“Greet death with sword in hand.” That’s the flavor text on the card Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, a legendary creature from the card game Magic: The Gathering — and if this sentence is already too nerdy for you to handle, buckle up.

Alesha was printed more than three years ago as part of the game’s Fate Reforged expansion, and she’s maintained her fan popularity over time thanks largely to one major distinction: She’s the first canonically transgender character in the game’s 25-year history. Though many trans players have flocked to Alesha’s macabrely beautiful representation, Gamergate holdouts and other reactionaries still regard her and real-life trans people with hostility. And as Magic publisher Wizards of the Coast (WotC) moves to dominate online card games with their newly-launched Arena platform, it’s still unclear how welcome — or safe — trans players are in one of gaming’s oldest fandoms.

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In all honesty, I stumbled onto this myself by sheer coincidence. I began playing Magic back in 1997, when the expansion Tempest had just been released, and instantly became hooked. Everything about it appealed to me: the competitive, ever-shifting gameplay; the social aspects of trading and bartering; and particularly the lore, packed full of complicated characters that grew with every set. But while I had plenty of opportunities to play with my friends in high school, college proved to be less receptive, and I drifted away from the game for a number of years as I graduated, figured out I was a girl, and tried to get my life together. Sure, I played a few games here and there, but I stopped considering myself a “Magic player” until recently.

A few months ago, I traveled back to my hometown for my high school reunion. (My trans friends sometimes express surprise that I wanted to attend; to be frank, you couldn’t have paid me not to go and flaunt how cute I am now.) Late in the evening, I mentioned to one of my oldest friends that I’d been thinking about getting back into Magic. Her eyes brightened: “Oh, I’ve got a bunch of those lying around,” she told me. “Do you want them?”

Flabbergasted, I accepted. I had no idea my friend had ever even touched a Magic card, and I’d known her since the fourth grade. But this wasn’t the only surprise awaiting me. Rifling through the cards on my long bus ride home, I gasped inwardly as I stumbled across her: Alesha, Who Smiles at Death. Even after being out of the game for nearly a decade, I had heard of her and who she was. Clearly, this was a sign that my old beloved hobby was calling for my return, and I was only too happy to oblige.

In Magic, each player builds a unique deck from cards with up to five different colors, representing schools of magic with varying strengths, and tries to reduce the other player’s life points from 20 to zero. Alesha is a red creature card, the color of aggressive play and heavy damage. That sort of play style isn’t really my strong suit, but the more I looked at Alesha, the more I wanted to make it my style. At first glance, her ability seems limited: when she attacks, her controller can pay to return a dead creature with two or less attack power to the field, attacking alongside her. But there are many creatures with abilities that make them much stronger than they appear. And even if Alesha’s ability was weak, I’d still have wanted to build a deck with her, because it’s thematically perfect for a transgender warrior.

“As a card and as originally conceived, Alesha was not identified as trans,” says James Wyatt, author of “The Truth of Names,” the short story which established Alesha in Magic lore as a 19-year-old trans girl and unlikely Khan of the Mardu Horde. Since legendary characters don’t often get backstories until after their game effects are already developed, it’s remarkable that Alesha’s ability is so apropos. Trans people in the world today have very little material power; we’re coerced out of our identities as children, and as adults are assaulted and killed with impunity. Who better to serve as the avatar of our vengeance than a ferocious trans teen who stares death in the face and makes it blink for once?

According to Wyatt, although Alesha’s backstory was originally proposed by former WotC creative writer Matt Knicl and honed by now-Digital Product Manager Alli Medwin, “when it came time to decide who would write the story, I played the ‘my daughter is trans’ card in order to claim that privilege.” In the story, Alesha is challenged by a nameless orc who calls her “a human boy who thinks he is a girl,” only to win his respect when he sees her terrifying prowess at dragon slaying. “I talked about it pretty extensively with [my daughter] Ashlie, and especially about the question of whether her identity should be challenged as part of the story, or just accepted as a given,” explains Wyatt. “We could have gone either way, but ultimately Ashlie really wanted there to be a jerk who challenged her and then got put in his place.”

But while Alesha is great at dunking on fictional bigots, flesh-and-blood ones pose real obstacles to trans Magic players. Trans people have frequently taken to Twitter to describe harassment and verbal abuse from players who view Alesha as representative of an unwelcome “social justice warrior” element in their hobby. Prominent member of the alt-right and Gamergate movements Vox Day described her in a 2015 blog post as “an overtly propagandistic SJW element” and “the gaming equivalent of a small but malignant melanoma.” Others’ prejudice flies more easily under the radar, like that of the TappedOut user who collects Alesha decks in a folder marked “the tranny.” Stephen Green, a buyer for Star City Games, joked in one of the store’s YouTube videos that Alesha is “trap-escent,” apparently referencing the dangerous and offensive trope of a crossdresser who “traps” men into having sex with her under the pretense of being a cis woman.

Alesha is far from the only lightning rod for anti-trans prejudice in Magic’s history. After Alexis Janson won Wizards’ first “Great Designer Search” in 2006, then-Magic judge Riki Takashi griped in a column for TCGPlayer.com: “At least I didn’t lose to a girl. Or did I? Alexis Janson won the contest, but why is it that she has an Adam's apple, speaks with a masculine voice, and some people know her as [redacted]?” Takashi would rise in the judging ranks over the ensuing decade, eventually serving as one of Magic’s Judge Program Coordinators from 2017-18.

“I received a lot of hassle on [video streaming platform] Twitch due to being trans when I first started streaming,” says Autumn Burchett, a professional Magic streamer and two-time English National Champion. Although Burchett says she’s never been subject to much hostility in person, “by the time I was attending events on my own, I had already achieved a fair amount...so [I] was allowed a fair amount of respect.” Fittingly enough, that behavior isn’t too different from that of the nameless orc who refuses to respect Alesha’s fundamental identity until she shows him her moves.

Burchett says she hopes that that mindset is changing, “but it’s tough because there’s this kind of catch-22 situation. Part of making change is just having more representation in the game to normalize not-white-cis-guys competing...but having more representation in the game is something that only really comes about if the environment becomes more respectful and welcoming.”

Of course, Magic isn’t defined by its worst actors, and many trans people have found friendship and community in the Magic fandom; according to Medwin, Alesha was greeted with cacophonous support from trans players when she was introduced, who felt more welcomed than ever. But when transphobia still creeps in everywhere from podcasts to the pro circuit, it’s clear something has to be done. When asked for their stance on harassment and prejudice in Magic, a representative for Wizards gave the following statement:

"Magic is a game meant to bring people together — it's right there in the name 'The Gathering.' ...All people should be able to express their joy for the game without being attacked, whether that's in a local game store, online, or somewhere in between. We diligently promote inclusivity and openness within our community."

With all that background radiation, I hope I’d be forgiven for having never engaged with the general-population Magic community and playing only with my friends. But personally, I’m choosing to take it as a challenge — after all, if Vox Day thinks my new favorite character is a cancer on Western society, how can I not play her every chance I get? This is the sort of battle Alesha was made to fight, one where the marginalized and forgotten are given new voice and become too loud to ignore. When I tinker with my newly-crafted deck, I’m reconnecting with a precious part of my past, preparing for the day when I next unleash her on an unsuspecting gamer bro who thinks trap memes are the height of comedy.

And if I lose, well, there’s always next time. After all, death isn’t the end — not when you greet it with a smile and a friend.

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