Jun 30 - How to Create your Fandom Deck

You don’t need to publish a deck to design one. You just need a fandom, a cast, and a symbolic system that makes emotional sense.

A fandom deck takes your favourite world - whether it’s sci-fi, felt-covered, post-apocalyptic, or lovingly absurd - and reimagines it through tarot’s archetypes. You’re not just assigning characters. You’re mapping emotional logic.

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🃏 Step 1: Choose Your Fandom

Pick a world with strong archetypes, ensemble dynamics, and emotional depth. Some favourites we’ve explored include:

• The Muppets

• Stargate

• The Tribe

• Welcome to Night Vale

• Fraggle Rock

• Doctor Who

• Avatar: The Last Airbender

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🧩 Step 2: Cast the Majors

Assign characters or concepts to the Major Arcana based on feeling, not just plot roles.
Examples:

• The Fool → The Recruit (Stargate)

• The Emperor → Kermit (The Muppets)

• The Tower → The Broadcast (Night Vale)

• The Lovers → Piggy & Kermit (The Muppets)

• Judgement → The Glow Cloud (Night Vale)

• The Hierophant → The System Lord (Stargate) or Mokey (Fraggle Rock)

Ask yourself:

• Who carries this archetype’s emotional weather?

• Who challenges, comforts, or transforms others in this way?

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🪄 Step 3: Rename the Suits

Give your suits a twist that fits the world you’ve chosen. Examples:

• Wands → Missions (Stargate)

• Cups → Connections (The Tribe)

• Swords → Broadcasts (Night Vale)

• Pentacles → Resources (Post-apocalyptic worlds)

Or try element-based or role-based sets:
Fire / Water / Air / Earth
Microphones / Maps / Keys / Threads
Rebels / Healers / Strategists / Dreamers

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🎨 Step 4: Emotional Mapping

Think beyond the surface aesthetics. Ask:

• What emotional tone runs through this deck?

• Is it hopeful, chaotic, tragic, absurd, tender?

• How does the world’s flavour shift the way you read the cards?

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🧠 Reader Prompts

• What fandom would you build a deck around?

• Who would you cast as The Fool, The Tower, or The Star?

• What suit names feel true to that world’s emotional logic?

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✨ Final Thought

Designing a fandom deck isn’t just fan art - it’s emotional cartography. You’re tracing the symbolic heartbeat of stories that already live in your mind. You don’t have to finish the deck (few of us ever do), but every card you map deepens your understanding of the archetypes.

Whether you build it for fun, for ritual, or just because you can’t stop thinking about what kind of High Priestess Miss Piggy would make, your deck is allowed to be weird, wonderful, and wildly specific.

Which world would you turn into a deck - and who’s your Fool?