Without getting into the issues around most of these, the statement was Gatewatch. The âPocahontasâ representation, as itâs been called, doesnât count for much until theyâre actually recurring members of the story. Adding background characters of color isnât quite the same thing as having them represented in the story. And the two you mention are problematic. I think theyâve been making comparably great strides, but thereâs a long way to go and retconning your characters to be POC isnât the way to do it.
Gideon is Mediterranean, which isnât the same thing as Middle Eastern. Heâs a Greek analogue, and itâs taken almost a decade for his artwork to ârealizeâ that. That hardly counts for much, either.
Chandra is gaelic-looking woman from a time when Wizards of the Coast used Indian names on white people or fantasy creatures to make them sound exotic. This was back when WotC talked about Liliana being Middle Eastern until they realized that they gave the Middle Eastern woman a VeilâŚ
Adding in an obviously Indian mother a decade later doesnât change the fact that they dropped the ball from the start, and there was zero indication Chandra was anything but snow white until Kaladesh. I wished they had just owned it, honestly, because Kaladesh is diverse and her parents could have been white Kaladeshi while simultaneously introducing the first actual South Asian representation in Saheeli.
But no. Instead, we get Chandra OâNalaar, who, despite biracial children having a wide array of features, looks more like my very, very white niece and nothing like my half-white/half-indian son or any of my friends or relatives, down to the Âźth or 1/8th Indians. Red hair and freckles are certainly possible for her, in as much as theyâre possible for anyone, but it would be exceedingly rare in such a way that itâs obvious Chandra was never intended to be South Asian representation.
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