Today’s deck is The Plastic Oracle: A Mean Girls Tarot Deck.
I once saw a post that was like “the two genders are Mean Girls and The Dark Knight” and I’ve not recovered since. Fittingly, right around this time last year I went through a book on the production of Mean Girls which was really good. It actually mentioned something that stuck with me near the beginning which is that Mean Girls is the odd “chick flick” with quotable dialog. Like say… contrast 13 going 30 (or whatever the movie of the teen becoming an adult was called) to Heathers (which Mean Girls had in mind during production).
As for the deck? It’s… fine. It tries too hard to have portraits of the characters except that with the artstyle you can’t really tell who’s who if not for the iconic composition of the scenes depicted… at which point why not forego the attempt at protraits and make it more minimalist?
So way later in the day I was reminded of a… bad experience in the past with someone and while I winced it was shockingly easy to get hit by. Today’s reading feels like a reflection of that.
Today I wanted to take it easy, my feet were starting to bother me ever so slightly after all.
So after working for a while I decided to get JS Burger and while I was in the area take some pics at the park.
As it turns out, the change to the menus where the non-chese version is a separate one was apparently chain-wide since they changed the menu here too. It was as good as always though.
Once at the park they had this exhibit that looked like the Tower of the Sun just had a bunch of eggs and it was a cute as it was ominous as it was hilarious.
The park was packed as expected but the ambiance of it all was neat. One thing I love about this season is that there’s so much… joy in the air, I guess.
Then I took some pics with Sol and I’m sorry but she HAS to wear glasses now what the fuck.
Here’s a couple of outtakes too. Sol’s best angle is from above, usually, so I had to figure an angle that was more “from above” without being from above or else I wouldn’t see the tree in the frame.
Also, here’s a side by side with last year. I’m trying to remember when and how I realized how to highlight the eye color (it’s all in the flash’s settings) or even why posing suddenly got better but… I guess that’s what practice does…
I also have no clue how her hair got to look so slick either.
The one problem was that by the time I was taking these it was already around 6PM and it was getting dark, so… remember how I said I wanted to take it wasy today?
Fuck it, let’s go to a different spot because Luna wouldn’t let me hear the end of it if I left her out.
The funny thing with Luna, however, is that I’ve taken so many pics with her for so long that I already have a feel for her best angles and most natural poses. Unlike the Sol one which had me going all around her and finding the best side, with Luna it was like bam bam wham boom done.
I spent more time solving her loose thigh than finding a good angle.
Here you can see how I’ve not missed a year with her since 2022 and all the improvements that have happened in the meantime.
There was one last set I wanted to do though.
I didn’t notice in the moment how Luna’s skirt bends or the fact that Luna is slightly blurrier but they’re not egregious problems, in fact, I kinda like how soft the blur makes her look.
Here’s a couple of fun outtakes from this one though:
First was the usual line of sight adjustment, but then I realized that from this angle Luna would be the one taking the front.
So I make them switch places and then notice Sol’s underwear peeking through. That’s not a problem, the problem is that Sol wouldn’t leave that so… openly.
Instead she would make the token effort to cover herself while knowing full well a bit of it is still peeking out. The shift also result in that super good change to her hand where she’s covering her mouth a bit.
Honestly, I think the other small details I mentioned earlier slipped by me because the composition of everything else felt so good I was excited and thought it perfect, and there’s something to be said about that.
I then dragged my pained muscles back home to rest. It was a nice day all in all.