2017-09-29 4:46:23 ¶ ●

## Here's a suggestion that's pretty simple: switch Aradia and Snowman, for the reasons already admitted in Death & Hanged Man's descriptions wrt them. Hanged Man being willful is important imo. Love the project & your description for The Lovers and Justice makes me die in a good way

Our second choice for the Hanged Man was actually Rose’s mom (and this was one of the decisions that took the longest—Hanged Man deliberations lasted a few days longer than any of the other cards). Both Snowman and beta Roxy are characters who are forced into stagnant, domestic roles at the will of a man (Snowman by Lord English, and Mom by Grandpa), waiting around and performing a supporting role until their eventual, inevitable death, slain at the altar of a greater purpose. In this sense, both characters reflect the “waiting period/inactivity/martyrdom” meaning of the Hanged Man. Although Mom’s decision to take a supporting role was more willful than Snowman’s—Mom at least seemed to love Rose and tried to connect to her, however unsuccessfully—neither of them really had much of a choice in the matter. Eventually we settled on Snowman because we thought she was important enough to justify a place in the major arcana, and because Roxy already had two cards. (Additionally, the Hanged Man and the World are seen in some decks as counterparts/inversions of each other—their legs are in the same pose, but the World is upright while the Hanged Man is upside down—and we liked the contrast between Snowman and Echidna: one party an agent of the death of a universe, the other of its birth.)

We talked it over a little bit, and while we can definitely see Aradia as the Hanged Man—particularly her army of robo-clones—Snowman as Death doesn’t really fit. Death, as a card, has a literal meaning—the end of a life—but it also represents rebirth, renewal, and immortality. For Aradia, death is a lifelong fascination, a constant which always leads her to a renewed and reborn self, ultimately guiding her to becoming one of the only two Sgrub players to achieve God Tier. Death is not a negative card, or a sign of ill tidings; depending on the context it is one of the most fortuitous cards to draw in a reading. Aradia, who is very much alive, and who intends to stay that way; Aradia, who sees death as an old friend and an agent of change rather than a grim shadow, is a great fit for this reading. Although Snowman undergoes changes in Homestuck—first the Black Queen, deposed and exiled, and then bound by Lord English to the Alternian universe frog—these changes aren’t at the fore of her narrative, the same way they are Aradia’s. (Snowman is also a character who rejects transformation and change, in a very literal sense: she refuses to wear the trolls’ prototyped ring, which is what allows Jack to depose her in the first place.)