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There’s a lady at this occasion. Slight and dainty, she’s the niece of a fancy lord. She hides her jawline beneath a fan, smiles with glittering energy as she is invited to the cardboard desk. Her fingers are at all times unhealthy and her grasp of the principles appears tenuous. Forgetting her knife-sharp grin, you compromise right into a wine-fuelled haze. Solely when the evening is over do you depend your cash, understand how a lot you have misplaced, and suppose once more of that shining smile.
In its broad survey of French aristocracy, Card Shark permits gamers to discover crossdressing and queerness. The sport’s tangible relationship to historical past is playful, broad, and explicit (as I’ve written about earlier than). Card Shark freely borrows tricksters and cheats from all through historical past but in addition reveals off the distinctive class-bridging operate of card enjoying within the particular time interval. Card Shark’s France is broiling with class friction, as a rising bourgeoisie has growing energy however can also be remoted from the immense wealth of the ruling aristocracy. Beneath all of it, Romani caravans keep away from persecution and the revolution brews. Participant character Eugene and his mentor, the Comte de Saint Germain, will discover all this by means of dishonest on the aforementioned card video games, amassing wealth, and discovering a thriller on the coronary heart of the French monarchy. Whereas the story advised is essentially fiction, a mix of The Three Musketeers and a satirical comedy of manners, the social circumstances of the characters are grounded in a fabric historical past. That extends to Card Shark’s depiction of crossdressing, gender nonconformity, and transness.
Earlier than we dig into Card Shark’s relationship to gender, I wish to begin on a quick be aware on pronouns and easy methods to focus on the potential tranness of historic figures. I’m going to make use of he/him pronouns and the identify Eugene for Card Shark’s protagonist. That is, on no account, meant to undermine the potential to know him as queer. It’s tempting and never at all times incorrect to label historic figures as homosexual or lesbian or trans. Nevertheless, it must be emphasised that these are comparatively trendy labels which might be erratically and typically unfairly layered over an infinite number of people and identities. These labels aren’t untarnished truths that we are able to now use to interpret historical past purely. Somewhat they broadly establish experiences and social norms, towards which individuals of every kind decide and perceive themselves. I notably just like the phrasing of Equipment Heyam’s latest historical past of gender’s title: “Earlier than We Have been Trans.” The implication is that previous gender-non-confirming individuals share a typical heritage, and plenty of identities, with present trans individuals, however that the actual label of “trans” is comparatively new.
Crucially, this doesn’t imply we can not resonate with or take which means from the historial queer figures. Somewhat we must always perceive that they have been, simply as we’re, current within the constraints and language of their surrounding tradition. Eugene could be trans, or definitely, the sport leaves sufficient room for him to be so perceived. However labeling him as such makes use of a language which he couldn’t have had entry to, even in Card Shark’s exaggerated historic fiction. I each wish to respect the fact he would have lived in, had he been actual, and respect the identities he might have held.
What makes Card Shark’s relationship with gender so sharp and insightful is that it understands its materials and historic context at each flip. Card Shark has a normal curiosity in exploring the margins of 18th century France. Notorious cross-dressing and womanizing opera singer Julie d’Aubigny and the good Afro-French composer and fencer Chevalier de Saint-Georges each have intensive cameos. The non-existent S.W. Erdnase, named after the pseudonym writer of The Professional and The Card, defies a definite gender at each flip, in ways in which allow them to enter into numerous realms and cultures. A Romani camp is featured because the Comte and Eugene’s base of operations and, in one of many sport’s extra trendy twists, each can donate to their mutual support fund.
The first means the sport explores the marginalized is thru the protagonist. Eugene exists at a number of factors of marginalization. He’s disabled (he can not converse), an impoverished orphan, and illiterate (he learns to learn and write over the course of the sport). Early on within the sport, Eugene takes on one thing of a servant’s function, studying to help Comte in numerous schemes that revolve round dishonest at playing cards. Most of the tips contain him getting wine for the Comte or getting a peek at different gamers’ fingers as he wipes the desk. However as he and Comte advance in society, Eugene’s presence as a servant on the desk turns into much less believable. Enter: crossdressing.
The efficiency of gender permits Eugene and the Comte to get the leap on misogynistic wealth and to cross Eugene off as a member of excessive society. Eugene makes use of gendered markers, like a fan or a make-up field, to tug off playing tips. For instance, he makes use of a make-up field to view another person’s hand after which strikes the fan in a specific solution to sign playing cards to the Comte. As a result of Eugene is presenting as a lady, the lads on the desk consider him incapable of wrongdoing or deviousness. He passes, when his efficiency of gender is nice sufficient, whilst he subverts their expectations. In an actual sense, Card Shark simulates the expertise of social gender, asking gamers to play at becoming into a task, with dire penalties ought to they fail. Dishonest is a social sport, as a lot as it’s a dexterous one.
This doesn’t imply Eugene’s efficiency of gender is insincere. Within the sport’s transient, however expressive, moments of selection, Eugene can specific enthusiasm or weariness, readiness or forgetfulness to the act of crossdressing. Equally, Eugene is a reputation given by the Comte, one which Eugene can finally settle for or reject. These are scant moments of expressivity, however they’re sufficient to depart tantalizing gaps in what may appear a mere male protagonist. The participant can embrace Eugene’s femininity or depart it as a device.
In the interim, although, Eugene can not stay merely “as a lady.” Nonetheless caught up, as he’s, within the drama of the plot. The sport focuses on this slender interval of his life. Although we see him as an elder after the French Revolution within the sport’s denouement, a lot of Eugene’s future life is left to creativeness. Eugene is the precise type of determine who would have been forgotten by history–whose queerness may be left within the reminiscence of scant events the place a forgotten lady briefly lived.
However that is the factor: Most of us may even be forgotten. Many trans individuals are misrepresented upon their demise or died earlier than they might uncover themselves. Card Shark understands gender as fluid, culturally and socially dependent, but nonetheless chosen or embraced. It raises up and highlights a marginalized previous, however it additionally lets gamers take part in it and in small methods outline it for themselves. Due to its sharp and playful relationship with the previous, it opens the door for gamers to know themselves as a part of an enormous expanse of queer historical past.
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