect rep but it's more than is usually offered.

There's a wlw couple, though it's not fully acknowledged. Despite frequent and repeated disappointments, we continue to hope they'll fix that in upcoming sets: it's becomes something of a rallying cry. Hashtag Gruulfriends.

And, shockingly, because it's a really common problem that media likes to treat "queer woman" as enough representation for the entire LGBTQ community, there's a mlm couple that's not just implied! Other characters talk about the relationship! They worry about eachother when a dragon's zombie army invades! There's no ambiguity about the "these two men are in love" of it!

That shouldn't be something for me to get so excited about, but also there shouldn't be a "hooray for homophobia" rally downtown today timed to try to disrupt Trans pride day, so I'm gonna work with what I've got and try to enjoy this nice thing if that's all right with you.

But, there's always room to do better. Which brings me to Ajani.

If you followed my twitter or my mastodon to this article, then you can probably already guess that I like this character. If you didn't come here from one of those places then how the hell did you even find this essay those are the only two places I shared it. But yes, my profile image in both places is Ajani, in front of a WUBRG pride flag, shouting "♂&♂!" which is the fewest characters I could figure out in which to say "gay rights." Because, as the #LetAjaniHaveABoyfriend hashtag that I keep trying to make happen implies, I think the 'text' of this trading card game strongly supports the interpretation that Ajani is gay.

Or bi. Or "same gender attracted" or whatever his culture on Alara would have called "romantically and sexually attracted to other males." This is going to be a long walk, strap in, because there's a lot of aspects to consider.

THE PLOT: First of all, there's just the basic facts of what the character's story is.

Ajani is a Leonin--what MtG calls cat people--from the plane of Alara. He was a healer and shaman of a pride of lion warriors, and was considered an outcast because his fur was white, which was not normal. His brother, the chieftain, was murdered, and he was sad enough about that to "spark" ie turn into a planeswalker, and if I'm going to explain all the MtG specific terms we'll be here all day. He fought an evil dragon (same one I mentioned above in talking about Ral and Tomik,) he made a friend who died, he made some new friends who then disregarded his advice about how to fight the evil dragon and almost died. And then they all fought the evil dragon, killed him, and one of the friends died.

So this is the framework we're looking at. Notice what I don't see?

A romantic interest. Which is interesting in the absence, because Ajani is one of the first five planeswalkers ever printed, when they introduced the card type. He's also kind of the Captain America of the good guys, he's always right, he's always trustworthy, even if he's usually not the main character. Of the other initial "Lorwyn 5" three have had love interests--Chandra is with Nissa, per the above, Liliana dated Jace, and Jace is now with Vraska--and the other one, Garruk, a literal slasher-movie axe murderer, wasn't seen or heard from in several sets until he briefly showed up in a supporting role for one set then vanished again.

So, on the face of it, there's nothing in the story that RULES OUT Ajani being gay. Let's take a closer look at-

THE SUBTEXT: Ajani's early life was defined by living in a community that regarded him as an outcast for the way he was born. Wizards of the Coast has recently, and very refreshingly, stated that there is no such thing as homophobia, transphobia, or any kind of queerphobia on any plane, but that doesn't rule out other kinds of oppression, and this one is a particularly apt metaphor for the experience of the closet: given that LGBTQ people tend to be born to straight families, this makes Ajani's experience a closer match than to other forms of discrimination.

Ajani's defining moment, the trauma that led him to become a planeswalker, was the death of his brother. This is especially significant, because for closeted gay men, this kind of devotion to Brothers, Fathers, Teachers, Mentors is a common experience. It's a sublimation that occurs when actual feelings of attraction are so off limits that they get redirected into reinforcement of the kind of affections that AREN'T off limits. If I'm not able to express how I feel about a boy I like, as a kid, instead I might double down on wanting my Father's approval, for example.

Once he overcomes the threat to the plane of Alara, Ajani is widely acknowledged as a hero, but he's not comfortable among his people anymore. It is as if, after a painful struggle, he has returned to the family who ostracized him with the ideal, true version of who he is, and they have reacted by pretending that they never ostracized him.

His next defining moment was his friendship with, and the death of, the planeswalker Elspeth Tirel.

Why yes, that cloak does look familiar.

Elspeth is the best candidate for someone who wanted to make a "nuh uh, he's totally straight, he was in love with so-and-so" counter argument, which, why would you choose to come into a gay man's blog to make such an argument, kinda homophobic of you? But viewing their relationship as a "relationship" is not supported by the text. Ajani describes himself as her mentor--I don't think it's ever said outright how old he is but he is older than her--and Elspeth herself was in a relationship with someone else, with a guy called Daxos.

And to answer the "why is he so devoted to Elspeth, if he's gay?" just ask any gay man of the previous generation how he feels about Aretha Franklin, or Grace Jones, or Madonna, or Melissa Etheridge. Ask a gay man now how he feels about Janelle Monae, or Lady Gaga. Ask my husband how he feels about Imogen Heap. Ask me how I feel about Florence Welch. There's absolutely a kind of crush that gay men have on women they admire but with whom have not the slightest intention of forming a relationship.

Note that all of these are not "this is designed to imply the character is gay" points, they are points of "this is designed to make it very very easy for gay men to identify with the character." I honestly don't know if that counts as coding, but in worlds where homophobia explicitly does not exist, it's very significant there's still a character whose experiences are comparable to those of an experience SHAPED BY homophobia--there's something to stand in for the closet, something to stand in for coming out, something to stand in for "gay icons," and something to stand in for persevering in the face of the deaths of friends and lovers and members of the community.

THEMING: Lions have, as a species, a notably very high incidence of male homosexual behavior. It's common for young lions, who aren't at the top of the pride and thus aren't mating with all the lionesses, to form pair bonds with eachother. Ones that would be particularly likely to do so would be, say, one that was ostracized because its fur was white and the other lions found that creepy. Which makes this card:

very interesting.

It's notable that Ajani is one of only three (as far as I can remember) planeswalkers who could be described as anthropomorphic animals. (I'm not counting Ugin and Bolas because they're just fully normal dragons, nor am I counting Arlin and Sarkhan, who only TURN INTO animal people via magic.) Of the three thus-describable "furry" planeswalkers, one has been dead in-universe for more than a millennia, and one is a very minor character who outright hates ever being involved with the plot in any way. Being the face of the furry community in the game absolutely brings a queer subtext to the character, because that discomfort you're feeling that I brought up furries at all? That's institutional homophobia. The internet's distaste for the furry community is 100% thanks to furry, in the early days of the web, being the one of the only places on the internet in which it was safe to be openly LGBTQ.

There's also the way he dresses.

I definitely know more than a few gay men who dress something like this at every opportunity they get. I'd dress like this if I thought I could pull it off!

Finally there is his color identity. Color identity is a much more complicated topic than I can address in one paragraph at the end of a much longer essay than I intended, but Ajani is (mostly) Green and White. Among other things, Green is the color of harmony, self-acceptance, and strength, and White is the color of solidarity, peace, and justice. Taken together, they're the colors of Community and Solidarity, of Harmony among Diversity, and of endurance and healing. Which, I can't speak for anyone but myself, but those are the values that I would prioritize in anyone seeking to be trusted as an advocate for LGBTQ rights, as an LGBTQ community leader, or of the LGBTQ community as a whole. I'd be very surprised to find that that's not a widely shared opinion.

He's the only Planeswalker with the word "Pride" in any of his card names.

All of which is not to say that Ajani IS gay. We haven't been shown enough of him to make such a call. All of which is to say that introducing a homosexual or homoromantic relationship, or a same gender love interest for him, would be entirely consistent with what we know of the character. More consistent, I would argue, than a heterosexual romantic interest would be.

In conclusion, then, Ajani's characterization has room for a boyfriend, nay, there's a boyfriend-shaped gap in everything about him as a character. WotC, if you're listening?

Let Ajani Have A Boyfriend.


UPDATE: I have since been contacted by a person in a position to have had inside information about the character design process--I'm not authorized to be any more specific than that--and IT WAS MEANT TO BE CANON:

Calvinism is the Seed of Conservativism - Example 2

A little more recently there was a provocateur of less celebrity who responded to a
discussion he wasn’t part of to object to the characterization of members of his hobbyist
group as “offended.” His exact words were “please point me to these mythical offended”
group members. Now, this is a group known not only for being on the whole utterly
unpleasable, but also for spending more time complaining about their hobby than doing it.
And the person making this objection has made an entire career out of being offended--
this is a man who is best known for harassing a widely-known fan out of the hobby entirely
because he didn’t like the way she dressed. The proposition of this hobbyist group not
being offended is on the face of it ridiculous, being offended is the primary
characterization they are known for.

Again, could this be mere cognitive dissonance? I don’t think so. Rather, I think this is a
categorization difference: for this man “offended” is a special category of anger, of which
only the minorities he harasses are capable. He isn’t offended, he’s merely filled with
justified anger so much and so consistently that he can film, edit, and release a video on
a weekly basis about some new part of pop culture that “the SJWs” or “the feminists” or
“the gays” or whoever is using to “ruin something forever”--there’s a gay character in a
card game, or there’s a movie in which a woman is a superhero, or a trans player was
allowed to compete in a game tournament, or a player in a different games tournament
is openly gay. None of these, for him, count as being offended, they’re about how the
existence of people that aren’t in the same category as him in spaces that he regards as
reserved for him, are specific offenses. “Being offended” is what the people whose
presence he’s angry about do when he gets angry at them for being present.

So there’s two classes of people: the Elect who are allowed to be in his hobby, and the
Reprobate who aren’t. When the Elect are angry, it’s always justified per se. When the
Reprobate are angry, it’s “being offended” and is always unwarranted. The Elect are, by
definition, incapable of being offended, because offended is just a quality that the
Reprobate always have, and it’s never a reaction to an injustice because nothing that the
Elect could ever do to the Reprobate would ever be unjustified.

Calvinism is the Seed of Conservativism - Example 1

(TRIGGER WARNING -- HOMOPHOBIC SLUR) Recently there was a controversy, and by “controversy” I mean “a right wing celebrity
provocateur incited a homophobic mass harassment campaign, explicitly and flagrantly
against his platform’s terms of service, but then said platform declined to penalize him in
any way because he’s famous and they don’t actually think that gay people getting
harassment and death threats for multiple years is a big deal.” I won’t name the platform
here, but it was one on which You could post video the internet, which has sometimes
been described as a series of Tubes.

But where the calvanism comes in is that the explicit and undisguised goal of the
years-long harassment campaign was to make the target, a journalist, shut up and stop
criticizing conservative positions. Yet when the journalist, and other LGBTQ people,
objected to the harassment, they were immediately accused of trying to silence
“freedom of speech.” So was this mere cognitive dissonance, that freedom of speech is
bad when person A does it and good when person B does it? I think not. I think it’s too
conscious and self-assured for that, and the terms in which it is asserted and defended
are too tied to the categories to which the persons in question belong: Person B has
freedom of speech, if people ask a video hosting platform to ban him for violating its
rules then his rights are being violated. Person A’s freedom of speech simply doesn’t
count, and if he’s harassed and shouted down then it’s no more than deserves. In both
cases, whether your right to free speech counts is entirely dependent on which category
you belong to, the Elect who are straight and white and conservative, or the Reprobate
who, in this case, is Latino and--they actually unapolagetically used the word--a Fag.

That distinction, in their minds, was why it was ok for them to hit, but not ok for them to
be hit back. The Elect may strike the Reprobate, but if the Reprobate objects he infringes
on the rights of the Elect. Example 2

Calvinism is the Seed of Conservatism - Intro

Calvinism is/was a school of doctrine, in Protestant Christianity, that held that there were
two groups of people, the Elect, who would go to heaven, and the Reprobate, who
would go to hell. The actual beliefs are a little more complicated than that--it involves
conclusions from God’s purported omniscience, and if He knows who is going to hell
then why would He bother wasting any Grace on them, and so really, only the Elect end
up mattering and if you think about it Jesus really would have only bothered dying to save
the Elect--but in terms of practical results it ended up not MUCH more complicated than
“there are two groups of people, the Good Ones and the Bad Ones.”

The effects of this philosophy have made it a very good contender for the worst and most
damaging philosophy in all of human history.

If we’re talking about it just in terms of “cultures and people and morality systems that
would have been influenced by the teachings of the theologian John Calvin” then that
gives us, well, all of European Colonialism and all that follows from it. But I think we can
use “calvinism” not historically, but diagnostically, as a label for tendencies in Human
Morality to sort people into “the ones who matter, who are the moral superiors, who do
good things, and who can be wronged” and “the ones who don’t matter, who are morally
inferior, who do only evil, and against whom anything is justified.” This is a distinction
that morality systems seem to want to make a LOT.

One suspects there may be a reason for that.

But the important thing is that calvinism, in this sense, is the keystone of every current
right wing worldview. Let me show you a few examples.

Example 1
Example 2