You have no idea how excited I am because today’s deck is The Mage Tarot. Mage as in Mage: The Ascension.
I don’t have the space here to gush about Mage or World of Darkness, but here’s what you need to know: WoD is the 90s as hell dark urban fantasy counterpart to Dungeons and Dragons. You might actually know it from Vampire: The Masquerade.
Mage is a different line within that setting that focuses on the humans that realize rules are made up and “what goes up must go down” is more of a… very strongly enforced suggestion.
If that intrigued you, do yourself a favorr and look up the game and join me in the “TYPE-MOON is just a homebrew MtA campaign” table.
This deck is actually a printed on demand replica of a deck they made back in the day for the game that you can get at DrivethruRPG. There’s still original ones on ebay but we’re talking $100+ vs like… $20.
What I love about this deck is that it has its own imagery and character but the cards manage to keep the “conceptual silhouette” of the original card.
Let’s use two examples of today’s reading.
For this one I saw a Ten, I saw two big figures and two small ones and went “Well there’s only one ‘Ten of’ that features that, the Ten of Cups”.
This one I like even more because even before you parse the sunflower to the right, the black cat, or the fact that there’s only one Queen card that faces forwards, the general composition reminds you of the card itself without copying it in any overt manner.
As for the deck quality, the cards themselves are thin but not flimsy and they glide shockingly nicely on your hands. My only complaint and honestly it’s not the biggest one, really, is that the box is also slightly flimsy though it didn’t cause ME any transportation issues, but also what’s going on with this folding??????
As for today’s reading, it is SHOCKINGLY clear.
So let’s follow each card. The Ten of Cups is traditionally about harmony and connection, it depicts what’s presumably a family of four celebrating, so reversed it might reflect either discordance or a disconnect, the sort of thing that separates such a family.
I’ve talked about the Queen of Wands… shockingly often lately, and that reversed form depicting that internal self-confidence, the kind that won’t budge even when others push against it.
Finally the Knight of Wands, depicting in its Reversed form the pent up creative energy that would normally lead you to chase those projects and passion in its upright position.
Here’s the thing, those that follow this blog (thank you, by the way) recently saw me a couple of days ago talking about how disconnected I feel from The Games Industry™, and how I hate being tied to just making games and such.
So imagine my surprise getting this read talking about “an outside disconnect and pent up creative energy that you’re willing to chase regardless” right as I’m writing the new Forsaken Gaia chapter. The project that I chase because even if nobody will read it, I love writing and I want to have an outlet that’s pure writing.
Pure creative writing, I mean.
Pure casual creative writing, I mean.
Okay so the thing with that project is that it’s what I call a “sketch novel”, not sketch as in comedy but sketch as in drawing.
If you’ve ever seen Japanese artists post something with “rkgk”, it’s the same principle as that.
If Forsaken Gaia was a Big Proper Product I would do more planning (I already plan a lot but I’d have even more outlined in advance), I would write everything before releasing instead of writing individual chapters, I would get an editor, build up a hype/release cycle, probably get them on a predictable schedule, etc etc etc.
In essence, Forsaken Gaia would’ve been a fanfic if I was the fanfic sort of person. My problem is that ever since I was a child I would start something that was in essence a fanfic before going “Wait, why am I limiting myself?” and making up my own thing that was nonetheless clearly adjacent to whatever I was into at the time.
There was another project with a similar concept that I wanted to do but things got stuck with that one. It’s not forgotten though, it’ll have its time.
The big news today is the American elections. I will not share what I think because I’m not American and I’d rather not act like I know anything about politics that I’m not familiar with no matter how much I hear from the outside.
A respect that Americans have never spared for Venezuelan protests-… aaaaaaaaand that should give you an idea on why I’d rather err on the side of “respect through not running my mouth”.
My day itself started slightly late, whether from some other pent up exhaustion or the walk from yesterday I ended up sleeping like 11 or so hours.
I got absorbed running a few errands at the start of the day and by the time I was wondering on whether or not to go out for food it was almost 5PM and I had a chiropractor appointment.
It had been over a month since I last went and I was feeling it. I was so stiff man, you have no idea. Also, whatever is causing the edge of my left foot to hurt sometimes seems to be tied to other leg muscles.
I should start doing stretches at home as a supplement to that, I don’t wanna get to 60 and become one of those old people that curve into an upside down U shape.
Afterwards I went to my usual chinese restaurant and this yakisoba Disappeared, I was honestly shocked how quickly I devoured it.
I’m a small eater, have been all my life. If I eat lots it tends to bee in small bursts rather than in one singular meal. The point is that I was kinda worried that not having had a proper meal before then would make it harder to eat the whole thing.
By the way, almost as if continuing a trend from yesterday I found another bill that needed to be paid out of nowhere. This one was more of the “it arrives at the start of the month” variety at least.
This was the internet bill, and I’m making this my mental note to talk later (probably tomorrow) about when I ended up without internet earlier in the year.
Beyond that it was an uneventful day, mostly catching up with work and life, with some writing here and there as mentioned.
Oh yeah, I finished Braving Britannia, the first volume at least since there’s a second one. It was overall a great read. I came in wary but came out not only pleased but impressed. It’s a super well written book.
Thinking about which one to start next I have three options on queue: A trilogy about the fall of WWE, a book about Nietzche, and an introduction to Paradise Lost by CS Lewis of Narnia fame.
I’ll probably go for the third one since it’s the shortest one and then see how I feel afterwards.