3 years ago veteran and accomplished fantasy authors Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman were contracted by Wizards of the Coast, a Hasbro owned company behind Magic: The Gathering, to produce a series of three novels set in a D&D world as a continuation of the 1984-2007 series of Dragonlance. WotC owned the licensing rights to both D&D and the Dragonlance universe, previously written by Weis & Hickman, and scheduled these novels to release contemporaneous with the new crossover between D&D and MTG.
However, in the past few years WotC has been both overtaken by the social justice movement as well as on the receiving end of numerous controversies from their insatiable SJW critics- controversies over transgender inclusivity, diversity in designers, etc etc. They've taken numerous and rather absurd actions at times, like banning all sexualized depictions of females on cards while allowing sexualized depictions of males, and retroactively unpublishing cards with any even perceived non-PC content or references to islam (but not christianity). And there's been a dozen such stories. In particular and worth noting here has been the demands for forced diversity among designers and authors, and an outcry over no black authors producing novels set in their universes. Which rational people explain by pointing out the total dearth of qualified black fantasy writers, but SJWs explain with racism.
Well, in spectacular and brazen fashion, WotC has breached its contract with Weis & Hickman and declared that the novels in production will not be published. One novel was already finished and ready, one was in production and nearly done, and one had a storyboard ready. Weis & Hickman have filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Western District alleging that WotC has violated the terms of the contract despite the writers fulfilling all theirs. They say that WotC has repeatedly interfered in the novels writing process to demand more inclusion, more diversity and social justice themes be added to the stories- requests the authors have acceded to. And even with that;
…at nearly the exact point in time of the termination, Defendant was embroiled in a series of embarrassing public disputes whereby its non-Dragonlance publications were excoriated for racism and sexism. Moreover, the company itself was vilified by well-publicized allegations of misogyny and racist hiring and employment practices by and with respect to artists and employees unrelated to Dragonlance. Plaintiff-Creators are informed and believe, and based thereon allege, that a decision was made jointly by Defendant and its parent company, Hasbro, Inc., to deflect any possible criticism or further public outcry regarding Defendant's other properties by effectively killing the Dragonlance deal
In or about June 2020, Defendant changed the editorial and oversight team
21 assigned to the new Dragonlance trilogy, removing Liz Schuh and Hilary Ross and replacing
22 them with Nic Kelman and Paul Morrissey. Mr. Kelman, who was and remains Defendant’s
23 Head of Story and Entertainment, was a controversial choice. As recently as 2019, his own
24 publication as author of the sexually explicit novel, “Girls: A Paean” was subject to ongoing
25 public discussions of whether his work contained or promoted misogyny and pedophilia. See,
https://medium.com/@aemarling/nic-kelman-hypocrisy-80d9c1edca71 (the Medium article
31. Following Mr. Kelman’s assignment to Defendant’s Dragonlance team,
3 Defendant issued a four-point set of comments dealing with various sensitivity issues ranging
4 from the use of love potions in the story, as referenced in the 5E Dungeons Masters Guide, to
5 concerns of sexism, inclusivity and potential negative connotations of certain character names.
6 On each occasion when the publisher or Defendant, directly or indirectly, expressed reservations
7 about the text or requested rewrites, including “sensitivity rewrites,” Plaintiff-Creators
8 accommodated such requests and provided rewrites, in one case, 70 pages-worth. Regardless, at
9 no point in time was there any indication of any problem with the writing or re-writing process.
10 In fact, given that the process was moving forward, Plaintiff-Creators also informed Defendant
11 that they had completed Book 2 of the trilogy, provisionally titled, “Dragons of Fate.”
12 32. By early to mid-2020, particularly in the July 2020 timeframe—separate from
13 anything having to do with Dragonlance—Defendant was engulfed in controversies. Specifically,
14 Defendant was subject to a drumbeat of negative publicity related to alleged “pervasive racism”
15 and various forms of cultural insensitivity/offensiveness in connection with its “Magic: The
16 Gathering” trading cards as well as with its professional hiring and advancement practices
17 within the company. In particular, beyond the issue of Mr. Kelman, who remained controversial,
18 the hiring of alleged white supremacist/alt-right/QAnon-affiliated story artist (Terese Nielsen)
19 was targeted by Defendants’ detractors, as was alleged over-sexualizing of the work (by content
20 creator Lizbeth Eden).
21 33. Further, certain allegations made against Defendant by Defendant’s former
22 employee, Orion Black, a self-described “nonbinary Black person,” became a media sensation.
23 As a result, Defendant issued a public apology, which, in turn, only fanned the flames of
24 consumer/Twitter/Internet blowback against Defendant all the more. On information and belief,
25 the aforementioned controversies came to the attention of, and were addressed at, the “highest
26 levels” by Defendant’s parent company, Hasbro.
The authors lawsuit seeks to enforce the contract and have a judge order WotC to allow specific performance, the rarely awarded civil suit outcome where the publisher would be forced to allow the publication of the book.
The suit lays out that the contract stipulates that WotC is required to provide approval for a product meeting their stated requirements, and can't block publication without reason.
So this gives an insight into the kind of pressures that authors face under the whips of the social justice overseers. Even if they do everything they're asked, even if they have no controversies to their own name, even if all that's wrong with them is that they're two white women writing a book series that was once set in classical high fantasy tropeland, no amount of added nonbinary muslim wheelchair-bound HIV-positive elves can let their works be published.