Tag: mine

Is there a reason that you use the tag ‘q slur’ when your blog explicitly states it is for “LGBTQIA+ characters”? I guess what I’m a bit confused and hurt by is that you include Q in the acronym and then tag my identity as if it’s something shameful or other.

ya-pride:

Thank you for sending in this ask. Our first and foremost goal is to make sure everyone is represented and respected. While we use the word “queer” in in our acronym and posts, we heard from several followers that they found the word hurtful and triggering. Because of this, we started tagging posts with this word as “q-slur” in case anyone in the community might wish to avoid the word. However, we want you to know that we respect your identity. We’ve taken your concern into consideration, and are now going to tag posts containing this word as “queer” instead of as “q-slur” to avoid further confusion and hurt. Thank you for trusting us with this comment, and we hope that you continue to find YA Pride a safe and inclusive space. Best!

Thank you.

So the comic I had pretty much resigned myself that I would never own in the format I wanted? Apparently the universe decided that I should have it after all. I mean I most definitely didn’t get it for FREE, but I was able to get it. It’s beautiful. It’s not coming out of the plastic until I’m ready to cover it, but I can wait that long.

Seriously heavy, seriously beautiful, and so glad to have this to go with my Jessica Jones blu ray.

Next to buy in the series, The Pulse, but that’s never been hard to find for a reasonable price. Alias was just ridiculously hard to get. Even the copy I found was a fluke – it came in a delivery to a comic store but wasn’t part of their order. They’d tried to get some months before, but couldn’t. Then, there it was. And there I was, in a comic book store over a hundred kilometres from where I live, a comic book store I didn’t know existed and stumbled across completely by accident less than half an hour from closing time. And they let me layby it, since I was too broke to buy it outright. And all those things had to happen for me to have this book. Amazing.

I know living through abuse isn’t a fucking competition, but I’d like to be able to tell myself, when the spectre of ‘BUT OTHERS HAD IT WORSE THAN YOU’ rises, “Yes, but what happened to you still fucking sucked” and have it somehow stick for good, rather than it being like a post-it note that I have to keep putting up again and again.

After I bought my two big decks, I saw this listing on eBay. And I figured, what the heck? It’s about three bucks. It’s called either Destiny Tarot or Secret of Destiny Tarot, depending on which part of the box you read.

If the whole deck had been like the minor arcarna, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. They’re essentially pip cards. the pictures don’t mean anything. The whole suit of swords have swords, and the Ace, King, Queen, Knight and Page of Cups have cups, but none of the Wands or Pentacles have symbology. They’re just anime girls, not posed to be anything other than pictures of girls.

Why I bought this deck? The major arcana. The listing didn’t even have pictures of the whole deck, but those major cards I could see and identify? I loved. See The Hanged Man? How she’s hanging, but in a delicate cradle of roots or branches. And the Sun, Moon, and Star? The Star is my card. And I looked at that eBay listing with a picture of that tiny, spiral galaxy in a bottle… I bought the deck on the strength of that card alone.

As you can see, especially from my first post, it’s tiny! The cards are literally half the size of my Celtic Dragon Tarot. They’re significantly smaller than playing cards. The card stock is thin, but it feels nice and the printing is lovely quality. As you can see from the closeups, there’s a super subtle patterning of almost black on black like wallpaper behind all the images. And ignore the listing, this is a FULL 78 CARD DECK. Actually, it’s 80, because there are two cards with information on them of some kind, and a paper information booklet. No idea what they say, because they’re in Chinese, but comparing the page headers with the symbols on the cards made me able to sort out the major arcana, which, unlike the minor, didn’t have any English at all. The 22 cards, as far as I can tell are a standard Rider/Waite/Smith order, and range from fairly conventional depictions (Wheel of Fortune) to unconventional (Strength – Thor’s Hammer, The Chariot – a lightning charged snapping turtle with a clubbed tail).

Was it worth it? Absolutely. It was cheap. It’s portable. It’s got some lovely unconventional cards and it’s going to help me to learn how to identify my minor arcana just based on the suit and number rather than the pictures, and therefore interpret without that prompting. And as a bonus, they got to me about a month sooner than eBay thought they might. 🙂

So, replacing my teenage deck feels like coming home.

I just love watercolour art – I grew up reading the Alan Lee illustrated Lord of the Rings – and I also love decks that aren’t as focussed on people, because as a queer person, most decks I saw as a young person were incredibly heteronormative. I didn’t get that vibe from the Celtic Dragon Tarot. The fantasy art, the grounded earthiness of the pictures, felt a lot more like something that spoke to me than the traditional Rider/Waite/Smith decks or Angel cards that were pretty much all I could find otherwise in my town’s New Age shops in the ‘90s.

The minor arcana are just as lovely as the major, and the four suits have subtle elemental imagery woven in – wands/air, swords/fire, cups/water, and pentacles/earth. It feels like a really calming deck to me, and I have to admit that I like that the light colours will balance out against the two other decks, both of which are fairly dark.

I’m just so happy to have my deck back.

New decks! YAAAS

So, I ordered some decks.

The Celtic Dragon Tarot was my first deck. I was a teenager. I’ve forgotten whether it was a gift or I bought it myself. But I loved it, and it was one of the many things I lost that I thought was stored safely at my mother’s house. (It wasn’t.) So, I decided I needed to replace it. It’s anchored to a very specific time of my life.

The Wild Unknown Tarot spoke to my self as I am now. I clicked with it immediately. I knew I’d work well with it, even with it coming from the other side of the world, just having seen pictures.

And then there was the tiny deck I impulse-bought from eBay for like, $3. 🙂

So far, just the tiny deck and the Celtic Dragon Tarot have arrived. So here are some pics! (I hit Tumblr’s image limit trying to post the detailed deck pics, so I’m going to post those separately.)

Excite

So two of the three decks I ordered arrived this morning! The Celtic Dragon Tarot (replacement for the first deck I had when I was a teenager that got destroyed) and a super cheap tiny deck from China bought on eBay called Destiny Tarot/Secret of Destiny Tarot. They’re both lovely, and I’ve taken a bunch of pictures that I’ll post later. So happy! Now I’m just waiting on the one that is brand new to me and speaks to my adult soul, The Wild Unknown Tarot.

I am still tarotless, but I found my Oracle and Knowledge cards, so that’s something. (They survived because I had them with me, not stored with Mum.)

Animal Spirits Knowledge Cards by Susan Seddon Boulet
Goddesses Knowledge Cards by Susan Seddon Boulet
Spirit Oracle by Toni Carmine Salerno (open box, Blessings card visible)

So, state of me

Mental health – still blows, but is somewhat more bearable than three months ago

Talking therapy – is still useless for me, so I’ve finished my six sessions I get for free and am going back to reading books. Currently reading You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Crazy, or Stupid?, and have The Body Keeps The Score waiting in the wings.

Exercise – is something I should be doing, again, but I’ve been struggling to leave the house, so, ugh.

As for more mental health stuff, I’m trying to get back into drawing and colouring, and man, it is so hard after not doing it for about ten years.

Also, I found my old deck of tarot cards in the one of the boxes of belongings I’d left at home when I moved out and mum totally neglected, and it was utterly destroyed.

Yeah.

So I’ve ordered a replacement of the old deck I had, and ordered a new one too, both on Mum’s dime, since it was her fault my stuff was trashed, and she offered to replace things. There’s a lot I’m not going to bother with, and a lot I flat out CAN’T replace, but I wanted my damn deck.

I don’t tend to use decks like a lot of people do. I don’t think they’re magic or sentient or anything (no problem if you do), but I do think you can find answers by using a draw to look at your question sideways, if that makes sense, and using a card to make you think of a solution or look at a situation differently. So that’s what I’ll be trying to do with them. The replacement deck will take at least three weeks to get here, the new one will probably take over a month, so I’ve got some time to think about how to use them before they arrive.

I bought some remnant fabric from Spotlight in dark grey panne velvet, black satin and poly chiffon that’s patterned in grey, green and purple. They’re so I can make a cloth to lay out readings on and make some storage bags for the cards when I’m not using them. The bags at least will have to wait until I’ve got the decks so I know the dimensions and can make them the right size.

Anyone out there interested in tarot who has anything to suggest that might be helpful for me getting started, bearing in mind I tend to be an instinctive reader, not a rule follower, and my decks are going to be fairly gender neutral ones open to intepretation outside conventional cis/het/neurotypical norms?