Jace was bullied, Gideon was a jock. Most recently SOI
Gideon is a shrimpy kid to start, just look at Kytheon's art.
I mean, I suspect you could get away with doing it like RTR and GTC (which were both regular large sets, I think) without having DGM ever added in (which added very little imo).
Yeah, I agree. DGM was them trying to solve a problem they saw in the first Ravnica block and then solving it very, very badly.
Okay, so, answer me this: why is Jace in Shadows Over Innistrad?
1) Wizards Creative is committed to having a central cast of characters who appear across sets now because it helps them sell more cards and keep people more engaged with the storytelling, so SOI
has to have one -- it can't just be Tamiyo investigating all on her own since that doesn't tie into anything else going on.
2) SOI is built around two mysteries -- the one Jace thinks he's going to solve (what happened to Sorin) and the one he actually has to solve (what is screwing up Innistrad). It makes sense diegetically for him to be the one wrangling with the first one; it makes sense metatextually for him to be in the position to deal with the second one.
3) Consider who else they would even send, in-world, to do this. Nissa is busy taking care of her fucked up world. Gideon beat the hell out of himself and needs to take a spa day before he's good for anything again. Chandra is the least subtle person in the world so she's terrible to send to a place she doesn't know to gather information. Plus, Jace actually talked with Ugin during BFZ and so he's the one with the most direct proximate cause to seek Sorin out.
4) As you already mentioned, Jace has a pre-existing relationship with Liliana which means he's the only narrative entry point to bring her into things -- none of the other Gatewatch members have ever even interacted with her.
5) On a meta-narrative level again, once they decided to make the Origins Five the focus of the storyline, they started cycling through them as face characters of sets to let them a) give each one some spotlight, b) tie them all together in this new narrative approach, and c) print a card for each one. BFZ block picked the characters with the most direct connection to its ongoing storyline -- Nissa (who's from there) and Gideon (whose current story arc kicked off specifically in fighting the Eldrazi.) Liliana was always going to get a spot in one of the two Innistrad sets because she's associated with the plane and fits perfectly with its theme. The next block is Kaladesh where Chandra will obviously be the face since it's her homeworld. That means there's literally no choice other than Jace to front SOI and no other set in this window that makes more sense for him to lead.
I mean, this seems like a gimme to me. Compared to Worldwake (where Jace is really just kind of there to fill a seat) he's set up very well narratively to be the guy here.
Why does Jace have ties with Lilianna, when they already explicitly had her character tied to Garruk?
Because Jace and Liliana knock boots while Garruk and Liliana butt heads? I mean they're two very different relationships.
He's like a professional wrestling face that the company wants to push no matter how much the fans groan and refuse to cheer whenever he appears in the main event.
Again, if your theory doesn't account for Jace actually being more popular than other characters it's not very useful.
. Especially not detailed by demographics.
