a long love stories love story (2nd @ aldershot)

The year is 2011, probably. I have known for a long time that rulebooks are amazing things, and that reading rulebooks for interesting games can almost make up for not having friends to play them with, or money to buy them. Now I've found a novel place to read rulebooks, called the geek, which actually indexes things in the same way that my brain works. One of the most urgent things to do is to research the work of Richard Garfield, whose silly wizard game I play a lot. His dead card game from 1996 looks incredibly cool and original, like nothing I've ever seen before. I search for lists for the original starter decks, print some proxies, and go to my brother asking him if he wants to play this hot new card game. He's understandably grown tired of me going to him with low-quality proxied games with components that are hard to read and feel bad to the touch, so he politely declines. I impolitely keep asking for a little while, and then I am at rest. I move on to other games, then eventually to things other than games (boring-in-hindsight prog rock, an overzealous library card, etc).

The year is 2013. I open the geek again after a couple years, and everyone has a new favorite. A company I've never heard of has remade the little hacker card game, and apparently it's amazing. Every summer, the kids in my extended family spend a couple weeks by the Ligurian Sea, a place of bewildering tag games, mediocre gelato and mysterious seiches. This summer, I've brought a new game for my brother and my cousin to play, and they keep explaining things to me that I can't see in it, like how to instantly win the game with a money advantage and a 3-card combo. I keep going through cycles of feeling smart, dumb, cunning, conned, and amazed. I'm ensnared in many ways.

The year is 2016. I took my brain off-road again, years have passed, and my holiday mates have become much more skilled at the game than I have. While I wasn't looking, my brother has started buying data packs regularly and sleeving up decks every week, after finding out that there are other people that play this game in our city - we were so used to thinking it was just our own little thing! His passion and discipline would serve him well in the years to come, letting him win two local nationals in a row. I try to go to a couple meetups, but I'm too shy and intimidated by people in general, let alone ones with Museum of History decks. I become a jnet jankster, doing the best I can with bizarre decklist choices. Every once in a while I watch a beyoken video and I can feel my understanding double.

The year is 2018. I'm back from an autumn abroad in a far darker and windier country, where most of my evenings were spent either playing Sunless Sea or jamming dubious Edward Kim concepts. For the first time, I decide to go to a tournament in my city, taking some random Palana glacier and my signature runner, Gang Sign Leela. I don't have the confidence to come out in a place like this, so all my opponents get to see is a deadname and a guy with pretty varnish. I end up with a respectable 4-4 record but little memory of it, and not much desire to try again. The Regional is won by a British player who just happened to be on holiday somewhere close by; some dishes are best served cold.

The year is 2021. I've had the opportunity to let my new girlfriend try Magic, building a small custom cube with cards we had lying around, only to curb eir excitement by telling em that there is a better card game. After moving back in with my parents, I ask my brother whether I could borrow a pair of decks for teaching. He sleeves up these new starter decks he's been playtesting and takes us on a whirlwind tour of everything that's happened since the last time I got distracted. I get into the game again, in what feels like a finally proper way. I see Prana Condenser, decide to test a deck against a guy called "cablecarnage" online, and win my first Store Championship. I think I can become good, actually. I and the girlfriend move in together so we can talk about games all the time.

The year is 2023. A bunch of fun queers invite me to a discord server to play games and flirt in. We incubate for a few months, then come out to terrorize everyone with net damage and virus counters. Older heads are at once amazed and scared. We meet in Barcelona, and I have a wonderful time with everyone only to find out that most of it will be spent isolating in a room away from people I love. I don't quite get to clutch a big tournament win, though it won't be far before grudge takes me there.

The year is 2024. I make plans to go kiss my friends. I pray that cops overseeing my passport application are more lazy than they are transphobic. I write beautiful and inspiring technical documentation; I watch old Marxist cinema with an old Marxist friend. I talk my lover out of her worries and distractions, and her beautiful mind impermanences them out of existence. For the first time I step into a battlefield with arclight standards, and leave it with my favorite prizes. I teach a friend how to turn numbers into sounds and watch her gears turn faster and faster; I trance to the most beautiful of winds, leafy speafing to me through the trees. I make friends with a fledgling jhana going right through my heart; I step my feet into the Ocean, the first great seductress; from atop a hill I watch the tide wash the emmets away and murmur to myself mare mare mare voglio annegare / portami lontano a naufragare. An old achy woman instinctively understands how to call me, and gives me one of the best possible gifts; my friends hide a pea at the bottom of my mattress to test me, and I come out of it august and royal; I'm locked in another mortal fight with my fated enemy.

When all is done I come back to my hearth goddess, the patient mender of my body and mind, to nest and nestle, until I leave again to game and gamble.