I have a tradition I do whenever I leave a tournament. Doesn’t have to be one that I ran myself, necessarily. It could be any tournament. Sometimes I forget to do it. Sometimes you just get caught up in the moment with your carpool and you’re just chattering over the sound of the highway and it’s 12 AM so there’s only three pairs of headlights ahead or behind you and you’re either going to [insert IHOP or Denny’s here] or you’re too tired for that so you all just want to get dropped off and call it a night.
If that’s why I forget, then that’s okay. It’s the absence of these moments that the tradition is meant for. It’s for the moments when I’m standing alone in a purple-lit parking lot with an hour drive ahead of me and only the din of 495 to talk to as I retread the same old route straight home. I can tell that it’s gonna be a long road. And so, the first thing I do after getting in the car is put on New Year’s Day by Taylor Swift.
Like any good pop song, you can live vicariously through its words. I imagine I’m saying them to myself. I don’t know when I started doing it, but I know why I did.
To remind myself of why we’re here. Week after week and month after month of finding a few hours of time we can slice out of our lives to be with people we have learned to care about and be without the thought that we are anyone other than who we are in that moment.
“I’ll be there if you’re the toast of the town, babe. Or if you strike out and you’re crawlin’ home.”
To remind myself to hold on to those moments as much as possible because one day they will be here and then gone the next.
“Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you.”
And to remind myself that as soon as we stop reminding ourselves of these things, those moments will never come back. They will only exist as long as we keep remembering them and reliving them over and over again.
“Please, don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere.”
Xanadu Games was just one of thousands of places that held these moments. For fifteen-odd years it was a place where people of so many different communities gathered, even as its physical location in space changed. In retrospect it is, frankly, a privilege that I was able to take part in writing a page in that venue’s story. We didn’t know it until a couple months ago, but we were writing a happy ending.
After Hitfall 3, a friend of mine told me that another player had mentioned that the tournament was the most fun they’ve had in their life. I initially scoffed at the statement, and my friend questioned my reaction. I realized I was wrong to feel that way. Who was I to judge them if they enjoyed themselves? Wasn’t a fun event what we were trying to achieve? Why was I doubting the intrinsic worth of our endeavor?
Just a few long years ago in 2019, Rivals of Aether was included as part of Glitch 7 at Xanadu Games. What happened there deserves a post of its own, but suffice to say, Rivals of Aether was run terribly, it was an embarrassment to the event, and it soured many people in the community on the venue, many of whom hoped they would never have a need to return. In the end, we were able to create something people couldn’t wait to return to. We were able to remind people. In my conversation with my friend, I remembered why.
As I was driving home from the last Extra Credit on December 22nd, the very last Rivals of Aether tournament at Xanadu Games, I listened to New Year’s Day by Taylor Swift. Except this time, the words weren’t just reminding me.
As silly as it sounds, the perspective of the song changed.
It felt like, for the first time, the words were being said to everyone. Everyone who walked through those doors and let themselves be reminded of why they did in the first place. Everyone who let themselves make memories. Everyone who kept doing so.
The story of Xanadu might be over, but I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day. If you’re reading this, I hope you will too.
Featured image photographer: Dawson J. Davis
