Tarot Questions!

Tik-Tok: the Hermit, the Star, the Moon

Jedao: High Priestess, Lovers, The Star

xiao Jedao, the Hierophant, Strength

lao Jedao the High Priestess, the Hierophant, the Hermit

The Hermit: LMAO WELL. it's not exactly repression

because like he DOES ALSO do a lot of vindictive sneaky violence about it

but also it kind of is. he's a deeply unreliable narrator and he tells a story of himself to himself that.........leaves out the experience of vulnerability 9 times out of 10, even when he's talking about horrific shit happening to him

he's not traumatized, though. He's free. He's doing this because he wants to, and he chooses to.

so I guess you could say he deals with personal issues with a really ferocious assertion of individuality and agency

regardless of whether that's totally accurate

when he's first worried he's going insane, he does reach out, trying to find someone who can explain what he's going through and help him. but when that doesn't work, he gives up on the idea that it's a problem and embraces being a killer

the Star - WEIRDLY, although there are some details about Tik-Tok's own art in the book, there's very rarely any mention of artistic influence in terms of visual art

there's quite a lot more about his experiences with literature

BUT he does have a strong response to the aesthetics of like, Excess and Grandeur

renaissance and romantics would be hits with him, I think, but impressionsts not so much

and he does love a surreal touch in his own work

I can imagine him enjoying some of the early surrealist films for the ways they can be viscerally uncomfortable for most humans - or he might find them unwatchably tedious excretions of human self-obsession and attempts at quirky randomness. hard to say

but he never quite gets over his awe at the grand southern gothic luxury lifestyle of his first owner's insane techno-punk antebellum revival plantation, so that kind of - glittering ball gowns with fiber optics that show AI generated scenes based on prompts from passing snippets of radio dialoge

an exquisitely apppointed 22nd century ballroom

he kinda loves that shit

the Moon - I think the longest period of uneasiness is when he's at Sam's Soul Emporium, a kind of vast Used Car Lot but for secondhand robots

he does very much go a little insane and desperate there, ordered to hold still and do nothing for hours and hours and hours whenever he wasn't rented out for temp work

other robots there did go completely nuts and often got junked

so he was terrified and desperate to get out - which is to say, get sold

he becomes a slick upseller for himself which - even you already are resigned to being a thing, is a fucked up psychological pretzel to get into

ʀᴜsʟɪᴛ ᴀɴᴛᴀɢ🧨

He is very interesting

also back to the 'personal issues' thing

there's a certain flavor of issue where he just gets really restless

and has to go do something impulsive

like when he just decides to do a bonus bank robbery he hasn't planned

and has to get bailed out by his partner in crime with a tank