Reflecting

As of this page's creation, it's Tuesday evening. My cat's on my left. A Bluetooth speaker's on my right—Death Cab For Cutie, The Cure, David Bowie, The Doors, and LCD Soundsystem have all drifted through me today (Three Nirvana songs: Pennyroyal Tea, Serve the Servants, Blew. That last one is the first track off their first album). A lamp's on in the far corner of the room. It's the only light. My roommate's been out of the state all summer. He didn't tell me that, of course. I had to figure it out. It's not like we talk much, though. I have a new roommate coming in the fall.

The leasing office didn't tell me that, of course. The new roommate and I had to figure it out.

The last time I wrote a post—the last time I sat in this room with you, dear reader—was May 2019. Not to mention that most of the posts I wrote were lost in a fit of neuroticism brought about by a sour interaction. This blog arose from the ashes of that one. 

Arose? Sprouted? Both of those feel too grand. "Sandcastled up," maybe. Read into that at your own peril. The curtains are blue.

Most of the material here is in drafts. There's a lot of Buddyfight.

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Since that last visit to this room, I've done a lot. I lost a parent. I graduated high school. I took a gap semester. I started therapy. I heard, "I don't know what to say," from people I thought would know what to say. I got into music. I started playing guitar. I joined my college's radio station. I got sent home about 3 months later along with every other student. I took strange classes—partially online, fully online, haphazardly constructed. Literature, Spanish, statistics, ethics, history of rock—I started journaling. I stopped journaling. I started journaling.

I witnessed another Vanguard reboot, I guess.

What am I doing today? Well, I guess the reboot was my catalyst. I'd like to wonder about this hobby of mine—and maybe attach the word "former" to it.

This is my reassessment.

I'm about to meander a lot. I don't think that's new to any of my friends. I've learned to pare back a bit, though. It might be more readable than my older material. None of us will ever know, of course. Those posts were all cast to the fire.

This post is personal. This post is long. This post is a canvas. It's also a way for me to make myself write. The thoughts here have been knocking around for days—maybe months or even years, in some cases. I'd like to see if I can strike a chord with someone while I work through them.

I've been watching a lot of Exurb1a and Savannah Brown lately. If you don't know them and like to think yourself into oblivion as I do, you should try them out. Along with the Vonnegut I've been reading (I just finished Player Piano and can see marks of Pity the Reader all over this post in editing), they've been drivers in the recent feeling of "maybe if I just send words into the void something will speak to someone."

This post is also a showcase of how I operate for my newer friends in lieu of another conversation at 1 in the morning after our 3 episodes of reality TV and everyone else's 2 beers. Well, maybe that part's a pipe dream.

The history

Listen to this.

I played Yu-Gi-Oh! as a kid (I don't remember when I would have picked it up or what humans are even capable of below the age of 11. I remember a HERO deck in my daycare cubby, though) and started going to a local game store when I was about 12. I lost all but one game over the course of—assuming I'm remembering it correctly—about two years. I played a wide-eyed kid's version of DinoRabbit for most of that time. I quit mid-Zexal. Somewhere around Order of Chaos. I couldn't pull a copy of Number C39: Utopia Ray.

I accidentally cheated in that one game, by the way. I didn't know Heroic Champion - Excalibur required 2 level 4 Warriors.

After a hiatus of what I remember as several years, I returned sometime in Arc-V. I played from then until mid-Vrains and took locals seriously enough. From what I recall, I played a lot of T.G., Mekk-knight, Burning Abyss, and Metalfoes. I also liked throwing together outlandish piles that sometimes worked. Many didn't. I played them anyway.

I won sometimes.

I looked for my Burning Abyss deck once when I visited my hometown. I couldn't find it. I open Duel Links on a daily basis. I watch MBT's content and click on some occasional other videos and livestreams.

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I picked up Vanguard around when it came to America. I think we were mid-Asia Circuit at the time. I started with the Blaster Blade trial deck. I stayed with Vanguard off and on (mostly on) between then and the first reboot. I went to the same local game store as the Yu-Gi-Oh! one I'd gone to, even when it moved. It had moved closer to my dad's place. After that place stopped supporting the Vanguard players, the store on the other end of the mall welcomed what was left of us.

I played a lot of clans, but I became sort of known among my friends for Dimension Police, Aqua Force, Liberators and Gurguit, the occasional foray into Dark Irregulars, some Shadow Paladin stuff (especially Luard), and coming up with an assortment of alternative formats of varying quality. Real Jake interactors know about Jankfight Hamguard.

My Discord server is still around and has been since 2017. My YouTube profile picture and username are the same that they have been for upwards of 4 years now (alchemist_pants—a reference to a conversation about Supremacy Dragon, Claret Sword Dragon I'd had with a friend I haven't spoken to in 5+ years—is accompanied by a profile picture depicting an edited Blue Wave Marine General, Foivos). Most of my Twitter mutuals and online friends come from Vanguard.

I bought all 5 of the start decks with the reboot. I have all my Dark Irregulars stuff and most of my Dimension Police stuff here in my apartment. Character sleeves adorn many of these decks and cards.

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Buddyfight was a fantastic game that I wish had a better name. I realized this too late and played from around X-BT04. People caught me playing a lot of Executioners, Magic World (Mystic Knights and Shadow Shades, especially), and Legend World (Laevateinn, mainly). I have several Hero World decks somewhere. My local community was small. I think it consisted of about 4 people on a good day. It was often 2. 3 by the time I moved for college. We had a lot of fun.

The game is no longer running. I have my Legend and Magic World stuff with me in my apartment. I never got the chance to play with my Time Thieves.

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I dabbled in Force of Will and Magic: The Gathering over the years. The latter I've tried more times. I have a R/B Commander deck buried somewhere in my hometown bedroom and a couple of Arena accounts from attempted resets and long-after-rotation-reentries. They never really clicked like the others. I've also tried a few digital card games, namely Shadowverse and Legends of Runeterra. Both were fun but either got too swingy or took too long for me to make a decent deck to really stick with.

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Suffice it to say I've put in my 10,000 hours. I don't have much to show for it aside from maybe, "Well, I won all MY games at a Buddyfight Team League playing Cosmoman FTK and I ran a blog that inspired at least one user to make content."

Honestly, I think if I helped lead someone to write then I've fulfilled my purpose. Even if every writer carries with them an acre of the Sahara desert, there's nothing else that gives me the satisfaction of finishing a post or a paper. I'd love to have opened a door to that feeling for someone else as so many did for me.

Difficulties

Tinted glasses

My brain is a bit internet-poisoned. I think it's the result of a few feedback loops, being the only child in a single parent household, early access to things like Tumblr, and living half an hour away from my classmates in middle and high school. I was inadequately socialized, let's say.

Whatever the reason, I come from an internet corner that tends to be insecure and has a sense of humor founded on irony. These two aspects shake hands often. It's overwhelmingly close to the corners that romanticize mental illness or make an awful lot of "no you see the joke is that I'm depressed" jokes—in fact, they overlap a lot and I see myself and several people I'd call myself close to as being in recovery from or in need of an escape from that particular space.

I have to add a note: If I just hit the nail on the head, it's not a reflection on anyone's character. It's the environment we've all ended up in. Getting to a better place is difficult. Sometimes it feels like I've never left the worse one. The internet breeds it.

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The next thing I want to say as I'm setting the stage is this: I don't take criticism well. It's not a kicking and screaming routine, but I take a lot of things to heart. It extends to more joking stuff like someone saying, "Oh, Jake only ever listens to British bands," and really always has. I remember being told I can't take a joke as a kid.

I've gotten a bit better at hiding it.

My dad has issues with rejection-sensitive dysphoria (I believe as part of ADHD stuff) and my mom had depression. I'm not equipped to diagnose myself but I'd be lying to you if I said, "Yeah there's no stew in my brain and I'm sure I'm all okay."

Every couple of months I make a new playlist of albums from American artists I hear people talking about. Rarely do any of them stick like my favorites. The last playlist was a lot of Brill building pop and pre-70s American rock. Another included Faye Webster and Cults.

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The sludge in my head is much of why the old blog is gone. It was a combination of a poor reaction to criticism and my enthusiasm for Vanguard being on the way out. This was around V-BT01 and I had decided that the thing to do was to air my grievances.

Was that the right thing?

Probably not. I still don't think Vanguard is a game designed for daily content (it may be getting there after this reboot) but I was childish in how I approached it. I was 17 or so and I've not done anything similar before or since—both out of my own nature and out of fear of repeating the experience.

I don't know that the precise criticism was warranted, though. Using specific names and claiming that I was putting people of two differently sized followings were the main things. I averaged sub-500 pageviews—sub-200, if memory serves—on all my posts and everyone's names were (and to my knowledge still are) public knowledge. I also received the messages very quickly after publishing the post—too quickly for any points to sink in, I think. I doubt anything I said made an impact bar making people angry. A bad situation all around, kickstarted by my ennui.

The headache of being earnest

With the foregrounding of "I'm not very secure in my interests" out of the way, let's get to the (original) meat of why I opened Blogger today.

I clasp my hands together as I say, "Engaging with TCGs brings up complicated emotions for me that come from years of people's unenthusiastic reactions to me playing them." At least, that's how my mud-tinted goggles have me seeing it.

"If that's what you want to do"

I hear, "If that's what you want to do," a lot. I hear it less now that I effectively live alone and rarely make unusual decisions ("I never did anything out of the blue," you know?). I hear it mostly when I tell my family about the classes I'm thinking of taking or coffee shops I'm thinking of applying to work for.

I heard it the most, however, between the ages of about 13 and 18. I would tell my mom I was going to spend some absurd amount of money on cards and she'd raise her eyebrows as she said it. I could always tell she wasn't too thrilled.

I remember talking to her about it once. She essentially told me that she was glad it made me happy and she didn't just want me to quit, but that it was worrying how haphazard I could be with my money. I never enjoy talking about money, but she told me I was slated to end up with quite a bit of it. It was a fair concern.

It happened earlier than expected.

I still have a text thread between myself and a number. "Mom (deceased)." It consists of standard parent texts before about two weeks of blue bubbles saying, "Home," and, "Going to school."

They're all marked as read now.

She had a letter on her computer giving some life advice and telling me to foster certain connections. It said there would be more letters, assuming she could write them.

There was only the one.

I think some part of me sees and hears the, "If that's what you want to do," whenever I consider spending on a hobby or doing something that isn't seen as life-advancing (If you just asked yourself, "What does that mean?" it's a good question. I don't know. It keeps me up at night).

Its an image of someone else's disappointment in my mind rather than a neutral remark.

"Jake's looking for a...

girlfriend who'll play Vanguard with him." I heard that one recently. I've heard it a few other times, actually.

It's definitely a joke. It stings, though. It usually comes from someone I've trusted enough to not only tell that I play card games but also that I'd be willing to teach them. It's a strange pattern.

The other big thing about TCGs is that I've become used to teaching people and it not clicking. Along with the amount of time put into them making me say things like, "You shouldn't play these. You just get really bothered about poor design decisions." I'm not lying when I say the second part of that.

I dated someone who played Buddyfight with me, by the way. I hope she's doing well.

That joke often speaks to something else, though. It's the outsider's perspective of the games I've put so much energy into. I know I've probably lost most if not all my readers at this point, but I have a note for anyone looking to joke about TCGs with someone who plays them as someone who doesn't.

We've heard it before.

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I'm not going to start donning Joker makeup or anything and saying we're oppressed, but trust me. The stereotype that every card game player is a greasy misogynist with no social skills has been around as long as Magic has. It's probably been around longer, honestly.

It's played out. It's also demonstrably not true. Of course any stereotype will have people that fall into and out of it, but the majority of TCG players I've met have been perfectly reasonable people. 

Besides, it contributes to the whole, "Oh but I'm not like those weird people who enjoy this thing I enjoy. I'm normal," routine that most people will tell you is pretty unattractive and off-putting. After all, confidence in one's own interests is attractive.

A brief journey back into the personal: my high school partner did a good bit of playful insulting and sort of "sarcasm is my method of flirting" stuff. She once said to me, "I'm surprised you never deal any of it back."

Well, years later, I think I've finally managed to explain why.

I believe jabbing at something someone has shown they're insecure about is not a good idea and only makes it worse. It's another of the many feedback loops you can encounter that takes a lot to break. After all, negativity bias is strong even among the happiest of us.

I think I overcorrect and believe, "You never know when you'll hit a nerve." I do a lot of walking back on the occasion that I do take a stab. Could I relax on it? Sure. Will I? I don't think so. It's not in my nature.

Are there weird alt-right pipelines in these communities that it's worth addressing? Certainly. There are in other hobbies, too. I'm looking at you, "self-taught guitarist to Joe Rogan watcher" pipeline.

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Oh, the other joke we've heard before is uh. It's the one that goes something like, "I just pulled a mega ultra bazooka rare," or something. You know the one. It's one of the only ways card games get portrayed in media, to my memory. It's not like we've asked companies to give us cards at arbitrary and absurdly-named rarities or print intentionally low quantities of things to drive sales. The joke usually includes words to "kiddify" it, as well, by the way. Don't think we don't notice.

It's especially easy to make the joke in this post-Paul brother Pokemon scalping world. TCG products have been taken off shelves to preserve retail employees' safety.

I don't know what to tell you. It sucks. Regardless, sometimes people past the age of 16 have interests. Sometimes those interests are marketed toward a younger demographic. Sometimes they have a secondary market that prices that demographic out of the game. Sometimes people lose their minds when they find a chance to make money.

Sometimes all of these elements make enjoying this hobby a chore.

Oh, right, if you weren't aware, TCGs are very backwards in terms of marketing and monetization models. Magic seems to have reconciled the two some, but most TCGs haven't. I'm not going to go into card games under capitalism, but it's a pretty wild thing.

Don't try to make money flipping cards for profit. The margins are slim. That reminds me.

Trying to play

Alright, dear reader, let's do an exercise. Don't worry, it's easy. What do you need to play a trading card game at the most basic level? Here, I'll even solve part of it for you. You need cards and...

Players. You need players.

Card games are an inherently dyadic hobby. You can try playing alone but all you'll be doing is practicing for when you're sitting across from someone else—or, uh, remote playing across from someone else, I guess.

Naturally, a TCG player has to find somewhere to play, given that their friends won't inherently enjoy the games they do.

For those who don't know, I live in Georgia. Off-hand, I can think of 7 card shops in the state that I've been to. I now live in the same town as 2. I think 1 of them is making the transition to a fighting game-driven e-sports arena of some kind (business concepts that would kill a Victorian child). I know 1 of them doesn't carry Vanguard. Another lost their Vanguard employee, last I heard. Still another has stopped carrying Vanguard after its players continually couldn't support their weight. That's the one I went to for Yu-Gi-Oh! during both of my stints.

All of these places used to be at least half an hour away from my mom's house, where I spent the vast majority of my time. As you can see, most of them don't carry the main game I play (Ah, right. Vanguard is one of the games you can't find at places like Target, even before the Pauling).

This seems to be the rule rather than the exception for playing anything outside of the big 3 (Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Pokemon). It's also an explanation for why these communities are so insular and online. This is all not to mention that new card shops are simply intimidating. I don't know that I speak for anyone else, but I find myself constantly on guard until I've been to a card shop for at least a month of local tournaments. Even then, I usually feel like an outsider.

Let me be clear. It's not all bad.

I think I have far fewer words for this section. It's at least partially because far fewer words can express its contents. Make no mistake. The cons don't necessarily outweigh the pros.

Card games have done a lot for me. I don't think my writing would be half of what it is without that blog I ran from 2014 to 2019. They're also that kind of hobby that makes other disciplines make a bit more sense. Well, that's what I think. There's something  in my head about efficiency and how things like engines work that make concepts from music work in my mind. A secondary dominant in music and toolboxing in TCGs, maybe.

They're also just a fun exercise. A friend of mine threw together a "Standard 2" format around V era that was remarkably well-designed and fun to play. We even had a couple of experiments in what makes a fair card. This version of Scornful Knight, Gyva drew 4 cards. You can lose yourself in a card game just as well as you can in any artform. It's rare that a card game is truly solved, after all.

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Card games are a place with room for error, as well. Given, most of the world technically is. After all, humans have an uncanny ability to still wake up and live from one day to the next. However, it's especially true in this space where there are genuinely zero consequences to most of your failures. You can play a suboptimal deck. You can lose some games. I think a lot of people who've been in touch with me for, well, any amount of time can tell you I'm naturally pretty hard on myself and I can be high strung.

I used to be worse.

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I've alluded to it, but card games are an inherently social hobby. I know. Shocking, given the stereotypes. But I can tell you pretty unflinchingly that the friends I've made through these games have been there for me more often—and at this point longer—than most or all of the friends I made in high school. I think the hobby comes with an understanding that putting on airs gets you nowhere.

I don't want to go too far into it, but I realized in my freshman year that one of my best friends in high school was transphobic and likely somewhere along the alt-right pipeline. For anyone keeping track at home, that uh. That doesn't exactly work with the life that I lead at this point.

I haven't spoken to him since our freshman year psychology class.

My TCG friends, on the other hand, are among the first to know about my major life developments and usually change their behavior when I point out various dogwhistles they've picked up. They'll also say, "Hey, you doing alright?" if they see something worrying on my Twitter account.

It's more than I can say the aforementioned friend did. I trust them perhaps the most in my life, despite almost never having seen many of their faces. Most of them have been here since 2017ish and while I may talk with them less these days I don't see that bridge burning anytime soon. 

If any of them have read to this point, thank you. You know who you are.

Where does that leave us?

Well, I was excited for the reboot.

It fixed a lot of core problems with the game. Namely, ride inconsistency and the card pool being way too segregated for anything interesting to happen. It didn't fix triggers, but that's the thing that makes Vanguard Vanguard, in some ways.

I've said it before but Bushiroad is the Weezer of TCG companies. Lots of duds, lots of bangers, generally apologetic consumers. Rivers Cuomo is there.

I haven't been as captivated by it as I'd like, though. Maybe it's my would-be local game store being scary to me, maybe it's that I haven't taught any of my newer friends the game, or maybe there's just not been that one specific card that draws me into a deck. Whatever the reason, I've not been playing like I expected to.

I think I need to let it sit. I probably won't ever be completely separate from Vanguard, much like my continued awareness of Yu-Gi-Oh!, but as it stands now I'm not keeping up like I used to.

I haven't watched the OverDress anime past the first episode, I haven't bought more than 2 OverDress singles, and I'm not really invested in any of the eternal formats past saying, "Well, I still have a lot of my cards."

I guess what it culminates in is, "This isn't exactly goodbye, but I don't feel here to stay, either." I've dug up some stuff about myself to chew on and will behave accordingly. I find it unlikely that I'll make a post again, at least as far into the future as I can see.

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Making this post has rekindled my interest in internet rambling on a place other than Twitter, I guess. I started up a blog with a friend. It's called Asbestos Inhalers and we started it with the intent of reviewing music. There aren't any posts yet, but there are a few ideas we've floated to each other. I'll likely hyperlink it once we have some stuff up.

I suppose that's everything, really. I just took you on a journey and said, "I don't know what the moral was."

How very modern of me?

Regardless, thank you for getting this far. I'm on most places as plastic_mylar at this point. Twitter's my primary platform. Good luck to those of you deeply entrenched in these games.

Until whenever.