I've been mulling over the concept of "eggs" recently.
For the uninitiated: it's a term used in the trans community to refer to "the folks out there who haven't figured it out yet." Perhaps most notably when people talk about their pre-transition selves, identifying "the signs" that they didn't acknowledge until they seriously began questioning. However, it's a term that also gets pointed towards others as well -- a kind of playful game of trying to spot the people in your life who, with the right nudge, would schedule a consult for HRT.
I've participated in these rituals plenty, and I can testify to the humor in some of the more extreme examples. I still cannot work past the "dude" who insisted to me that "I'm not trans, I just experience seasonal dysphoria."
Sure Jan.
But I have started reflecting on this concept lately, spurred on by a blog post linked to me earlier this week. It left me with some conflicting feelings, which makes me feel like this is a conversation worth having in earnest in the community. So I'm making my contribution to the milieu here (for whatever that is worth).
I think the simplest way to break down my complex feelings about this blog post is to highlight the main thesis statements I took from it:
The reality of trans existence has been systemically mediated through the lens of cishetero normative society for decades (at least), and that has warped everyone's (emphatically including the "eggs") understanding of what being "trans" really means
Online trans communities have established a norm of avoiding telling an "egg" that they might be trans -- referred to as the "trans prime directive" by the author -- with what she finds to be superficial and illegitimate reasoning
On the contrary, she concludes that we should be ACTIVELY confronting people about their gender, loudly and aggressively, and that this is a moral imperative for helping foster the next generation of trans people through their transition journeys
I'm sympathetic to the sentiment here. Like the author, I resonate with the experience of feeling overwhelmed and lost in my queer feelings when I felt I had nobody safe to confide in. Having earlier guidance from trans elders may have helped me work through these thoughts earlier, and perhaps saved me from some of the pain I later experienced when I properly began questioning my gender. In fact, guidance from trans elders was essential to getting me to begin questioning in the first place. And with rare exception, this seems to be the experience that nearly all my queer friends have voiced as well -- spending time around other trans people was the biggest catalyst for them to begin their own self-discovery.
Yet I can't quite work past the distaste I feel reading words like these:
Proponents of the egg prime directive claim that a person being told they might be trans could make them uncomfortable. Counterargument- who cares? ...
The other argument I've heard in favor of the egg prime directive is that being encouraged from without to explore gender is an avenue for self-doubt. The argument goes that if someone is "told" what their gender is, then there's a chance they'll push back. This argument is even more questionable. ...
I think this rule has a lot to do with the kinds of communities that trans people early on in understanding themselves get shuffled into. ... I find that these "egg communities" tend to be saturated with early-transition people with very few elders for guidance. Left to their own devices, they stew in their own doubt and create rules like the egg prime directive to protect their comfort. ...
These words present an innate naivete on the part of those early in transition, and explicitly infantilizes them and their experiences. She describes the concerns as "discomfort", much in the way I'm accustomed to having my gender experiences diminished by conservatives; "grow up snowflake, your 'safe spaces' can't protect you from the real world", and all that.
And it's frustrating, because I can read back on my own experiences I've written and immediately dredge up the extreme emotional turmoil I was in during my initial questioning phase. "Uncomfortable" is not the word I would use to describe my mental state at that time -- an extended panic attack would be much more apt. There were nights I laid awake, unable to stop spinning in my anxieties of "am I really feeling this way or have I just convinced myself of that because of the friends I hang around with?" or "if I pursue this, am I prepared to face the social consequences of it?" These are heavy fucking questions, and not something that a random internet stranger would be able to address constructively. It takes a strong, intimate relationship with someone to safely confront these kinds of emotion-fraught discussions, and that finesse is not what I'm reading from the author's post.
Which, for what it's worth, is something I think everyone I've ever heard discussing the "trans prime directive" in earnest has agreed with. I discussed this with a number of trans friends before writing up my thoughts here, and all of them shared stories of helping friends through their questioning phase. Even giving the gentle nudges of "maybe you should try the dress?" to friends who were still deeply in denial. These are careful, considered conversations that make no declarative statements towards the "egg" about what their identity definitely is or is not.
^ But I fear that my thoughts up to this point basically boil down to pure critique of the author, and I really don't want that to be the spirit of this discussion. As I said from the jump: I'm more sympathetic to the sentiments in her post than not. Approaching these conversations with care and consideration may or may not be her preference, but the general sentiment of being a shoulder for close friends who may be going through The Shit with their gender is a kind, and in many ways necessary, service that we as the trans community must provide for one another.
Instead, I would like to approach this topic constructively, building off the ideas of those who came before me. And here is where I've landed after digesting my thoughts and feelings on the topic:
We should stop calling people "eggs."
The central conceit of "egg" is that there is a class of people who are trans, but haven't figured it out yet. This class of people are, by their nature, incomplete and ignorant of themselves. The narrative of "egginess" implies that once someone has properly figured out they are trans, and thus breaks free of the shell (so to speak), they are finally of their true form. Perhaps still imperfect and young, needing time to grow fully, but nevertheless more knowledgeable and enlightened than those who have not yet "hatched."
I think it is true that many people (dare I say everyone?) have blindspots in their self-awareness, which are much more easily pointed out by a trusted confidant. That may even include gender identity crises. However, observing that one characteristic of a person does not invalidate the rest of their existence. It certainly does not grant a right to violate their personal autonomy. And ultimately, prescribing someone as "egg" is doing precisely what we criticize cishet society for doing to us: imposing an identity upon us without our authentic input.
Meeting my fellow trans folks in good faith: I do not believe anyone (including the original author) intends to violate anyone's autonomy with their discussions of "egginess". I think it is noble to feel a sense of moral obligation on helping others avoid the pain you suffered from ignorance. However, I think we should give more respect to the validity to the identity someone has before transition.
And frankly, I think that includes our own experiences. I've participated in the shibboleths of recounting "The Signs" from my past; all the moments that crop up in my memory when I reflect on my past life as a boy. But the more I reflect on this, the more I feel I owe it to my past self to respect that I did not at any point identify as trans -- in fact, I explicitly did not. I do not regret these years. My life was not wasted because I had not yet transitioned: I studied and obtained a degree that led me to a profitable career. I survived religious trauma and built a strong sense of self that allowed me to eventually embrace my transness later in life. I made friends and fostered skills that let me help them to properly be a part of a community. I learned about the world and developed increasingly nuanced understandings of politics and ethics that help guide me through my life to this day.
I'm going to personally try to cut "egg" out of my trans vocabulary, and rethink my relationship to those I see as "showing signs". I'm not convinced this is the perfect solution, so don't mistake me for suggesting you are all obligated to join me. But I'd hope you at least stop to consider your relationship to this word, and what it does for you and your relationships.
I recently started playing the Emerald Rogue rom hack, and had a pokémon spark ignite that I hacn't felt in a looong time haha. I also started having some nostalgic memories of an old project I did drawing snapshots of myself for each generation of the main game.
I decided it would be fun to do a throwback to that with a new piece capturing myself now, about 13 years later -- something of a fun art-progression and transition-progression piece :)
So I just watched a video that hit me very hard, and I encourage anyone who plays Magic: the Gathering (especially at a competitive level!) to watch it. This post is largely a response to it. Not as a critique per-sé (I largely agree with what Jorbs has said here), but adding some additional perspective and expand upon it based on my experiences that I think are relevant.
This is going to be a post that's pretty deep in the weeds about Magic: the Gathering community, culture, and policy. It's also mostly a free-form journal entry to process some thoughts and feelings I have on my end. I hope that I'll be able to convey ideas with some amount of value for external readers to get, but if you see the length and feel your brain shutting off at the Magic jargon, please feel free to pass on, none of this is really that important lol.
Layer 0a: Video Summary
For those who see a 2hr timestamp and nope out, here's a quick breakdown of Jorbs's video:
He shares a story of two players (renamed to Brad and Jessica) who mistakenly run afoul of a particularly arcane and strict rule from Magic's Infraction Procedure Guide ("IPG" moving forward) -- the document which describes various rule violations and what penalties are associated with them at high level competitive play. In this circumstance, the players are given a match loss, which likely knocks both of them out of contention for meaningful placing for prizes in the tournament overall. Brad reacts with a severe emotional breakdown, including what I would describe as a violent outburst, and is thus expelled from the venue for the safety of the remaining players. Brad then posted his experience in a long-form blog post decrying the judges for their actions, and standing firm that he feels he felt no regret for his actions.
Jorbs does a deep dive into the relevant policy, as well as its motivations. He also dives into the specifics of the scenario, removed from the emotional charge of the blog post, and discusses what he feels are reasonable reactions to the situation. He then begins going through the blog post and describing in detail why he found the post emotionally manipulative. Editorializing a little: I generally agree with his read on both the document, and on the unsettling reality that there were so many tweets replying in defense of Brad.
Layer 0b: My Relevant Experience
I used to be very involved in the Magic: the Gathering community. Involved to the point that I became a certified judge (kind of the equivalent of referees for those out-of-the-know), traveled the country on staff for multi-thousand person tournaments, and a central coordinator for my home state. At my peak, I was staffing one event or another on average once per weekend, and often assisting local stores in some capacity multiple times per week outside of that. All of this being done as a kind of side-job -- most of the labor was unpaid, and what was paid didn't pay especially well. Nevertheless, at the time I found this to be a deeply enriching part of my life and a valuable contribution to my local community.
Layer 1: My Reaction to Brad
In my time judging, situations like the one Jorbs discussed were not uncommon. I wouldn't go quite so far as to say I saw one at every event I was on staff at, but it was definitely something I had to keep my eyes peeled for at the top tables for every one. They sucked to issue every time, and it tended to have some tense emotions from players when I had to issue them.
Stepping a bit beyond that, having to issue unfavorable rulings that hurt someone's standings in a tournament were constant. Multiple such calls every round, even at relatively small events. Magic is a complex game, and it's almost impossible to play perfectly. People screw up, and when they do it can sometimes cost them more than they realized was possible. This is an understandably emotionally fraught situation. I'm grateful to say that most Magic players would handle negative rulings like this in stride. Perhaps grumble and try to argue, but cases of escalation like what is described in Brad's post were thankfully rare.
That said, they were not unheard of. In fact, the specific act of going online to write a lengthy diatribe about how "I was wronged by a magic judge today!!!" was painfully common. Frequently over situations much pettier than what Brad experienced here. Jorbs opined multiple times about how the judges were doing their job professionally, and that considering their humanity was also essential. Speaking as someone who has been in that position: yes, I often felt dehumanized by the way people treated me, and it was a significant contributor to my burnout and eventual departure from both judging and Magic as a hobby altogether.
But I don't bring this up to complain about my mistreatment in the role -- in fact, I have much more nuanced thoughts about that I'll get to later. Rather, I would like to highlight something that Jorbs did not discuss outright, but I feel comfortable speaking to: people who feel the need to write up the kind of post that Brad made here, and who have the level of emotional outburst that he had from losing a match at a Magic tournament, are likely doing this more than once. While these kinds of outbursts were rare, the times they did happen were almost exclusively isolated to a small handful of people. The "Brads" in my community were well known to me, and when I saw these people on a player list, I ended up needing to account for them in my preparation for the day so I could cater to the necessary deescalation that would come up should -- god forbid -- a ruling ever go out of their favor.
Jorbs analyzed the situation as Brad being a "strategy gamer" -- someone who has become conditioned to seeking every advantage to win a game. That while not all such "strategy gamers" will do this, some may bend rules or forgo social norms for any edge that may help them win. I can't agree more with this assessment. But I will take it a step further than he did: I feel that the social norms of "strategy gamers", and especially the specific culture that built up in competitive Magic scenes, actively encourages people to become willing to do that rule bending.
Outbursts like what Brad described were rare, but I saw hundreds of small instances of these kinds of behaviors in less extreme fashions during my tenure. People who would complain about prize support not being top-heavy enough (read: they wanted more for winning) and would heckle me to try and negotiate changing it after the fact. People who would grill me for what specific arcane words they could use to perform the exact infraction Jorbs discussed in the video but not technically break the rule so they could get away with it. People who would take advantage of inexperienced players to cheat them out of expensive cards through unfair trades. These kinds of behaviors were uncomfortably common, and shockingly tolerated by the community -- sometimes even celebrated!
And to my dismay, I saw myself falling into these behaviors as well at times. I'd like to believe I was not especially bad about it, and generally tried very hard to be as considerate of everyone around me as I could be. However, I felt the spark of joy from getting very invested in personal improvement in a strategy game, and it's simply a reality that learning to angle shoot and outmaneuver your opponents also necessarily trains the kinds of skills that can be darkly warped into manipulation, deception, and greed. This was another major part of why I left the game, and it is the biggest reason I have struggled to even play the game since.
Layer 2: My Reaction to the Judge Program
I am far from the only person who was both a heavily invested player and also judge for Magic: the Gathering. In fact, I'd say in my experience most judges were seriously invested "strategy gamers", and were very much subject to the same cultural sway that competitive players experience.
As one example that I found particularly sad: the Judge Program used to have a project called "The Exemplar Program." The idea was to celebrate judges performing above-and-beyond acts, and recognize their efforts with a material reward (special promotional cards often worth significant amounts of money). Every season judges would be allocated a number of allotments they could use to nominate people they saw doing cool things.
I found this project a tremendous tool for bolstering my local community. These promotional cards were often inaccessible for lower-level judges through other means, so finding ways that I could send some positive kudos out to people in the community and attach a bit of material weight to it was awesome! I saw a lot of genuine joy in my local area come from this, and I know I wasn't alone in that.
The problem was, these allotments were distributed relative to the judge's level in the program, meaning higher-up judges had more control over the distribution. And because the higher-up judges were often more likely to work with one another than they were to work with the lower level judges making up the vast majority of the program, those rewards were disproportionately given to the folks at the top. In fact, it became something of an open secret that people would nominate one another to ensure that they would each get their pack of foils each quarter. Eventually this became so pervasive, the managers of the project just shut it down entirely.
I bring all of this up because I think it's important to appreciate that judges, like players, are also human. It's fairly common, I find, for judges to be separated away from players as a fundamentally different group of people. Either dehumanized by the upset players who rant and bemoan their "cold", "emotionless" attitudes during a ruling that didn't go their way, or dehumanized by their defenders who see them as "professional event staff". Some may recognize judges as just other players when they aren't on staff, but the moment that the uniform went on, judges got cast into a different social class in the community, and that has serious ramifications that I don't think get confronted very often.
Layer 2: ACAB
I am a white person, comfortably middle class for pretty much my entire life, and presenting as a cisgender man for a good chunk of it. As such, I really wasn't confronted with police violence in any meaningful way for most of my life. I'm grateful for that privilege.
But I was tragically unaware of just how much I benefited from that privilege until much more recently. With the election of Trump in 2016, the rise of fascist mobs from the alt-right such as the march in Charlottesville, and escalating coverage of violence towards black people such as the shooting of Trayvon Martin, I was forced to confront political realities that were a lot darker than I had felt from my relatively sheltered life. While I had always considered my politics to be "progressive", I realized I was really not as well informed as I thought I was.
So I started becoming more politically literate. I got involved in activist groups and started doing outreach to vulnerable populations in my community. I got involved in much more diverse and progressive online communities. I started speaking with queer and neurodivergent people more consistently, and came to realize I fit better into both those categories than I had ever felt comfortable acknowledging before.
And more than anything, I started learning just how fucked up cops are.
I'm not going to do a breakdown of prison abolition arguments here -- it's a topic with a lot of depth, and honestly Angela Davis has already written a better introduction to it than I could hope to. But for our purposes here, there are a few social realities about police we need to acknowledge before moving on:
Police are separated into a unique class role, defined by their monopolized control of violence in our communities. Regardless of whether you feel that the police are doing a job that protects our community or not, it is inarguable that their role is one that wields violence to exert power over others.
The role of police is to protect property, not people. And when I say "property", I really mean "the property of the wealthy aristocrats" -- any Magic player who has had a binder stolen out of their car knows just how hard it is to get police to care about their personal property, but how easy it is for a big box store like Target to bring in cops to protect their Magic stock from getting shoplifted.
Police are human, and bring their human biases into their actions. While police are ostensibly supposed to be enforcing an objective set of rules in a consistent way, we know that in practice they do not. And tragically often, these biased actions can have deadly consequences.
I hold the belief that policing, as an institution, is fundamentally a corrupt institution that serves the purpose of oppression. I'm fairly indifferent to whether individual police officers you may know are "one of the good ones" -- at the end of the day, we see the systemic effects of policing all around us, and they are not just imperfect, they are actively harmful. As such, I advocate for the dissolution of prisons and policing as systems entirely, replaced with more humane solutions, such as Restorative Justice programs.
Layer 3: Judges are Kinda Magic Cops
So bringing this back: as I refocused political education, I began seeing more of the small reflections of broad socioeconomic issues in the smaller parts of society that specifically touched me. Since I have been processing my departure from the judge program at the same time, it's unsurprising that I've drawn some specific parallels. And one that sticks out particularly is how uncomfortably similar the judge program is to the institution of police.
Upfront I will acknowledge: this is not a perfect mapping. Most importantly, Magic judges do not have power of violence over players. The most drastic thing judges have direct authority to do is disqualifying someone from a tournament. Ostensibly they could kick someone out of a venue, but in practice they wouldn't enforce that, the venue security team would. This is not a minor point: the violence inflicted by the police is by far the most critical aspect of their oppressive power.
But in practice, judges do have tremendous sway over how events are run, and what the outcomes for players in that event get to experience. Beyond that, I find most judges -- especially those of higher level -- are given social clout that gives them sway beyond the realms of a single event, and into their local community at large. I certainly was put in this position during my time in the program, and I absolutely leveraged that power many times. I'd like to believe that I typically used this for good, such as convincing store owners to grant me some space in their store on a weekly basis so I could teach players interested in learning the rules better. But I also feel confident I perpetuated harm in my time in the role, such as imposing beliefs that I had about running tournaments without earnest engagement with the community around me before doing that advocacy.
And I can certainly testify to harm done by other judges in the program due to biases they held. As a particularly egregious example: I once got into a conversation with a judge who openly stated he would not invoke penalties for hate speech directed towards players with marginalized identities because "it's more important to protect the political free speech of white supremacists than to protect the comfort of players in a Magic tournament". For additional context: this judge spoke those words in the company of an openly queer person, and a person of color.
Furthermore, much like how the police will form "the blue wall of silence" to protect one another from scrutiny into corruption or criminal action, I've witnessed similar behavior from judges as well. While being trained as a judge, I was routinely told by my seniors that I should always rigidly apply the rules precisely as written, and "if the players complain, remind them that you don't write the rules you just enforce them." As I got more involved in higher level judging, I also became privy to backdoor conversations where some pretty intense policy decisions were being discussed and influenced with little to no oversight from the Magic community at large.
I had friends who were blacklisted from events for making reasonable requests for disability accommodations. I heard judges complaining about other judges behind their back, and quietly excluding them from future involvement for various discriminatory reasons. I got roped into boys-club conversations that were openly misogynistic and hostile towards efforts from others in the program to try and build a more inclusive space for women and queer people. I watched top-level judges make decisions that were actively harmful to smaller or international communities, and got looped into some of the startlingly racist reasons behind those decisions.
For my part: I tried to do what I could to make my community as welcoming as possible, and build up a better Magic ecosystem where I could. I don't think I did an especially good job at it. I also didn't push back as hard as I ought to when I saw the most heinous examples of ableism, misogyny, and racism on display. I am ashamed of this inaction on my part, and it is something I constantly grapple with doing better moving forward.
That said: there was really very little I could have actually swayed even if I had spoken up. These were deep-rooted, systemic problems that had a heavy base in the underlying Magic community values that the judge program sprouted from. And they were decisions being made far above my paygrade. The most I could hope to do was sway the influence of someone above me who might be able to sway the influence of someone above them.
Layer 4: Why is IDW Controversial?
The scenario from Jorbs's video centered around conflict from a judge's ruling about "Improperly Determining a Winner" -- a rule that Jorbs provocatively calls "the most controversial rule in Magic". I think the term "controversial" is interesting here, because personally I think it disguises some interesting dynamics at play with this rule in particular.
See, I would not have ever labeled IDW as the most controversial rule in Magic; not even the most controversial in the IPG. I would easily award that to "Unsporting Conduct: Minor" -- a rule that is perhaps the most critical for ensuring community spaces are welcoming to people with differing backgrounds, but is by necessity left frustratingly vague and open to interpretation by individual judges. That yikes conversation about defending white supremacists I mentioned earlier? That conversation started because the judge was complaining about how someone got on his case for not issuing an Unsporting Conduct: Minor infraction to a player who had a playmat with overt pornography printed on it that a woman playing at the event expressed discomfort toward.
Nevertheless, I wasn't entirely surprised to hear that IDW was the rule in question either. I have had countless arguments with players about this rule (and its sister: "Bribery and Wagering"), and their faulty understandings of it despite the seemingly simple nature of the rule. It was perhaps the single rule that caused the most headaches for me at tournaments, because almost without failure I would get players trying to angle shoot to find loopholes to perform IDW without technically violating IDW rules. It's also a pretty common rule to get brought up in these kinds of emotionally manipulative tournament report blog posts like the one Jorbs reacted to here.
As a judge, I got used to the standard explanations for why this rule exists, which I think Jorbs covers well in his video. Magic is uncomfortably close to crossing gambling regulations, and losing access to the game in your local area because regulators decided to ban it on those grounds is a pretty severe cost. I've even witnessed a local game store get closed down on grounds of violating gambling laws.
Nonetheless, I can't say I ever felt fully convinced by this explanation either. I think the scenario between Jessica and Brad is tragic, and a good highlight of how easy it is to accidentally step into this rule as a trap. It's far from unheard of -- in fact, one of the foundational examples they teach judges early on is even more severe:
Imagine you are judging a small tournament at your local game store. A pair of young kids, new to the game, are paired against one another in the first round. They are having a good time, but aren't very conscious of the timer, and end up running out before finishing their first game. You come by and explain to them what that means, and that they will draw after the next 5 turns. One of the kids says "hey, how about we just flip a coin to decide who wins then?"
This is a cut-and-dry example of violating this policy, and at a high-end event like the one described in Brad's tournament report this would come with a Match Loss. But you know what's kind of fucked up? For young kids playing at a low stakes casual event at their local game store? That penalty would be a full on disqualification (at least at the time I was judging -- it's possible this has changed since then). Sorry, you can't continue playing Magic in the tournament tonight.
Now any judge with a heart would follow that scenario up with "okay let's find ways for them to continue playing Magic though" to try and soften the blow and make sure we don't completely ruin their night. But I've had conversations with judges who have issued this ruling with cold precision and left kids crying at the table and just moved on from there -- precise and professional, just as Jorbs celebrated in his video. And you know, I don't find that inspiring.
So when I hear "IDW is the most controversial rule in Magic", what I really hear is "IDW is a rule that is despised by players, but adamantly defended by judges". Judges have good reasons to defend the policy, no doubt. But players have plenty of very good reasons to be upset by it as well. Neither group has power to sway the policy as written, but judges do have power of enforcement, which is far beyond what players have in this situation.
Layer 5: My Reaction to Jorbs
So with all of this split ink, I finally return to my feelings from Jorbs's video. Because while I emphatically agree with his analysis that Brad's reaction was emotionally immature and irresponsible, and the tweets defending him are wildly off base, there is nonetheless a bad taste left in my mouth from his analysis. He makes multiple assumptions in his video that I don't think should be taken uncritically.
For one: a strategy game tournament with high-stakes and high-end expectations from players not only should have, but needs strict and rigid rules. I think he presents compelling arguments for why IDW is specifically necessary, but I don't think he provides good reason why the rule needs to be exactly what it is.
For another: players ought to be expected to follow the rules rigidly, and expect punishment when those rules are violated. He seems to imply to me that not just Brad's emotional response (which I find unambiguously unacceptable) but also Brad's emotions themselves ought to be scrutinized. After all, rules are rules, right?
And lastly: the explicit hierarchy of power between players and judges, and within the judge staff itself, ought to be met with respect and deferment. I found it telling how much emphasis Jorbs put into scrutinizing Brad's emotional manipulation (which again: was all very much there, and warrants scrutiny), but glossed past the judge referring to the Dreamhack venue as "his hall". While Brad is far from a reliable narrator, I can say from my experience with judges, that doesn't sound like an outlandish thing to hear from a head judge. And perhaps it's just me, but that statement reeks of someone allowing the power of their position to go to their head.
Ultimately, I agree with Jorbs that this situation sounds like a shit show, and Brad wildly over reacted in a frightening and perhaps even dangerous way. By his own account, the judge staff did an admirable job deescalating the situation and enforcing rules as written. But I think it's also fair for Brad to feel that he was not being treated as a human by the judges in this cold and clinical treatment of the situation. I also think it's fair to say that IDW as a policy kind of sucks, and it's fair for players to feel frustrated by it -- especially since they have no direct influence over how those policies are written.
Anyway, I think I've said my peace for now. Seriously, do go watch Jorbs's video if you have any investment in the competitive Magic community. I don't fully agree with his analysis, but his assessment of the situation is still spot on and something I don't think gets spoken by non-judge members of the community very often.
Another year, another long gap between personal updates, lol.
Last report was:
🏳️⚧️
same name for now
they/them
^ subject to change
Current status report:
Still 🏳️⚧️
new name (not sharing publicly though, sorry)
she/they
^ still subject to change
But this is just the matter-of-fact, Reader's Digest version of things. There's a lot more weight behind this, and I'd like to talk about it.
There was a very long time where I described my gender as "anxiety." At first this was a joke -- "haha, yeah, my gender is <pick mental health problem from checklist>" -- but it quickly became clear that this was a very apt description of my reality. Nearly every waking moment I spent thinking about gender, and how it intersected with my lived experience. How did I feel? How DIDN'T I feel? Was it real, or was I faking it? Was I actually trans?
I went into therapy thinking that finding an answer to that final question was what I needed to do. I sort of understood that it was the wrong question -- nobody could tell me the answer to it other than myself, after all. But with how much doubt and worry filled my mind, it's hard to blame myself for feeling that I needed help figuring it out.
Over time, the work that ended up actually helping me was confronting the anxiety. Slowly dipping my toes into new things, and allowing myself to feel the stress of the new thing that felt overwhelming. Allow my circle of comfort to slowly stretch and expand until these new experiences were no longer terrifying, and I could explore them without the fear overwhelming any other feeling.
And that was hard work. Gender is a wide, all-encompassing thing. I quickly found that despite how considerate and progressive I considered myself, the reality was that I never truly confronted the realities of gender, even in a very basic way. It took time, there was really no way around it.
When I last came to this blog to share my truth, I was still mid-process. Truthfully, I still am. I'm not convinced that transition is something that ever truly ends. However, I am definitely farther along than I was, which makes it much easier to say out loud what I always really felt: I'm a trans woman, and I want people to know that.
I set my pronouns to "she/they" where the option is available, because I want to project my transness to others. I tell people I use either pronoun, and am pretty insistent that either is okay when they ask if I have a preference. "What's important is that I'm not a man," I will tell them.
In my heart, I have a preference. There's a flutter of recognition that genuinely makes me feel a little more me every time I hear a "she" come from people I'm speaking with. "They" does not bring this same joy. I'm not sure how I'll feel if someone actually takes me up on the "feel free to use whatever neopronouns for me if you feel they fit" offer, haha.
However, that preference doesn't reflect how I see myself. I have a friend who describes herself as "a trans woman, but not a woman" -- not because she does not consider trans women to be women, but because she specifically doesn't see herself as one. I deeply resonate with this idea. I've seen many trans women talk about how they wish they had been born a cis woman. I, on the other hand, feel fairly confident that had been AFAB, I would have ended up being trans masculine instead. Being transgender is a critical part of my identity, and I WANT it to be.
Still, I'm not finished growing, and still don't live as loudly open as I think I'd like. I'm in a comfortable spot where I can at least reasonably well pass right now, and in the white Utahn suburbs, there is a critical sense of safety that comes from that. I'm hoping to push myself a bit harder as time goes on, and knowing the spicy political fire burning in my heart, it will only be a matter of time.
Being in isolation for a few years thanks to a global pandemic sure has a way to push you into self reflection and clean out the dusty corners of your psyche. And oh boy did I sure pile a lot of garbage into the closet that's just been waiting to burst.
So, um... Hi, I'm trans.
I'm going to be honest, making this post scares me shitless. Not because I'm afraid of anyone's reaction -- by now the people I've kept in my circles are the kind of people who I do not expect to be transphobic assholes. This isn't even the first place I've come out, I've already posted publicly to the loudest channels I have to say this from. At this point I'm just going back and posting updates for the straggling accounts I have lingering around.
No, I'm afraid because despite knowing this post is going to fly past peoples' dashes and disappear into the aether, I still have to confront the reality of what I'm doing. And as someone who specializes in avoidance strategies for anxiety, this is a pretty terrifying hurdle to jump past.
2021 was a hell year that I spent mostly spinning in my own mind questioning my gender identity, what gender identity even was, and what I wanted out of it. There was a six month stretch where I was unemployed, and spent every waking hour ruminating on this question. When the realization first started crashing down, it hit me so hard I literally could not stop myself spinning on the thoughts long enough to get sleep, and ended up staying awake for nearly 72 hours straight.
By now I ought to be comfortable in this reality. I'm even 9 months into HRT for fucks sake. And it's not that I'm uncertain -- I've had plenty of moments of sheer, unambiguous gender euphoria to know with confidence that this is what I want. But it's still gut wrenchingly difficult for me to confront this head on.
All of that to say: this is going to be a slow, arduous process on my end. So for now I'm still using my old name, and I'm going by they/them pronouns, but both of those things will likely change with time.
In the meantime, I'll just continue slowly converting old accounts to using femme avatars, haha. 🙃
I've spent the last two weeks trying to figure out how to write this post, but my mind has felt like it's tumbling around a washing machine and trying to figure out how to straighten my thoughts into a coherent message has felt impossible. But I'm driving myself crazy continuing to hold off on saying something, so I'm going to just rip off the bandage now, and we can talk in more depth after the cut.
Hi! 👋 I'm Asexual and Aromantic! Let's talk about it.
Where to even start
This month has been a fucking trip.
On the one hand, this has been the fourth month of nearly continuous quarantine for the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other, the end of May was the spark that began a wildfire of protests against police brutality that have swept across the country, including the seemingly milquetoast land of Salt Lake City. I found myself simultaneously figuring out the umpteenth way to keep myself entertained while being in home nearly uninterrupted for over 90 days, while also desperately searching for the courage to exit my home and join the marches against injustice.
And in the background of all of this, it was Pride Month.
On the 12th, a Youtube creator I follow released a video about their experience discovering themselves as non-binary. You should watch it, but what is important for the sake of this post is that the bulk of the video is an asynchronous telling of various moments throughout their life that, in reflection, show them that "[they] were who [they] are now, back then". These moments form a tapestry that tell a story of self discovery, and the result is incredibly powerful.
They released a rough cut about a week earlier for Patreon supporters, and I was immediately transfixed. I watched it three times in a row on the first day it was uploaded. I watched it twice more after the release. Hell, when I pulled this video up now to get the share link I couldn't help but sit and watch through it all over again.
At first I didn't really know why I felt so attached to this piece in particular. Yet still, I spent multiple nights laying awake for hours in what felt like a dreamlike haze at the time. It took three nights like this for me to realize I had spent all this time reflecting on my own past moments, and revisiting them through the lens this video had shared with me.
How I got here
It is September 2005. I am currently at a school dance. I know I am supposed to be finding someone to dance with and enjoy that for some reason, but all I want to do is go home. I might consider mustering up some courage and just asking someone, anyone, to dance, if it weren't for the fact that I still didn't have any friends. Instead, I feel trapped, wandering up and down the side wall, waiting for it to be over so I can finally leave. I stumble across a small group also sitting on the sides; a girl reading manga, and another playing Yu-Gi-Oh! with a boy across from her. I approach: "I didn't realize anyone still played this" They invite me to join, and soon I find myself with genuine friends at school for the first time in years. I never think about asking someone to dance again.
It is the summer of 2017. I am at a bar with some coworkers at the end of the week. I don't drink, but I've opened myself up to joining people for happy hour because it feels like a good way to socialize, and I've genuinely enjoyed getting to know folks. My team lead makes a comment that he feels it's impossible for a man and a woman to ever have a friendly relationship without having some element of sexual tension between them. I rebuff this comment -- initially I feel a sense of feminist frustration at the concept, as if it is implicitly saying that men and women should not work together. As the conversation continues, I realize the real reason I feel so sure this is wrong is because I have never felt this way toward anyone I've worked with.
It is the summer of 2008. I am in church, listening to the new instructor for my Sunday school class shift the discussion towards politics. Since he began, every lesson without fail will eventually derail into right-wing screeds. For him, any issue that is even vaguely left-leaning is a potential avenue for Satan to take hold of you: feminism, activism, even environmentalism. But lately he has had a particular fixation on the topic of gay marriage, and it is beginning to take a toll on my mental health. Being in these classes, hearing a man in a position of authority repeatedly say "it is not that we shouldn't love these people, but we need to still understand that they are committing a sin" has become physically painful to listen to. Of course, I am not queer, just an ally -- I can only imagine how painful this must be for those who are directly affected. I will nearly pass out from exhaustion and anxiety during sacrament meeting a few hours later.
It is February 2020. I am out to lunch with a friend and coworker. I have just recently changed jobs after less than a year, because I was hopelessly miserable at my last one. It should have been a dream job, marrying two of my closest passions, but instead I felt suffocated by being in a world where everyone seemed indifferent towards me at best, or actively hated me at worst. My friend invited me to join this job, and although it is a miserable job, I find solace in being able to go to lunch and have genuine conversations with someone I get along with. He mentions his wife is pregnant, and the stress of tending for his current child while she is resting. I acknowledge the frustration, though somewhat awkwardly since I am still single. "Oh, yeah, I sometimes forget you aren't married yet, haha. Well, don't worry, you'll get to join in on the fun soon enough!" I want to say "I very much doubt that"; instead I say "Well, I guess we'll see." The conversation does not feel so genuine anymore.
It is January 2009. I am watching House M.D. with my dad. We bond a lot while watching tv. We're both avid fans of MST3K, and we are invariably the obnoxious people in a movie theater a few rows down cracking jokes throughout the film. It feels fun and rebellious, even if we're doing it at home where nobody will be annoyed. This episode starts with Foreman and Thirteen waking up together in bed after clearly spending the night together. My dad cracks a joke about how "they're going to get in trouble, since they aren't married!" I quip back "nah, it's not a big deal, they just slept together, haha." My dad pauses the show and turns to me, deadly serious: "Who told you that was okay?!" I am a deer in headlights. I suddenly realize that I meant "slept together" literally, but nobody else uses it that way. I don't understand how I missed that.
It is October 2010. I am at home, speaking with my mother after coming home from school. She has always been a political firebrand, and especially after I left the church and started college the two of us have connected on this a lot. She has just read an article that mentioned the expanded acronym "LGBTQIA", and says she doesn’t know what all the "I" and "A" refer to. I don't yet know what the "I" refers to, but I suggest the "A" is probably for "asexual". She says she hadn't heard of asexuality, though that does make sense. I realize I don't recall hearing about asexuality before either. I don't actually know if anyone identifies like that. It just somehow feels like something that must exist.
It is the spring of 2007. I am at a local game store playing at a Friday Night Magic event for the first time. I suffer from very extreme social anxiety, and I spent the entire week a ball of nervous energy. Despite myself, I have managed to drive myself to the event and register. I have promised myself dozens of times over that I already knew Magic players were people similar to me, so there was no reason to worry. My first match is against someone wearing a frilly dress, cat ears, and tail. She mews at me several times while playing. On the surface I have frozen and only robotically go through motions of playing the game because my anxiety has boiled over to the point that I cannot quite function properly. Inside, I am filled with pure delight at realizing that someone could feel comfortable expressing themselves that openly in a space like this. I eventually become friends with this person who I will later learn is trans -- I had never met a trans person before. I will become close friends with three more trans people, at least two enbies, and countless other queer people over the next decade of playing this wonderful game.
It is November 2019. I am at work, sitting at my desk, feeling completely numb despite starting the day energetic to the point of mania. I've just had an argument with a close friend -- perhaps the closest friend I've ever had -- and it ended... poorly, to put it mildly. So poorly, in fact, that it is safe to say we are just not friends anymore. The reality was that there were always problems between us, and this was a culmination of conflict that never really got effectively resolved. It might not have even been possible to resolve. In the moment, though, I cannot escape the suffocating feeling that I am a failure as a human being; someone who simply does not know how to maintain a relationship. My mind goes through loops of how I could have said something differently to have it end better. The emotional pain will not fully make sense to me until several months later, when I realize this was the closest thing to a break-up that I've ever experienced.
It is January 2012. I am watching House M.D. with my dad again. Since leaving the church, watching shows like this has been a desperate lifeline for our relationship. We don't joke as much anymore. This episode features a side plot with an asexual couple, who House determines is simply impossible, and uses his power of supreme logic to prove the asexuality wasn't real all along. I have heard of asexuality, though I don't know where or when, so I am angry at this. Of course, as an ally. I want to joke with my dad to release some frustration, but he is still in the church, and I don’t think he will empathize. I stay silent, and do not enjoy this episode.
It is December 2019. I am scrolling through a Discord channel I was invited to from one of the leftist creators I follow. This community has been a breath of fresh air in many ways, and one I found surprisingly helpful was an NSFW adult content chat channel where people are open about sex, fetishes, and more. I've considered myself fairly open-minded and sex-positive, but I'm still a virgin at 28 so I've found there is a lot I just don't know about. Today, someone has started a conversation about what qualifies as "taboo" and relating it to kink-shaming. Another member replies, mentioning they are asexual and find the whole notion of taboos being kind of bizarre. My mind reels at seeing someone who identifies as asexual in this chat. Over time I find out there are several other people who identify at least gray-ace in this chat, some who even draw risque artwork for commission. I realize how little I actually understood about what asexuality really was, and begin scouring the internet for articles and wikis on asexuality.
It is April 2010. I am at an Apollo Burger across the street from the local game store where I am playing in a Magic prerelease. My friends I followed over are talking about weekend plans, and one of them makes a joke about doing some chores to butter up his partner to have sex. The joke does not go over my head -- I am straight, and understand sex, even if I am still a virgin -- but I still can't help but think out loud: "You know, I just don't get why people make such a big deal out of sex." The awkwardness and confused looks are suffocating. I drop the topic immediately.
It is June 2020. I have just watched a video from an enby Youtube creator about their experience discovering their own gender identity. Over the next three days I will see every one of these past experiences, along with hundreds of others, flash before my eyes in rapid succession, over and over, until I begin to realize that I haven't allowed myself to truly identify how I do. Every time I asked "am I asexual?" in the past, I would dismiss it because I understood sex and have a sex drive. Once I actually researched asexuality, though, I almost immediately found stories of people who identify as ace and still experience a sex drive. I also discover a lot of stories from aromantic people that sound painfully similar to feelings I hadn't even realized were not the norm. For the first time I begin to realize I may not just be an ally.
So what does this mean
I came to a sense of satisfaction with living alone and single a long time ago. At first this came with a certain level of shame, because I felt like it was only because I was too cowardly to enter the dating scene and try to find a relationship for myself. Over time the impact of the shame diminished, but it never went away; it just became a quiet background noise that I got accustomed to pushing back.
But now that I feel comfortable calling myself "Aromantic", I don't feel any shame. A romantic relationship is simply something I don't need. Instead, I can focus on fostering the kinds of deep relationships that do feed my soul. That will likely be a difficult thing to do -- awkwardly traversing intimacy was something most people worked through as a teenager or young adult, and I'm nearly 30, haha. But it at least feels possible now.
But really the biggest change for me is that I feel like I can be honest and public about who I am in a way I never was before. Simply being open about this piece of my identity somehow feels important if for no other reason than to let other people who felt like I did growing up that they aren't alone.
I’ve become a bit obsessed with role playing games lately, and I had an interesting idea last night for a game designed around the idea of “discovering your character” while you play -- jotting it down here so I don’t forget. Maybe someone else will find it inspiring and try it out? :)
Premise:
You and your party are a group of wayward spirits who are trapped between planes of existence. You are met by a figure calling themselves "The Gatekeeper," and each presented with a set of sealed envelopes.
You are told that you have all passed away. The Gatekeeper led you to this plane -- apparently a halfway point between mortality and the eternal afterlife -- but the journey causes you to lose all recollection of who you were in life. The envelopes contain statements you wrote for yourself before the journey to recall your life; but in order to unlock them, you must complete challenges to prove your worth.
Mechanics:
One person will fill the role of "The Gatekeeper", and the rest will be Players.
Before play, all the Players write out five or more simple statements of fact about a person. For example, "You worked as an archeologist.", "You were married three times.", or "Your favorite food was enchiladas." These statements can be completely arbitrary -- even seemingly mundane facts are great! The only requirement is that they are short and specific. The Gatekeeper collects these statements, shuffles them together, then distributes five at random to each Player. These represent the memories for that Player's character.
The Players all begin with flat stats for their characters. The Gatekeeper will present challenges to the group; possibly challenges of strength, wits, or charisma. Ideally they should be challenges that the group can all collaborate together on. Importantly: they need to be challenges that can be succeeded or failed, but not simply ignored.
If the Players succeed: they each open a new memory, and expand upon the simple statement to determine what that implied about their character in life. Remember, this was so important to the character that it was one of five things they felt encapsulated who they were as a person! For example, "Your favorite food was enchiladas." -- perhaps your character was raised in Southern California, surrounded by Hispanic immigrants, and grew to appreciate their culture (in particular, their food!) as a consequence. These interpretations of facts will then be used to either gain two stat points distributed as they choose, or three stat points, and one negative point (to represent a flaw recalled from the memory).
If the Players fail: they each destroy one of their undiscovered memories, meaning they will have permanently forgotten that aspect of who they were in life, and will be unable to gain the stats they would have from unveiling that memory.
After five challenges are completed, The Gatekeeper presents them with a Final Challenge, and if this is succeeded, all the characters will ascend to eternal rest. If it is failed, they will be doomed to persist in this state of half-memory forever.
Wow, it's been a while. I was planning to just start writing a new post about some thoughts I had today, but then I started wondering which life developments I needed to expand on to have the post make sense, and discovered my last post was nearly a year ago. And given the nature of my 2018, it wasn't on a particularly optimistic note either.
So let me start with some recap:
I spent most of 2018 in a fairly constant state of depression. Even after starting to take antidepressants, the vast majority of the year was a miserable slog. Therapy was not helpful; family often felt more alienating than comforting; relationships with friends started to dwindle; I outright quit my biggest hobby -- the way I'd spent the vast majority of my time for the better part of a decade. It was hell.
During the entire duration I felt like my life centered around my job. I very intentionally didn't put in excessive hours -- I suspect my average was actually FEWER than 40 hours per week -- but even so, my mind couldn't escape. I would refresh messages from the company Slack channel at all hours; I would frequently spend extra hours with coworkers, ultimately talking shop more than anything else; many therapy sessions revolved around my feelings at work and how pointless or actively harmful it felt.
Almost everyone would listen to my stories, and immediately recommend I find a new job. "You clearly hate it," they would say, "so why stick around? You can find a different job with your degree, no problem!"
But the problem was that I didn't hate my job. I spent extra hours hanging out with my coworkers because I enjoyed spending time with them -- they were awesome people! I would complain that it felt nearly impossible for me to make a tangible impact on the direction of the company (or even my own team), but I was able to work on technically interesting and challenging tasks that would be difficult to find at another company. And all of that is ignoring the ludicrously good compensation package.
So I stuck with it. I figured that if I was unable to enjoy this job, I'd likely be miserable at any job, so it would be more constructive for me to figure out my personal problems while keeping the job that was pretty much objectively amazing.
Long story short: it didn't last. Trying to keep my head down on issues that caused me serious concern eventually started to boil over, and I began making somewhat-too-public comments in opposition to the work of the company. At some point I said the wrong thing to the wrong person, and it turned into a manager meeting with me and talking over my attitude problem. It ended with me leaving the company.
For about a month I was over the moon. I felt myself energized by righteous indignation. "How dare these managers call me out?" I would think. "I may have been blunt, but this company was founded on openness and willingness to listen to controversial opinions. These bastards are pulling out as soon as one of those opinions makes them look bad!" Being slighted made me feel so much better -- I stopped talking to a therapist, and even stopped taking medication. The world was bright again!
But the righteous indignation passed, and the melancholy set back in. The hopelessness of working in a capitalist world eked back into the forefront of my mind. The helplessness of being new at a job, and feeling unable to shape the direction of what was already laid out before me; and perhaps even worse, the overwhelming tide of work needed to lay out foundation that was completely nonexistent. Everything was bleak again, just as I imagined.
So with that background, I begin my actual post: Tonight I joined a friend and former coworker at my previous employer's company board game night.
I entered with anxiety about being seen as an outsider. I also entered with hope that I'd be seen as a returning friend. I anticipated spending a lot of time chatting with coworkers and catching up on things since we had last seen one another. I dreaded anyone jokingly asking me to rejoin the team.
But none of that happened. There were some initial "Oh, hey, it's you"s, but after a friendly handshake and some quick questions about my new job, conversation shifted back to the normal topics. Which was all the more awkward for me, because those topics were all company related, which meant I was no longer up to speed. I would try to make old jokes, but they were long since forgotten. There were a few jabs at my unwelcomeness in the space -- clearly in jest, but still had a sting of truth to it.
Yet, despite how awkward and isolating it felt, I choose to focus on the pleasantness of reconnecting with old friends. I could feel myself open up in a way I have been unable to for a long time. And I actually felt able to put aside some of the frustrations and anxiety for a few hours, and just enjoy playing some board games.
It's probably the anti-depressants talking, but I hope I can get invited again.
I'd intended to commit myself to writing something at least once a night. Instead, it's taken me five days to write this blog post. It's taken even longer to do the dishes. But I got to rank 4 on the Hearthstone Ladder.
The problem isn't that I don't know how to prioritize. I spent most nights for the last week feeling guilt over failing to accomplish basic household tasks.
The problem also isn't that I lack inspiration. My mind was often flurried with ideas I could write into a post for that day.
And the problem was definitely not a case of feeling that the tasks were insurmountable or difficult in any way. Part of what fed the guilt I felt was how seemingly trivial the items I hadn't completed were.
At first, I felt the issue was a lack of motivation. A deep, foundational problem that I had causing me to simply be lazy. Obviously this is a fairly harsh outlook on myself -- and perhaps equally as obviously I was told that this perspective was judgmental and unhealthy. Perhaps it was.
More recently, I began to consider this being caused by an inability to concentrate. I find it difficult to stay focused on one task for extended periods of time (especially recently), so perhaps there was some aspect of myself that makes it hard to stay on a task? But this felt like a deception when placed in front of direct examples from even my recent past where I was able to fixate on a hobby for hours on end.
I've been told I should reframe my inner frustrations by accepting that the tasks I haven't accomplished are not ultimately that important. I can't accept that -- because that's the exact mindset that has swayed me towards inactivity. It's an excuse; a defense mechanism.
Which forces me to reflect: what am I defending myself against? I already acknowledge the tasks are easy -- that's part of what binds me up in guilt in the evening. In fact, some of these things are even enjoyable; I wouldn't be writing these blogs if I didn't find some sense of satisfaction in it. So what is the pain I'm trying to avoid by not working on these things?
Then I remember. The start of every new season -- that overwhelming sense of stress and immediacy that overshadowed every other sensation until PPTQ registrations were complete. Despite knowing I didn't need to worry about the details; despite knowing I wasn't obliged to assist to the degree I had convinced myself I needed to. It felt like a rope tightening around my chest (even literally at times), tugging me away from the hobby I enjoyed.
I remember again. The feeling washes over me as I cover the responsibility of management for my coworker while he was out of town. That sense of helplessness in a sea of far more than I had been aware of before. Even though I could feel myself and my team swimming steadily to shore, it was the sense I couldn't shake of being pulled under and drowning at any moment.
And I remember one last time. Pangs of nervousness and frustration around the prospect of owning a home, and all that entailed. Of being responsible to do chores, make a space hospitable for others, and take care of myself. The devastating realization that I would only ever have more and more items to complete in a day, and there would be no respite to stop and catch my breath.
All this time I've been crippled by anxiety.
I came to this realization with my mother, who immediately proclaimed "well, duh, of course. You've always been anxious." I suppose she's right, if I think back. Learning the lesson of avoiding too many extra curricular activities because I was literally pulling my hair out. Feeling the crushing stress of shifting from high school to college, and then from college to a career. It's painfully obvious, yet I've been blind to it this whole time.
That said, I used to be able to move on with my life and not get swallowed by this in the past. Something has changed to have this stress overtake my life. I guess my next task is discovering that secret.
Depression has done a lot of painful things to me, but by far the most devastating has been it's reaffirmation of my already dismal view on the nature of "Happiness".
See, I've really never been much of an optimist. I'd typically prefer calling myself a "realist", a "skeptic", or maybe a "nihilist", but at the end of the day it all boils down to good 'ol fashion pessimism. And thus, I've never really had much of a healthy relationship with the concept of being happy.
But I've never typically been bothered by that, because "being happy" didn't mean "feeling upbeat" to me. I have good days, and I have bad, just like everyone else. Even now, in the grips of mental illness I laugh at jokes, enjoy a good match of a game, or find pleasure in socializing with friends. Yet none of this removes the crippling sense of hopelessness that surrounds me; it doesn't relieve the literal physical exhaustion I feel from the prospect of going to work in the morning.
In the past I would have said I find "happiness" in achievement, such as conquering difficult goals or creating something unique. Now, however, it feels like "happiness" is more like a fuel tank that provides me energy to accomplish those things; a fuel tank that has been running on fumes for far too long. I long for the days where my concerns were how to conquer a goal, because now I find myself stuck in an endless loop of just trying to prove to myself that purpose in life is even possible.
I mention all of this, because I get the impression that most people (or, perhaps better put, healthier people) don't find themselves exhausted of this resource so consistently. As a consequence, when I speak with others about the issues I face, it feels like we are literally speaking a different language.
For example: earlier this week my father shared an article he read on the topic of happiness he felt "might offer a little something for me to consider". The article discusses a distinction between "temporary elevation in mood" versus "raising the equilibrium" to describe happiness. It talks about how small things -- such as watching television -- might "make us happier", but only briefly and fleetingly. Instead, we should focus our energy on perusing long-term goals and finding purpose in life.
Or, in other words: exactly the notion of "happiness" I'd like to return to.
But the article doesn't discuss how to find purpose. The article was religious in nature, so perhaps the author just assumed that God was enough purpose for anyone -- but honestly, I didn't really get that impression. Rather, it read to me like the author simply felt that "finding purpose" was something that everyone innately knows how to do, and that the reason they wrote the article was simply to pass out a friendly reminder that might be a healthy choice.
Well, to be blunt, this advice is fucking worthless. In fact, in light of the struggles I'm going through, being told "why don't you just try to find purpose in life?" feels like telling someone in a wheelchair to get up and walk.
And to clarify: I don't begrudge my father for the sentiment. He just wants to help -- as does everyone else who reaches out when they see me acting strange or unhappy. It's because we're speaking completely different languages that his feedback doesn't resonate with me, and why my replies don't make sense to him. I just wish I could explain the pain I'm feeling without forcing him to feel it too.
I've spent this last weekend in Phoenix, AZ -- yet another in a growing lists of cities I've visited to participate in a Magic tournament. And just as with those other cases, many of my friends are reporting to Facebook the escapades they've had, and the photos they've captured and want to share. Usually I don't join in on this exercise -- most of the memories I cherish most are small, fleeting moments that defy explanation without larger context. "You had to be there", I suppose.
But I'm currently sitting in the Phoenix airport, waiting for another four hours to pass before my flight arrives, and I can return to my regular routine. In the absence of a more meaningful task (or, perhaps, in order to avoid working during my last day out of the office), I find myself compelled to document some of the thoughts and feelings that came up during the trip.
The Urban Desert
The aesthetic of Phoenix had an odd effect on me. Almost immediately after leaving the airport, I was struck by how dead the city seemed. Not because there were no people, but rather because walking through the city feels like walking through the surrounding desert wasteland. Most buildings are a pale tan color, blending seemlessly into the sidewalks since the separating barrier is almost always sand, gravel, or cement rather than grass or shrubbery. Even the scarce trees lining some streets appear painted with a sandy, unliving palette.
Perhaps fittingly, this sense is only amplified as you wander farther from the city-center. Walking about twenty minutes away will begin putting you into a typical suburbia, but still clearly affected by the surrounding desert. There are now older buildings with red brick-and-mortar rather than tan concrete, but it still resonates as an old-west town. Some homes attempt to keep up a lawn, but they are dry and patched, clearly showing the effects of the dry environment.
Combining this unusually flat appearance with the tangled network of roads in the downtown area made it difficult for me to keep my bearings. Despite my hotel being only a block from the Convention Center, and the fact that I walked back and forth over half a dozen times during the weekend, I still found myself relying on maps to lead me to where I hoped to go. It genuinely felt like being lost in a desert, despte roads, people, and signs everywhere around me.
A Job Well And Done
Of course, the purpose for my travel was to act as a Floor Judge for Grand Prix Phoenix.
For most of the staff, this I think this was an uninteresting event. The turnout was small (I think well over half the venue was empty on all three days, and it wasn't a particularly large hall), and there wasn't anything particularly special for this Grand Prix. I suppose it was a release weekend for a new Masters set, which is typically met with a fair bit of fanfare, but even those events came off as mundane and typical. We were over-staffed, which made things run smoothly, but only because they were easy.
And for what it's worth, that's not a bad thing. Constant excitement means there are constant problems. Slow events like these are probably well over half the GPs I've worked, and they can still be fun. But they aren't memorable.
That was not my experience, however. For me, this was the last GP I'll be attending for the forseeable future. Although I only attend these three or four times a year, I still usually felt like there was another event on the horizon to look forward to. Nearly every friend I spoke with poked me at one point or another for whether I'd be in Seattle?... Vegas?... DC? Normally I would be queued up for at least one -- this time I awkwardly said it would probably be a while for me, but hope to see them soon.
Even worse, though, were the compliments.
I was approached by a colleague asking if I'd be willing to join more actively as an author for a blog on feedback. She complimented by writing skills, and was hoping she could find a core of people who could regularly contribute and keep the steam going. It crushed me to have to say I wouldn't be available.
I also had a chance to reconnect with an old mentor of mine. He's a genuinely delightful person, but he also has a heck of a way to poke my sense of obligation that I don't think he realizes. "Yes, he was one of the candidates I tested in judge classes back in 2012 -- glad there was at least one person to be proud of out of that group!"
More than anything in the world, I wanted to describe the internal struggle I was engaged in. Discussing the burnout I'd had over the last year. Explaining my current struggles with depression. Sharing my feelings and frustrations over the past several months. But this was a dialogue that wouldn't fit into a simple chat between coworkers, interrupted by tournament calls. My job was to put on a happy face, give good customer service, and get things done -- so I did. So, perhaps even more than usual, I spent a lot of this tournament feeling Fake Happy.
Filling the Void
Which brings me to the present; sitting in an airport still biding the hours before my flight. The empty time is boring, which is perhaps obvious now that I say it out loud, yet it still eats away at me as I sit here, just waiting for the passage of time.
Typically airports do not bother me the same way they same to frustrate others, but I begin to wonder if this existential sense of nothing to do is really what causes so much resentment? Then I find myself clinging to this idea, and internalizing it (true or not), and realize how familiar this sense of empty time with nothing to do really is to me.
"Why did I even choose a flight at 5:30?"
I recall that it was so I could find an excuse to go out and do things in Phoenix before my flight. Of course I chose not to do that, and go to the airport early instead.
"I should have just chosen the earlier flight -- I would've been home by now."
But, even if I were, I realize I would be doing nothing different than I am now. Staring aimlessly into space, possibly typing up a blog post about my feelings, but nothing more. Only I'd be in my home instead of the airport. The location just gives my mind an avenue to blame my external surroundings, which lets me feel frustrated by the boredom, rather than consumed by it. And with that, the sense of numbness and apprehension I've been plagued by for the last several months has returned to the forefront of my mind.
"Well, that's it -- guess my life is officially a hot mess."
The last few days have been a struggle. Actually, if I'm being honest, the last week or two have been pretty bad in general. It's been difficult for me to concentrate at work, because I've been unable to stop fixating on issues that frustrate me. More than usual, I mean. And when I've managed to escape the cycles of defeatist attitude, usually in my off hours, I find myself succumbing to an overwhelming sense of melancholy.
"Have I always felt this way?"
These problems aren't new. They aren't even novel to this blog -- I've posted about them a number of times in the last few months. I don't even think these feelings are more intense than my worst episodes; probably the same general out-of-sorts I would feel normally, but never draw attention to. Certainly not something dramatic that would convince me to see a therapist, or speak to friends or family about it.
"Why hasn't it bothered me before? What is wrong with me now?"
But this time I noticed it -- and despite how plain it was to see that I was sabotaging myself, I found myself utterly helpless to stop it. I would struggle with myself, demanding I get back on task, or desperately try to find acceptance of the grievances I was focused on. None of these efforts helped, though; even if I found a few moments of solace, within minutes I would be back to a cascade of worry, irritation, and malaise.
"What if I can't even trust my own thoughts?"
I'm reminded that my mind is actively deceiving me. I'm reminded that others have expressed the same experiences in their own struggles. This does not help. To the contrary, where I once found hope (albeit driven by sheer belligerence), I now find helplessness. The desperation is inescapable, and I am constantly reminded that I will be perpetually trapped with it.
"I wish I could do something worthwhile..."
At my core I just want to accomplish something. I want my actions -- and therefore my life -- to have meaning beyond just going to work in the morning, and doing my chores on the weekend. I understand this takes work, and theoretically I'm willing to put in the effort. I've even done it in the past. But now I feel like the cost of my investment greatly outweighs the benefits from the result, and I lose all motivation.
"But everything feels too hard..."
Everyone around me says I just need to start simple. Pick a small task, and once you get started you will find yourself get lost in the task. It's easy.
"Even when everyone else can do it..."
They say "you can do anything for a year." But can I?
"Something must be wrong with me..."
They say "it's just five minutes -- it's not that hard!" Yet it feels insurmountable.
"Maybe I'm just lazy..."
So I revert back to shame. Something about me is broken, and that prevents me from accomplishing things that people normally handle just fine. I don't know what this broken piece is, but it's clearly a part of me -- everyone else handles things just fine.
"Maybe I'm just lazy..."
Apparently after three months I never managed to articulate this clearly to my therapist. When I finally say that I spend most of my weekends and vacations zoned out in front of a computer screen, she seems concerned that I'm "more depressed than I realized." My friend directs me to articles about "dysthymia." Well, this all sounds like familiar feelings.
"Guess I'm just 'Depressed'."
These diagnoses come across with a twinge of satisfaction. They've found the problem, so now it's just a matter of solving that problem! But I haven't been able to solve any problems in a long time. So this diagnosis is now just a new label I can apply to myself and feel shameful of.
"And now there's nowhere to move but backwards."
I understand that the healing process is long and hard -- especially with mental illness. I'm willing to put in effort to make improvement, and I know that will be necessary. But that really depends on what "willingness" really means, because when the core issue trying to be solved is finding the energy to convince yourself to start a load of laundry, it's hard to justify being actually willing to do anything at all.
Spoiler alert ahead. IMHO Celeste isn’t a game that loses much for having the late-game plot spoiled ahead of time, but if you are concerned about it, I’ll be speaking through some late-game dialogue here, so you may want to wait until you finish to read through this post.
But first, the basic, non-spoiler content. For the uninitiated, Celeste is a Platformer released early this year, and it is Very Good. I was already stoked on this game for being based on a popular Pico8 title, and coming from the folks behind TowerFall. And Celeste definitely delivers on tight controls and clever level design. Celeste Mountain is a fascinating setting, and the developers put a lot of energy into building the levels to be explorable and multi-faceted. I'm not much of a completionist, but I still found myself curious to search for hidden passages and take a stab at completely unnecessary bonus strawberries quite often. It's really nice to have a game that gives someone looking to just play through it a linear path to follow, while still having explorable paths to branch out for those intersted in a bit more depth.
But what really shook me about Celeste -- and why I really recommend you check this game out, even if you aren't typically a fan of platformers -- is the emotional punch from the narrative. And for that, we're going to jump into the spoiler break.
Celeste tells the story of a young woman, Madeline, who has ventured to Celeste Mountain to climb to the top. Along the way she meets a small cast of characters: an Old Lady who lives on the mountain and provides perplexing advice about traveling to the summit; an amateur photographer, Theo, who is exploring the mountain to snap some sweet selfies; and Mr. Oshiro, a ghostly hotel operator who seems to be unable to find rest due to the closing of his beloved inn.
At first, we aren't told what compels Madeline to climb -- it's just a quest she's determined to complete. But the picture begins to become clear during the second act, where she encounters a strange mirror that splits "Part of Her" into a physical being who begins antagonising Madeline through most of the game. We learn that Madeline has been experiencing severe depression and panic attacks. Just as we aren't clear of her reasons for coming to the Mountain, Madeline too can't explain her motivations -- she just "needs to accomplish something."
As this picture of Madeline crystalizes, the true arc of Celeste becomes clear: this is a story of Madeline figuring out how to accept herself as she is, and curbing her tendency to fixate on painful past experiences rather than moving on with her life. The narrative perfectly relates Madeline transitioning through an understanding of the problem: At first, she comes to the Mountain entirely unaware of what to do, other than a vague awareness that her life is mesed up, and she needs to get out of a rut. Then a seemingly dark "Part of Her" is released, antagonizing her, and making the way up the mountain harder. As she approaches the final stretch up the mountain, Madeline concludes that she needs to destroy, suppress, or separate from this "Part of Her", but this backfires and results in her crashing halfway down the Mountain again. Madeline faces a choice of giving up, or climbing back up, and decides not to back down. On her way back up, she begins to realize that there is no way for her to proceed without the assistance of this "Part of Her", and decides to embrace this aspect of herself, becoming literally more powerful as a consequence.
The story is simple, but it is also very powerful. As someone who is also currently struggling with mild depression, there were many moments where Madeline expresses concerns and thoughts that perfectly resonated with issues I have experienced. For example: at the beginning of the sixth chapter, Madeline and Theo settle down to camp together after just escaping an ancient temple that had amplified each of their neuroses into literal monsters and traps. Madeline had of course been dealing with these since the beginning of her journey, but this was the first time that Theo had seen it. Madeline explains what she had been experiencing, and Theo asks why she hadn't simply spoken up about it before.
Theo: "You could have mentioned that your demon dopplegänger was on the loose."
Madeline: "Come on, Theo. You know how crazy this sounds. I didn't even believe myself."
Theo: "Okay, okay. I understand. But next time, just talk to me. I promise I'll believe you."
Reading this had me choked up for a moment. While the two are talking about literal demons and magic, Madeline's feeling that she couldn't explain what she was experiencing out of fear that nobody would believe her is exactly the sensation I feel when coping with depression. "I can't talk about these feelings with others -- they wouldn't understand." Or, "even if I tried to explain, nobody would believe me -- I always put on a happy face." Theo's follow up insisting she speak with him anyway is a poignant reminder that your friends and family do care how you feel. This was what made Celeste so powerful to me: despite clearly being an exaggerated metaphor, the experiences of the people were still real and applicable actual depression.
Depression Quest was a game designed to explain what the experience of having depression was like. Celeste, on the other hand, is a game that explains what the process of therapy is like, and why resolving these issues is so painful and hard. I haven't seen a game like that before, and I'm glad I got to encounter this one when I did.
I am fortunate. Unlike many of my peers, I have steady, gainful employment. My life is generally free of turmoil. I frequently enjoy the company of close friends and family.
And yet, at least in the moment, my personal narrative is written in a somber tone, with a quiet, haunting melody in the background. And the cruel irony is that the author who drags down melancholy on this otherwise pleasant story is myself.
On a daily basis, I find myself confronted with what feel like hopeless conflicts. Sometimes of a grand scope: "there are so many people struggling with poverty, and yet my greatest efforts are meaningless in the grand scheme of things." Other times they are small: "I just wish I could make a product I am proud of, but instead I have to work around the hacks and mess that have compiled over years of development." Each time I feel trapped with two miserable options: either take on the burden of trying to bring on meaningful change, knowing that my efforts will be great and my success will be minor, or retreat from action, and feel the pang of guilt from knowing I didn't step up when I could have.
This, in turn, translates to a recurring sense of frustration. I recognize the futility of my feelings: if the efforts I enact are doomed to bring no success, then there is really no point in feeling guilty from not acting. So my inward feelings of guilt turn into outward expressions of anger and resentment. In any case, a miserable state of affairs.
I was recently talking with my parents about these feelings, sharing that I feel that this has been my perception for an extended period of time. They expressed concern, saying that earlier this year I had seemed positive and optimistic about life. When they said this, I could recall those days, and felt truth resonate in their statement. Yet even now, this feels untrue -- my mind can't help but fixate on how miserable I have been for as long as I can remember feeling.
Reconciling this disparity between factual versus emotional memory has been a difficult task over the last few days. This sense of duality -- that part of my mind sees the world through factual observation, while the other colors the world with emotion and feeling -- is not a new revelation for me. I realize that I've frequently said things like "I know this intellectually makes no sense, but that is still how I feel." Yet it fills me with dread that my own mind could contradict itself so bluntly. Most troublingly is how beyond my control the realm of feelings seems to be -- it's as though I am literally afflicted with Decartes's Demon, reshaping my world into something dark and morose without my input. Even worse, because at least Decartes could find solace in knowing that his own thoughts were untainted; my Demon corrupts even the inner sanctum of my mind.
Nonetheless, I see hope in the darkness. If it is true that my emotional vision was brighter at another time, then the possibility to return to that brightness also exists. Moreover, like a beast from a fantastical horror, this dark color seems to feed off itself, finding strength in the hopelessness of no return. It was easy to forget a time when I genuinely felt happiness, because my own mind amplifies the frustration I feel in the moment to all of time.
So the premise is to allow my factual-half to take control of my emotional-half -- not because emotions are weak or unimportant, but because mine are broken and in need of care. By capturing the state of my feelings in a regular journal, revisiting these with a more factual-oriented mindset is possible. "How many days did I actually feel helpless?" "Are there recurring patterns that lead to more dismal episodes?" "What activities have brought genuine enjoyment, and may help recover from an event of frustration?"
As I write this out, I still feel the tug of the Demon fighting back. "This idea is silly and pointless. Writing out your feelings has never helped before, why should you expect anything different now? You don't even know that these feelings are misguided -- perhaps the reality really just is that bad."
Even as I continue to berate the feelings by calling them "the Demon", I am finding myself convinced.
But I may as well still post something. Just like every other action may be meaningless and ineffective, this post won't cure a disease. But maybe, if nothing else, a little more willingness to put in effort without reward will convince me to get on with my life.
As promised, here is the follow up to my previous post with more historical context. If you didn’t read the previous post, I’d recommend going back to at least get the details for what is going on, because I’m going to move on from here assuming you have the basic introduction. However, if you don’t want to read the whole post, feel free to disregard it, because honestly I think this one has much more important info anyway.
Part 3 -- Questionable History
When I began describing this incident in my previous post, I mentioned it being entangled with Gamergate and chantrolls, which probably makes no sense. The rest of the details suggest this was a public scandal that WotC addressed by instituting their new background check policy. To a certain extent, that is exactly true -- but the specific details around that public scandal are the important point for the rest of this post.
First let me introduce you to our primary character. Jeremy Hambly, otherwise known as MTGHeadquarters and Unsleeved Media, is a YouTube personality who makes videos primarily focused around Magic: The Gathering commentary and current events. You can find his channel here:
Specifically, on Christmas Eve of 2017, Jeremy posted a video entitled “Predators in the Magic Judge Program?”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp7EtTwRecc
In summary, the video talks about a discussion thread on a Judge IRC channel where a concerned parent asked whether the Judge Program performs criminal background checks. He expressed concern about the safety of allowing his teenage child to attend tournaments, and was upset to learn that the Judge Program didn’t perform some kind of criminal investigation on their personnel before certification. Jeremy agrees with this conclusion, highlighting another recent incident of a prominent L3 recently being decertified due to allegations of sexual misconduct. He concludes the video by petitioning the Judge Program to immediately perform these checks in order to protect children, and also requests his viewers begin sending him private information to an email address he registered: “[email protected]”
Over the next several weeks, he continued posting more videos on the topic, getting more specific and disturbed with each one. A few examples:
I’m not interested in breaking down the details of these videos, but I do want to highlight something I hope stands out as odd if you watch these without any other context. If you’ve watched the videos, you’ll have likely noticed a few odd things. He’s mentioned a few times that there are judges who are harassing him, and he expresses frustration that there is no action taken against these judges. He has a sign in his background saying “Days Banned: “ and a sideways 8, I’m assuming intended to represent an infinity symbol. Even the email address of “[email protected]” implies a certain level of vengeance in his tone. What is that about?
The answer to that question takes us another month back in time. On November 24th, 2017, a prominent Magic cosplayer, Christine Sprankle, posted on Twitter that she would be leaving the community due to harassment she received from MTG Headquarters and Unsleeved Media. I would link to the tweets, but Christine has locked off her account to avoid continued harassment. Instead, you can see a related video article about the incident here:
The news came over Thanksgiving holidays, so Wizards was unable to react immediately, but they made a public statement decrying the harassment being seen online, and on December 7th made a follow up statement re-iterating their position, and also silently issued a permanent suspension to Jeremy Hambly, and several other affiliated people, from being able to participate in Magic tournaments.
The specifics of Jeremy’s posts to Christine are largely private and unknown, but from the general information she shared -- and backup from other female Magic community members who experienced similar harassment from Hambly and his followers -- describe messages threatening rape, physical violence, disgust at her appearance, stalking, and other serious attacks. So pardon a brief moment of personal opinion, but I think it’s safe to say this is cut-and-dry unacceptable behavior, and given the prolonged nature of these attacks, a permanent suspension does feel a proportionate and necessary response.
And I want to draw attention to this situation, because it helps explain Jeremy’s state of mind entering December 24th when he posted his original video about sexual predators in the Judge program. Jeremy had been publicly shamed by much of the community for several weeks, then forcibly removed from the game he’d been playing for several years. His videos describe the situation as a “Witch Hunt” against him, and culminate in a video entitled “PRESS F TO PAY RESPECTS”, and a thumbnail that reads “BANNED FOR LIFE (NO APPEAL)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opNYgHoSYsc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f79efv_AQYY
And at it’s most extreme, Jeremy even shared his story with Breitbart, and broadcast what he had dubbed as “Magicgate” to the public at large (or at least the section of the public that pays any attention to Breitbart):
In other words, for months now Jeremy has been engaged in building a narrative of antagonism towards the Magic community -- which he describes as being infested by authoritarian SJWs engaging in a witch hunt -- and Wizards of the Coast -- which he describes as an oppressive corporate overlord that unfairly punished him with no hope for appeal. And it’s important to remember that it is only a narrative. Although Wizards of the Coast DID suspend him from play and in effect confiscated his Magic Online collection, this was not a spontaneous action done from malice -- it was a reaction against him due to blatant and extreme violations of their terms of service and community standards. The purpose of his suspension was at least in part to demonstrate Wizards’s solidarity against cyberbullying and the sort of behavior that Hambly has now been trying to defend for months on his YouTube channel and Twitter account.
With that context, these videos of concern about pedophilia in the ranks of the Judge program take a dramatically different light. These are not the concerned posts of a community member looking to build a safer space for children -- it’s a paranoid exaggeration to continue propping up his narrative that Wizards is corrupt and uninterested in defending the community. “Look, they’re even hiding pedophiles now!”
And as a final jab that I feel clearly demonstrates Jeremy’s true intentions, on January 4th, Jeremy posted a public Google Doc containing the name, home city, and DCI number (unique identifier used for enrolling in / judging Magic events) of all Level 2 and Level 3 judges in the program. His original tweets, which have been since taken down, encouraged his followers to begin checking names and locations on the sex offender registry “since WotC and the judges won’t do anything.” On the surface this may sound fine enough, but keep in mind the repercussions of this action for affected judges. Because DCI numbers are used for registering as a judge in tournament software, it is now very easy for anyone to impersonate any of these judges at future events. And since the context behind this post was CLEARLY one of targeted attacks, even if only a handful of people act on Jeremy’s request, it is frankly very likely that at least one Judge will experience this fallout. Combined with the fact that proper criminal background checks are complex (turns out that there are frequently multiple people with the same name in the same area), siccing an angry mob against the Judge program is effectively tantamount to an open attack against any completely innocent member of the community (which, realistically, is effectively everyone).
Part 4 -- Reframing the Narrative
So, with that context behind us, I hope it’s apparent what the intent behind these actions were. That said, Jeremy’s intention shouldn’t have any impact on the viability of WotC’s decision, right? Even if an idea is proposed for bad reasons by bad people, that doesn’t make the idea invalid.
And this is where the discussion becomes by far the most frustrating, and also by far the most nuanced. It’s true that trying to invalidate an argument because the person making it has questionable morals is an ad hominem attack. However, my intention is not to claim that background checks in general are a bad idea because Jeremy Hambly recommended it -- I’m saying that the specific decision to create the policy that WotC did, at the time that they decided it, with the context surrounding this ongoing situation, plays straight into Jeremy’s narrative of corruption. Furthermore, given WotC’s deliberate language choices that direct responsibility away from themselves and towards the Judge Program, Jeremy’s attacks against Judges are not only disregarded, they are outright validated.
That support of the narrative is an important problem point in WotC’s decision, because that is ACTUALLY the objective that Jeremy cares about. It’s abundantly clear that he doesn’t care about the quality of the Magic community -- if that were the case, he wouldn’t have engaged in harassment in the first place. No, his objective is to reframe the discussion around unfair bias against him and his followers, and to normalize and justify the actions they have taken. By supporting his narrative, WotC is in effect created a policy that might proactively address a handful of horrible future incidents, but has actively reinforced horrible behavior that currently plagues the Magic community.
Part 5 -- Moving On
To my non-Magic friends (who actually read this blog), I hope this provides some context around the frustrations I’ve felt for the last several weeks. I’m now hoping to just move onward and cope with the reality I find myself in, but I can’t quite shake the anger I feel at the injustice of this whole situation.
It does not help to try and put things into perspective for myself: in practice, I already know that I will have basically zero impact from these policies. I have a simple background that will not find any criminal history, and enough report with local stores that I expect little to no fallout. Hiccups introduced by this policy will be ironed out over time, and eventually I expect it will evolve into an actually very positive part of Judge certification.
However, this perspective is purely one of privilege. Not all Judges have the good fortune I have, and not all players have the option to simply ignore bullies the way that I do. I don’t want to be idle when my friends are actively being attacked by those around them, yet I feel utterly powerless to help them. So I make this post, as modest and short reaching as it may be, in hopes that it will at least live on as a reminder of why people like Jeremy Hambly are so toxic to a community.
This is probably not the best venue for posting this topic, but I’ve got some thoughts I need to express, and I don’t quite feel comfortable sharing them in the places I normally would. But I feel like I need to write something up to clear my mind, so here you go, Tumblr, enjoy.
God, I hardly even know where to begin with describing this shit show. The full chronological adventure spans four or five different controversies, over several months, and the full context is kind of necessary to get a clear picture. And, really, for a full context on this issue, we’d need to back up to GamerGate and other such chantroll garbage that’s been going on for the last decade or so.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. So first off, the basic introduction I should have led off with:
Friday morning, Wizards of the Coast made a PR statement announcing they will be introducing a requirement for all Tournament Organizers running sanctioned events to perform formal background checks on any staff for these events. The full statement is available here:
This is relevant to me, as a certified Magic Judge, because I and my fellow judge friends will be subject to these checks.
Now, right away I want to emphasize that I am not opposed to the notion of making Magic play spaces safer. In fact, it’s a little surprising in retrospect that checks like these weren’t required in some capacity long before now. Although the demographic of Magic tournaments typically consists more of adults or older teens, there are still absolutely children who attend events at all sizes, and making sure that the space is safe for children is a very important thing. If nothing else, sending the strong message that the community outright rejects any kind of sexual offense as a zero-tolerance policy feels like a positive move forward in fighting issues such as rape culture and sexual abuse of authority.
But there are some very serious issues with this PR statement, the current implementation of this policy, and the larger implications in context that really need to be talked about. And that’s where we start on the messier road.
In the interest of pushing off the tangled history lesson, I’m going to start with the simplest criticisms first:
Part 1 -- Condescension
Wizards begins their statement with “The safety of Magic events is of paramount importance to us.” Despite coming from a clearly corporate PR machine, this is a statement I find veracity in. Wizards has been known to take a zero-tolerance policy for even relatively minor sexual offenses in the past -- most notably an incident a few years back regarding a somewhat prominent player being discovered to have been a registered sex offender, and thus being entirely banned from future participation in Magic events moving forward.
That said, just from reading the rest of this statement, I have a harder time feeling the same conviction I’m used to seeing. The statement says this comes in light of “an individual ... inadvertently not decertified by Magic Judges nor reported to Wizards” who was later discovered to also be a registered sex offender. The wording here is subtle, but also clear -- Wizards is not taking any liability in this incident, instead redirecting blame to “Magic Judges”, and whomever it was they expected to report it to them.
This shifting of blame is further magnified by describing “Magic Judges” as “an independent community-run organization”. Technically speaking, this is an accurate statement -- the Judge program is independent from Wizards of the Coast and from Hasbro, largely from those companies own legal insistence. But in this PR statement, where the central topic is that of explaining the incident in question and Wizards reaction to that incident, this statement serves no purpose other than to further emphasize their perception that the core problem lay outside of their realm of control.
Now, I’m honestly not that bothered by Wizards of the Coast not taking blame for this incident. The reality, as best as I can gather, is that a judge who was long inactive was discovered years after the fact to now be a registered sex offender. Although this is a drastic discovery, and one that definitely deserves immediate action, there was also no known incidents of actual sexual misconduct by this judge at Magic events, nor are there any other known incidents of serious danger being present prior to this discovery. Had this been taken care of silently, outside of the public sphere, I personally feel like no injustice would have been done, because no harm was ever actually inflicted to any people in practice.
But there’s a huge difference between not accepting blame when none is warranted, and passing blame onto a different agent. I don’t feel that, at least prior to some formalized background check system being put in place, Wizards of the Coast or Hasbro would have any reasonable course of action to have prevented this issue. However, neither would have the Judge Program. Passing blame onto this separate body serves no purpose other than to save face in the media frenzy, and digs a trench between the creators of the game, and those who are on the front lines running events for this game. And it’s very much worth nothing that this trench has been undeniably present in many other uncomfortable ways in the recent past. I’ll save the details of that conflict for another post, but suffice it to say this messaging sends a very chilling and uncomfortable message to me, as someone who already feels somewhat burned by the relationship between myself, the Judge Program, and Wizards of the Coast.
But even ignoring the language they’ve opted for in this article, the action that they’ve settled on -- requiring Tournament Organizers to perform background checks in order to run a sanctioned event -- is in effect another form of responsibility passing from them on to other parties. Wizards and Hasbro have explicitly stated that they will not provide monetary support for performing these background checks, and they also have no intention of looking at or maintaining the content of these checks. It’s fully at the discretion of the Tournament Organizers -- who, for context, are frequently small local game store owners -- to perform and catalogue these checks. Oh, but be sure to hold onto records, because Wizards could request proof you’ve performed them at some undisclosed time in the future! And if you’re playing along at home, can you guess when that request would reasonably be expected to come through? If your answer is “the next time we find out a registered sex offender wasn’t decertified, so we can see why the store owner didn’t catch it,” then you win the bonus prize.
Altogether, this sets a very sour tone to the message, that tells me that Wizards and Hasbro are actually not interested in taking responsibility for this incident. And that’s troubling to me, because as far as I can tell, they are the only entity with any actual power to deal with this situation in the first place.
Part 2 -- Enforcement Begins
A follow-up statement was released to the Wizards Play Network (the official name for the tournament sanctioning program that stores apply to):
Suffice it to say, the exact implementation details of this policy are scarce, and a surface level reading at least comes across as the expectation will be for any store owner to perform a full background check before allowing any position of authority for that person at the events run by that store owner. For a hired employee, this might be a reasonable expectation in some areas, but for a judge, this is a more tenuous request, because judges aren’t exactly consistent hired employees -- they’re more like independent contractors who bounce from one venue to the next for every event. So, without further clarification, this introduces several potential issues:
First, background checks are not an infallible process. Many people I’ve seen discussing this topic are convinced that it’s as simple as just looking up a judge’s name in the national sex offender registry, and leaving it at that. But it doesn’t take too long to figure out how bad of a plan that is -- verifying that the information gathered from the sex offender registry actually matches up to the exact person you are searching for is a lot less straightforward than you might imagine. What happens if a judge has a common name in a large urban city? What if a judge has moved several times, or their legal name has been changed? What if a judge has been a victim of identity theft, and there are literally falsified documents for them on the record? These are difficult things to track down in the general case, and are why companies tend to pay money to obtain professional background checks by outside agencies.
Furthermore, background checks are a deep invasion of privacy. Although I’m not personally bothered by someone investigating my criminal background, I AM bothered by that information being disseminated to several local game store owners who, to be frank, I do not trust to keep tight control over those records. And if I work with a dozen different store owners, that means that my sensitive personal information is now potentially accessible through a dozen potential vulnerable spots, which is a pretty tenuous position for me to be in moving forward. I’m less bothered by these checks being done by a larger company, because I would expect that company to have a dedicated HR department whose job would be to control those documents and keep them confidential. A local game store doesn’t have an HR department -- they have a shelf under the front register.
It’s also important to point out that these checks have asymmetric impacts on different members of the community. For example, transgender judges who have legally changed their names will now be required to disclose their former name to store owners looking to work with them. In an LGBTQ+ hostile environment, this piece of historical background may be considered potentially harmful to children, despite actually being utterly irrelevant. Therefore, although the judge may have been able to work on their own terms without uncovering this aspect of their past life to the store owner, in the world of background checks, that may no longer be possible to do in a safe fashion.
Finally, the financial cost of this venture cannot be ignored. Especially since it seems that judges will not be able to provide a shared form of background check for all store owners they work with, this means that any individual judge will be potentially checked several times, which means that the total cost of these checks -- even assuming the generous estimate that one check is on the order of $20-25 -- could be several hundred dollars per judge. For some of our local stores that work with five or six judges, this adds a huge tax to the Magic community as a whole.
And this is why I say that the only entity that truly makes sense to take on the endeavor of performing background checks for Judges would be Wizards of the Coast or Hasbro. As the central authority threatening suspension or desanctioning, the power lies squarely in their court. Plus, as a large company with a centralized HR team, this is the body that actually has resources to put towards proper verification and control of these background check investigations. As a central organization, it would remove the need to perform checks multiple times, reducing the overall cost significantly, although certainly focusing that cost into one organization, which makes it more painful to Wizards than it would be to any individual local game store otherwise.
All that said, these are logistical issues that I suspect will be sorted out over time, or end up being much less problematic in aggregate than what the initial public reaction is. What cannot be repaired, however, is the larger contextual meaning behind this decision. And that leads us to the grossest part of this whole affair: the historical background.
Unfortunately, the time is late, and this post has started to drag on much longer than I’d expected initially, so the history will have to wait until later. If you’ve read this far, thanks for bearing through my rambling up to this point -- I promise the last part will be interesting, albeit gross and unpleasant.
In which I describe why the holidays have not gone so great for me, and how fucked up my head is.
I’m not a fan of the holiday season. For the last several weeks, I’ve been trapped in a vortex of anxiety and stress fueled partly by projects and goals I’d set for myself independently, but primarily driven by a sense of obligation imposed by this time of year. In general I have a tendency to step up and offer help when asked, even if I don’t actually have time or resources to commit to doing such a thing -- the lesson of saying “no” to projects when I am too busy is one that I still really haven’t learned that well -- and this tends to lead to a lot of stacked deadlines and undue pressure put on myself. And the holiday season amplifies this already intrusive neurosis by echoing a general societal pressure to show goodwill to ALL people, which is not feasible at the best of times, let alone when there are several other ongoing commitments I’ve made and cannot hope to satisfy.
Furthermore, I don’t handle gift giving culture very well. My head twists this practice intended to show generosity into a practice that imposes obligation; “oh, thank you for giving me this item -- now I suppose I need to get you something of equal or greater value, otherwise I’m kind of a selfish asshole.” Worse yet, since I personally don’t care much for monetary value of items, that means I feel the need to mirror sentimental value, which is pretty difficult when you get right down to it. Manifesting how much I care about someone into a physical item is really difficult for me, and this makes finding even a single gift for a single person a really strenuous process. And since it doesn’t scale, I inevitably fail to get gifts for most people I know, which gets spun by my inner voice as me being that asshole I was afraid of being at the beginning.
My defense mechanism of choice between high school and graduating from college was just ignoring the traditions altogether. I was still young enough that nobody really had any expectation of me getting gifts for anyone. But I did begin generating a bit of a toxic perception of shallowness around it all: “Christmas isn’t really about generosity to the rest of humanity -- it’s a celebration of our slavery to consumerism and capitalism.” This Freshman Philosophy analysis of the holiday justified shutting myself off from any celebration, and began convincing me that avoiding participation just demonstrated my woke cultural criticism.
But, of course, this was really just a rationalization for actually being an asshole. Although I’ll still maintain that gift-giving traditions establish problematic notions of emotional value being tied to consumerism, at the end of the day that valuation exists, and disregarding it necessarily means disregarding what other people care about, which is kind of definitionally what makes someone an asshole.
Which brings me full circle back to the beginning: thanks to my wonderful tendency to over-analyze everything, I’m fully conscious of all of these facts. I’m aware how stressful gift-giving is, and I’m resentful of it, especially because my values aren’t in line with the consumerist nature of the practice. That resentment makes me not want to participate, which drives me away from people, and puts me on edge when I’m around them during this part of the year. But since I can’t avoid people forever, I tend to be thrust unwillingly into the holiday anyway, which burdens me with obligation I don’t want and am honestly really awful at delivering on.
So, getting past the rambling diatribe, you hopefully get a sense of my headspace entering into December of 2017. Compounding this were multiple stressors in quick succession:
* I was scheduled to judge a Grand Prix event in Portland, and got assigned to working all three days of the event (I typically only work two days and take one off to play, in the interest of allowing my hobby to continue to be that rather than a job).
* I also volunteered to present at a judge conference the Thursday before that event (effectively extending my work schedule to FOUR days, plus the prep work before the event).
* I ALSO volunteered to help schedule a local conference only a few weeks after the tournament was finished, meaning even more prep work before and after returning home.
* I agreed to travel to San Francisco with my parents the week after the tournament, which proved to be much less of a vacation than I’d hoped.
* In the background, I’ve been ramping onto a new team at work, which has had me feeling all those lovely incompetent feelings of starting a new job, but even better because technically I was still at the same company so “why didn’t I know this better already?”
* I had volunteered to let a remote coworker stay with me while she was in town for a concert, and she arrived literally the day of the local conference.
In other words: between the week before Thanksgiving and about two weeks before Christmas, I was in a perpetual state of ongoing stress, which theoretically was separated by vacation time, but realistically that vacation time got spent working on projects and delivering projects. And all of this happening while I was marinating in the usual misery of the holiday season.
Two weeks ago I broke down. I can recite the triggering event, but I’d prefer not to, especially because I don’t think that one incident was the sole factor. Suffice it to say, after a very uncomfortable conversation, I ended up spending an entire day so engrossed in self loathing that I was unable to concentrate, and actually passed out at my desk on multiple occasions. Not because I was tired, but because something deep inside me genuinely felt that being unconscious would be preferable to being awake and trying to deal with the turmoil I had going on in my head.
I’ve never experienced anything like this before. I mean, I’ve felt Imposter Syndrome, and difficulty concentrating at work. But this was something much more drastic, and I’m still at a loss for words at how to describe it accurately. And although it would probably be unfair to qualify this experience as an emergency (I wasn’t suicidal or dangerously lethargic), I’m still terrified of what this means about me and my own mental health.
Moreover, as I reflect back over the last several months (well before the holiday season kicked in, and all these stressors started devouring my attention), I feel like there have been many moments of general malaise and unpleasantness in my life. I don’t document my day-to-day experiences very well, so I don’t know that I can testify clearly to whether the feelings I’ve had over the last few weeks have been reflected for the last several months, but I’m worried they have. And if they have, I’m afraid I won’t know how to resolve this.
But perhaps the most twisted part of this whole ordeal is that no matter how I contextualize this experience, my head keeps spinning it as being my fault somehow:
“It was just a couple of nagging thoughts. Guess you should have figured out how to push those thoughts away and concentrate on what mattered.”
“It could be burnout. Guess you shouldn’t have screwed up your vacation.”
“Maybe you have depression? Guess that makes you a burden to those around you who have to deal with your insufferable depressive moments.”
It’s currently just past 2 AM on December 26th. I’ve been unable to sleep, despite being exhausted. This weekend I’ve dived into learning to play synth piano, built prototypes of image compression software I’d been reading about online, and gorged myself on YouTube videos debunking “Alt-Right” politics and discussing shockingly nuanced views on social justice in 2017. My mind is a buzzing with a flurry of ideas I want to think more about, and write down, and discuss.
My mind is also still drowning in enough melancholy that I spent the last hour writing about how much I hate the holidays and how crappy the last few weeks have been rather than any of those things.
I tend to put a lot of faith in the concept that the human brain is such an incredibly complex system, these sorts of seemingly contradictory experiences are just expected. It doesn’t lessen the confusion I feel being tangled up in this mess, but it does give me hope that I can learn to embrace the weirdness and move forward with my life.
