Why is Liliana’s Animal Form a Squirrel?
General forum
Posted on July 10, 2024, 8:21 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
Bloomburrow depicts several planeswalkers as anthropomorphic animals: Jace as a fox, Nissa as a frog, Ral as an otter, and Tamiyo as a rabbit, but Liliana is a squirrel, which I find to be most ridiculous and not at all in line with how she has been portrayed, since her introduction.
In my mind, Liliana's animal form should be either a raven or a black cat, since both of those animals would suit her personality far better, as they are both predatory animals known for being graceful and mysterious; there is nothing remotely squirrel-like about Liliana.
What does everyone else say about this? Why is Liliana's animals form a squirrel?
TheOfficialCreator says... #3
Squirrels have been shown in a very vicious light in MTG; Ravenous Squirrel is a good example.
That being said, I think the absurdity of Squirrel Liliana is the point; it gets people talking and it's funny. A raven/black cat would be so obvious that people would just gloss over it.
(This is probably also partly the reason Ral is an otter; queer MTG players were rolling at that one)
July 10, 2024 8:52 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #5
TheOfficialCreator, why did WotC portraying Ral as an otter cause such a reaction?
July 10, 2024 9:09 p.m.
Crow_Umbra says... #6
DemonDragonJ, the term "Otter" is used to refer to gay men of a certain type of body shape (slim/"average"). Similarly, "Bear" is used to refer to men that are larger & have more body hair, which is how Bearscape got the art that it did in the Pride Secret Lair a couple of years ago.
July 10, 2024 9:23 p.m.
Fable style squirrels are known to be somewhat miserly and individualistic. With all their acorn burying and unbarying. There is a good bit of to the greedy fable personality
July 10, 2024 9:53 p.m.
I think it would be more of a statement to make a beautiful graceful character manifest as a rat or something to manifest that personality
July 10, 2024 9:59 p.m.
So why did Jace end up as a fox? Obviously a reference to cleverness, trickery, all that stuff, but are there other foxes on Bloomburrow? I guess frog and otter were taken, bird isn't quite right, but rat would have worked thematically, and kept all of them to major types.
July 10, 2024 10:02 p.m.
Weasel or stote would've worked for Jace as well. Or some less on-the-nose things would be best. But I think they want cohesive types... Which is weird for fox then
July 10, 2024 10:30 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #12
Gleeock, that is exactly why I felt that a raven or black cat would have been a better form for Liliana.
July 10, 2024 10:37 p.m.
Some other guesses: Garruk - badger, Chandra - lizard, Domri - raccoon, Elspeth - swan, Sorin - bat (too easy?), Gideon - mouse, Oko - snake
July 11, 2024 6:18 p.m.
Crow_Umbra says... #14
Surely, Oko would be an elk lol. I could see Kaito being a rat, based off current color pairing for rats in Bloomburrow. The Wanderer could also be a mouse.
July 11, 2024 6:31 p.m. Edited.
Noire_Samhain says... #15
Domestic animals don't seem to exist on Bloomburrow so far, so while she certainly matches being a black house cat, that was probably off the table from the get-go.
In colors, Oko would probably be a frog. The more predatory animals like owls or wolves or the bigger animals like moose seem to all be Calamity Beasts, who aren't aren't, from a human perspective, as "smart" as the smaller animals. If we ignore color identity from Bloomburrow entirely, I'd guess a lizard for Oko. A chameleon based one.
July 11, 2024 7:35 p.m. Edited.
I mean, if anything Nissa should have been a squirrel because they literally plant seeds.
But yeah, I think either of your choices, raven or black cat, totally make way more sense.
I do think that most if not all of them kinda don't make a lot of sense. Jace and/or Tamiyo should have at least been some kind of sea creature. An octopus or cuddlefish maybe.
July 12, 2024 6:14 p.m.
TheOfficialCreator says... #20
Gleeock visualizing it now and... you're not wrong.
July 13, 2024 12:25 a.m.
Sometimes I have some gooberish comments, inviting debate.. But, I think blobfish Jace if a very unifying concept.
Tsukimi says... #2
Otters are blue (Ral)
Rabbits are green white (Tamiyo)
Frogs are green (Nissa)
They're doing animals in certain colors and so far the only non bloomburrow animal type we have seen is Jace. Also in this setting squirrels are the closest thing to necromancers.
July 10, 2024 8:30 p.m.