Let's have a little talk...

Hello WyvernIRC. I am here to talk to you about the game The.

What? You say this game is called Magic The Gathering? No, that can't be right. We lost the "Gathering" part when the COVID-19 pandemic started earlier this year, and we lost the "Magic" part when this became The Walking Dead TCG. So yeah, it's just called "The" now, as far as I'm concerned.

That was just a joke. They say it's always best to open with a joke, particularly when you have a dark topic to discuss.

Anyways, we need to talk about Negan, the Cold-Blooded. This card is... problematic. Much more so than the other The Walking Dead cards.

So, if you don't know, Negan is a villain. He's not exactly a good person. But that's fine, Magic has had a lot of villains before, right? Yawgmoth, Nicol Bolas, the Phyrexians, the Eldrazi, and so forth. What makes Negan any different? Well... he's real. He's not some giant dragon. There is actually a real-life person walking around out there who looks exactly like Negan. Namely, the actor who plays him on TV.

Characters are not actors, of course. And I'm not here to imply otherwise. But the fact that he's from a live-action TV show means that there's less of a separation barrier between "our" world and Negan's compared to the separation barrier between our world and Nicol Bolas's.

So do keep that in mind as you read the rest of this post.

Let's talk about Negan's crimes. There's a lot of them, but one in particular stands out: rape. This is an unthinkably heinous act that should never be committed under any circumstances. Rape is wrong. I can't believe I have to actually say that, but this is what it has come to. We should NOT be putting rapists on cards. Period. Imagine if you're a rape survivor and your opponent plays this card against you. It would trigger so many awful memories. It's appalling. Wizards of the Coast banned "racist" cards specifically for this reason, yet they simultaneously thought that showing off a rapist was A-OK. Disgusting.

Here at WyvernIRC, we have had many users, both former and current, and likely future as well, that have been victims of sexual assault and rape. We should not be exposing them to this card. WyvernIRC is a community founded based on respect for each other, supposedly. That is what the rules say, after all. And if that's truly the case, then this card ought to be banned from WyvernIRC. Instead, mainstreet said "it's okay as long as you let people know that you're using it", which is... fine, I guess.

But here I am right now making this thread so I can link it to you later: Consider Negan, the Cold-Blooded to be banned in all games involving me. I will NOT permit anyone to use it against me. Period.

Now, I'm sure one comment that I'll get on this is that I shouldn't be speaking for rape victims. I should let them speak for themselves. And... um... I guess I can come public with this, but... okay, here goes:

I AM A SEXUAL ASSAULT SURVIVOR.

It wasn't "rape" in my case, as there was no penetration or sex involved, but... I have had both my genitals and my ass groped non-consensually before. And just my past with that alone makes me not want to face off against a Negan deck. I couldn't imagine what I'd be feeling if I was actually raped.

Besides, if you want to be technical about the definition of "rape" like that, then technically speaking, Negan isn't a rapist either. All he did was... oh. Um... first of all... MASSIVE TRIGGER WARNING here for talk of nonconsensual sex. If you don't want to read about this, please stop reading now.

...

Okay, we good?

So, what Negan does is TECHNICALLY not rape. In fact, he even once stopped a rapist by pushing a knife through his throat. For the most part, his crimes just include beating people to death with a baseball bat or disemboweling them with a knife (or just stabbing them in the throat, as shown above). But he also keeps a lingerie-clad harem of "wives" for on-demand sex. These women all "agreed" to marry him only because they would have died otherwise, either because he offered them food when they were starving to death, medicine when they needed it, or just providing shelter for them from the zombie-infested post-apocalyptic wilderness. And he hands out these women to his followers as rewards for favors. In several instances, these womens' husbands have tried to interfere with Negan's "ownership" of them, and then he brutally maims and kills them. Technically speaking, he doesn't use force DURING sex. So these women do "consent", but it's still rape as far as I am concerned. Coercion is NOT consent.

Oh, and if anyone is gonna comment on the fact that Michonne has a card too, and she's sexually tortured The Governor by pounding nails through his dick and then shoving cutlery up his ass, I will point out that this was done in response to The Governor capturing her and raping her for several weeks. At that point, she was totally justified in doing anything she could to get out of that situation.

So yeah, that's where we're at right now.

Surviving sexual assault is a uniquely traumatizing experience that haunts people the rest of their lives. I am pretty reasonably certain that I will never be able to forget what was done to me, even though it's been over a decade since it happened. And so I ask, at least for my sake, that Negan, the Cold-Blooded not be played in games against me.

Really, it ought to be banned on WyvernIRC in general, since I know I'm not the only sexual assault survivor here, and I know WyvernIRC tries to be respectful of that, but since it is still Wyvern-legal, I will say that it is no longer GSS-legal. Can't be used in games against me. If a mechanically-identical version of this card is ever printed that DOESN'T depict a rapist on it, then that will be fine. Until then, sorry, but I'm not going to play against a deck that has Negan in it.

Thanks for reading.

--GoldenSandslash