Y0Addenda.3

In Which Several Trans Girls Deal with Stereotypes and Play MtG

“I only started getting into this recently.” Bel admitted. “So you might need to bear with me.” Alice nodded, reaching out a hand. Bel placed her Deck Box in it. Alice unclipped the box and pulled out Bel’s deck, slowly thumbing through. She raised an eyebrow. “What? What does that facial expression mean?”

“Nothing, nothing, just…”

“What?”

“I didn’t peg you for a ‘Bant’ kinda girl.”

“I don’t know enough to know what that means, yet…” Bel frowned.

“Bant is very…building, growing, expanding, I guess.”

“What am I, then - "

“ - Golgari.” Alice smirked.

“Again I ask - "

“ - She’s making fun of you.” Faith rolled her eyes, distractedly, slumping down into an armchair on the other side of the lounge room, folding one leg over the other. “Golgari strategy is pretty often centred on indiscriminately, aggressively killing things and then bringing them back.”

“Y’know…your favourite thing to do?” Alice smiled.

“Look, it was…narratively justified.” Bel winced. “And I did bring you back, no?”

“Asterisk.” Faith muttered.

“Oh save it for the sequel.” Bel rolled her eyes. “If you guys have something to say to me - “

“ - It was a joke, Bel.” Alice smiled wanly.

“Which deck are you playing, anyway?” Faith directed at Alice.

“My Teysa deck. So…Orzhov.”

“Hope you like humiliating losses, Bel.” Faith chuckled.

“Not sure ‘like’ is the right word, but I do have a fair amount of experience with them.” Bel shrugged.

“Did you want to play?” Alice asked Faith.

“No thanks. You know I’m not super into the whole…” Faith trailed off.

“She thinks she’s too good for our stereotypes, you see.” Alice smirked back over her shoulder.

“I mean…kinda.” Faith shrugged. “But mostly I just never really got the appeal of the uh…I don’t know. Magic, Warhammer, anime, hyper-pop. Spending way too much time on Discord. Fuck, what else?”

“And yet…you still have a Blahaj.”

“You uh…you do realise that if you don’t have one, other trans girls will proactively force them on you, right?”

“Excuse me? What other girl’s Blahaj is in our bed, Faith?” Alice’s eyes narrowed as she looked back at her girlfriend.

“It was a joke.” Faith assured her.

“Fucking better have been…” Alice muttered.

“Still kind of weird that I wrote you two together…” Bel sighed.

“Well, one suspects you might have had larger thematic concerns, considering our relationship was pretty well the only healthy thing in the entirety of that fuck-ass book…” Faith noted.

“Yes well, early transition was a bit of a minefield for me. So it tracks that my ideal, amidst the chaos, was the seemingly unattainable goal of maybe having…like…a relationship with myself that wasn’t complete garbage?” Bel paused: “Can you shuffle my deck? I’m…really bad at it.”

“Sure.” Alice shrugged, doing so.

“I get how you wrote me, given the shitty early-days stuff. But I’m actually curious how you managed to write her.” Faith mused. “Was it just…purely aspirational?”

“Aww…thank you, baby.” Alice smiled as she continued to rearrange cards.

“I mean…kind of? But divergent timelines, right? Alice was…a future I could conceivably have visualised for myself if I’d had a healthier outlook. Her way of interacting with her transness was the way I wished I could interact with mine. At the time, the idea of seeing it as…what’d I write? A ‘radical form of self-love’? That’s something I truly believed - then and now - but it seemed really illusive. Theory over practice. Writing a version of me who embodied that was…beautiful. And…maybe a little tragic, relatively speaking. Like it seemed so…unattainable, at the time. Loving myself was something I could only really manage in a begrudging, bitter, qualified kind of way…and in spite of my transness rather than in a way that was inclusive of it.”

“And now?”

“Bit better. But there’s always room for growth. Work to be done. Y’know?”

“Mmm.” Faith agreed. She reached down beside her chair, grabbing for a book, flipping it open to a pre-bookmarked page.

“Okay. Roll for first turn.” Alice placed Bel’s shuffled deck down on the table and handed her a dice. They both rolled. Alice won: six to five. She drew seven cards and skimmed them warily. “Fuck it, I’ll keep.” Bel picked up her cards, shrugged and confirmed:

“Me too.”

“So was I just…the cautionary tale, then?” Faith asked.

“What? No.” Bel scoffed. “In a lot of ways, you were my favourite. At that point in my life, I really, really needed to believe in…the concept that you could go through everything I had and worse, and still be…” Bel paused, considering carefully: “Kind.”

“Kind?”

“Yeah. For all your…community disillusionment, and pain, and frustration with the world, you never let it turn you into…”

“Liv?” Faith raised an eyebrow.

“Baby,” Alice laughed. “Jesus Christ.”

“Liv was a whole other thing. But you never let what you’d been through change this kind of…innate desire to put others first, to make sure they were okay. The ironic thing about your whole anti-community spiel is that it came from a place of disillusionment that you felt, but never embraced. When Kade and Olivia needed that strength, that community, that you’d never really found for yourself…there you were, for them.”

“I play a Swamp.” Alice advised. “And I pass.”

“Uh…Plains, tap, Sol Ring, tap, Ornithopter of Paradise. Pass.”

“Oh what the actual fuck, Bel?”

“What? It’s a good hand!”

“Too good…” Alice huffed.

“What, you think I - "

“ - Did you not? On a meta-narrative level, you’re an Alter whose power is to narrativise reality, and you’re telling me you just randomly got a Sol Ring and an Ornithopter of Paradise straight out of the gate?”

“You shuffled!”

“A likely fucking story…”

“Baby…” Faith laughed: “Sometimes a lucky hand is just a lucky hand. I love when you’re competitive, but maybe save a little for later.”

“Yes, hun…” Alice rolled her eyes. “Command Tower. Tap out for Arcane Signet. Pass.”

“I’ll play an Island as my land for turn, I’ll tap everything and bring in Galadriel.” Bel smiled innocently as she dragged her Commander from the command zone and onto the board. Alice stared at her neutrally.

“That it?”

“Um…yeah, that’s it. I pass.”

“Cool. I play a plains. I tap that and Command Tower, and play Reprobation, then pass.” Alice said. Bel’s brow furrowed.

“What the fuck is ‘Reprobation’?”

“Reading the card explains the card.” Alice stated sweetly, holding out the card with two fingers. Bel grabbed it, skimming through the text rapidly.

“So you’re…neutering Galadriel?”

“Yep.”

“Fuck.”

“Quite.”

“God, you’re both such fucking nerds.” Faith shook her head, smiling to herself.

“Hey sweetheart?” Alice looked over her shoulder: “What’s the difference between a Maiar and a Valar again?”

“Okay, point taken.”

“We’ve all got our things. Where’s the fun in life if there’s not something you’re a huge nerd about?” Bel shrugged. “Uh…Spara’s Headquarters as my land for turn - “

“ - Was that the only land you had in your hand?”

“…Why?”

“No, no reason. Don’t worry about it. And…?”

“And…” Bel paused, frowning: “Champion of…Lambholt?”

“Sure, if you like.” Alice nodded.

“You’re looking at me like I just fucked up.” Bel laughed nervously.

“No, you’re fine. You’re done?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Great. High Market as my land for turn, then I bring out Teysa…and, I dunno, fuck it, Viscera Seer. Then I pass.” Alice smiled. From the far side of the room, Faith chuckled to herself.

“What?” Bel asked.

“Nothing, truly.” Faith assured her.

“Oh. Okay.” Bel smiled as she drew for turn. I’ll play a Forest, and then I’ll play…Imperious Perfect.” Alice nodded with a pensive little frown. “And then I’ll pass.”

“Don’t wanna swing in at all?” Alice asked.

“Not even a little.” Bel rolled her eyes.

“Sure. Well…I’m going to go with…Isolated Chapel as my land…and then I’ll tap four for…Zulaport Cutthroat…and…Bitterblossom.”

“Fuck.” Faith snickered.

“Enjoying your book, sweetheart?” Alice smiled innocently over at Faith.

“Yes. It’s really good.” Faith nodded, smirking.

“And I pass.” Alice confirmed.

“Why is this such a thing, anyway?” Bel sighed, leaning back in her chair.

“What do you mean?” Alice asked.

“Magic. For trans girls.”

“Oh. I dunno, really.”

“Dawn has this theory about a lot of trans girls growing up thinking they’re boys - trying to be boys - and gravitating towards hobbies that don’t select for overt masculinity, but also work for…gendered masking, as well as allowing for isolation, or small, select groups. Which makes sense to me.”

“I guess.” Alice shrugged. “For me, I filtered in and out of a lot of hobbies. Always restless. I never quite found somewhere I…fit. So I ended up with a really broad palette of things I kinda liked, or…sort of knew my way around.”

“Yeah. And the whole…Genocide Studies thing - "

“ - Obsesses me.” Alice nodded. “Academia doesn’t really fit, either, but…the shape of inhumanity, of cruelty and prejudice and the way they bleed into momentum and movements…analysing Othering helps me to make sense of the world. Even if the conclusions I end up with are…routinely horrifying.”

“It’s the same for me, really. And I think we both understand why we feel that way. God, it’s…kind of depressing, honestly, feeling like the things I’m interested in, the things I can’t get my mind off, the things that I enjoy: they all seem to, on a certain level, have roots in masking and dysphoria. And it’s such an irony that people accuse us of making being trans into our whole fucking personalities, when…if gender wasn’t so fucking enforced and rigidly policed, our expression of who we are wouldn’t have to be fucking branded from every angle with Otherness. Our habits speak to it, sure, but it’s ultimately because our safety relies on it; requires always having one eye and half our fucking focus devoted to where the next blow, or threat, or micro-aggression might come from. Trying to explain to people that getting misgendered buying spring onions at the supermarket isn’t just that, it’s…” Bel trailed off with a sharp inhale.

“It’s an unwanted reminder that you need to remain vigilant.” Alice nodded, placing an elbow on the table and cupping her head into her hand, absently rolling some dice. “That whether you want them to, whether they’re well-intentioned, or neutral, or want you dead, they can see you. You don’t get to just exist. You have to exist in context. As a walking statement. As fucking discourse.” Alice frowned.

“Either from the outside or the inside, everything we do, everything we are is infested with this fucking…sticky miasma of trans-gendered implication, to the extent that, especially in the early days, before you work through developing an ability to tune out the worst of it out, it’s…claustrophobic. Fucking oppressive.” Bel murmured.

“I remember when I was starting out…” Faith said quietly. “There were these moments I’d have where I’d think back to seeing The Shawshank Redemption. It was just that one quote, really: ‘get busy living, or get busy dying’. Kinda haunted me, if I’m honest. Like a mantra I never fucking asked for. Cause…y’know…anything is oppressive if you let it be. The truth is, we spend a lot of time - too much time, probably - intellectualising this shit. And I think something that gets lost along the way is that the horror of it all? Of being trans, of being a woman, hell…of being human, disproportionately exists in the moments when you have time to reflect on it. Staying busy doesn’t make the world less horrifying, but it does give you less time to marinate in the horror of it all.”

“So like…distraction? That’s the play, we think?”

“I mean…yeah. Sometimes it’s the best we can do. If you have the connections and the spoons to try to participate in making the world better…that’s a thing worth doing, but…a lot of us don’t, and those of us that do still need to navigate burnout and exhaustion so…trying not to think too much about the ‘why’ of it all has…merit. Maybe that’s the real reason that, as a collective whole, we seem so obsessively drawn to these community oriented, deeply involved hobbies. Because you’re right, Bel: we’re neck deep in a fucking nightmare, but overthinking it isn’t going to somehow change it. So…’get busy living, or get busy dying’.” Faith finished. At no point did she look up from her book. Bel shrugged. She drew a card.

“So, no lands. But…I’m going to tap four mana - two green and two colourless - for…” Bel smiled broadly: “Ouroboroid.” Alice raised both eyebrows.

“Oh absolutely the fuck not. Swords to Plowshares.” Alice slapped the card down on the table. Bel leaned forward, a small smile on her face, elbow on the table; chin resting in her palm.

“Hey. Alice. You like card-draw, right?”

“…What?”

“I mean, that’s a big part of your whole strategic plan, no?”

“Bel. Can we - “

“ - I mean, if you wanna make an offer - “

“ - What do you want?”

“What can I have?”

“I’ll…I dunno, Bel: suggest something.”

“Take it back.”

“Take what back?”

“The Golgari thing.”

“What? That’s so fucking weird, and petty - "

“ - Just say it. Say I’m a Bant girlie and I’ll let it resolve.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Guess you’ll find out, won’t you?” Bel smiled. Alice sighed.

“You’re a Bant girlie. You happy?”

“I am a Bant girlie. Now get out of my fucking garden.” Bel grinned, slapping the Arcane Denial card down on the table.

“Oh my god, you’re such a little cunt!” Alice couldn’t help breaking into laughter halfway through the sentence.

“I mean…yeah, kinda. You all forget that I didn’t just write you, I wrote Seven, I wrote Cee, I wrote Lacey…” Bel leaned back in her chair, raising he arms victoriously over her head. “I contain multitudes.”

“That was pretty great, but uh…you realise how badly you’re about to lose, right?” Faith commentated from across the room, laughing quietly.

“Worth it.” Bel shrugged.

“So the space-vine stays.”

“It stays. It’s Our-oboroid, now, Comrade.”

“God, you’re such a loser.” Alice chuckled to herself. “Do you uh…” Alice paused, uncertain.

“You can ask. Whatever it is.”

“Do you really relate to Seven? Even after everything?” Alice pursed her lips and furrowed her brow, uncertain.

“Yes.” Bel nodded slowly. “Seven’s…how do I explain this? Seven’s not really a person, per se. She’s more like…” Bel paused, slowly running her tongue along the ridge of her upper lip, deep in thought. “Okay. Seven is…she’s the worst day of your life, and the feeling you get just as you realise it’s going to be. She’s the voice in your head that makes you want to drink, and the one that mocks you for it the next morning. The voice that stops you from texting your friends, then convinces you that they don’t text you because you mean nothing to them. She’s the nausea and pre-emptive regret that keeps you from leaving the house wearing what you want to wear. She’s the despair and sadness you feel when, a minute ago, you liked what you saw in the mirror…but now, your reflection makes you want to peel your skin off. She’s what happens to your brain when you’re in so much pain, and the world is so absurd and cruel, and you’ve cried so fucking much…that you start laughing, because your body doesn’t know what else to do. She’s the muscles that tense and contract when you cringe at the thought of some stupid thing you’ve done, or of the people you’ve accidentally hurt. She’s that black hole opening up in you when something breaks you - right before the pain comes - when you think about the world and you wonder if it wouldn’t look better in flames. She’s that part of you that thinks about the meteor hitting, or the bombs dropping, or the virus spreading and feels…calm. She’s that. That’s where I excavated her from. Those parts of me.” Bel explained. Alice paused, considering.

“I genuinely have no clue how to respond to that.”

“Then don’t.” Bel shrugged. “I’ve lived with this shit - with Seven - for a very long time, it’s hardly new to me. So…draw the card. Play the hand.”

“You pass?”

“I mean, not really, but I’ve come to terms with that.” Bel smirked.

“That’s not funny.” Alice shook her head, trying not to break into a grin.

“It’s pretty fucking funny.” Faith confirmed from across the room.

“I’m out of mana, but…move to combat, Ouroboroid does the counters thing, and I’m done with my turn. No attacks.” Bel confirmed.

“Cool. So…I get my Faerie - “

“ - What? Why do you get a Faerie?”

“Bitterblossom. Gives me a Faerie in my upkeep.”

“That’s annoying.”

“You’ll live. For the moment. Draw my extra cards, and…” Alice raised an eyebrow as she looked over them. “Well hello, there.”

“Fuck you’d be bad at Poker.” Bel exhaled aggressively.

“You’d be both surprised and wrong…” Faith commented.

“Thank you baby.” Alice smiled, still inspecting her hand. “Now. Bant bitch.”

“Fuck, this is gonna be awful, isn’t it?” Bel winced preemptively.

“I’ll make you both a drink.” Faith got up out of her chair, moving towards the kitchen.

“Before we get started…” Alice made eye contact with Bel, a wolfish little grin on her face: “I need you to know that this isn’t be best play I could have made. It’s not the most strategic. It’s just…the funniest. And after that stunt, I really do think you need every square inch of your ass kicked.”

“Ha!” Faith called over her shoulder from the kitchen.

“First…” Alice’s eyes seemed to catch the light with a vicious little glint: “I’ll play a swamp. As my land for turn. Just to set the mood.”

“Ugh. You’re making it worse,” Bel groaned.

“Yeah, I fucking know I am.” Alice laughed. “Next, I will tap five mana. Not four. Not six. Five. And then, I’ll play two cards. First, we have Unbreakable Formation.”

“…What does that do?” Bel asked reluctantly.

“Reading the card explains the card.” Faith patted Bel on the head and set a tumbler of gin and tonic down beside her. She handed Alice one as well, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek. “Having fun?”

“Very much so, thank you.” Alice beamed.

“So…your creatures are indestructible and have vigilance and counters until the end of turn.”

“Correct.”

“What’s the other card, Alice?” Bel deadpanned. She took a sip of her drink without breaking eye contact with her doppelgänger.

“Oh…y’know…Vanquish the Horde. Before you ask, it uh…does what it says on the box, basically. So…all your creatures die, Teysa doubles death triggers for the Cutthroat, I get ten life, you lose ten life, and then I attack with all my creatures for…another 7 damage to uh…to your face.” Alice smiled, sipping her drink. “Did we learn something, today, Bant girlie?”

“Yes.” Bel sighed. “You really like the sound of your own voice, and Faith makes excellent G-and-Ts.”

“You’re welcome.” Faith smiled.

“Are things…better?” Alice asked.

“Hmm?” Bel’s eyebrows creased inwards.

“Just revisiting the ‘Seven’ of it all.”

“Oh. Well…you know how it is. Self-loathing, and the uh…the ecosystem that supports it, it never really goes away entirely. It tends to bloom and recede. It’s seasonal, but the foundations of it are in deep. The roots and structure of it. Cause it’s part of you. You wouldn’t be you without the…infrastructure of self-critique and the history and logic it feeds off of. I don’t think I’m a very likeable person. Or a very good one. I try to be. I want to be. But a lot of people have hurt me in my life…and I’ve hurt people, too. And my brain’s response to that is to remind me - probably a little too often, in fairness - that the common denominator for my actions, and for most of my pain, has been me.”

“So you’re blaming yourself for…existing, basically.”

“That’s one way of putting it.” Bel shrugged. “Another is that I’m blaming myself for existing wrong. Which feels…uh…more qualitative. Justified.” Bel drew a card, before immediately placing it alongside her other lands. “Forest. Tap out for Galadriel.”

“You need seven after Commander tax.”

“I have that. Wanna count?”

“No, that seems right.” Alice shook her head.

“And I pass.”

“Sure. I get another Faerie, then I’ll play a swamp, and then play Requiem Angel. And I’ll pass.”

“Why aren’t you attacking me?” Bel asked, folding her arms across her chest.

“I dunno. Don’t feel the need to, really?”

“What’re you planning?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Yes. Obviously.” Alice pursed her lips. Then her eyes narrowed. Then she shrugged.

“The thing is, Bel,” Alice started, looking up at the ceiling pensively: “No one’s for everyone - "

“ - I know that. Of course I know that.”

“No, you say that, but I’m not sure you believe it, given, from where I’m sitting, you seem to be treating your damage as data points for why you’re unlikeable.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Then where’s the data from?” Faith asked from across the room, over the top of her book: “If you’re not doing that, how have you come to the conclusion you’re unlikeable and not a good person?”

“I mean, I’ve also - "

“ - People make mistakes, Bel. They fuck up, they hurt people…they’re selfish, sometimes cruel, often oblivious. When’s the last time you tried to hurt someone?”

“I…haven’t, really - "

“ - Yeah. Exactly. So are you uh…positive this isn’t just a manifestation of that whole catastrophising thing where you try to predict how people are gonna hurt you before it happens? You assume someone’s gonna think you’re an asshole so you make the decision to proactively call yourself one first?” Bel glanced back at Faith with a scowl, downing the rest of her Gin and Tonic.

“Make me another drink.”

“Sure.” Faith rolled her eyes, getting to her feet. Bel drew another card, nodding to herself. She grabbed the empty glass as she passed the table.

“Okay. Forest, then…I’ll play Galadhrim Brigade. I pay the Squad cost twice, so I get two copy tokens of it. That triggers Galadriel three times, so…counters on everything, then I scry two and draw…” Bel did so, putting one card into her hand and sliding one under the bottom of her library: “And I get three floating green mana. So using that and tapping my last land, I play Parallel Lives. And I pass.” Bel concluded.

“Very nice. Really strong turn.” Alice mimed a dainty little clapping motion.

“Why are you not worried?” Bel asked.

“Why are you not giving me a reason to be?” Alice enquired neutrally.

“Jesus…” Bel sighed, laughing nervously.

“You’re likeable, Bel. Finding your people wasn’t a fluke, keeping them isn’t on a timer, and loss isn’t inevitable. You got dealt a shitty hand, and you played it as well as you could. You expect better from yourself, and you regret the things you’ve fucked up, and the pain you’re worried you’ve caused…and that’s good, actually: bad people don’t do those things. You’ve done a lot of work on yourself, and you deserve what you’ve got, now. And loss isn’t inevitable.”

“In your life, she means.” Faith clarified, returning with a Gin and Tonic, placing it beside Bel. “In this game on the other hand…”

“Yeah…” Alice smiled…her nose crinkling a little around the inner corners of her eyes. “Don’t worry, I’ll make this nice and quick for you.”

“What do you mean - "

“ - I’ll get another Faerie. Then I’ll play a swamp. Then I’ll play Divine visitation. That means I get an Angel - four strength and toughness - anytime a different token would be created.”

“Oof.” Faith commentated.

“Then…” Alice placed a single finger directly in the centre of her Commander’s card: “I sacrifice Teysa Karlov.”

“What? Why?” Bel demanded. “Why are you saccing your fucking Commander?”

“Cause…Orzhov.” Faith clarified. “She likes being thematic about these things.”

“Mmm.” Alice nodded. “So killing Teysa with Viscera Seer activates Cutthroat, which hits you for one. It activates Requiem Angel, which makes a spirit, which, because of Divine Visitation, becomes an Angel. Which I then sacrifice to Viscera Seer. Which hits you for one. Which creates a spirit, which becomes an Angel. Which I then sacrifice. Which hits you for one. Which creates a spirit, which becomes an Angel.”

“And then…?” Bel asked slowly.

“Well…the short version is…good game.”

“It’s an infinite combo.” Faith explained. “Infinite Angels, infinite damage.”

“You can do that?” Bel asked, somewhere between shocked and incredulous. Alice shrugged.

“Well I just did, so…” Bel blinked. She blinked again. Bel and Alice both silently raised their glasses and clinked them together, taking a sip in tandem.

“This game is so fucking fun.”

“Isn’t it though? And so efficient for drowning out the horrors an hour at a time.”