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

Hello all,

This was Thursday's update from last week... which I never published! Whoops.

As some of you might know, I got quite sick. I was sick for the two weeks leading to launch, went to clinics and cleared the infection that was causing pain. But then things weren't right still, so after I launched this, I went to the ER. I can confirm that this last week+ I've been feeling pretty great, and today got results on a test so it looks like things are good!

However that means things I was doing before this launched were pushed back and got accomplished over the last week and this week. But the wait is over to see more of what's coming in the booster pack!

For the Future Family, I decided to make it a mixed Mexican and Chinese home. I don't know if this will always necessarily matter-- meaning the ethnicities of the family members might not always match up, a Brandi-Cinderella kind of way. But here, I was trying to make it somewhat true! Obviously I went in a new direction from the original set of bomb victims the Future Family is in the main deck-- but I think I did a number of clever things!

The Daughter of Future is a victim of circumstance. She is meant to be a girl whose future is decided, to be a mother, as her mother was. I made our little girl with flowers and her little Mexican doll in full color, and made a timeline arrow from the pocket watch that signifies my suit of Future which sees her a bit older and older still, growing less saturated and more colorless over time. The doll, the cat and kitten, and the baby pram all leading to a final pregnant self. But the timeline arrow does diverge halfway through, petering out as it tries another passage. Here, the vibrancy is focused on where the possibility lies, almost the opposite of what happens with her mother, or the same if you interpret it as tradition.

The Son of Future is a foolish kid that rushes forward into things, often getting others into trouble as he chases the future. In reverse in particular, he is likely a con artist, abusing his power over pushing others forward into trouble without him. I decided to create a line down the middle which separates him from his adult self. As a kid, he like cameras. As an adult, he has a line of polaroids of naked people and an embarrassed man, implied to be blackmail photos. The future he rushes into is even higher risk and reward than now, and he becomes a person for whom the ends justify the means.

The Mother of Future is meant to be at a table, set with a massive meal, but with no one to eat it. The idea is she pushes further and further for the future, looking out for what might come next, but often before it's needed. She can be overbearing, always trying to be prepared for what may come. To interpret the empty table, I gave her four empty chairs, her family absent. For the full dinner table though, I decided to interpret traditional Mexican foods into the timeline arrow from the pocket watch as they become more Tex Mex, then just something else entirely. This mirrors her push to worry about the future, while still stacking the dinner table with foods. I decided to keep the cigarette holder and martini glass, but made the martini glass a modern restaurant's margarita. Still open for pushing her more black and white herself, but I'll sit on that one.

The Father of Future is meant to sit on his recliner like a throne. While I don't have the chair in the new one, I gifted him a crown to maintain his power. The pipe stuck in though! He is meant to be resting on what he knows best: The past, and making money for his family. He is meant to apply past logic, tradition, on what's going on now and into the future. In reverse, the older hand coming from the large temple pot statue points at him from above, showing the meaning of the past weighing on him and making him feel enslaved to the finances and traditions he has bought into.

See you next week with a whole other family, as we explore the meanings packed into these cards and how they have emerged new takes from the original work done by Amy Smith! Keep in mind the solid grey/silver elements here, the timeline arrows or the lines and crown, will be silver foil on the final cards! Can't wait to see those!

Talk again early next week!
7DA
your pub gob

Hello!

First off, thanks for making this project get so far without me even being here! I have been sick the last 3 weeks, which it turned out was an infection 3 weeks ago which cleared after 5 days, but then caused heart complications after, which now after my ER visit Tuesday (after launching this!) and Friday's cardiologist visit is being medicated for. I'll be okay in a month or so, but for now I'm just a bit low energy.

If you backed the original Kickstarter for the HHW Tarot last year, you will have a chance on that project to upgrade your standard deck to a deluxe deck on that project's pledge manager. But the booster pack and gingham bag are unique to this project alone. That was the requirement to launch this launch project.

If you're here just for this project, you're all set. Back whatever parts you want to have!

I wanted to be doing live streams at launch and once a week, but health had other plans. Still, join me Wednesday in the early evening, 5pm-7pm MST, I will be live for a 2 hour hangout and reading stream with the early print of the deck! If you haven't seen one of these streams, it will be both on Youtube and mirrored here on the campaign page, so you'll be able to chat right on the main campaign page, ask questions, and get a small reading while I'm live!
See a previous 2 hour livestream from the oracle dice project here!


I'll start sharing more of the new designs as I get back to work on them for the Missing America booster pack, for now, please share the project around and help spread the word! I'd love to see a nice push across platforms now to get us up to 10k, then 20k!

See you all Wednesday!

7DA
your pub gob