This is a collaborative Tarot Deck of the major arcana exclusively featuring the women of Homestuck.
Artist applications will be opening October 1st through the 22nd.
Applications will be open to anyone! If you are thinking about applying, please take the time to check the card assignments on our blog. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot us an ask
In the meantime, you can help us out by spreading the word and reblogging this post!
Applications open October 1st! We will be posting a link to the Google form once they open
It depends on the reception this project receives, but not yet! If we receive an overwhelming number of applicants we might expand, but honestly it would probably be an entirely separate process from this project
There was a team of about a dozen people who deliberated over the card assignments, but the project is being organized by @arosoup and @snilm!
We’ll be making a post with a link to a Google form when apps open!
We’ll ask for things like a link to some examples of your artwork and your tarot card preferences, most importantly
Since this project only focuses on the major arcana, we decided to keep it to the most important characters and especially the characters that had significant impact on the plot.
We put a lot of deliberation into these decisions, and the first thing we did was make a list of Essential Ladies that had to be included, and unfortunately Nepeta and Feferi didn’t make the cut-neither did any beforus trolls besides aranea. (which isn’t to say we don’t like those characters, but they are objectively less important)
While i’m sure there could be an argument that say… the handmaid would also work as death, it makes more sense to have that be a character with more screentime and bearing on the plot
IF this project expands to the minor arcana we would definitely include more secondary characters
We’re going to pick 22 artists, one for each of the major arcana
Whoops, sorry about that—the card assignments page is basically just a copy-paste from our shared google doc with all the back-and-forth arguments omitted, so some of it is out of context. It’ll be replaced by a more polished version before applications open up.
In the Rider-Waite and derivative decks, the titular Lovers are the Biblical Adam and Eve, before their expulsion from Paradise. Analogically, Rose and Kanaya are the Adam and Eve of Earth C: Kanaya is responsible for hatching the new mother grub, ensuring the propagation of her species, with Rose as her partner who works with her and the other jade-blooded trolls to ensure the safe birth of each new brood. Next to Adam is a burning tree, representing the flames of physical passion—the way Kanaya’s skin uncontrollably lights up when she gets flustered around Rose; and next to Eve is the serpent, the Devil in disguise, making the lovers imperfect and weighing them down with earthly temptations—such as Rose’s alcoholism, which is exacerbated by her anxieties about her relationship with Kanaya and which plagues her all through the Game Over timeline. (In the Rider-Waite deck, the Devil card also depicts Adam and Eve, in chains and doomed by the sins of the flesh—the Devil is represented in the ladystuck deck by the Condesce, who was responsible for Rose and Kanaya’s deaths in Game Over.)
When drawn, the Lovers represents a close interpersonal relationship—usually a romantic one. It also represents duality or a union: Rose and Kanaya are the ultimate icon of the union of Earth and Alternian cultures that Earth C manifests, and their first kiss as well as their wedding took place on 10/25 (the sum of 4/13 and 6/12). It also represents choices—coming of age, finding oneself, and a conflict with heavy consequences. Rose and Kanaya’s relationship, while ultimately healing and enriching both of their lives, coincides with a lot of radical and uncomfortable changes for each of them (their first face-to-face meeting follows both of them undergoing a metamorphosis of death-and-rebirth: Rose’s god tiering and Kanaya’s vampirism; Rose’s alcoholism as mentioned previously; the depressive stagnation of the three-year meteor journey; Rose and Kanaya each encountering a mother-figure as a peer: Roxy for Rose and Porrim for Kanaya. And so on). Usually, the Lovers indicates that someone will have to make a difficult decision, or a major change, but that the rewards for doing so will be well worth the upheaval.
When drawn inverted, the Lovers indicates a relationship with some sort of disharmony or conflict, usually of communication. Of course, Rose and Kanaya’s relationship is not perfect, and is fraught with shortcomings and miscommunications due to either party’s hesitance. Rose starts drinking because she’s so wrecked with anxiety over her relationship, Kanaya is unwilling or unable to talk to Rose about that addiction because she’s too afraid to rock the boat (even though they both know Rose has a problem). Rose nearly forgets their first date, Kanaya wasn’t even aware their meeting was a date—and Rose dies without ever having told Kanaya she loves her. The inverted Lovers indicates that the honeymoon phase of a relationship has passed (the mutual flirting of their first face-to-face meeting at the green sun) and been eclipsed by the hard work that is ultimately necessary to sustain a relationship—work that neither of them was able to put forth in the Game Over timeline.
This card is ruled by Libra and traditionally depicts a female figure holding both a sword and a scale. Her scales are balanced, indicating sound logic and reasoning—and her sword is upright, indicating that she is ready and able to punish the wicked. (Lady Justice is also usually depicted blindfolded.) This card, no matter how it is drawn, indicates that somebody’s gotten—or will get—what’s coming to them. It is the card of karma and inevitable outcomes.
Upright, Justice indicates impartiality, and that justice will be served. When Terezi slays Vriska, she sees herself as Lady Justice: Vriska has sown disorder and carnage in the Sgrub group as well as on the meteor, and if allowed to continue her actions will result in the death of Terezi herself. Terezi loves Vriska, but when she stabs her, she’s acting not with her heart, but with her mind (or her Mind): at the end of the day, Vriska must die so that the remaining trolls (and the potential for the entire species) can survive. Vriska’s life has been marked by bloodshed everywhere she goes, and her death—reinforced by the decision of her God Tier clock—is her ultimate comeuppance. And her death does, indeed, bring law and order to the meteor, at least for a little while.
When inverted, Justice indicates that the querent—or someone close to them—is cheating. Someone is lying or dodging accountability, and when karma eventually gets them they may not understand what they did wrong. It tells you to accept the consequences of your actions, and to make a change before it is too late (like how post-retcon Vriska ends her tendency to solve her problems by murdering them). Justice inverted may also indicate a flaw in a black-and-white moral mindset, and a need to open your mind: Terezi saw her conflict with Vriska as having only two options (let her live, and doom herself and Karkat; or to kill her and spare her own life), but she eventually finds a third option through the retcon (impeding Vriska and changing her mind while letting her live).
Feel free to send asks with suggestions, but bear in mind that the current assignments were settled on by a team of over a dozen people (with experience close-reading tarot interpretations and history as well as Homestuck analysis) over the course of two months. If there is a character you feel would be better suited for a given card, feel free to suggest it, but chances are pretty good that it has already been considered, as most cards went through several iterations before the assignments listed on the blog were decided.
Here are a few questions which were considered in each assignment, and which you should be prepared to answer if you have an alternative suggestion:
The beta girls are the most prominent in the deck, with three cards each, because they’re the girls which have the most longevity and presence in Homestuck’s narrative. The alpha girls—Jane, Roxy, and Callie—get two each (with one of Jane’s cards being Nannasprite, and one of Callie’s being her doomed adult self). The central troll girls (Kanaya, Vriska, and Terezi) also get two each, while Aradia (who is more important than Feferi and Nepeta, but not a member of the “core four” trolls) gets one. PM and Snowman (the most important female exiles) each get one, the Condesce (the series’ primary female antagonist) gets one, and Aranea (the most important dancestor) gets one.
If the response to the major arcana is positive, we will expand the project to the minor arcana, and that’s a whole 56 cards to fill, so Nepeta and Feferi and all of the other ancestors/dancestors/carapaces/other minor female characters (perhaps the Beautiful Wonan?) will be incorporated. But the major arcana was decided based on which characters and scenes fit the meanings and symbolism of the cards, as well as to give proportional representation to Homestuck’s most important girls.
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.)
Yes there will be! We’ll be informing the artists via email and we’ll send out a link to the server then.
We’ll release the application around noon CST tomorrow
I don’t think we have made this clear up until this point, so I’m sorry if there was any confusion- but this is going to be juried. We’ll be picking artists based on who we think will be able to best represent a particular card- it’s not first come first served.