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: