What a Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Deck Can Say About Identity

personal essay / reflective essay by Suzie Toumeh

📖 Essay Summary

29-year-old Suzie is out here re-playing a niche PS2 game "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelists of the Roses" when her friend hits her with the wild request for a "pretty" Yu-Gi-Oh card deck, Suzie discovers that she had no category for "pretty" in this game, and slowly realizes that she'd been choosing game avatars that wouldn't be noticed her whole gaming life. This leads her into a line of thoughts about trauma responses in play, why some versions of ourselves never get built, and how we learn to survive in fields that weren’t designed for us.

📖 In This Essay

I A Card I Glued to My Wall II Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelists of the Roses: A Game That Changed Nothing III How I Built the Ugliest Card Deck: The Zombie Deck IV My Friend said "I want a pretty deck" and my brain went blank V How I became a side character in video games VI The Celtic Guardian and other cards I liked but never played VII The real lesson I learned from the Zombie Deck VIII The lore the game never spills out IX Conclusion: 3 things I learned

I. A Card I Glued to My Wall

I glued a card to the wall of my bedroom in my parents' house. 

The card was held there by dried glue that I'd squeezed from a plastic bottle. It sat right between my questionable middle-school art and a poster of some band I pretended to like.

The card was Pumpkin The King of Ghosts from a children's card game, depicting a grinning Halloween-ish pumpkin, his face a mass of orange and black with one eye. Not beautiful and not even particularly rare, I don't think. 

When I was a kid (and I'm talking 9 years old) I collected Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. I lost all of them now, like so many things I left behind when I grew up. But I kept one card. This one on my wall. 

Don't get me wrong, I loved to play the classic card game! But the way kids played this game back then was a DISASTER. Enter the PS2 version, y'all, the "Duelists of the Roses" was different. It had 3D models for the card characters. It had playing fields that affected the game. And that’s where Pumpkin and my wall started their toxic situationship.

At first? I chose to put this card in my deck for the most practical reason. It was overpowered. After many duels, it became a card close to my heart. I had the physical version on the wall and everything. I never once thought, “Hmm, this is kind of a grotesque orange nightmare.” To me he was just… Pumpkin the loyal patient card. A little unhinged but still perfect. Now I look at him and I’m like… yeah girl, the red flags were the entire pumpkin face.

II. Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelists of the Roses: A Game That Changed Nothing

Duelists of the Roses serving underrated PS2 gem realness.

Duelists of the Roses wasn't the game everybody was playing from the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise. It was like that one friend who shows up with insane ideas, gets ignored, and then quietly becomes an "underrated gem." 

They took the classic card game which was all about numbers (whose card has higher attack/defense) and turned it into chess where the card can move and had 3D models that made your monsters feel alive. It had so much potential, but did the world care? Not really. It was not the "big success." It sold okay, got mixed reviews, and then... disappeared. You won’t find its DNA in the big modern Yu-Gi-Oh games.

It just... existed and then disappeared. (but not for me)

II. I Built the Ugliest Card Deck: The Zombie Deck

When 9ish year old me made my first deck, I chose my cards to work with my overpowered deck leader Pumpkin, and those all happened to be "zombie" cards.

Once I summoned the Pumpkin, every single turn, every single one of my zombie cards on the field gets a little stronger. (+100 attack. +100 defense.) Turn after turn after turn.

This deck wins through patience... and not like "waiting in line" patience but endurance. The feeling of a plan that cannot be stopped and that in a few turns some weak zombies will become super powerful.

IV. My friend said "i want a pretty deck" and my brain went blank

Exhibit A of my taste: this absolute horror show.
I thought he was “fine.” My friend took one look and said “no.”

I was deep in another comfort replay, happily rotting with my zombie squad, when my friend peeked over my shoulder and casually wanted to build her own deck. So she started looking through my cards, and she said something that stopped me cold.

She said: "I want a pretty deck."

…Excuse me?

I looked at her. And I looked at my screen. And I looked back at her. My brain went full blue screen. And I realized:

I had never once thought of that.

My zombie deck. It's full of... well, let's be honest. It's full of horror movie cast reunion. Snake Hair. Dragon Zombie with his wings all battered and torn. Armored Zombie with arrows in his shoulder. And ugh.. don't get me started on the Clown. All these are cards that tell stories of the uncanny and grave. Complicated, tragic stories that the game doesn't even bother to tell.

Bro got arrows in his shoulder and still showed up to the duel.

And I had never noticed. I had never looked at them and thought that they were tragic. I had looked at them and thought "They work together!"

My friend’s vibe

My friend built her deck in like twenty minutes. And it was gorgeous. Queens. Elegant Female warriors. Priestesses in soft colors. Cards that looked like they’d give you a hug and positive affirmations after the duel... And I sat there, watching her scroll through her cottagecore girlboss cards and I felt... confronted: It never occurred to me to ask the question "Is this pleasing to look at?"

My brother? He played too. Since we were kids. He played a Machine King deck. Big numbers. hit hard, win fast. And it brought him joy. Pride, even. To play that deck and watch it instantly crush opponents.

My brother wanted power. My friend wanted pretty. My category was... what? Potential? The zombie deck's ugliness was not a deliberate choice. I didn't wake up and say "oh today I will make my deck born from decay." It was a non-issue. It simply did not register. 

The zombie deck's ugliness was not a deliberate choice. I didn't wake up and say "oh today I will make my deck born from decay."

It's not that I ignored or rejected it. It's that it did not exist in my mind at all. I still played with the zombie deck after I watched her put together her cute cards. But now I also see the cards. The hole in the Dragon's wing. The tragedy of the arrows in the warrior's shoulder. The stories they carry that the game never tells.

Barrel Lily, my emotional support flower after I finally retired the nightmare clown.

And now I always swap the Clown for a Barrel Lily because the clown card is just pure horror aesthetic.

V. How I became a side character in video games

So obviously I had to spiral. Why had I never developed the category "pretty"? Why had I never even noticed that my cards were full of tragedy? Why was "efficiency" the only question my brain knew how to ask?

I had to look at the other games I played. And y'all, when I started looking? The pattern was embarrassingly clear.. Take The Sims, you a game all about freely creating a character and just experiment with colors and styles. You could be whoever.

The Sims 2 Pets on PS2, where my older sibling saw me trying to make a cute Sim in green.

Back in the days on the PS2, My two siblings and I had to share the consol. My oldest sibling saw me experimenting in The Sims and there was a reaction. He made a comment loud and clear that trying out different choices is NOT something I am supposed to make. Even picking the color green was not an option in his books. Why? Idk bro had issues.

I learned to limit myself a lot growing up because the PS2 is not as private as a psp or a laptop or even a phone. And my brothers (and cousin) would comment on my choices and/or make it an issue.

So I developed a strategy. I picked what won’t get me roasted. I picked characters so under-the-radar that nobody would even waste energy bullying me for it. For example, In Naruto games, my brother, who seemed to feel he can always pick first, because of male privilage, decided to play as Naruto, (main character energy, obviously) my cousin decided to play as Sasuke (edgy rival) and then I happily snatched... Kakashi.

The game where I learned the sacred art of “I’ll just take what’s left.”

Kakashi, who (at the time) had no backstory and wore a mask that hid 75% of his face was the first side character I chose. Game after game, I became more of a professional side character collector. 

Kakashi with peak side character energy.

I had learned, early and often, that choosing what can be seen? That can get you hurt. So I chose what was efficient. A King Pumpkin that can stack strength in the dark. The lack of the category "pretty" was a way of moving through the world by taking what wouldn't be noticed.

VI. The Celtic Guardian and other cards I liked but never played

After that “pretty deck” incident, I decided it is time to have a full main character arc. I started digging through cards I’d always liked but never actually played because they didn’t fit my “zombie” strategy. First up: The Celtic Guardian. This noble warrior with the green hat and sword looking like he’d actually show up for you. I always thought he had main character potential, but I’d left him collecting digital dust for years.

So I built a whole deck around him of warriors, spellcasters, and other cards that worked well with him. I was out here having fun. Feeling joy. Discovering strategies I’d ignored for decades because I was too busy maining my pumpkin cards. Turns out it’s never too late to experiment. (Even with colors in character creation. I’m looking at you, green outfits I was bullied out of getting my Sim to wear.)

I started making more decks. Tried different playstyles. The game suddenly got an extra 50 hours of content just by me deciding to try out a different strategy.

One of the pretty-ish cards I finally let myself play.

VII. The real lesson I learned from the Zombie Deck

And that is a knowledge that I carried with me... that if the field wasn't built for me. A job. A relationship. A situation. Then turn by turn, you can flip the situation by growing your strength in the back row patiently.

In Duelist of the Roses, the terrain is always chosen to help the AI. To give it an advantage. And your cards? They have to survive in that. 

So I learned to flip the field for zombies with cards like Yami (Darkness) or Wasteland. I stacked copies of these terrain cards. I played them over and over until the board completely changed. Until the space became habitable. I put traps in the front row. And in the back row? My zombies were safe and growing.

This is the game that taught me that even on a grid designed for someone else's victory, you can find a way to make the space habitable. 

My favorite way to make the board more habitable for my zombies.

And that is a knowledge that I carried with me... that if the field was not built for me. A job. A relationship. A situation. Then turn by turn, you can flip the situation by growing your strength in the back row patiently.

VIII.The lore the game never spills out

The PS2 stripped the cards down to pure mechanics, the numbers, effects and that's it. No flavor text or a story of a friend who traded it to you. A card becomes only a game mechanic.

Yu-Gi-Oh has great possibility to be lore rich, and my brain can't stop filling in the blanks. I look at Snake Hair and I see the complicated, tragic lore of the story of Medusa who was turned into a monster by forces beyond her control. Living alone in the dark, waiting, because anyone who looks at her gets turned to stone. 

Snake Hair serving main character Medusa energy.

The game does not tell me this at any point. I bring the lore from Ovid. The card glued on my wall, Pumpkin The King of Ghosts, has zero official lore in this game. But it has accumulated layer upon layer of meaning and memory throughtout the years. So I'll keep looking at Snake Hair and seeing Medusa, and I will look at Pumpkin and see a sure victory 20 moves away.

IX. Conclusion: 3 things I learned

One: Pumpkin The King of Ghosts isn’t just a card. To me, he’s a metaphor for patience. I learned in a children’s card game that sometimes the strongest move is to sit in defense, stack your quiet power, and wait for the board to shift in your favor.

Two: Visibility changes everything. Once you see the pattern, the way you’ve been choosing things your whole life, you can’t unsee it. The unconscious gets revealed and suddenly you’re noticing it everywhere. But seeing it isn’t the same as fixing it. Choice is in the actual gameplay.

Three: It’s never too late to build a different deck. The moment I tried the Celtic Guardian build and realized it actually worked? I felt silly for waiting so long. The game got brand new life. New strategies. New joy. This could anything you have been putting off because it isn't efficient enough like learning how to play an instrument or taking a patining lesson. 

Turns out the prettiest thing you can do is finally let yourself play the cards you actually want to play, even if they’re bright, bold, or a little extra.

Author: Suzie Toumeh

Suzie is a writer and cultural observer with two Master’s degrees in Media Studies and English Studies. She writes about how games, stories, and pop culture shape who we become.

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Game screenshots and box art (The Sims 2 Pets, Naruto Ultimate Ninja, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Duelists of the Roses) are used for personal commentary and transformative storytelling under fair use. All rights belong to their respective owners (EA, Bandai Namco, etc.). Yu-Gi-Oh card images via Yugipedia.