Today I used the Real Talk Tarot.
It’s a deck meant to have that sort of more modern flair to itself. I was kinda surprised it didn’t offer options for The Lovers like other examples. The cards are good in their meaning… though Judgment confuses me. I THINK it’s meant to represent therapy? But the many speech bubbles immediately made me think instead of Jdgment as in Judgemental People.
Using one of those chairs where you lay down would’ve probably been a better fit. Even if it’s not something therapists actually use that much it IS an image recognizable with therapists and Tarot is all about those archetypes, the same archetypes that make me associate a bunch of speech bubbles with chat apps or social media.
Also, here’s a slightly amusing story. In this deck The Empress is a black woman. This isn’t a problem at all, if anything, I actually welcome how these more modern decks add more variety to the skin colors of the people in the cards. As much as I liked the Alchemia Tarot from yesterday, rendering the peopl in the cards in a more modern style or higher resolution just highlights how… White a Tarot deck can be.
I bring it up, however, because I’ve noticed that these more modern decks always decide to pick The Empress as the one to become a black woman. And the cynical part of me immediately goes to assuming that it’s because The Empress is traditionally a Blonde Lady and it’s just the easiest counterpoint to make.
“Always” is a big statement to make, however, and in this sort of topic you’d need to back up your words, and that’s when I realized… do I really want to go through all my decks, one by one, for just this specific petty reason? How would my life be improved in any way if I did that compared to fulfilling any other of the many tasks and stuff I want to do?
As I was storing a couple of loose decks, I did see the Star Spinner Tarot from a couple of days ago and in that one The Empress is indeed a black woman again… and that’s when I realized just how pointless the endeavor would’ve been. At best I’d have one petty thing to point out every so often like asymmetrical backs and not only did I stop pointing out asymmetrical backs anyways, unlike that one “why is this card always a black woman” is not a statement I’m comfortable even entertaining as a recurrent bit.
By the way, The Pictorial Key To Tarot (A. E. Waite’s writings on the symbolism for every card) doesn’t mention at any point that she has to be a blonde white woman. It mentions a scepter with the world and fields of corn, though.
For today’s reading THAT MAN HOLDING A KNIFE IN A CAR IS THE FUNNIEST SHIT I’VE SEEN THIS WEEK.
*ahem* Today’s reading advises that the key emotional assuredness is to temper your initiative with independence. “To be self-assured, make sure you’re not going to bat for something you didn’t sign up for”.
I had singing lessons today finally. The main takeaway from it today was lip movement. More specifically… uh… lip movement forwards basically.
For those that don’t know, the way you move your lips is very important not just for enunciation but also for control of all the air leaving your mouth. I already had been practicing opening my mouth more (though there’s still a weird reflexive resistance to show my teeth as it were), and I today I wasseeing what happens when you add more forward movement while at it.
Learning about it is easy, practicing it until I don’t have to think about it is the time-consuming part.
There wasn’t much novelty today afterwards aside from working. One noteworthy thing, however is that ブラックメタルu-1, a DLsite circle I’ve brought up a couple of times announced that all but two of their games (the two most recent ones) would be delisted.
It was a bit of a bummer in general, the reason mentioned was that they weren’t happy with the quality of their past work. And to be honest I can see that. Their art style is very simple, that’s arguably a lot of the appeal to me, but testing out their most recent game with one from before that was actually coded in an older version of RPG Maker side by side, there’s actually a lot of improvement that you might not notice at a glance.
It was nice to see people in the comments be like “well, it’s sensei’s wish and should be respected”. But I was also surprised to see so many people comment that they play the games frequently, because I do too, like I said before there’s just something about a harem house that a mere recollection room doesn’t replicate.
There’s a doll event tomorrow and I gotta drag my ass to Tokyo on Monday, so there’s that to look forward to.