“What am I even doing here?” I mutter to myself as I walk through the door

“Welcome to Kingmaker games, how can I help you?” The man behind the counter asked.

I decided to stop by this shop on my way home since it was on the way and I had been wanting to try playing magic in person. I’d been playing magic arena online quite a bit recently and I thought maybe playing in person might help me get better at interacting with people. As I got closer and closer to the store however I started to get nervous and started to think that maybe I should just stick with playing online, but the thought of never actually making a real friend in my entire life was a rather depressing prospect. I just need to ask about mtg tournaments and go from there.

“Um, hi I was wondering if you guys did Magic the Gathering stuff here?” I asked, trying not to seem too weird.

“Yeah we have tournaments every Friday at seven for draft, standard, and modern. Draft is for the most recent set which is currently Guilds of Ravnica.” The man answered.

“Ok thanks I guess I’ll see you Friday then.” I replied, already heading for the front door but hopeful that maybe Friday would go well.

______________________________________________________________________

Friday rolled around and I showed up to the shop at seven exactly and I noticed that most people hadn’t shown up yet so I signed up for draft and sat down to wait. The shop had a tv hanging on the wall that was playing episodes of the Office and I was content to spend the time waiting just watching. Fate however, had other plans for me when someone sat down next to me. He looked rather unlike what I expected a card store patron to look like, he had short hair no beard and seemed rather fit, a far cry from the neckbeard stereotype I had in my head.

“Hey, I haven’t seen you here before, I’m Andrew.” He said while extending a hand to shake.

I reached out to shake his hand and responded. “Yeah it’s my first time coming to play in person. I’m Danny by the way.”

“Nice to meet you Danny if you have any questions feel free to ask me for help.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it, sorry if I seem a bit strange by the way.” I said and he gave me a weird look that I couldn’t quite figure out what it meant exactly.

“Uhh ok you seem pretty normal to me?”

“Sorry I don’t do well with people and they often tell me that I can be weird or annoying. That’s part of why I decided to start coming to these, to maybe get better at interacting with others.” I replied realizing that I was probably oversharing. 

“Don’t worry about it, pretty much everyone here is pretty chill and used to a bit of social awkwardness.” Andrew says and I start to feel a little bit more comfortable.

As we wait for the tournament to start more and more people start to trickle in. The more the shop fills up the more nervous I get and I start to get a headache but I try to bear it. After a few more minutes of this I notice someone enter the shop who immediately intrigues me. She has bright green hair going halfway down her back and is wearing an almost ethereal green dress. As soon as I see her I immediately want to get to know her better so I decide to ask Andrew about her.

“Hey Andrew, who’s the girl in the green dress?”

“Oh that’s Ciara she actually hasn’t shown up in a while after a couple guys gave her shit for being trans.”

“Wait, he’s a trap?” I ask and I notice about half the shop turn to glare at me including Ciara.

“Dude, what.The. Fuck. I literally just said that reason she stopped coming here was because a couple guys were being shitty to her over being trans, and then you go and misgender her and use a slur in the same breath.” Andrew scolds me and I just want to not talk for the rest of the night but I know that I should say something so I force myself to answer. 

“Sorry I always liked those kind of characters in anime and I didn’t realize it was a slur, and I was always told trans people were mentally ill at best and they’d always be the gender they were born as so I guess I just defaulted to that thinking in my panic.” I replied.

Andrew sighed and said, “Look just try not to do it again and apologize to Ciara. I know meeting new kinds of people can be scary especially when you’ve been told they’re all a certain way your entire life but try to have an open mind in the future, ok?”

“Ok, and I’m sorry again for being shitty.” I replied

After that little fiasco I was quiet for the rest of the time before the matches began. I couldn’t help but be incredibly embarrassed of what I said. I knew most of what I was taught about lgbt people in elementary and high school wasn’t true but I guess I still need to work through some of that conditioning. We then started the draft a few minutes later after a judge explained how draft would work and I made my deck in short order. As I waited to find out who I would be playing I realized that whoever I was playing would probably already have a bad first impression of me and I couldn’t help but groan a little at that thought. When the pairings were put up I felt like the universe was playing some sort of cruel joke on me because my opponent for round one was Ciara. As we made our way to a table to play I saw Ciara was already glaring at me with a look that felt like it could strip paint.

“Um, hi I’m Danny.” I said offering my hand to shake but she just continued to glare at me.

“Just sit down and let’s get this over with.”

“I just wanted to say I’m really sorry about what I said, I didn’t realize how bad it was.”

“Whatever, I’m used to it at this point, you’re just another cis guy who was told some bullshit his entire life and never actually questioned it.” She replied and I cringed at how right she was.

“What does cis mean, is it an acronym?” I asked.

“No, cis is just short for cisgender which means someone who isn’t trans.” Ciara answered but for some reason the idea of being called cis made me feel weird.

“Oh ok, I guess you're right that I never really questioned what I was taught my entire life, like I guess I always thought trans people were just looking for attention since everyone wants to be the other gender you know. I guess I didn’t think that maybe some people feel a lot stronger about it than others.” I replied and Ciara gave a really weird look that seemed shocked from what I could tell.

“Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, anyways let’s start our match.” Ciara quickly said and before I could ask what she meant she already started shuffling.

Ciara proceeded to absolutely destroy me in our match which shouldn’t have surprised me given this was my first time playing draft and my first time playing magic in person. The rest of the night was uneventful but I did notice Ciara kept glancing toward me for some reason. I actually managed to win my next two matches which meant that I got a prize even. Apparently Ciara went undefeated the whole night which made me feel a little bit better about winning at least one game against her even if I lost the match. It was starting to get late though so after my matches I decided not to stick around and socialize like some of the other patrons were. As I just got out the door however I felt someone’s hand on my shoulder and I turned around and saw Ciara.

“Hey hold on a second.” She said and I braced myself on a long lecture about how shitty I had been now that we were out of the shop.

“What is it?”

“I just wanted to give you this.” She said as she handed me a piece of paper, “It’s a list of resources about trans people so you can learn not to make an ass of yourself next time.”

“Oh thanks, I’ll make sure to check these out tomorrow.”

“No problem, I think you’ll like the last one quite a bit in particular. Byyyyyyye.” She said and just like that she was gone.

When she left I looked down at the list it seemed to be several urls that I didn’t recognize. One seemed to be a twitter thread and the last one was actually for a website I did recognize that I used pretty often. The one I recognized was a subreddit that I had never heard of called egg_irl which confused me quite a bit. I knew about the blank_irl subreddits that had become popular over time but what do eggs have to do with trans people?