Representation
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always loved writing stories based on cards.
Greeting cards, trading cards, any sort of card with a picture will attract my attention, and I will start to imagine the lives of the people in the art immediately. Some of my most beloved old stories come from this method of idea generation, so as soon as I was asked to create 20 character ideas for the musical I’m working on with my friends, I knew exactly where to go.
I decided, since I’m experiencing a resurgence in my interest in Magic: The Gathering, to go through my cards and pick 20 that I’d like to write about. I did that pretty quickly, but since this is a mental health musical, I wanted to try to pick a character who I could truly share my experiences with.
Trauma was easy, and it was also easy to find comedy in the pictures. But I couldn’t find something specific with OCD, and as the deadline for my 20 characters neared, I started to wonder if I was going to be able to muster anything at all.
Then, I went to a pre-release for a new set of Magic: The Gathering cards coming out this upcoming Friday. At these events, players see the new cards for the first time and get a chance to play with them. I didn’t look up any spoilers, so when I got there, I had no idea that the set revolved around werewolves, vampires, zombies, and other fantastical creatures, as well as fantasy elements like blessings and curses. The idea of curses intrigued me, as I saw my mental illness as a curse when I was a kid. I had the idea floating around in my head, but I was completely unprepared for one card that came my way:
It depicts a determined-looking person sitting on the ground, resting a hammer on their knee. They are sitting on a torn-up floor surrounded by loose, jagged planks. There is a lantern haphazardly leaning nearby, as if it’s about to set the whole thing on fire, precarious, dangerous, but still not quite there yet.
The name of the card: “Curse of Obsession.”
I was already intrigued when I saw the name, but when I saw that the card’s flavor text (a mini-story written by the game developers) referred to seeking something with such determination that this person had bloodied their hands, I knew what I was looking at: the first fantasy representation of OCD I’ve ever seen.
Sure, this might seem thin on the surface, but as someone who has washed my hands until they chapped and bled, who has sought answers to questions by doing the same useless behaviors a hundred times over, it made sense to me. I felt represented.
When I told my mom, I wasn’t anticipating her to think I would be offended by seeing something like this in the media. After all, it’s depicting obsession as a curse, even though I’ve seen it like this in the past, especially when I liked to think of myself as someone out of a fairy tale who had to overcome a problem from magical means when I thought brains were boring.
But to me, it all had to do with intention. When I get offended by things like “Obsessive Cat/Christmas/Cooking Disorder,” it is because it uses the acronym without showing any nuance. It doesn’t start a conversation or involve any thought. It’s just like a throwaway joke that makes me feel like the butt of the joke.
I feel the same way when I see portrayals of characters with OCD who display stereotypical behavior as the only things they do. Mental illness is only a part of someone, not the entirety of who they are, and when I see a character on TV or in a movie who is only there to feed into stereotypes as common relief, I feel hurt. I get a similar feeling from images that show a person with crazed eyes, or depicted as inhuman in some way.
The major thing that differentiates this card for me is the intention. The mechanics of the card mean that the person playing with it has to play in a particular way that differentiates from the usual rules of the game. Instead of the usual rules of drawing one card at the beginning of their turn, the player draws two cards, then they have to use only those two cards during their turn, since they have to discard the cards at the end of their turn.
It seems like a disadvantage on the surface, and let’s be honest, it is. But it’s also a different way to play the game, a challenge that requires using both rigidity and creativity. And working with this challenge, you can still play the game just like anyone else, albeit with different strategy. It feels like how I navigate life - doing my best to use disadvantages to my advantage and finding new ways to make things work.
And so, I will be using this card to craft a character. I want to make someone brave, yet tackling self-doubt. Rigid, yet learning how to do new things, or how to do old things in a new way. I don’t know what the backstory will be yet, but when I look at this picture, I see the inspiration for my first character I’m writing to have OCD on purpose. I’ve done it by accident before, but writing OCD intentionally will hopefully help me continue the representation I see in this card and share it with even more people.
While scrolling on Tumblr recently, I saw one of my old favorite posts that has resonated with me ever since I started blogging and sharing my story openly: “The problem with becoming the kind of hero you needed yourself is that it can’t change the fact that nobody came for you.”
In the area of representation, there was no fantasy character who could show me a good life with OCD, a life filled with love and friendship and kindness and overcoming obstacles. As much as I loved - and still love - Gandalf and Aragorn and every other character from the Lord of the Rings series and other favorite books and movies, I didn’t feel like I could ever be like any of them because I had a diagnosis. But one day, maybe this character I’m working on will be that person for another kid hoping to not feel so alone.
Ellie, a writer in the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.