My two common experiences walking into my local card shop for Friday Night Magic are the faint but ever-present smell of week-old sweat and the instantaneous feeling that I am alone in my queerness. One particular week, however, only the smell hung in the air. By my first match, I think I knew why: the player across from me was trying to flirt. The cliché of nerd life affirmed in his awkward flirting and my inability to do any better (he told me later he was trying to play footsy with me). But our conversation was ultimately flat and labored, so when I won the match we parted ways. He found me a match later, returning the phone I left and once more our awkward attempts at flirtation continued before leaving for the final match. During my last match, he returned handing me a Scion token with his number written on it, telling me to call if I ever want to have some fun—thus beginning an amazing journey into the faerie and pup communities.

In the Magic universe, a Scion is an extension of the massive Eldrazi titans. The titans stretch their forms over the plane and break into Scions to devour life before being consumed and returned to the titan's form. In the game, Scion tokens are produced by numerous Eldrazi creatures to function as chump blockers to keep the player alive or to be sacrificed to build up mana for stronger creatures and spells. The Scion’s role is to give life through the destruction of others and themselves. 

Magic is not inherently or overtly queer, but queerness can thrive in its constructive universes and performative communities. Queerness within Magic functions not unlike the Scions: we willingly devour the universes we enter and produce expanding communities of energy that are consumed by the host body so it may thrive. And while this may be true of non-queer Magic communities, we are not creature types, we have no designation. We are tokens to be conjured as confirmation of “diversity” to chump block powerful attacks and for our needs and desires to be sacrificed readily in the name of the host’s survival. Like the only two supposed queer characters in Magic, we are obscured by distance and vague language.