My story from the 2007-2008 season can be traced back to the release of Mysterious Treasures in August 2007. As the cards from this set were beginning to circulate, I was starting my freshman year at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. I had decided to go to the second largest state school, because it wasn’t the largest (which is where the majority of my graduating class went) and I already had a few friends in Springfield.
I came out at the age of 14 and, like many queer kids, I kept a safe distance between me and my high school. Most of the high schoolers treated me as a strange specimen for the viewing, but not for the dissecting. That isn’t to say I wasn’t subjected to bullying on occasion, but it wasn’t to the level that devastates so many in the queer community. And, if I am being honest, maybe I did experience intense bullying and my defense mechanisms kept my self-esteem in tact. In retrospect, I do think I responded by developing an incredibly competitive desire to succeed in the Pokémon TCG and in the looks-obsessed gay dating scene. It is chilling to reflect on some of the extreme measures I took to enhance my status in the dating scene, but I had this fanatic conviction to pair off with a sculpted boyfriend as quickly as possible. My senior year of high school, in particular, was marked by desperation and let downs.
This desperation shaped my mind as Mysterious Treasures hit the metagame and the 2007-2008 season kicked off. I leapt into this new season determined to find success - and my definition of success usually revolved around innovative deck building. I think, in some ways, this concept of overcompensation can be seen in my commitment to turning less celebrated cards such as Torterra / Torterra LV. X and Celebi into tournament winners. In a certain light, the overcompensation narrative can be viewed as an underdog narrative.
Here is a screenshot from a report I posted on PokéGym at the end of December 2007 describing the first few months of my Pokémon season.
What sticks out to me is the enthusiasm in my writing. I was delighted by what was going on in my Pokémon life. That joy was not playing out in the other parts of my life, though. I was not doing well at Missouri State. My grades were poor and my dormitory was not welcoming. I remember coming back to my room one evening to find the word FAG written hatefully on the whiteboard hanging on my bedroom door. I do not think anything quite this bad happened to me in high school, but memory is a funny thing when it comes to remembering distressing life events.
I ended up transferring to Saint Louis University mid-year and starting my spring semester there. I should note here that the looks-obsessed gay dating scene drove me to become very tan in high school and to stay that way in the first couple years of college. When I came back to St. Louis in January 2008 I took a job at a tanning salon. Then I lost that job, and took another at a different salon. And then another. Just as young gay communities can become mired in gossip and intra-community bullying, so can the culture at a tanning salon. I think back with disgust at some of the bullying that I initiated. I share this shameful detail because it shows how overcompensation can lead to unkind and unhealthy behaviors for those who feel compelled to overcompensate. It is strange how easily a victim of bullying can turn into a perpetrator of bullying, but nothing is quite as complex as the human mind.
My grades continued to be very bad in my first semester at SLU, but I met a boy and we started dating. Meanwhile, the metagame continued to solidify around Gardevoir/Gallade and Magmortar. Some key deck mechanics changed when Great Encounters was released in February, though. The disruptive power of Absol slowly phased out when Claydol became available to deck builders. Gardevoir, in particular, gained a great deal from the arrival of Claydol. Cosmic Power brought additional consistency support to the Stage 2 heavy deck, while Psychic Lock became even more oppressive in the increasingly Claydol-reliant format.
I hung onto Absol for a little longer than some players, and managed to win the Kansas State Championships in March with Magmortar/Absol. I faced a Beedrill variant at this tournament and was stunned that I nearly lost with my Fire deck. I left the tournament with a new curiosity for the recently released Stage 2 Grass Pokémon. I worked on a Beedrill list and took it to the St. Louis Regional Championships in April. I ended up winning that event with an undefeated record. This tournament stands out in my mind, because I can still recall how I felt as I was playing through swiss rounds and top cut that day. It was as if I was willing my mind to open itself to every possible line of play that might lead to victory - no matter how hidden or obscure. I recall making plays that I do not think anyone would have thought to make. I do not know how best to say it, but it seems to me that something acted upon my will in ways that made me unbeatable that day. In retrospect, I would say this is how overcompensation can play out in the Pokémon TCG.
Many tournament reports written in those days ended with a ‘Props and Slops’ section. Props were the positives associated with the event and slops were the negatives. They brought a more nuanced perspective to a player’s experience that we don’t really see in modern times. Here are mine from this Regional Championship.
I want to highlight the last slop - “getting sick after the event.” I will come back to it in a bit.
April turned to May and I was wrapping up my second semester of college. The honeymoon period of my relationship was already ending and my grades were so bad that I lost some of my scholarships. My loving parents were terribly worried about me. It didn’t really matter to them how well I was doing in the Pokémon TCG, because everything else was a disaster. They put some restrictions on my freedoms and rightfully so. Fortunately, my parents couldn’t really say “no” to me attending the U.S. National Championships because I had won a paid trip.
Majestic Dawn (MD) unleashed a whole host of changes to the metagame at the end of May. Empoleon pushed FIre out of the metagame, while Call Energy brought additional consistency to setup decks. These changes coupled with the release of Torterra brought me back to where my season started. Celebi had been outclassed by other energy accelerators such as Sceptile and Leafeon LV. X, but the lasting power of Torterra / Torterra LV. X remained - especially when combined with Super Scoop Up. I settled on Sceptile as the preferred partner, and also predicted that Cessation Crystal would not step out of obscurity into mainstream decklists at Nationals. This allowed me to focus my list on the inherent strengths of the Torterra line.
I presented at Nationals in June with a feverishly tested Torterra build and a case of acute physical exhaustion. I was quite sick that weekend. I made countless trips to the convention center drugstore for overpriced Mountain Dew and cough medicine, which is pretty much all I ingested over the course of the tournament. When I was a teenager, illness was a predictable companion in many of my tournament stories. I was often sick while playing in a tournament or after finishing a tournament weekend - just like the Regional Championship that happened a couple of months earlier. There seems to be a connection here to the overcompensation narrative and some supporting evidence for how these conditions might lead to tournament success just as reliably as the “achieve balance in life to succeed in the Pokémon TCG” narrative. There is no way that anyone who was paying attention would have considered teenage Colin to be a model of good health. I think reaching for success in the Pokémon TCG as a teenager often involved borrowing from some of the bodily processes that sustain health. As I described in Part 1, we should consider certain mechanisms in games as analogous to certain mechanisms in life. Torterra LV. X continues to be an excellent metaphor here. Vigorous Dash exchanges hit points or health for massive damage to the opponent. I think, in some ways, I was doing the same thing as a teenage Pokémon player - especially during the 2007-2008 season.
After I finished in third place at Nationals, I excitedly called my boyfriend to tell him about my placement. Again, it is funny what you remember after a couple of decades. His response to the best news of my life was a wolfish ‘why didn’t you win the whole thing?’ I think this was the precise moment I realized my young romance was both shallow and not long for this world. I can still feel the winds disappearing from my sails as I hung up the phone and climbed into bed with a weariness that had crept from my body into my soul.
The metagame shifted between U.S. Nationals and Worlds, but I did not shift with it. Despite my dazzling winning streak and a paid trip to Worlds, I could not muster the energy to prepare for the final event of the season. I was totally burnt out. A shell of myself boarded the plane to Orlando in August and that shell scrubbed out of the main event. Thus ended my 2007-2008 tournament season. Nothing in my life, not even my identity as a Pokémon TCG player, was flourishing.
I didn’t think I would need to write a Part 3, but this concludes Forest Murmurs: Part 2. Putting this series of events into words has been draining and somewhat harrowing. There are still some loose threads that I need to tie together, though. Many elements of my life changed after this season - including my drive to overcompensate in the Pokémon TCG.
Colin