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cookinguptales · 1 year

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wwdits tarot: the fool

Well, now that I've finished tarot weekend… time to talk about my WWDITS tarot ideas!

I wrote a couple posts about how I would assign a few of the major arcana if I were making a WWDITS tarot deck, and a few people asked me for my thoughts for the rest of the deck.

And… I’m down! I collect tarot decks and studied tarot in college, so I’m a giant nerd about this shit. I’ll be happy to talk to you about my ideas.

(Just remember that you asked for this.)

Because some of these are fairly complex, I decided to just do one meta post per card so I can talk about both the card symbolism and the character in question. Some are gonna be simple and silly, others will have quite a bit of thought behind them. I'm working off the Rider-Smith-Waite tarot for this, like most decks do, so that's the imagery I'll be discussing.

So uh. Yeah. Let’s get started with 0. The Fool.

(under a cut bc this is long and has images)

You might think I’m going too literal with this one, but I promise everything I’m about to say will make sense when I’m done. For The Fool, I’ve chosen Sean Rinaldi.

You might be thinking I’ve done this because Sean is kind of a dopey character. Foolish, if you will.

NO.

The Fool in tarot is a card of fresh beginnings, innocence, and infinite potential. The imagery is usually of a young man starting out on a journey. He’s young and carefree and naive. He hasn’t had the experience he’ll have soon, and he doesn’t know what’s coming — but he's ready to find out.

I chose Sean because in many ways, his friendship with the vampires has given him a new lease on life. The Sean we saw at the beginning of 2.03 was tired and irritable. He’d lost a lot of the innocent happiness and optimism he’d had when he was younger, as well as the kindness and affection that had accompanied it. Charmaine pretty much said as much when she talked about what a great guy he’d been when they were dating.

But after getting his brain scramblied, Sean really was able to take fresh new steps into a life he was living as if for the first time. And since then, he’s managed to get new friends, new business opportunities (more… or less…), new adventures, etc. He’s come to love the vampires and be loved in return. He has a great relationship with his wife and his friends. He’s happy, and there’s a sort of carefree spring in his step that suits The Fool well.

Unlike a character like Guillermo, who had infinite potential at the beginning of the series but has already made quite a bit of progress through his journey, Sean still feels fresh, new, and full of possibility. He’s literally pretty foolish and silly, yes, but he’s also just beginning to dip his toes into this supernatural world — and I strongly suspect that he’ll end up in there pretty deep by the end of the series.

There’s also a sense that there’s more to Sean than has been fully revealed, especially regarding his ability to withstand hypnosis, and I think we’re really just starting to see his journey unfold.

He approaches the vampires with friendly naïveté and seems to enjoy new activities — as long as they don’t get too scary. Even though he’s constantly getting into weird, dangerous, and scary situations (like… bankruptcy) he seems to bounce back with an enviable enthusiasm and joy.

In addition to all that, The Fool (archetypally speaking) is a figure that seems silly and naive but has a tendency to be able to see things more keenly than others and is able to speak truth in situations where others aren't allowed. I think Sean slides rather neatly into this as well; not only can he resist hypnosis more and more as the show goes on, sometimes he'll say something remarkably perceptive — and you have to wonder how much he's really picking up on what's going on around him.

(Plus... I just think it’s really funny that the Rider-Waite-Smith card has a little puppy on it and he reacted so very badly to the vampires' “puppy pile”. RIP my sweet cheese, my rotten soldier, my good-time boy.)

So if I were to design a card with Sean... The Fool is usually on a cliff with his bindle, and the imagery reminds me a lot of Sean's look during The Pine Barrens. The gun over his shoulder and the way he's dressed for a journey, a little companion at his side... I think I'd try to adopt some of that imagery but I'd add in some bats for good measure.

IN CONCLUSION, due to his relationship with the vampires, Sean has become what is essentially a blank slate that is constantly being wiped clean. But he seems happy that way, naive and fresh and thrilled with the world, and his story — his new story — is just getting started.

Tune in next time for The Magician!

wwdits tarot masterpost

#wwdits #wwdits meta #sean rinaldi #wwdits tarot thoughts #I have a notepad with all 22 of these already written down y'all like I have THOUGHT about this

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megaawkwardhuman · 4 months

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hey hey happy new year everyone!

sooooo idk how common this is but I saw a few people doing this like "one drawing per month this year" thing and thought it would be neat to put something like that together!

note:so there's no drawings for january or febuary due to me not picking up pixel art after not doing it in a year until march

below are links to every drawing here due to 1 many having to be cropped and 2 the quality not being the best here

march: the first wwdits bunny/bunny memo drawing

april: guide tarot card

may: tattoo memo fanart

june: redraw of one of the good omens season 2 posters

july: cuck horn chair nandor

august: autism creature colin robinson

september: wellness center nandor bunny

october: slayer guillermo bunny redraw (as a part of cringetober)

november: wellness center car scene redraw (fun fact apparently this was the ONLY pixel art I drew in november)

december: mothman memo glowing eyes gif

#ngl it was tough to pick out just one for most of the months #I never realized just how many drawings I'd draw per month #let alone how many I still like!#you go past me #what we do in the shadows #wwdits #wwdits fanart #guillermo de la cruz #nandor the relentless #the guide #colin robinson #good omens #gomens #good omens fanart #aziraphale #anthony j crowley #*funny tag for my art*#bun stuff #happy new year y'all :]

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cookinguptales · 1 year

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wwdits tarot: the magician

Well, some people read and enjoyed the last post, so here’s the next meta post in my WWDITS tarot series.

Last time was the beginning of the journey with The Fool, so now we move onto I. The Magician.

Now… I feel like this one was one of those no-brainers. But I really like this one because it suits the character well on a literal but also metaphorical level.

(Under a cut for length and images)

Who else could I choose for The Magician? It’s the Djinn, of course.

On a very literal level… yes, of course, he’s an actual, literal magician. More than any other character, including the witches, he deals in magic.

All that aside, though, we have to turn to the actual meaning of this card. The Magician is a card that’s all about manifestation. When you see it in a reading, it usually indicates that a time of great productivity, inspiration, and/or creativity is about to come upon you. It means that you should go for your goal, because it’s a perfect time to achieve it. It’s a card of willpower and desire and making things happen.

The Djinn, of course, is all about making things happen. He really does work as The Magician; he takes all the desires of his masters and makes them manifest. He makes their dreams into a reality through force of will alone.

But… when reversed, The Magician is a card to watch out for. It can be about greed and trickery and becoming drunk on power. It can be about using all that creativity, willpower, and ingenuity in unethical ways. In short, it’s exactly what the Djinn punishes. He manipulates wishes to punish the greedy, the selfish, and the corrupt. He offers his master anything in the entire world — but will punish them for misuse of that power.

He’s a fascinating character in this role because he really does manage to embody both the upright and reversed meanings of this card, the positive and negative aspects of inspired will. Of course it’s good to push for what you want and use creative and stubborn means to achieve that goal… but it’s possible to use that power for ill, as well. And if you do that, so will the Djinn.

The Djinn will make all your wishes come true. He will make your dreams manifest. But never forget: he is the creative one. He is the tricky one. And his masters always learn by the end that the wishes have never followed their will — they always follow the Djinn’s.

And the Djinn’s desire is to make his masters learn the true weight of a wish come true. For better or for worse.

It’s his willpower, his creativity, his ingenuity, and his raw skill that actually end up driving this card. Not his masters’.

They always figure that out eventually.

The hard way.

Anyway, as for symbolism, the RSW version of this card is complicated.

The Magician stands before a table full of all the symbols of the minor arcana — the pentacle, the cup, the sword, the wand. And he raises his own wand above it all. Above that still hovers the symbol for infinity. He is a creature of infinite powerful potential, and he will use all of the resources at his disposal to get what he wants. All around him, flowers are blooming; this symbolizes the way that he can make vines bear fruit for him.

If I were to be designing a card for the Djinn, I would have him stand before his own table of treasures: Nandor’s table in his treasure room. This is where the Djinn’s lamp was found and it’s where he seems to do a fair amount of his negotiating. I feel in some ways it’s become his domain more than Nandor’s, though the Djinn would never let him realize it.

Instead of a wand, he would hold his own object of power: his lamp.

[ETA: No, I've changed my mind. I've been convinced, it should definitely be his pen that he's holding aloft. While it may not be the source of his power, it definitely seems to be a conduit/focus of it. And it suits the wand movement better.]

And rather than standing tall and triumphant, he would have that peculiar hunch to him — you know the one. That “don’t mind me, I have no plans of my own” look. I think that unassuming, rumpled nebbishness is where his real confidence lies. He always lets his masters dig their own graves without suspecting that he’s the one holding the shovel, and I love that for him.

For the blooms around him… well, you gotta go with begonias, right? They symbolize both inspiration and caution — and I think the Djinn is best approached with both.

:')

wwdits tarot masterpost

#wwdits #wwdits meta #wwdits tarot thoughts #the djinn #wwdits tarot

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cookinguptales · 9 months

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oh by the way, the five of swords is about having a big conflict/fight/disagreement and feeling shitty about the outcome. like whether you've won the argument or lost it, you're walking away feeling lost and dejected -- because even if you "won," you've lost something much more precious than an argument.

it's one of those cards that really questions whether your fight is worth it, and if your position is so important that it's worth alienating people who are important to you.

(and... it also sometimes carries a connotation of lying or otherwise shady behavior.)

so... I'm just... really trying not to think about Guillermo walking away clutching that railing...

I was mostly joking before about the progression of swords re: s5 of wwdits, but now I'm just really hoping we don't have some kind of disastrous ten of swords situation. :')

#wwdits #wwdits spoilers #never thought that my wwdits tarot posts would come in handy again but #here we are aren't we huh

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cookinguptales · 1 year

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Okay, so the tarot meta poll is done now, got way more votes than I expected, really. I think I might've gotten more votes on that poll than notes on any of the meta posts, so I can only assume that some of the people who voted aren't actually reading the posts? I guess that does color the way I look at the results a little, if it wasn't my primary audience voting, but still.

It seems like a very strong majority said to just post them whenever and not worry about spamming the tag because people can block the wwdits tarot tag if they don't want to see it. After that, I'm putting the "once a day"/"post whenever but not more than once a day" people together (which I think is fair, bc I'd clarified that the second option really meant "post once a day unless I get distracted") and that was the second largest...?

So what I'm getting from this is that y'all either want the posts more often or just genuinely don't care when I post them. Keeping that in mind, I'm gonna do the one where I try to post once a day but if I get distracted or whatever I'm not gonna sweat it.

I did have a few people say that they like the current posting schedule (and one person said they'd actually prefer it less often than it currently is) and I considered that strongly, but I think probably the best option for people in that boat is to block the tag and then just look in on it when it's comfortable for them. It was like... 17% collectively vs. 83% collectively for the other side, so that's the solution that feels fairest to me...?

I am gonna try to post once a day as much as I can because if I do that, I can get finished for my birthday. And if I do that, then we can have a fun tarot reading party to celebrate being finished with the posts and also me being old. 💜

FINALLY, I don't plan on doing this often, but I'm gonna reblog the post I made yesterday because I think some regulars missed it. I made a bunch of these posts trying to figure out the schedule and I think the actual meta post might've gotten lost in the shuffle. lmao

Anyway, thanks for all your feedback! No more long posts like this for a while. I'll just post a lil tarot meta post every day and, as always, if you don't wanna see them please block "#wwdits tarot".

#I mean either you missed the post or you guys just FOR SURE did not agree with my thoughts on laszlo lmao #wwdits tarot #tbh I usually open my inbox up to fic requests for my birthday but like #I haven't written much in the past couple months so I don't want to promise anyone anything I can't deliver #I've just been kind of sick since the medication mishap ;;#I'm doing better now than I was but it just takes a long time to build back up

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cookinguptales · 1 year

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wwdits tarot: the lovers

I’m a hopeless romantic and you all already know that. I will not apologize for anything that is about to transpire.

Let's do VI. The Lovers.

Okay, real talk tho, The Lovers is not always about literal lovers. It’s about pairs and duality. This can mean relationships -- sometimes a romantic one, sometimes just a relationship with someone else who’s important to you. Family, friends, a business partner, etc.

When it comes to the relationships reading of this card, the important part is a sense of harmony. These are two people who trust each other implicitly and communicate well. This card is usually either telling a person to depend on this relationship or work towards achieving it.

There is a secondary meaning to this card, too, though. The pair can also be a pair of choices. The card won’t tell you which to choose, but instead calls on a person to look inside for a better understanding of which path to take.

In other words, at its heart The Lovers is a card about knowing yourself. It tells you to look inside and figure out who you are and what you want. It calls for perfect openness and honesty, even when it's difficult. This will help strengthen your relationships but also help you make difficult choices.

All that out of the way… I really went back and forth on this one. I always knew that I wanted Laszlo and Nadja to be on this one; not only are they literal lovers (the lovers of all time, honestly) but they really do trust each other and communicate on a level that bewilders and charms us all.

But… after a lot of thought, I’ve decided to deviate from tradition a bit and put more than one pair on here. Some of this is my own sentimentality, I’ll admit, but I think I also want to go a little bit deeper with this card.

The Lovers, when reversed, is about disharmony, both in your relationships and within yourself. It means you don’t know who you are and it means that you’re not communicating with full honesty and understanding in your closest relationships. And when upright, the card is a tacit warning against this. It’s a card that tells us to value our relationships, but also to carefully evaluate them and whether we’re being fully open with our loved ones and cognizant of what we want.

So… I think what I want here is an example of the harmony that this card represents, but also an example of the potential that this card seeks to realize.

So I’ve decided to make this a card of harmony, but also disharmony. Emotional closeness, but also distance. Being true to yourself, but also lying to yourself to protect yourself from uncertainty.

Yeah, I want to put Nandor and Guillermo on here, too.

I’m sure I don’t have to go into a lot of detail about Laszlo and Nadja and why they belong on this card. They’ve been together for centuries, they've grown together, and they communicate very well. They are keenly aware of the other’s emotional state and every time they have to keep anything from each other, it seems to physically wound them.

What really gets me, though, is the way they’ve helped each other flourish. That detail in s4 about how, due to abuse and neglect, Laszlo had a very difficult time expressing his emotions until Nadja worked with him for hundreds of years. She saw that potential in him and she supported him until she was finally able to draw it out. And he supports (most of) her murders and harebrained schemes without question. He believes in that beautiful, fierce peasant girl that he met all those centuries ago, and he will fight anyone who tries to disparage her.

Through knowing each other, they've come to know themselves, which is really the key to The Lovers. Seeing themselves through their partner's eyes has allowed them to see truths about themselves they might not have otherwise seen, and has allowed for a kind of open confidence that both accomplish through the support of the other.

Love that for them. Love those two weirdos. ;o;

And when I look at Nandor and Guillermo now, I see the beginnings of something like that. Both of them are able to be themselves with each other in a way they can’t with anyone else, and they have a trust and dependence on one another that doesn’t always seem earned. But… they’re not all the way there yet. They aren’t fully open with each other. They don’t live in harmony together. Their communication is frankly abysmal. They aren’t quite in full card reversal but at times it feels close.

So to me, I feel like we have The Lovers card in both of these relationships, to some degree. We have the platonic ideal of the card, an almost perfect partnership where the two of them are deeply in harmony with one another… and we’ve got the kind of relationship that The Lovers feels like it’s there to treat. The kind that needs to listen to this card's advice to become its final form. The reversal that is slowly being turned upright.

There’s an inherent potential in The Lovers, and I feel like I wanted to capture that as well as the ideal definition of the card. Because just like a great relationship has helped Nadja and Laszlo understand themselves, I think Nandor and Guillermo also need to be honest with themselves so they can be honest with each other. I think that, like Nadja and Laszlo, the health of their relationship is inextricably tied to self-knowledge and the choices they make.

So… The Lovers is a card about relationships but also about knowing yourself and making choices. It’s about the end result (having a great relationship) but also the time spent getting there (learning to open up and be honest with yourself and your partner). It is a card that doesn't necessarily describe the now, but what can be.

And it's a card that sternly warns against letting lies and misunderstandings ruin your relationships.

Anyway... yeah. I want both of these relationships on the card to show the different stages of the same idea, so to speak, and for this more than any other card I have a very specific idea about imagery.

I’ll show you the RSW card first, but I’ll warn you that I’m about to make a departure.

The RSW version of this card depicts a vision of Eden. Adam and Eve and the archangel Raphael. (He is an angel of the air, and the symbol associated with this card is… well, obviously it’s Gemini. lmao) So you’ve got these two lovers, but also the tree of good/evil there to represent choice. It represents both meanings of the card.

For the vampires, though, there’s an image that immediately came to mind when I thought of The Lovers, and it’s this:

(censored for your comfort)

In WWDITS, Laszlo and Nadja are often paired together for interviews, as are Nandor and Guillermo. But while Nadja and Laszlo are often presented as a unified front (sitting close together on the couch, holding hands between chairs, standing huddled together as they plot), Nandor and Guillermo are often either posed on unfair standing or several feet apart. Maybe Nandor is sitting and Guillermo is standing to his side. Maybe Nandor is on one side of the room, in the foreground, and Guillermo is on the other, by the door. The two are sitting in separate chairs, not touching. A game of strategy lies between them. The two of them maintain a certain distance.

This framing is very consistent with both pairs.

What’s interesting to me, though, is what happens when both pairs are together in the same frame. What we sometimes get is a frame like this, where Laszlo and Nadja are together in the center of the couch, and Nandor and Guillermo are together behind the couch — but on opposite ends of it.

I’ve always thought that dichotomy was fascinating. Together and apart, but both still paired. Moreover, what gets me is that Nadja and Laszlo often have an absent-minded intimacy; they will hold hands without even looking at each other. On the other hand, Nandor and Guillermo will steal looks at each other across the room, but they do not touch. It’s an appeal for intimacy, but one that is rarely fully met.

So if I were to make a card featuring both pairs, both together and apart, I would have a scene where the four are being interviewed. Laszlo and Nadja together in the center of the couch, holding hands and turned slightly toward each other as they look at the camera. And behind them, Nandor and Guillermo behind the couch, standing several feet apart but also just barely turned toward each other. And unlike Laszlo and Nadja, who stare straight ahead, secure in their intimacy, Nandor and Guillermo are pretending that they aren’t both stealing glances at the other.

(No angels allowed! This is an antichrist-ian show, thank you.)

And who knows! Maybe one day the two of them will actually listen to the advice of The Lovers, talk to each other frankly, and end up framed more like this!

no one is allowed to make fun of me for my decisions for this card okay bye

wwdits tarot masterpost

#this ended up being meta comparing and contrasting the relationships between Laszlo/Nadja and Guillermo/Nandor whoops #well it's my meta I can do what I like #wwdits #wwdits tarot #wwdits meta #ladja #nandermo

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cookinguptales · 1 year

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wwdits tarot meta masterpost

Hi! This is a masterpost of all my WWDITS tarot meta posts along with a little FAQ about the project!

All 22 Major Arcana (and a brief post about the Minor Arcana) are now complete and on tumblr. Each card has gotten a character or theme from the show, and I've used the themes of the tarot to delve into my thoughts about each one.

I also talk about the meaning and imagery of each card, and how I would change that imagery to reflect the character I've assigned to it.

Basically, I designed a WWDITS tarot deck! But I did it by rambling about the characters for several thousand words. I hope you enjoy!

The Posts

0. The Fool (Sean) I. The Magician (The Djinn) II. The High Priestess (Lilith) III. The Empress (The Sire) IV. The Emperor (The Baron) V. The Hierophant (The Guide) VI. The Lovers (Laszlo, Nadja, Guillermo, and Nandor) VII. The Chariot (Laszlo Cravensworth) VIII. Strength (Nadja of Antipaxos) IX. The Hermit (Nandor the Relentless) X. The Wheel of Fortune (........the BBT slot machine) XI. Justice (The Vampiric Council and/or Wellington Paranormal) XII. The Hanged Man (Jackie Daytona) XIII. Death (Colin Robinson) XIV. Temperance (Derek) XV. The Devil (The Hat) XVI. The Tower (Simon the Devious) XVII. The Star (Marwa) XVIII. The Moon (Jenna and Gail) XIX. The Sun (Jan) XX. Judgement (Guillermo de la Cruz) XXI. The World (ancestral soil and graveyard dirt)

The Minor Arcana

What is this project?

Well, I'm a giant nerd about both tarot and What We Do In The Shadows, so why not combine the two? I studied the history, ethnography, and popular interpretations of tarot when I was in college and still do readings for fun. So I'm going to be approaching this from more of an academic POV than a spiritual one, but that's still fun, right? (Right??)

Anyway, I love writing overly complicated meta posts about WWDITS, too, so that's how I've decided to go about this. Each post is about a different card from the Major Arcana, and will contain what I've chosen to represent it, my reasoning, some thoughts about the character/object in question, and ideas about card imagery.

Some questions I've been asked:

Are you making a deck?

No, I am primarily a writer, scholar, and overthinker. I'm not good at visual art. lmao

Can I make a deck based on these ideas?

Yes! I'd love to see what you come up with. Just please credit me and include a link if you intend to use my ideas.

Can I produce a deck based on these ideas and sell it?

Um. Contact me, okay? We'll talk about it.

Why did you choose [X]?

If you want to know about my reasoning for any of these decisions, please feel free to send me an ask. I am always happy to ramble about this stuff.

Do you do tarot card readings?

Once every month or two I open up my askbox to tarot readings. So if you keep an eye out, yes. They're just for fun, though.

You studied the history of witchcraft in college?

look okay it's fine

I think that's everything. I have already thought about this a ridiculous amount, so I already know how I wish to assign all the cards. I plan on posting one of these every few days until I'm through with the Major Arcana, then I'll probably just do a brief overview of the Minor Arcana. As long as y'all keep reading them, I'll keep posting them.

(and if you don't want to see them anymore, please block #wwdits tarot)

#wwdits tarot #wwdits tag

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cookinguptales · 1 year

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wwdits tarot: the hermit

This is another one of those cards that I’ve talked about before, so some of my followers will already know where I’m going with this.

But, well, I’ve never found a WWDITS topic that I couldn’t ramble about for a little bit longer, so let’s talk some more about IX. The Hermit.

Now, before I get too deep into who I’ve chosen, I’d like to talk about the card itself a little. I think that some people assume that this card is always to be taken literally, that The Hermit is always about a person who doesn’t want to be around others. But that’s not really what this card is about; it’s about self-reflection and spiritual self-discovery. It’s about looking inward so you can fully understand the world around you. It’s about an ascetic on the top of a mountain who’s gone there to think truly and deeply in the absence of any human sound.

The Hermit is one of those cards that’s really about meditating on life’s big questions. Why am I here? What’s the meaning of all this? Will I ever be happy?

Now you’re probably getting where I’m going with this.

I think that Nandor the Relentless makes a tragically perfect Hermit — and he already owns the cloak.

This is another one of those situations where the character I’ve chosen suits both the upright and the reversed meaning of the card, but this is a little more subtle than the ones in the past. The upright and reversed meanings of The Hermit both essentially refer to the same behavior; the question is really just if it’s currently healthy for you.

And for Nandor… well, like The Hermit itself, it’s kind of a mixed bag.

The Hermit is a card that’s about taking a moment to tear yourself away from the hustle and bustle of daily life so you can think things through without the discordant chaos of other people’s words. This can be a really good thing if you’ve got some stuff to ponder and you’re being led astray by too many points of view, but it can become a real problem if you’re starting to withdraw from others. It can be card of discovery, or a card of loneliness.

I think that Nandor’s current journey of self-discovery is eminently necessary but also ultimately ineffective. It’s true that the man is at a crossroads and needs to figure out who he is and what he wants, but he’s so in his own head that it’s hard for him to see his life for what it really is.

I’ve written a lot of meta about Nandor the past couple years — like… a lot — and getting at what makes him tick is so difficult. Nandor is one of those rare characters who thinks both too much and far too little. It’s kind of like a plane that can’t find a place to land. He keeps going around in circles and circles without ever reaching a real conclusion.

He’s deeply thoughtful about the world he lives in, but he has a hard time seeing it for what it truly is. I think he’s trying really hard to discover the meaning of life without realizing that meaning is a thing you have to make, not find. He’s looking at what his life is missing without realizing that the real problem is that he’s missing from life.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Nandor is the type of guy who’s always daydreaming about how the grass is greener on the other side without ever thinking to water his own goddamn lawn. He doesn’t seem to get that he already has what he needs; he just needs to learn to make use of it, y’know?

It’s like the Djinn said with that dick wish: he was surprised that someone who had so much still wanted more.

But that’s Nandor in a nutshell, isn’t it? The man is frantically casting around for something that will make him happy and make him feel like his life has meaning, but he’s so terrified of something actually getting beneath his emotional defenses that he sabotages any pursuit that might actually bring him peace.

So he really is both the upright and reversed Hermit. He really does have all the positive traits: he’s deeply thoughtful, he’s curious about the world he’s currently living in, he’s willing to listen to outside ideas when necessary but just as willing to withdraw and come to his own conclusions.

Like — Nandor really does seem to understand that something needs to change and that he needs to do some soul-searching to figure out what it is. He’s not wrong in that respect, and The Hermit’s advice to slow down, take some time for yourself, and really think through the big questions is not bad advice for him.

The problem is that he’s just so fucking shitty at it.

So then you’ve got the negative side to The Hermit as well. He’s withdrawing too much. He’s too stuck in his own head. He’s so wrapped up in these questions that he can’t enjoy the life he’s currently living, and he’s starting to hurt the people around him during this quest for meaning. He’s constantly talking about how the life he currently has isn’t enough — which makes his friends and loved ones feel like they’re not enough.

But… I think what Nandor eventually needs to realize is that cutting himself off from the people who really love him is the worst thing he can do. He needs the thoughtful parts of The Hermit, but the solitude is killing him.

Because, and this I think is the key part, Nandor is isolating himself because he’s afraid of genuine emotion. He falls for women who don’t love him because he’s afraid of what he feels for the people he does have a connection with. He marries a woman who never actually asks anything meaningful of him, and then goes even further and prevents her from even asking for the things that aren’t.

He’s so afraid of truly loving someone and losing them that he’s only allowing these surface-level relationships. He never cultivates a real relationship with any of the people he chooses, and while that serves his fears of intimacy and abandonment, it means that he’ll just keep feeling hollow inside.

Like… if he never truly offers up his true self, that self can’t be rejected. If he never truly loves someone, he can’t lose someone that he loves.

Not again.

I get it. Being alone can feel safer. But that’s no way to live.

Nandor is feeling around at the edges of this whole mortifying ordeal of being known thing, but he can’t even allow himself to be known by himself, much less anyone else.

So even if Nandor is probably the character that longs for human connection the most, he’s also the one that just cannot allow himself to have it. And he can think all the thoughts in the world, idiot that he is, but he’s never going to find the fulfillment he’s seeking until he allows himself to.

I do think that Nandor is The Hermit in every sense of the card. He’s off on this wild, meditative journey, but he’s so, so alone. He’s searching for the key to this nebulous sort of lock inside him without realizing that he was the one who hid the key behind a locked door in the first place.

Nandor even tried to go on a literal Eat, Prey, Love journey like this card often advises people to do. But his problem was that he did do it alone. I think even subconsciously he knew that the problem was that he wasn’t forming human connections. That he was trying to muddle through this life without anyone to seriously depend on. I think that’s why, after Guillermo “abandoned” him, the first thing he did was try to find a family.

I think Nandor’s finally starting to understand that the best family he’ll ever have is already right there waiting for him — and the partner he’s been longing for has never been all that far from his side.

The problem is mostly just that his solution has become a cage. And until he’s finally able to summon up the courage to follow his musings to their logical conclusion, he’s just gonna keep going in circles, all alone, on the top of a mountain.

Unable to meaningfully touch another living soul.

Depressing as that thought is, let’s move on to some imagery.

The Hermit is a very simple card. An old cloaked man stands at a lonely mountaintop, a staff in one hand and a lantern in the other. The lantern contains a six-pointed star, a symbol of wisdom, and it shows what is lighting his way as well as what he seeks to find.

Nandor is one of those characters who literally and metaphorically favors a cloak. His emotional defenses are some of the fiercest we’ve seen in any character, and are ultimately self-defeating.

On this card, he has no staff; our Nandor strongly relies on outside support but it’s still very difficult for him to admit it. (Though… he’s getting there.) Instead, he holds out his candle with one hand while drawing his cloak tight around him with the other. He’s still too fearful to let anyone inside.

The Hermit typically looks down at where the lantern is lighting his path, but Nandor instead is looking out into the darkness. His flame is not yet meaningfully lighting his way; it could, if he would just pay attention to the earth beneath his feet, but his head is still up in the clouds. His eyes are fixed on a horizon that he cannot quite make out instead of the solid lighted ground he has to work with.

And yes. He wears a Jansport on his back.

wwdits tarot masterpost

#tbh I could talk for a thousand years about nandor's fucked up little brain #and barely even scratch the surface #wwdits #wwdits meta #nandor the relentless #wwdits tarot #nandermo #but only a little

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cookinguptales · 1 year

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wwdits tarot: the chariot

A continued thank you for reading my silly tarot thoughts. I’ve really loved seeing what y’all have come up with! I’ve always loved how tarot seems to inspire creativity. :)

I’ll probably talk about this more extensively later, but for those curious, in this deck, I’d assign the Minor Arcana as:

Wands/clubs: candles Pentacles/diamonds: treasure (mainly old gold coins and jewels) Swords/spades: stakes Cups/hearts: those little glasses of blood they seem to favor

I have reasoning for all those choices, but I’ll leave that for after the Major Arcana!

Anyway, time for VII. The Chariot!

The Chariot is a card of strength, determination, and courage. It’s often associated with victory in battle, and versions of this card often depict a scene pertaining to war and warriors.

With all that said, you might think that I’m about to assign this card to Nandor.

NO. My version of The Chariot goes to Laszlo Cravensworth.

I have multiple reasons for this. It is not just because I wanted to put his car on a card.

(Really.)

(But his car will be on the card.)

Anyway, the one defining characteristic of this card is decisive willpower that leads to victory. This is a card that tells you to make a decision and follow it all the way to the bitter end. It tells you to have courage and make bold choices, and to have the willpower to see them through.

When I think of a character in WWDITS who actually makes firm and thoughtful decisions, well — it’s actually Laszlo. Nadja and Nandor are happy enough to chase their ideas around, but how many of them have really had staying power? Most of their ideas collapse around their ears.

But let’s look at Laszlo’s track record. When Jim showed up, Laszlo decided to leave the house and create a new life for himself in order to evade consequences, and he successfully did so. He committed to keeping Colin Robinson’s upcoming death a secret and showed remarkable fortitude when it came to putting up with Colin’s unflagging bullshit. He made a plan to save Colin from the siren, and then he did so. And then he threw himself into tricking his wife into leaving without him so he could (again, successfully) raise Baby Colin.

All of these decisions were made in a split second, but he immediately committed to them and saw them through to their inevitable ends. And more than that, all of these endeavors were pretty successful. Usually when Laszlo puts his mind to something, it gets done. That’s… not always a good thing for everyone else, but within his own mind, he has a remarkable success rate.

And jesus, just ask Gregor if Laszlo is a successful warrior or not.

Laszlo often seems like the loafer of the household, but when you think about it, he’s more like a snake poised to strike. He certainly conserves his energy for when it matters, but when he makes up his mind to do something? He does it.

The Chariot is a card of great confidence, and Laszlo is 100% a confidence man, in every sense of the word. Like — if nothing else, Laszlo Cravensworth always commits to the bit, whether that’s a long con or a short one.

I think that Laszlo would be a good match for The Chariot either way, but I've got an ulterior motive for choosing this one. I’m also interested in the way that The Chariot and its sister card, Strength, both look at different kinds of inner strength. Like The Magician and The High Priestess, they both discuss a similar idea but expressed in different ways. Like The Magician, The Chariot is a card of outward power while Strength and The High Priestess want you to consider a more interior kind of power.

Spoilers, I suppose, but I want to use these two cards to discuss Laszlo and Nadja and how their strengths, weaknesses, and respective traumas really kind of complement each other. Both of them are extremely strong vampires, but they face challenges in drastically different ways.

Of the two, Laszlo is better at tackling outside problems and actually emerging victorious, while Nadja is better at withstanding adversity. If Laszlo is a confidence man good at worming out of tough situations, Nadja is a woman who will stand her ground, take the hits, and keep on coming. She’s a vampire who’s used to being attacked — and being the one to emerge from the ensuing puddle of blood come hell or high water.

I’ll talk more about Nadja as Strength next time, but for now, I did want to talk about that concept of interiority vs. exteriority. At first glance, I think you’d definitely think that Nadja is the exterior and Laszlo the interior. He keeps to himself much more often and Nadja is by far the brasher of the two.

But… being real with you, Laszlo is probably the only one of the entire main cast who could successfully live amongst humans if he had to. (And yes, I am including Guillermo in that.) He has a remarkable talent for analyzing real-world situations and turning them to his best advantage immediately.

Nadja has big dreams — but Laszlo has realistic ones. I think that’s why he’s so good at actually exteriorizing his ideas and getting what he’s aiming for, even when it hurts him. Nadja’s power is more in the theoretics, I think, but Laszlo’s is extremely concrete. He, like The Djinn, specializes in bringing plans to fruition; he creates tangible results.

That said, as differently as both approach the question of strength and results, the two of them complement each other on a deep and fundamental level. Laszlo is always happy to support his lady wife’s dreams and help her turn them into something approaching reality. When she creates an elaborate plan like a vampire night club, he’s the one working to supply the moneymaker. When she wants to go to England to join the international vampiric council, he’s the one who will make sure she’s protected on the way.

On the other hand, Nadja’s stubborn fortitude and at times canny emotional perception have helped her husband just as much. While he looks out for her physical welfare, she looks out for his internal emotional one. Her stubborn brand of compassion has helped him come to understand his own feelings and trauma, and she is often there to help draw him out of his moods when they get to be too bad.

Put plainly, for a woman who has always experienced extreme housing/familial/physical insecurity, a man who is focused on keeping her safe, happy, and physically cared for makes her feel secure. For a man who was constantly emotionally neglected growing up, a woman who helps him come to terms with that abuse and loves him anyway makes him feel secure.

Both are strong and both are weak, but both of them know how to use both that strength and that weakness to create a healthy partnership.

I love them, your honor.

Anyway, that’s definitely what I was trying to get at by making Laszlo and Nadja The Chariot and Strength.

But also, yeah, the car.

Speaking of which…

The RSW version of The Chariot depicts a warrior coming home from a successful battle in his war chariot. It is being carried by twin sphinxes. They are two different colors and facing two different directions, showing The Chariot’s ability to control all of his resources and options, even when they appear to contradict.

(In other words, The Chariot’s pretty good at herding cats.)

There are quite a few celestial and alchemical symbols here, which speak to divine will and the capability for self-transformation, but these ideas are brought down to earth, so to speak, by the square on his chest that symbolizes the earth.

Our Laszlo doesn’t have a chariot, but I am told that he has a pretty nice jalopy.

Instead of armor, I’d have Laszlo wearing his driving outfit (we all know his best armor is emotional walls, anyway) and instead of a chariot pulled by two beasts, he’d be in his car, of course. I’d have his headlights be two different colors, though, to symbolize the two options that he is corralling into one path ahead of him.

And instead of a starry canopy, why not just have him driving out under the stars? He deserves it, as a little treat.

(Even if The Guide is still kind of mad at him.)

wwdits tarot masterpost

#wwdits #wwdits meta #wwdits tarot #laszlo cravensworth

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cookinguptales · 10 months

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for my new followers interested in my wwdits meta and/or my thoughts on wwdits tarot, a while back I did a set of 23 meta posts where I assigned characters to each other major arcana, talked about why, and discussed card symbolism. (the last one was about the minor arcana!)

basically, I pulled an a.e. waite and designed an entire tarot deck without having a lick of artistic talent myself. lmao

it's here, if you're interested

#a few of them were illustrated too I lost my damn mind #I put them all under my wwdits tarot tag #and honestly I stand by my choices even halfway through s5 #wwdits tag

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cookinguptales · 1 year

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wwdits tarot: the devil

This is another fun card that’s largely misunderstood by people who don’t read tarot. I thought long and hard on which character should be XV. The Devil, and I had a couple very strong frontrunners. But in the end, my Devil could only be one option…

So The Devil is one of those cards that I think people assume is bad, and I mean. It is. But not necessarily in the way you’d expect. The Devil doesn’t necessarily refer to some powerful outer entity in your life who’s about to make you miserable. It’s not some evil person. The Devil is worse, in some ways, because it’s about all the worst impulses in you.

The Devil is a card that’s about choices — namely, bad ones. Imagine your shoulder angel and shoulder devil. This card is the shoulder devil. It’s the card of addictions and bad habits and self-talk that will always hold you back. It’s a card of materialism and indulgence and giving into your very worst impulses.

Put simply, it’s a card about temptation.

The Devil is about recognizing the part of you that’s tempted to fall back into patterns of behavior that feel good now, but will only hurt you in the long run. And the advice that usually comes with this card is to just tell them no.

I very seriously considered Jan for this card. She feeds on insecurities and dips her fingers into addiction. She’s very keen on power and materialism and she leads her followers down paths that will only ever hurt them.

But… again, this is not a card about a bad person, exactly. This is a card that simply encourages the bad things that are already inside of you. It encourages you to make the bad choices that you’re already tempted to make, and it makes addictions to things that hurt sound so, so sweet.

So actually, the Devil that I’ve chosen isn’t a person at all.

It’s a hat.

A cursed witch’s sphincter hat, that is.

Laszlo’s cursed witch-skin hat is an addiction that he just can’t seem to leave behind even though it has only ever brought him sorrow. It has hurt everyone and everything he has ever loved, but still he can’t seem to give it up.

And neither can Simon the Devious.

There’s certainly a sort of selfish materialism to the hat, a desperate and awful need to possess, to own, to claim, but more than that, it seems to warp even the good things in both of them to something bad.

I’ve always thought that the real tragedy of the feud between Laszlo and Simon is that they would actually be incredible friends. They get along so well. They have similar hobbies, they like the same movies, they both have a passion for home design — like, they seem to just genuinely enjoy working together and spending time in each other’s company.

And it always seems to be poisoned by that damn hat.

The two of them always seem to end up at each other’s throats, and it’s certainly because that witch’s hat is whispering to them. It’s become the bad devil on both of their shoulders. Frankly speaking, most vampires seem to give into their shoulder devil at all times — but usually that devil would at least help them!

But rather than being truly self-serving, the cursed hat only has the illusion of benefit. Like all of The Devil’s temptations, it is a misdirection from the truth — that this temporary joy will only ever lead to sorrow. The real curse on this hat seems to be the inability to let it go, even when it’s actively destroying your life.

Whether it’s an addiction to gambling, shopping, self-harm (physical or emotional), drugs, or an extremely cursed witch’s hat, The Devil is always offering instant gratification in return for your soul.

(Or, if you’re like Laszlo and you’ve already tried to sell your soul at the crossroads a few times for musical ability, The Devil can at least really fuck up your life. And keep you from enjoying the best friendship you've never had.)

Anyway. Imagery.

I do feel like there will have to be a rather radical departure from the RWS imagery here if just because for all that that sphincter still…. sphincts… the cursed hat is still a largely inanimate object.

The original RSW card shows Baphomet, or the devil, seated on an altar between two people who are enslaved to his will. They are physically chained to him, which is a symbol of being chained by addictions, bad habits, and indulgences.

I think for all that we’ll be taking the central figure (Baphomet) from the card, we can still adhere pretty closely to the rest. Instead of Baphomet seated on an altar, it will be the cursed witch-skin hat sitting on a pedestal to be admired. A pentagram still hovers above it, but it is Laszlo and Simon who are chained to its base.

I’ll leave it up to you whether they’re wearing any clothes.

wwdits tarot masterpost

#I've got a whole meta post in my head about how the witch's hat is actually a parasitic magical creature #that enjoys changing hosts every so often #but that's a story for another day #wwdits #wwdits tarot #wwdits meta

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cookinguptales · 1 year

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wwdits tarot: the star

Time now for one of the most positive, sweet cards in the entire deck, which makes it a difficult one for the WWDITS-verse. :’)

It’s XVII. The Star!

The tarot deck is often conceptualized as a journey starting out as someone naive and inexperienced (The Fool) and finding completion at The World. So some of the cards have a vibe of progression to them.

The Star is definitely one of those cards. A lot of negative and/or difficult cards have been coming lately (Hanged Man, Death, Devil, Tower) and The Star very much gives you the vibe that you have finally come out on the other side. It’s a card of faith and hope and optimism, and it feels like a sigh of relief.

The Star is a card that generally indicates that you have gone through something terrible, but you have survived it. You are now feeling renewed and hopeful. It’s a card of inspiration and spirituality, and it really encourages you to follow your dreams now that you’re in a really good place.

It’s just… sweet, y’know?

Admittedly, sweetness is in kind of short supply in WWDITS. Most characters, when they are being kind, are only doing it reluctantly or with ulterior motives. Even Guillermo tends to have selfish reasoning more often than not, and his optimism is always tinged with desperation.

When I think about a character who just seems sweet and optimistic with their new lease on life… I gotta give it to Marwa, y’know? Like this card implies, she is always looking up at the sky in hope and wonder.

(RIP, pour one out for a real one, taken from us too soon, etc.)

Marwa, I think, has gone through two of the worst experiences a person can go through in this series: true death and being married to Nandor the Relentless. (I am only partially kidding.) But as bitter as she could be about her circumstances, Marwa actually seems to view her position with a lot of optimism. She’s happy to be alive again, and she’s excited to be in the modern world. She has faith, to some degree, that this relationship will work out with her husband, and she wants to return to her love of astronomy.

She certainly starts to doubt her relationship with Nandor more and more as the series progresses (and rightfully so) but even when she was truly considering calling the wedding off, she seemed to be approaching things intelligently and without sorrow.

(You have to do a lot of supposition with Marwa; we so rarely got to hear her true thoughts.)

It can be a little difficult to separate Marwa’s true passions from those that Nandor imposed upon her, but we do have some hints here and there. We know that she was very close with her parents, who allowed her to become a fairly distinguished scholar. We know that she was passionate about astronomy and the stars above.

So let’s focus on that.

I feel like astronomy is one of those intrinsically hopeful sciences. You have to look up at the sky above and see all of the magic in it, then you have to think — I want to know more about that. You have to want to reach up high and brush your fingers against ideas that humanity has only begun to consider.

Like — while Nandor was imagining a turtle, Marwa was considering the stars.

So I feel like it’s only proper that she get such a sweet, hopeful card and be put right up there with the celestial bodies she studied. It suits her bright personality, before it was dimmed, and her propensity to look upwards rather than down.

Now. Onto some imagery.

The RSW version of The Star portrays a nude woman beneath a sky full of stars. She is pouring water from both hands, one into a pool and one into the earth, nourishing it. She has one foot in the water and one on solid ground, symbolizing both her spiritual nature and her grounded one.

For Marwa, I think she can keep her clothes on. The nudity traditionally symbolizes purity, but I think she’s plenty pure all on her own.

In my version of The Star, Marwa still has two cups and stands in two worlds, but those worlds are that of humans and vampires. For her, both are the realm of the undead.

I think, then, that she should be pouring blood back into its own pool — but the other jug should be emptying upward. Not down toward the earth but up toward the sky. And it shouldn’t be blood, but fire going up into the atmosphere to become stars above her.

For all her sweetness, Marwa has a unique fire to her. She doesn’t give up when other wives do, and she always makes the best of her shitty situations. So I think instead of nourishing water, that’s what suits her best. Blood and fire.

Man. She deserved so much better.

wwdits tarot masterpost

#wwdits #wwdits meta #wwdits tarot #here’s hoping the formatting is okay I’m on mobile #late again but I was out at a museum learning about hell

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cookinguptales · 1 year

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wwdits tarot: death

Sorry for the late posting tonight! I……. forgot. lmao

It’s time for probably the most misunderstood card of the entire deck, to the point where it’s almost a cliche when you’re talking about tarot.

XIII. Death.

Now… Death isn’t about literal death, most of the time. It is about the death of the now. It is a card about change, but unlike Wheel of Fortune, there’s a very real sense that you need to get rid of what you currently have so you can have something new. You must abandon attachments that are no longer serving you and reach out to something better.

Death, as a card, is death in the sense of autumnal foliage. Leaves die, yes, but only to protect the tree during the coming winter. And then new leaves can grow in their place. It is a necessary death to make room for new life, y’know? Like many deities associated with death, this card is largely about the death of the current and the death of the self — but not necessarily a permanent death that signifies the end.

When this card comes up in a reading, it’s usually actually a sign of opportunity. It tells us that change is inevitable and often uncomfortable, but it will give us the opportunity to grow and change and experience new things that will make our lives better in the long run.

With all that in mind, you’ll probably understand why I’m not just being too literal when I tell you that I’ve chosen Colin Robinson.

Yes, Colin is the only one of our main cast who’s died in a meaningful way. (Like… I mean, they’re almost all dead, but not dead-dead. Not head-crushing dead.) And when he died, the cast all had to grapple with their grief in very disparate ways.

But like Death the card, Colin Robinson’s death was an opportunity for change and rebirth. He managed to come back as a wholly new person, bringing up a lot of questions about nature and nurture and the essence of change.

I’ve always thought that Colin Robinson’s journey was interesting because it did bring up such questions about meaningful change. Like… he did read his journals and revert back to his former self, but he seemed intrinsically changed by his experience as Laszlo’s son. He could never grow up into anything but what he was, but he got to have a childhood blessedly free of all the things that seemed to burden him as an adult.

As an adult, Colin Robinson always seemed to have trouble with his own existence. Sure, he liked draining people, but you could tell it bothered him, that he had to drain his loved ones even when he didn’t want to. It bothered him that no one wanted to be around him.

When he was reborn as a child, suddenly, he didn’t have that problem anymore. Everyone wanted to be around him. Laszlo, Guillermo, and Sean all became quasi-father figures and he had adoring audiences at the club.

It’s… debatable, honestly, whether young energy vampires just feed in different ways (being annoying, demanding attention, breaking things, being loud, etc.) or if that’s uh. Just how children behave. But either way, this did give Colin Robinson a second chance at creating these meaningful interpersonal relationships.

That’s why it was so sad, in a way, to see familiar patterns playing out with him. Having difficulty making friends his age, starting to hurt people just to feed on them, etc. And then, in the end, he largely returned to who he’d been.

But did he always have to? It’s hard to say whether this was the first time Colin Robinson had been through this cycle of death and rebirth. He didn’t remember a life before the one he was living in the first three seasons, but it’s possible that this was just the first time he’d left notes for himself.

(And if it was the first time — why now? Who knows!)

It’s just interesting that Baby Colin seems to be so thoroughly a symbol for the inevitability of change, but also an intangible sense of self that you can’t escape from.

Like Colin, Death is about change while retaining who you are. It’s not a literal death, so you are who you are before you changed. Just… a different version of yourself. Maybe a better one, if you’re lucky.

I’m so curious to see if our Colin Robinson will also find himself permanently changed by his period of rebirth. His humming Rap Tap On Wood does seem to imply that no one can be wholly unchanged by a parent’s somewhat dubious love, even if they are an energy vampire.

Either way, I do think he makes a fantastic Death. His very existence seems to predicate on a need to be reborn once a century, and the husk of his old body is very literally discarded to make way for a new one that seems to feed on attention until it can grow into a brand-new adult form. Death is all about abandoning attachments that are well past their expiration date, and. Well. I guess an entire body could qualify.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, I suppose.

Anyway. Imagery.

In the Rider-Smith-Waite tarot, Death rides on a pale horse wearing armor that shows the invulnerability of death. Around him, people from all walks of life fall to his feet. There is no one who can escape Death or the change that it brings.

Death’s pale horse really does seem to be a very key part of this iconography, so — what the hell, Colin Robinson. You can keep the horse.

So our Colin Robinson will be riding on a horse, but — I think a reversal could be fun. Instead of death being all bones, his pale horse will be. So Colin will be riding on a horse made of bones, his armor of corporate casual on his back. His eyes glow blue, and those around him are falling as he drains them dry.

And standing there next to him, one hand stroking the skeletal horse’s side, is Baby Colin surveying all that one day he must become.

(Baby, you would’ve loved the puppet in War Horse.)

wwdits tarot masterpost

#wwdits meta #wwdits #wwdits tarot #colin robinson

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cookinguptales · 1 year

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wwdits tarot: the world

Finally, the last of the Major Arcana, XXI. The World. I will be doing one more post on the Minor Arcana tomorrow, and then posting it all to the tag for people to read at their leisure.

(And then we’ll have a tarot weekend on my blog to celebrate.)

I do think, overall, this project came out to about 15k-20k words of meta, so… I do appreciate the people who’ve stuck with me all this time, and the people who will be catching up now that I’m about done. I know that these weren’t as popular as my usual meta posts, but I had a lot of fun writing them!

Thanks for indulging me. 💜

So we’re finally at The World. I actually struggled more with this card than any other, mostly because I actually had a fairly strong idea of what I wanted as soon as I thought about it, but I kept wrestling with why I wanted it.

I think I get it now.

The World is a card about wholeness, totality, and the end. The Major Arcana is often read as a journey, and The World is where that journey ends. It may not be the end forever, but it is the culmination of a cycle that has finally finished. So the end of a chapter, perhaps, if not the whole book.

There’s a sense of fulfillment to this card, like whatever you set out to do, you’ve done it. There’s a finality to it, too, like you’re looking back on what you’ve accomplished with satisfaction.

It’s also a card about the literal world that we live in. There’s a sense of unity and interconnectedness to this card, like through it you can access a connection to all other things. It also tends to have implications of literal travel, like journeying all across the world.

The World is about wholeness and completion and feeling at one with all things. It’s about reaching out and touching the world around you.

And I haven’t chosen a character at all, but instead a thing that connects them. It is, in a sense, quite genuinely their world.

What I’ve chosen to symbolize The World is in fact ancestral soil. Grave dirt, if you will.

In a very literal sense, obviously, we’re talking about earth. But we’re also talking about both freedom and restraint. Ancestral soil is a physical limiter on them, but also the thing that gives them full access to their powers and the ability to move around — if they’re clever about it.

Moreover, it is a thing that they all share. All of our (traditional) vampires have their own ancestral soil, and Guillermo is the one who collected it. (Colin… is more complicated, and I’ll get into that soon.)

Soil is one of those things that just keeps coming up again and again and again and again in this series, whether it’s Guillermo burying them or Colin being buried. It’s Nandor carrying soil around in his Jansport but also all of them searching for assorted corpses in their front yard.

There’s a sense of soil as foundation that seems to resonate through this series, and it affects them all. And every time I see Guillermo dig a hole in their yard, I look at that pile of dirt and wonder if he’s gonna have to keep it in a bag one day.

The soil that they all live on has become his ancestral soil. And he has fertilized it well.

Colin Robinson, the only one of them who has no interest in ancestral soil, and the reason why they all lost their original bags, still seems to have an intrinsic connection with the land they live on. He’s buried in it, obviously, both his clones and his decaying body, which presumably is still somewhere either in the basement or the yard.

He has an odd physical attachment to the house they live in, too, as evidenced by his need to burrow into those walls even before he died.

They all have soil of a kind, and they all have territory. And I’m obsessed with the idea of them mixing their soil.

I’d say that soil seems to represent both an end and a beginning for them all. I mean, it’s graveyard dirt. Originally speaking, vampires’ soil was supposed to be taken from their graves. WWDITS is obviously a little more lenient, especially because many of their vampires were never buried, but there’s still a sense of that finality in the soil they do have. There’s still a sense that the soil they have to carry around is a symbol both of their death and their rebirth.

And then for Guillermo and Colin, again, we’ve got this idea that they live in those holes, they die in those holes, and they too have both experienced a kind of rebirth. Guillermo has been reborn as a slayer, and Colin has been quite literally reborn from his own hollow shell.

So it makes sense to me, I think, that soil in this deck would represent an end to all things, a grave, but also a beginning. There’s a sense that no grave remains entirely unstirred in this show, and what is usually a symbol of finality becomes a symbol of liberation and ascension. Soil restrains them but empowers them as well. It is what connects vampire and human and slayer.

We all have dust beneath our feet.

Now, onto the last card.

More than any other card, my The World will be a radical departure from its RSW counterpart. The RSW image is that of a dancing woman surrounded by an endless wreath. It is the beginning and end of all things, and the violet symbolizes success and the red ribbons eternity. There are four creatures in the corners, and they are the same ones found in The Wheel of Fortune. They symbolize the four elements that make up everything and are a symbol in this case for pure unity and harmony.

The only thing I’m keeping here, I think, is the sense of fours.

What I actually want for my The World is a scene from the house. Or rather its yard. I want a freshly dug grave, a mound of upturned dirt next to it. Three sacks of earth sit in front of it, heaped on top of one another. And next to them all, one lies empty, waiting to be filled.

In the background, foreboding and familiar both, is their home. It is where they all live and over the centuries it has become their World, all five of them.

And slowly, they are finding completion.

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#wwdits #wwdits meta #wwdits tarot

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cookinguptales · 1 year

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wwdits tarot: the tower

Time for XVI. The Tower!

This card in my WWDITS is the soul sister of the last card, fyi.

So The Tower is a card that is in many ways similar to Death. It is another one of those cards that symbolizes change and the notion that sometimes change can only come after a period of destruction.

The difference between Death and The Tower, though, is that The Tower’s emphasis is certainly the destruction.

The Tower speaks to cataclysmic destruction. It does not promise that the change that comes after that destruction will be good or bad, simply that there will be change. Because there won’t be any choice but to change. There won’t be anything left of the life you had before.

Moreover, The Tower is destruction that often comes as a surprise. There’s often a vibe to Death that you’re outgrowing your old life and you need to discard the parts of it that are no longer serving you. With The Tower, things are usually going pretty good. You’re happy, everything seems to be going well — and then it all comes crashing down around your ears.

In short, it’s not usually a great card to get in a reading. You can look at as an opportunity for change (very few tarot cards carry true finality) but… I mean, truthfully? If you see The Tower, you should really just be bracing yourself.

With all that in mind, the character I’ve chosen for The Tower is Simon the Devious.

And not just because almost every episode he’s in seems to end with an explosion.

Every Simon episode seems dedicated to building up our vamps just to tear them back down, and usually in more ways than one.

In his first appearance, they go to him trying to make an alliance. There is a build-up — they think they’ve reconnected with a new friend, they think Simon’s gonna help them out with their short-lived goal of conquest, Guillermo’s pleased to visit a vampire club… and then it all goes to shit. They realize that Simon has only been playing them all along and they leave with even less than they had. Guillermo is hurt by Nandor’s unwillingness to protect him. Laszlo loses his cursed hat.

And Simon actually has the biggest destruction of all when his literal tower literally falls when it literally explodes.

In his next appearance, he seems downtrodden. You think he’s going to finally create a good relationship with our vamps. PSYCH, he’s played them again. And again, Guillermo’s perception of himself in the vampiric world falls to bits when he kills Carol.

And again, Simon is really the one to face the biggest cataclysm when he emotionally alienates all his crew and they leave him down there to die alone.

Finally, we have an entire season’s worth of build-up with Go Flip Yourself. This time, the audience was brought in on Simon's build-up, come-down cycle on a very meta level. This time we were excited right along with Laszlo and the others — and we were betrayed as well when for the third time, Simon showed up to take away everything.

(And yeah! Guillermo had another really rough day! Is Simon his curse?)

And, as always, Simon was the one who truly lost everything when he very literally blew up on camera.

So I mean. You obviously have the physical destruction that’s portrayed in the card. Simon is always coming close to death in new and interesting ways once he steals that hat — and those interesting ways often look a lot like the card itself.

But on an emotional level, Simon also brings this vibe of “just when you thought everything was going great, I’m gonna fuck the whole thing up” just like The Tower does.

His betrayal always forces our vampires to change they way they’re going about things, but not after making them suffer for it first. They have to get a new plan for conquest. They have to find a new way to fix their house. They uh. Have to deal with the problems brought up by Guillermo killing Carol.

Every time, Simon looks like he’s gonna be offering some quick fix. An alliance. An ego boost, when you see your humbled foe brought low. A new house. But every single time, they regret ever letting him inside. Every single time, Simon’s plans just beget destruction for everyone involved.

(RIP Toby.)

Every time, in other words, Simon builds up The Tower just to bring it all down. His actions always force the vampires to change directions, but that’s mostly because he very literally burns their old plans to the ground.

And frankly speaking, you just know that whenever Simon the Devious shows up, something explosive and terrible is probably about to happen.

But that’s why we love him. And the vampires hate him.

Now! Imagery!

This one is actually really easy. The RSW version of The Tower depicts a tower catching fire due to a lightning strike. Two terrified inhabitants jump from it, probably to their deaths. A crown is knocked off its roof, a symbol of prosperity being knocked from its perch. (Or materialism, or spiritual power, or a host of other things depending on who you ask.)

So this is easy to transfer to poor Simon, who always seems to be blowing up some fucking building. For my Tower card, I want the tower to be Simon’s club exploding into flames, and he and Laszlo are jumping from its windows. Instead of a crown, well. It’s gotta be that damn hat.

Like I said, this is kind of the sister card to the last one. Cause and effect, if you will. Both Laszlo and Simon seem to be very good at reinventing themselves after each failure — but if you keep going back to The Devil, your Tower will eventually come crumbling down.

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#wwdits #wwdits meta #wwdits tarot #simon the devious

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