Here's my tentative lineup for Wands. Wands are inspired by munchies - girls who pretend to be sick for Internet asspats. ("Munchie" comes from Munchausen Syndrome by Internet, a more medical term for this behavior.) For whatever reason, male munchies are very rare.
They're in Wands because munchies love medical devices they can show off on TikTok, and a cane is an easy one to start with before you get a service animal, a wheelchair, and various sorts of feeding tubes.
I've picked some of the themes that you see in a lot of munchies, plus one particular cow who hilariously personifies them, then went through the suit looking for where they'd fit best.
I haven't written up the card interpretations yet - I'll do that once I've gotten suggestions, thought about it more, and finalized the list. I'll make sure the interpretations apply both to the cows and more generally, in case anyone is daring enough to do a reading for themselves with the Kiwi Tarot. I'll include reversed readings as well.
Here's my first draft. Most of these girls don't have their own threads, so I'll also double-check their lore to make sure everything's correct. I've also saved a couple of them for Pentacles, which is about grifting and e-begging.
Ace of Wands: Tubes
Reason:
@Wallace suggested that the Ace of Swords should be a dilator, since Swords will be trannies, and I think I can find an iconic object for every suit. Munchies love their tubes - feeding tubes that range from the "nose hose" (a nasogastric tube threaded down your nose into your stomach) to the beloved button (an opening directly into your GI tract). Then there are PICCs and ports, installed under the skin for easier access to veins. Once you're done showing off your toobz, you can fuck with them to make yourself sicker.
Cow: Kat von Loosmore
Kat von Loosmore got a feeding tube because she convinced her doctors she couldn't eat ... then ballooned because she was eating and running her tube feeds. Her social media pics are usually taken in her kitchen, where you can spot all sorts of junk food on the shelves and counters behind her (she lives alone).
Two of Wands: Fuck Around
Reason: In the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, which is probably the most famous, the Two of Wands is often interpreted as a merchant sending out his ships, and the Three of Wands is the same merchant watching them return. I wanted the Two and Three to correspond to the idea of actions and their consequences.
Cow: Madeleine-Camille “MC” Preuninger's doctors wanted to taper her off steroids, but she doctor-shopped until she could find doctors who'd keep prescribing them. The steroids crumbled her spine and now she actually does need a wheelchair for the rest of her life.
Three of Wands: Find Out
Cow: There are lots of possibilities, but I was thinking of the woman whose unnecessary medical treatments gave her a mini-stroke that left her partially blind for life. I can't remember her name but I'll hunt through the thread if I don't think of a better candiate.
Four of Wands: Kate Farms
Reason: The Rider-Waite card shows a festival with garlands on the wands, which fits the idea of a celebrated food.
Kate Farms is a company that makes vegan, allergen-free nutritional formulas and shakes for people who can't eat normal food. Only the sickest patients would actually need Kate Farms instead of other formulas, and insurance often won't cover it because it's more expensive than other brands, so actually getting it is a bit of a status symbol.
Cows: Abby and Nicole Sams
Identical twins who compete to out-munch each other. Made a pyramid of empty Kate Farms cartons and wrapped it in Christmas lights. The Kate Farms company liked the post, too.
Five of Wands: I Would If I Could, But I Can't
Reason: The R-W card depicts a fight. Munchies often claim mysterious allergies that stop them from doing anything they don't want to do, but mysteriously allow them to do anything they actually want to do.
Cow: Victoria "Victor" Markhoff claims to be allergic to just about everything, including citric acid, which your body naturally manufactures, and threw a fit because a vegan bakery had apples in their baked goods and didn't warn her. She also spends huge amounts of her rich parents' money on Doordash, which she can somehow eat just fine.
(I might think of an even more ridiculous example.)
Six of Wands: Service Animal
Reason: The R-W card prominently shows an animal (a horse).
Cow: Abrea Hensley has a service horse. You read that right. She has a miniature horse who lives (and shits) in her house, rides in her car, and appears to be miserable. When a news story showed her taking the horse on a plane, the regulations were immediately changed because that's such a terrible idea.
Seven of Wands: Ana-Chan
Reason: The R-W card shows a man on a hill attacked by numerous other people - he's outnumbered, but in a defensible position. Anorexics often discover that if you're a walking skeleton, your mean parents will put you in an eating disorders program, but if you convince them you're just too sick to eat, you can get as skinny as you want.
Cow: Amanda Wittig was a skellie, but when she went to Disney World with her friends, she sure was eating a lot of junk food all the time. Then they caught her in the bathroom using her feeding tube opening to drain out the food she'd eaten.
Eight of Wands: The One That Starts With D
Reason: The R-W card shows wands flying through the air. They're high, geddit?
Munchies start out wanting sympathy and attention, but between their claims of 11/10 pain and their unnecessary surgeries, they often discover that opioids are fun. They're usually too canny to admit it openly, but they give the game away by talking about IV Benadryl, which intensifies the opioid rush.
(Doctors joke about drug-seeking patients who know better than to ask for a powerful opioid - like Dilaudid - but will play coy and say "most painkillers don't work, but I did get a really effective one. I don't know what it's called ... it starts with D ...")
Cow: Alexys D. Jones, "Jonzie," was a waif who kept going to the pediatric hospital as an adult and would photograph herself playing with kiddie toys in the waiting room. Her little-girl image was forever stained when, unable to get her doctors to prescribe more Percocet, she got hooked on heroin.
Nine of Wands: The Enabler
Reason: This is the other card that depicts someone putting up a well-prepared defense. (I might swap it with the Seven of Wands, another defensive card.)
Cow: There were a pair of mother-daughter cows - I'll hunt around for their names - where the mother spent a lot of time online shouting at anyone who was the least bit unsupportive of her daughter's many ridiculous illness claims, while also doctor-shopping for new diagnoses and treatments. This didn't seem to be a Munchausen by Proxy case, where the mom was actually making the kid sick - it's more like the mother's Mama Bear behavior was cutting off any possible route to recovery.
Ten of Wands: The Final Diagnosis
Reason: The Tens of every suit are generally a culmination of what came before. Ideally, I'd like all four Tens to be about specific dead cows.
Cow: Chelsea was an anachan faking chronic illness so she could get away with starving herself. She starved herself to the point of multi-organ failure. You know how ana-chans brag that they're so tiny they have to buy children's sizes? Chelsea bragged that she was so tiny they were giving her a child's organs. She survived her five-organ transplant, but died shortly afterwards.
The Page
Cow: Paige's photos of her mopey face and double facial tubes earned her the moniker "Sad Walrus". She had two fingers amputated because she messed with her skin. She filed a lawsuit (in New Zealand) to force her doctors to let her to starve herself to death, which they were opposing on the grounds that her problems were mental, not physical. She won the suit and is now dead.
Reason: her name is Paige
The Knight
Cow: Kelly Ronahan was a ballerina turned munchie who caused so much damage to her own legs that they both had to be amputated. The pre-amputation photos are some of the most horrifying things you'll see on the Farms.
Reason: Of all the standard court cards, Knights do the most damage.
The Queen
Cow: Jaquie Beckwith, already known as "Queen Jaquie", was a prominent chronic illness influencer with a huge following even though her stories didn't add up. She convinced a doctor to give her an unusual sort of feeding tube connected to her intestines. After the surgery, she started using medical marijuana, which gave her the munchies so she ate a lot the regular way (which, of course, she'd been able to do all along). The resulting weight gain resulted in her guts ballooning out of her body through the hole that had been cut for the feeding tube. The damage killed her.
Reason: She was nicknamed the Queen because of her huge following - both women who believed her (and often imitated her), and suspicious rubberneckers who could tell she was lying.
The King
Cow: Shelby "Julian" Gavino was a pretty girl who didn't make it as a model ... until she got a wheelchair and started on testosterone. Once she was a disabled trans man, she got lots of gigs.
Reason: There are almost no male munchies, but even though she's since detransitioned, Shelby can still be our King.
I'm liking all of the suggestions guys but if you could get some good frontal profile pictures/photos or iconic outfits as well that would make it easier AI sloppy all this.
Edit: wasted my free time math sperging but I will be back tomorrow with more cards
Will do - I was thinking about going suit by suit in the Minor Arcana as I get them firmed up. I'll get pictures of their service dogs for you, too.