jury

There’s a part of me that still feels the need to justify my use of tarot – it’s one part pick me energy and another not wanting to disappoint my dad…which, thinking about it, may be related. Both my parents had left the Church of Christ and were agnostic leaning atheist before I was born. Both software engineers, watching Nova every Tuesday – the whole nine. The black and white distortion my child mind concocted was, “religion/spirituality is for superstitious Neanderthals, who need to believe magic is real to cope with reality.” 

That anchor of skepticism has been useful, since I have a tendency for wishful thinking, but it’s made engaging with even the tamest spiritual stuff a constant battle. I shadow box with men I’ve known in my mind “No no no I don’t believe in ghosts or fortune telling or planets deciding your personality. It’s all about tapping into the subconscious through ritual and activating your natural intuition. Maybe that subconscious has one foot in something metaphysical, but whose to say.” Behind all that is the desperate plea, “Please don’t think I’m stupid and start condescending to me. Please don’t dismiss me as one of them.”

For about 6 years I was playing an MMO called Guild Wars 2 almost every day, too many hours a day. I was in the sweaty tryhard guilds with people who competitively speedran and soloed the endgame PVE (I even had one or two minor records myself). There were a few other women in the scene, more than other MMOs, but the culture at the top was of course a boys club. It was also the height of gamergate, so there was always this silent purity test – are you one of those annoying feminist bitches? They wouldn’t use those words, or any at all…while I was on TeamSpeak. But I could feel the side-eye through the mics any time a particularly gnarly joke got dropped. 

At one point I started playing with a lady who was selling dungeons (low manning and then selling the open spots at the end), but in a more casual way. She was using healing and defensive utility, which was blasphemy to speed runners. GW2 had odd balance at the time, and was also trying to get away from the traditional tank/heal/dps meta of games like World of Warcraft. If you were speedrunning, you could and would want to have everyone blasting dps and self sustaining. I noticed, however, that my runs with her were not really any longer – often they were shorter, because we could easily recover from mistakes. They were also more chill, we could chat and joke with each other much easier. 

So I naively brought this information to my guild. I found out really quickly that there were a surprising number of  people who didn’t like me, and were just waiting for an excuse to tear me apart without looking like an asshole. I was told I was lazy, I was never actually good, I was making the guild look bad. I did matrix dodge the “you only got in the guild cus you were a girl” by not being egirlfriend material, so that was a silver lining. One guy went so far as to find my Facebook, and made a video where he motion tracked my face and his character’s face on to wrestlers to beat the shit out of me. I know there was other unhinged stuff in that video but I think I’ve blocked it from my mind. 

That permanently altered my brain chemistry, and it sounds like a weirdly specific experience. It is and isn’t. I think most of us have a jury of critics in our mind that we consciously or unconsciously try to justify ourselves to, that’s populated from our trauma/childhood. On mine is my dad, my ex, those guild mates – mostly guys. But for someone else, it could be their mom, a sister, maybe a female teacher or a high school crush, and so their sensitivities will be different. 

This metaphor is useful for me because it helps me depersonalize those harsh, self-critical thoughts. I’m not trying to convince myself tarot is ok, I’m doing a Jimmy McGill song and dance to phantom jurors, most of whom hated me in real life. When I can see it like that, I can put on my black cat Gigi hair clip, light the San Miguel candle I got for $1.79 at Walmart, and cry when I ask about love and get the 10 of swords. …..maybe I better hope this tarot stuff isn’t that accurate, actually.