After reading @KameronHurley's fantastic essay, "In Defense Of Unlikeable Women", it magnifies to me how even more important Liliana Vess is within Magic Story.

I've met quite a few folks who dislike Liliana. She's abusive, manipulative, and not above using her sexuality to 1/

get her way. She's selfish, un-empathetic, primarily driven by fear and obsessed with power. I don't make any excuses for Liliana, and frankly she wouldn't want you to either. Part of being Mono-Black is owning up fully to your actions without shame, and she meets that mostly.2/X

Liliana polarizes people who like Magic Story, and for some good reasons. But what interests me is the fact that no one seems to hold other manipulative, genocidal and/or selfish male characters to the same vitriolic bar. Ob Nixilis literally ended life on his planet. 3/X

Tezzeret is a nearly inhuman maniac consumed by self-hatred. Oko literally stripped Garruk of his identity and forced him to do his bidding *without consent*.

Maybe the additional scrutiny is because she's a main character/part of the Gatewatch? Nope. 4/X

Jace has entered people's minds, probed their innermost thoughts and wiped them without asking. If we consider inflicting our desires/will upon another person's body without their consent abominable behavior, what do we call invading their personal psyche? 5/X

Liliana gets the hate she does because she is a woman who unabashedly, unreservedly and unflinchingly wants power without approval. She inverts almost every expectation we want in a woman. Unlike Chandra, she's not a manic pixie fire girl or a nurturer like Nissa. 6/X

Lately, she hasn't even bothered using her sexuality to influence others (yay former Magic Story team!). Is she better than Oko, or Nicol Bolas, or Tezzeret in terms of conscience or the amount of blood on her hands? Not necessarily.

But she is more important. 7/X

We need unlikeable women. We need them in every aspect of society, because at the end of the day women are people, and people suck. We need to give everyone - especially women - the opportunity to fuck up, make mistakes and be as shittastic in fiction as we are in real life. 8/X

And don't get me started on other marginalized genders. Enbys/Trans folks barely get any representation as it is, but I dream of the day when we can see both heroic and shitty nonbinary/trans folks in a story and think: "Yeah, that's what it means to be human." 9/X

We need scary, unlikeable women in our fiction. We need nurturing, empathetic men. We need a giant influx of trans/nonbinary folks who can kick ass, fuck up and make all manner of great and terrible decisions.

We need that in Magic Story too. And I think it can be done. 10/X

I'll close with @KameronHurley 's words:

"Her power, the real power, threatens established social order. Women with real power can use it against men. Women with real power are not there to be looked at. They are there to act."

If that isn't Lili, I don't know what is. 11/11

I need to amend this thread, because I started down a road of speaking for how trans/enby folks should be represented in media, and that is *not* my role or place.

My apologies for this, and thank you for pointing out my biases. 12/11