6588/Game Day at Melodrama

Game Day at Melodrama
Date of Scene:	16 June 2021
Location:	Melodrama - Gaming Lounge
Synopsis:	No description
Cast of Characters:	Madison Evans, Nazo Sarwani

---

Madison Evans has posed:
    It's game day at Melodrama! And several tables are full of groups of friends - laughing, or arguing, or even groaning at a particularly brutal card reveal or dice roll.
    Madison, however, is still new in town. At her game store back in California, Level Up, she would have known dozens of people, and been invited to a table - or at least had someone to chat with while she waits for a new game to start. Instead, the girl is standing around awkwardly, looking over some of the games in play, and then going to the wall of demo games and running her fingers over some of the boxes - looking for just the right game, that would be sure to entice people to join her. It's all in making the right choice. Isn't it?

Nazo Sarwani has posed:
It's game day at Melodrama! And a not-very-observant, book-loving, Muslim woman, having only caught the window of the shop out of the corner of her eye, steps in thinking it's a bookstore she'd overlooked.

It doesn't take her long to see that she's made a mistake and that she blends in about as well as a devil food cake blends in at a Weight Watchers meeting.

How does she fail to blend in. Let us count the ways.

1. Sure things are better than they've been since the '90s when creeping misogyny finally pushed girl gamers away from any public gaming venue. Sure the shops are smarter now, the dumber, old-school owners finding their customer base dwindling as newer, more welcoming places (like Melodrama) start attracting gamers of all stripes. But still, a strange woman in a gaming store. Probably someone's mother looking for something for a birthday present, amirite?

2. This strange woman is stranger still, dressed like half-ninja, half-medieval auntie or something. The only thing giving away that she's a woman is the red sash that pulls the robe in around her waist. Everything else is covered up: hair by a hijab, and face by a niqab, leaving only the brown eyes, widened in confusion, staring around.

3. Oh, and, again, while better than the '90s and '00s, she's a woman of colour. Not very strongly represented in the gaming world.

"What is this place?" Nazo blurts out in confusion and consternation as she tries to decode what is going on around her.

Madison Evans has posed:
    Madison is idly turning over a box in her hands - reading the back of it and studying its art depicting pirates with a curious look on her features when Nazo speaks, and she looks towards her with a curious, friendly smile. Others look up as well - but most go back to their games without paying the newcomer much mind.
    "It's a game store," Madison explains brightly. "People come and do role playing games, or deck building games, or Euro games or- well. Any sort of games, really. Except for the boring stuff like Scrabble or Monopoly or Candyland." She gestures to the box in her hand. "This one looks like it's a storytelling game where we pretend to be //pirates//."
    There's a brief pause before she adds, "That's a hijab, right? One of my friends in California wore hijab - she had a bunch of them, in a lot of different colors. They didn't cover her face, though. She was from Turkey."

Nazo Sarwani has posed:
"Hijab." Nazo's fingers briefly touch the head scarf that covers her head and shoulders. "Niqab." That's the veil over her face. "Abaya." The robe. The demeanour is friendly, body language relaxed, voice has that sing-song quality of someone saying the same thing repeatedly to the point it has become a routine.

"This ... whole place." Nazo's eyes dart around as she tries and fails to take in everything. Her accented voice carries a sense of disoriented awe. "This is all for children's games?"

She looks around briefly.

"So the parents are trying the games to decide which are appropriate for their children?"

How to make friends and influence people in a game store. Give her a round of applause!

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Niqab, abaya," Madison repeats - her tone still curious. She's seen //images// of women who covered their whole faces - but this was the first time she'd met one. It was a strange idea - but, well. It was a vast, strange world.
    And then she asks //that// question - and Madison can't help but burst into giggles. "Oh, gosh. No. These aren't games for //children//! I mean - some of them are. There's a whole section - over there - for children's games and family games- no. Most of these games are ages 14 and up - though really, the ages the put on the games are ridiculous, you can't really trust them, I know plenty of ten year olds that play the 14 and up games. But- umm. Yeah, for the most part they're for adults. Which is why there's lots of games about zombies, and stuff like that. And you come here and play them, and meet people, and make friends, and then you can buy them and take them home." She talks a mile a minute - bouncing up onto her toes at one point.

Nazo Sarwani has posed:
Nazo's eyes focus off into the distance like she's trying to remember something vague. Which, to be fair, she is. She's trying to remember things from her village when she was younger. Remember watching adults.

Not the women, of course. Women didn't play. They worked. In the fields. In the homes. In the kitchen. What women did for entertainment was sing. Songs set the timing and pace. Songs kept the mood. Subconsciously, as she tries to recall, one of those tunes finds its way to the back of the throat, very quietly hummed.

No, she was remembering what the men did. Chess, yes. It was practically invented there after all. But also ...

"So like Shatranj ... ah ... Chess, then? Or Carambole? Panjpar?"

Her voice is rising on each entry as she desperately tries to find any point of commonality so she can start to understand what's going on around her.

"Pachisi?"

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Well - yeah, sure. Like those," Madison agrees. "Only those are ancient games - right? All strategy, and about competition? There's a lot more games than that!" She gestures towards the walls - then pats the game in her hand. "In this one - if I understand it right - we're all working together. We're pretending to be pirates on a pirate ship, and we need to make sure the ship doesn't sink. If the ship sinks, we all //lose//," she explains. "BUT - we all have our own goals we're trying to fulfill. So if you keep the ship afloat, but don't achieve //your// goals, you can still lose while I win. Or if we all achieve all of our goals - we can all win!"
    She points to another game. "That one... We're all time travelers, trying to stop an evil professor from stealing precious artifacts and locking them in his vault. That one's co-op too - but it's a straight co-op. We all win, or we all die. And that one - we're pretending to be survivors in a zombie apocalypse. Only we each have a secret goal - like getting a bunch of food cards. But one of us MIGHT be a traitor who's trying to get us all killed! So that one's fun.
    "And these one's over here," she continues - pointing to more games. "They're competitive. This one you're trying to brew the best magic potions by pulling out the marbles. And when you do - if two marbles of the same color crash together, you can take them. And if that keeps happening, you can keep taking more marbles, to have more ingredients, to make more potions! Fun, huh?" She beams at Nazo - waiting for her reaction.

Nazo Sarwani has posed:
The reaction is a glow glazing over of the eyes as Nazo, determined to politely listened, gets hit square between the eyes by what to her seems like word salad.

A lot of word salad.

And not one of those lettuce plus oil plus vinegar simple ones. No, this is more like a Waldorf salad. Meets a chef's salad from a trendy Manhattan eatery. And falling over the floor.

"It sounds very ..." Nazo struggles for the right word. It's unclear if this is a vocabulary issue or an attempt to be courteous issue. "... different from anything I've heard."

The latter. Almost certainly.

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Oh. Well... I could show you one of them, if you liked, teach you how to play," Madison suggests - her tone going thoughtful. "The Potion one is pretty easy - and plays two people well..."
    "Oh!" the girl adds suddenly. "I'm Madison, by the way. Madison Evans. I just moved here from California," she offers without any prompting, thrusting out a hand to offer it for a handshake, after juggling the box she was holding to rest under her other arm.

Nazo Sarwani has posed:
"Nazo Sarwani. I moved here from ... Afghanistan." She actually looked around and lowered her voice before identifying the place. Like she doesn't want random strangers to overhear. "A few months ago," she continues in her normal voice. "I go to school at night," she adds, before casting her eyes down a bit with shaping around the edges that suggests she's frowning or making some wry expression. "I buy rugs during the day."

Wait, BUY rugs? That's a business is it?

Her eyes wander to the door like she's about to make an excuse to leave before ... snapping back to Madison like she's made a decision. Throw caution to the wind. Take the bull by the horns. Sure there's homework due tonight. But ... play a game, dammit!

"And thank you."

Madison Evans has posed:
    The girl doesn't seem at all phased as Nazo shares where she's from - she just nods her head and smiles. "You know, I think where ever you go - most people are nice, good people. There's always a few assholes, you know? To make everyone look bad. Forget them."
    Madison moves towards the wall of games - putting back the pirate game and grabbing a box that says 'Potion Explosion' instead. She gestures for Nazo to follow her to a table and drops down onto a chair as she opens the box. "Okay, so like I said - we're making magic potions, and they need different ingredients - represented by the different colors of marbles. The more marbles they need the more points they're worth. The person with the most points at the end of the game wins. And each potion has a different power it can do that will help you in the game when you drink it - but you can only drink it once," Madison explains. "I'll tell you what they do when we start finishing potions. And like I said - if you pull out one marble only. But if that makes two marbles of the same color touch, you take those marbles. And if THAT makes two marbles of the same color touch - you take THOSE marbles - and you keep doing it until the marbles stop 'exploding.' ...make sense?"
    To a gamer, sure. To a girl from Afghanistan...? Maybe not.

Nazo Sarwani has posed:
"I ... think it is easiest to learn by doing," Nazo decides. Because that explanation wasn't word salad. That was word salad chucked into a blender set to frappé!

"It is like hooking rugs that way. If I were to describe it to you it would be nonsense. If I were to show you while you held thread and hook in hand it would be the easiest thing in the world."

That's a lie, of course, but isn't analogy just another word for 'lie'?

"So ... we are not doing witchcraft, right? It is just words?"

Oops.

"I think witchcraft would be haram. But stories about witches are not, so games are closer to stories than practice."

Cultural minefields can be fun!

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Yeah, it's just a story," Madison agrees brightly. "No magic - just marbles. And marbles aren't bad, right? ...does haram mean bad?" She starts by giving Nazo two potions to start with - and taking two for herself. "I'll go first so you can see how it goes. Okay - so watch. If I pull this black marble - see how it has yellow in either side?" She pulls out the black marble, and the yellows crash together. "That's called an 'explosion.' So I get to take the yellow, and see how there's blue on either side of the yellow? When I pull out the yellow - another explosion! But see how there's red above the blue and yellow below...?" She pulls out the blue marbles. "No explosion that time. So I get to put the marbles on my potions..." She matches the colors of the marbles with the colors on the cardboard 'potions' - dropping each one into a hole where it sits snuggly. "Okay, these ones I can't place. I can save there of them here in my beaker..." She drops them into place, "and the extras I toss back onto the marble track. Now it's your turn. Easy, right?"

Nazo Sarwani has posed:
Nazo, it turns out, is uneducated and unfamiliar with culture.

She's not stupid.

And she has an eye for colours and patterns that goes well beyond what you'd expect.

Of course, out of unfamiliarity she loses her first game. And her second But the first, when she was more baffled than anything she lost by a wide margin. And the second by a far narrower one.

The third?

She lost. By a razor thin margin in a "it could have gone either way" degree.

If the niqab does anything for her, it gives her one Hell of a poker face, but she does have a tell: the eyes crinkle at the edges and light up, it seems, when she's happy. And this is making her happy. The brown eyes take in the patterns, the colours, the required needs, and she manages to arrange herself a lot more pairings than seems right, though she is crippled still by not quite understanding the potion powers.

By the end of the third game she looks around.

"You say this place sells games such as these?" she asks hopefully.

Madison Evans has posed:
    Madison seems delighted that the woman enjoys the game - and she nods her head eagerly. "Yeah. It does. That wall's the demo-games," she explains, gesturing towards a shelf filled with haphazardly stacked games. "The for-sale section is over there." She points again - to where the games are neatly arranged by name, and type, standing neatly on end with their box art on display. "I can see the Potion Explosion box from here. See?"

Nazo Sarwani has posed:
Nazo takes a careful note of the for-sale section, looking at the box in front of the pair, then over at the distant box. Then, apparently afraid that someone might get that box before she does...

"Excuse me for a moment?"

And she's off like a shot, making a beeline for the potion explosion game and grabbing it, heading to the (surprised looking) clerk to purchase it, before returning with it, pushing its shop bag into what looks sort of like ... a carpet bag? Only it's not closed at the sides.

"I'm terribly sorry about that, but it was the only one I could see and I didn't wish to risk not having it."

Mads should get a job here, apparently.

"Shall we play again?"

Madison Evans has posed:
    Madison giggles - picking up the water bottle she brought with her for a swig. Her legs are kicking idly under the table - they have been almost the entire time they've been playing, to be honest. When Nazo returns - she gives a firm nod of her head. "Absolutely," she agrees. "I think you're going to beat me, this time," she adds as she starts shuffling the cardboard potions to randomize them for the next game. "You catch on //really// fast!" she says in an impressed sounding tone. "And I think it's your turn to go first?

Nazo Sarwani has posed:
This time Nazo concentrates with almost inhuman intensity as they play, her eyes never seeming to focus on just one thing when it comes to the marbles, but very precisely focusing when it comes to the potions. And Madison's play. Despite not seeming to be a very mathematical player (she has trouble counting the points, even!), she has colour and pattern matching skills that are above reproach giving her an edge in arranging chains of explosions.

This game is hers.

And for the first time there's a sound of genuine excitement escaping her niqab as she realizes she's almost certain to win. A slight squeal of joy paired with eyes that are super-crinkled.

"I think I have won?" she asks.

Madison Evans has posed:
    "I told ya you'd get me this time!" Madison says brightly, beaming across the table at the woman across from her. She thrusts out a hand adding, "Good game!"
    Moments later, she's leaning her head onto her hands, a thoughtful look on her features as she asks, "I wonder what other games you'd like... There's a new game that just came out - called 'Arch Ravels' that's all about knitting and crochet. I haven't played it yet, but I hear it's good." She taps her chin thoughtfully before adding, "And there's Set. It's an older game, but it's all about pattern recognition. It's pretty fun. You might even like Kingdomino, I think..."