By Nemesis (Nemesis) on Monday, January 28, 2008 - 11:40 am:

As Head of Magic: the Gathering's Creative Team, I admittedly haven't been very active in the time that's passed since I took over the post in a military coup during November '03 (Full story here for those of you who weren't around when the announcement was first made). My justification for this is that an inactive Creative Team is still better than what we had prior to that. Keep in mind that this was the team that gave us the Onslaught and Mirrodin blocks.

With that said, I would like to take a moment to respond to current events by reiterating the Creative Department's stance on fan fiction. As Magic: the Gathering's storyline is, and has always been a shared endeavor that involved numerous authors, we do not have a problem with fan-created contributions. However, due to the inconsistent nature of fan writing, it should be perfectly clear that any work of fan fiction is NOT considered canonical within the storyline of Magic: the Gathering unless specified otherwise by the Creative Department.

I feel compelled to bring this up because it has come to my attention that one work of fan fiction in particular has caused quite a stir on internet forums over the past few months. This piece of fan fiction, conceived by deposed Creative Director Brady Dommermuth and written out by veteran Magic writer Scott McGough, with the assistance of Timothy Sanders and John Delany, has proven especially controversial in that it would, if canonical, radically alter certain elements that have been central to Magic's continuity from the very beginning, namely it's planeswalkers.

The details of the fanfic in question are too lengthy, convoluted, and, ultimately, irrelevant to go into right now, but, from what I gather, the jist is basically this: Every plothole that was created during Mr. Dommermuth's brief tenure as Creative Director opens up over Dominaria, creating a series of massive space-time rifts. Closing these rifts, of course, requires that a planeswalker's life force be poured into each one. As a result, almost every planeswalker is dead by the end of the story (The three exceptions being Teferi and Karn, who have lost their sparks, as well as Nicol Bolas, who has escaped to an undisclosed location). The whole thing reminds me of a fantasy story I wrote in the sixth grade. I wrote steadily for a couple months, and eventually reached a point where I wanted to end the story. However, it was too complicated by that point to do so easily, so I just finished it with a quick "And then everybody died. The End." Apparently, Mr. Dommermuth has decided to do the same thing. Not terribly creative, I know, but what do you expect from a guy who still thinks that Mirrodin was a great setting to which future storylines should return?

Based on statements that he has given after the conclusion of this 900+ piece of fanfic, Mr. Dommermuth seems to think that his work would be a valuable addition to Magic's continuity. In his view, the existing planeswalkers were apparently too powerful, to the point where he thought it would be difficult to write compelling stories that involved them. (If he had actually done his job and read some of Magic's older storylines, he might think otherwise.) He has even go so far as to propose replacements for the old planeswalkers, which embody the same general principle but lack everything that made characters like Urza, Tevesh Szat, Freyalise, and Taysir interesting and compelling. As far as the Creative Team is concerned, these creations are utterly irrelevant, so I won't spend any more time on them here.

Anyway, to bring this to a close, I would like to reiterate that the Creative Team in no way accepts Mr. Dommermuth's fan fiction as canonical. To paraphrase George R.R. Martin, we regard our continuity to be our contract with our fans, and retconning to be unacceptable and inelegant violation of that contract. If the current class of planeswalkers presents problems, which it is not my opinion that they do, then work will have to be done to accommodate or work around those problems. (Nobody said it would be easy, but they do call us the Creative Team for a reason.) Scrapping the entire system, especially through such a graceless retcon, is not acceptable.

In short, Brady Dommermuth should never be allowed to write fan-fiction again.

Nemesis,
Head of the Magic: the Gathering Creative Team

By Squeeman (Squeeman) on Monday, January 28, 2008 - 01:10 pm:

So it would seem El Presidente has changed the name of his bureau from "Continuity" to "Creative."

Rock on, Nemesis. Rock on.

By Squeeman (Squeeman) on Monday, January 28, 2008 - 01:13 pm:

I think it says a lot that WotC renamed the Continuity department to "Creative." While it may be more appropriate when it comes to creating new worlds, it's a move that, regardless of their intentions, symbolically says a lot about the attitude to continuity.

By Ineffable's Son (Eidtelnvil) on Monday, January 28, 2008 - 05:11 pm:

Best. Post. Ever. I'm putting a link to this one on my sig on the WotC forums.

By Puschkin (Puschkin) on Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - 03:15 am:

You'll generate lots of questions aka "Who is that and why is he the head of WotC Creative Team?", lol.

By Homelands Bookie (Psycho) on Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - 07:54 am:

Don't worry, I'll answer those questions with "DWARVEN PONY!" and then ask them to join HCPFC.

That'll do the trick.