Cardset, #01: The Saint

 

01: The Saint

The Saint is a card made with references to and in light of a character I have worked pretty intensely on, named Caroline "Bloodsaw" Bradshaw. This is not the true first card, that being "The Title of Liberty" (which I'll have to track down sometime). Both are inspired by The Sun (from tarot), which becomes fairly obvious when you look at the two of them side-by-side. 

Given that they're a character from the fictional town of Lake Wonder, Bloodsaw's life is a little convoluted, and the symbols I used here are a little specific (when they're not included for the sake of "I thought it was cool and I put it there). To summarize Bloodsaw's life:

Caroline Charlotte Bradshaw was born in Lake Wonder, Washington on December 24, 1979 to Austin Bradshaw and Julianne Bradshaw, nee Coldiron. Their mother was an avowed socialist feminist; their father was definitely for women's rights, but was focused on his union; and they raised their children with the same morals. Their oldest, Phil, may not have gotten it, but the middle children, Carrie and Heather, definitely did. 

There were a lot of factors that led to Caroline Bradshaw turning out the way she did. Chief among them were her sexuality, some untreated mental health issues, and her relationship with her younger sister, Heather. When you grow up a keen sense of justice, you're going to see what's wrong. When you live with your fists clenched, you're going to start swinging. 

That sort of attitude-- impulsive, brash, self-loathing, sacrificial, caring-- led "Carrie" to two key things: an angel telling her, at age sixteen, to fight demons with a pickaxe to prepare for something (no, she wasn't allowed to know what); and dating a girl named Laura Mandarin sometime in her first year of college. Laura had survived a summer camp massacre the year before and was looking for a way to live again; and Bloodsaw was more than happy to show her the world and save her from it, under the sheet of their little lie of plausible deniability. How do you save her from a second massacre, though? How do you guard her when you're dead at the gate? 

The short version of that is, Laura invited her to a party that was happening in the tunnels under Lake Wonder. (Lake Wonder has a series of Prohibition-era tunnels crisscrossing it that were later used for drug running; and, when the summer camp was closed down, for teen delinquency.) Bloodsaw agreed to attend after work. Her car broke down; she arrived and said she was crashing the party; and then, at some point, when the band was setting up, the massacre started. Bloodsaw found the first body and realized what was happening. At some point, she made her way up to the surface to protect the guy who organized the party, Harrison Bergeron, from a local guy called "The Mermaid" (Kyle. His name was Kyle). Kyle, crazed from something he had ingested, went to kill Harrison; Bloodsaw intervened; and the two died in an ourobouros of divine weapons. 

Twenty-six years later, in 2023, an angel named Almiel resurrected her for seemingly no reason and told her to just kind of figure it out from there until he came back and gave her more information. And then he didn't. Instead, Bloodsaw started working at a bookstore with this weird conspiracy theorist and scientist named Tiff, who became her only friend ever, stole Tiff's computer and went to Wyoming, came back-- and then fell through a portal to the North Pole months later. 

And now they're Santa. You get it? They're Santa now. They were supposed to be Santa the whole time, but they died. Almiel brought them back to be Santa. He corrected the order of things. And now they're Santa, they have a hot elf wife, and they're trying their best. 

Their best is not good enough most of the time, but they're trying.  

Other things happened between all of those points, but that's the short of it. There was a dragon. There was an extraterrestrial bacteria in a bottle of strawberry Fanta. You know how it is. 

With that life and rebirth of a "Saint" (the divine, official title of Santa Claus in the Lake Wonder canon) in mind, the symbols and colors I chose to use are kind of important to me. 

• I used balls and swirls of red and white in certain places (like that notable ball of white on the right side and the swirls of white and red under the stick) as a reference to the way their magic looks. As a divine being, and as the Saint/prospective Saint, they had access to divine magic, used primarily for healing. This manifests as swirls of "gelatinous red and sandy white light" centered around their hands, meant to evoke candy canes or peppermints made in traditional candy shops. 
• Atop those swirls are black tendrils. Like the black splotches, I thought those were cool. When you have a goth-punk Santa milling about, it's important to get some black in there. 
• The big yellow glitter is meant to be a reference to The Sun, from the Major Arcana. Also, I like working with glitter (hence the smaller dots). 
• The smaller dots are in red, gold, and green on purpose, since those are Christmas colors. 
• The large stick stretching across the bottom corner is in reference to the pickaxe they use as their primary divine weapon. 
• The letters I chose are all in black, gold, red, and white because black, white, and red are "their colors," and gold fits with their theming and the theming of the card. 

All in all, I think it works pretty well. 

This was also the first piece I did in months after not being able to draw, paint, or even write consistently thanks to organic chemistry. (That class took over my life. God.)