Hello folks,

As of now, the Smoke Test of surveys has gone out. That's 5% of people getting their surveys. Once it's clear that it covered all the proper questions and all that, you'll see the rest of the surveys go out later today or first thing tomorrow.

Your surveys ask some simple questions:

I will be manually combining orders that choose to be merged in this way before we ship, so you'll only be charged for shipping once!

Otherwise this project is straight forward, there were only a few items on offer! But you can add extras to your order if you so desire, of course. So just get your addresses in and confirm your orders, y'all!

Thanks,
7DA
your pub gob

Hello everyone!

We are in the final moments, just about done and over. And we've done amazingly!
I do not have my work computer back, so I opted for no end of project stream-- apologies! I know many people love them, but without my proper work setup it's really hard to make it happen.

However, I did take some thoughts from people's suggestions for a bonus two cards, and I'm putting them together! There were a lot of awesome ideas for what the two extra Major Arcana cards could be, but I've opted to go with an alternative Justice/Sheriff and Hierophant/Planner.


For the Justice card, I wanted to look at people who were being abused and left behind, or actively fighting to make things right for themselves. I think the Lavender Scare is often missed, but queer people were rooted out of the government (and elsewhere) during the 50s. Fear of the Russians blackmailing queer members of government and making them Red Puppets was the guise they used to oust as many as possible from positions in the state department and elsewhere. Of course, the 50s were a huge time with segregation coming to an end and a great deal of marching for equal rights for black Americans. For the foil, I did some obvious things with crossing out 'homosexual', and creating a sunrise behind the brave boy walking up the stairs among the white boys who were intimidating him on his way to school, but I also wanted to remind us of today's protests. The circles capturing faces that we can see is very much an homage to facial recognition technology that is being employed against us in exactly these kinds of scenarios today. I think it also helps people realize that many of these people in this image are still alive today. This is not the distant past. Justice is still far on the horizon, but we can make it real.

For the Hierophant, I like to think about art as a connection from the mortal world to the great divine, and this was a way to pay homage to black music as it is and was without being appropriated and claimed out of their hands by white folks. The Planner card focused the man who planned the suburbs for white families as a connection to the divine in a sort of trite way, thinking of him as a great visionary-- but among the arts that didn't create safe and white places to live, we can find so much more power. It doesn't on its own speak to the way rock was taken and claimed by white folks, Elvis and the like, but it at least recognizes the beauty in the black music as it was, in the hands of those who created it.

I'm finishing the guidebook, but think it can be done in a few weeks time. (So long as my work computer returns home quickly!) Then we'll move to pledge manager, where we'll work to combine orders for folks who backed the original campaign and just came here for the booster pack! 

Can't wait to see where we end up! Right now with an hour and a half left, we're 430 backers with $16,300!
Can we break even further?

We'll find out,
7DA
your pub gob

Our High School Sweethearts is reimagining a gay, black double prom king situation! This didn't happen openly in the 50s, of course, and it likely didn't happen in a desegregated school, though Brown v The Board of Education was 1954! Still, I wanted to acknowledge another MLM relationship and with black men, who are often left out of queer depictions. The brown foil here crowns the both of them, and adds a heart looped in two locked rings over the kneeling boy's hands, promising love forevermore with his man. At the top of the card, just above the two school administrators reading the prom king winners, we have a dove in brown foil as well.

For The Union, our World card, I got a chance to sneak some transgender representation into the deck! It's a bit busy at the small size, but on a card and with the foil brown arrows, you'll see it clearly in your hands. Children to kids in school starting to talk, to graduating together, then when we jump to this couple as adults, the man disappears and a second woman appears! Then marriage and growing old together, back around to children just being kids again.

I love these cards, and might touch them up a bit smoother when I have my computer back (work computer didn't want to work today!) But now we have all 18 cards for the booster pack complete...!
Or do we?

Do me a favor and check the rest of the deck on the campaign page if you would... I think we have room for two more cards in this booster pack... but which cards?! Where would you like to see another take on a card, or what minority groups do you think this booster still misses for fulfilling our MISSING AMERICA idea?

Just 24 hours left on the campaign, so tell your friends, parents, pets, postal workers all about it, and help us push past $15k! And so long as my work computer is back in its proper home tomorrow, I'll see you for a final hour livestream of readings and laughs as we bring in the end of this project.

Tata for now,
7DA
your pub gob

Well hello there!

Today is a beautiful day for Baseball... and BOMBS!



For the Baseball family, I wanted to explore the core meanings of the cards again. Since Amy already did the awesome roller skating girl for the Daughter, I decided to have this girl in a wheel chair absolutely stunting on this crying girl in the water. Get good, girl! We're popping wheelies in the rain and having fun!
For the Son, I stayed close to the original, but this time instead of campers/boyscouts, we have the kids under covers at home reading books and comics by flashlight! His Baseball bat is falling off the card, and the baseball itself is literally about to disappear! Instead, their foil element focuses on how they imagine a fantastic scenario together instead as their mode of play.
For the Mother, I've reimagined her as a closet lesbian. The meaning is focused on someone left to do the boring domestic work while everyone else plays! I used her baseball bat to whack the man on the head as she dreams of beautiful women she'd rather spend time with.
For the Father, I've kept them as I had them. This beautiful woman is remembering her favorite times of playing baseball, probably brutally pitching too hard against this child. The implication of this family also suggests the mom does find her way out of the closet to join the dad in a cute couple, then they adopted these kiddos.

For the Bombs family, I wanted a black family with some redheads mixed in. While by the 1950s, most Irish folks were considered 'white,' the historical heritage from the 1850s to that point was marked with incredible racism. While the general shift to escape the racism they face was to become white and assimilate, often doing so by being AGAINST black Americans, there's a lot of intersectional minorities nowadays who ride similar lines. I say this as a white queer person. Oppressive majority on one side, minority on the other. I think there's something to be said here, but I'll leave it at that.
The Daughter chased this to be her harmless participant self in the US war machine, supporting the soldiers however she can!
The Son has his eyes set on the future-- joining the military and helping the war effort! He is fully bought in on the war idea, carrying a bomb in hand and imagining the day he gets to be on a boat, a plane, or riding a truck right to the front lines! His toy soldiers are literal children in uniform, lining up to fall off the end of the propaganda line.
The Mother is a diner cook and waitress, looking after her people while packing their burgers high with bombs!
The Father has bombs on the mind, unrelatable and above us behind his glasses. He adds nothing to the conversation but to maintain the status quo, in his seat of power already.

And that's the booster pack!



...What's that? You think there's more cards left? Oh hmm, well these seem empty...

Well gosh, I hope by the final 24 hours we might see something manifest in place here! ;)

Talk to you tomorrow as we head into our final 24 hours!

7DA
your pub gob

Hello again,

Well, this was supposed to be 4 days after the last update, but I didn't get that one out on time.
So back to back, let's take a look at some new cards I've designed for the Missing America Booster Pack compared to the original cards by Amy Smith that you'll find in the Hot Housewives deck!

With the Son and Daughter of Pies, I went different approaches for sure. The Daughter featured a girl dancing at the diner, and this time I wanted to see a first peoples girl dancing in the grass, looked on at by the people at a diner, jukebox and all. This card is about dancing and being joyous and not looking beyond that, which I felt worked well with this almost forcefield element around her head, driving off the curiosities of the white people looking on at her. In reverse though, she is ignoring things that affect people in a greater way than just herself.

The Son was shown on the campaign from the start, but I've added in the pie and foil hearts from the boy checking our Son out. The original Son of Pies was already plenty implied to be gay, but this one is just a little more obvious. This was from an old advert for swimsuits, which I find pretty great. Also making use of soviet propaganda where they tried to connect Russia with China to fight against their foes that comes across (and always kind of did) a little gay!


The Mother has become the Grandmother! I wanted an older native woman with a wonderful spread of food before her. Squash, flatbread, fish, chicken, and pie of course. For the parents, I decided to do pie halos because if I have a round design element I will always struggle to not make halos. Forgive me. I have not chosen to make anything in her card black and white, which makes her stand out a LOT. But I think it works. In readings she's about doing all the labor to be the host with the most, and how people appreciate and laud you. What you do is meaningful! In reverse it can be more like you do all the work because people expect it of you.

The Father is about a person who does nothing to make the works of labor before him, but who lives as a king. I chose to give him a literal king portrait on the wall, top him off with a fedora, and give him a green foil table to eat off of. I feel like love is still here, but it's lesser than the other members of family present in this court of cards. He's at the top of the pyramid of power and loves it. Because of this card's meaning I was really hesitant about putting a minority in this seat of power for, I hope, obvious reasons. Still, here he is! compared to Amy's, the table is a bit empty, so I might add a few more things to its space-- let me know if you have thoughts!


The thing that usually holds me up on getting projects done is the guidebook. I've mentioned this a few times across my projects. But it turns out thanks to the way I approached this deck, writing up card design ideas and at least partial meanings FIRST, then moving to art, putting it all into the guide has proven rather quick. Now I still have to pass through the guide and clean up the old meanings and whatnot, but there's already a lot to work with! That means most of my effort will be cleaning up and expanding, then what's unique about this deck and ways to read with it!

I'm feeling really good about tackling this guidebook and getting it done!


I think I have a fun idea or two to add to page edges, but these two entries for example have already been read through, expanded, and completed. These two both have notes underneath in italics with a little pointer finger to start the comment. Old Mabel's talks about the "magical negro" trope that exists in her character, while the text doesn't necessarily address that element as much. I have other notes under various cards to help share a bit about my reading of Plutopia by Kate Brown, and what element of our history surrounding Richland, a real plutonium town, inspired the card or art. 

In the past, some people have asked that the deck be less clearly American, because things present here are also present in Canada or Europe-- but they really aren't. Racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia may be present the world over, but this is more than just those loose topics. The Hot Housewives Tarot takes place in a town made to support a Plutonium factory/lab, and the specific approaches to many of these topics come in through this lens. So I hope my notes help share and take apart the worst of ideologies presented in this deck, but also in helping readers understand our atomic history as a country.

Talk again later this week with another family!

7DA
your pub gob