#signifiers

In season one, despite the colours, lace, and detailing, Stede’s dress is mostly conformist in cut and style. His shirts are high-buttoned, cravated, and do not show much flesh below his chin. Coupled with the pantaloon and waistcoat, Stede’s wearing the clothes of traditional masculine presentation of his era.

There are times Stede’s clothing becomes less formal. During the sword practice with Ed in 106, Stede’s shirt is open and the cravat loosened. Again, in 107 we see Stede in his open nightclothes wandering on deck. During evening story hour, his jacket is removed. Stede usually seems more relaxed during these moments too.

Stede’s style changes properly on the second leaving of Bridgetown. What Stede is wearing openly as he drags the boat to sea is a rather romantic poet-pirate look with billowing shirt and sash. The look has links with future nineteenth-century Romantic freethinkers, championing individualism, revolution and liberty - including sexual liberation.

The open-neck shirt was popularised by Byron and Shelley a hundred years later. It was a deliberate choice of styling in opposition to enforced gender presentation and monogamous heteronormativity. The fashion of the times, similar to the 1700s, was high collars and neck-wrapping in order to force the holding of the male head in a stately and erect manner. It’s all about rigidity…

For an English gentleman of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to have his shirt open and loose in public, was a sign of effeminacy. It was women who showed their décolletage in society, who were allowed a softer presentation; this new style hinted strongly at sexual and gender nonconformity. Women were viewed as more animalistic, men as cultured. Cultured people cover up. Softness, looseness - these are aspects of female sexuality, a bit bestial. And women are also a little bit insane. Why would any man, especially a man of status, want to present as feminine and lesser? And what does it say about patriarchy if some men actively choose to relinquish their privileged status by presenting more effeminately? It’s dangerous.

By today’s standards, Byron was pansexual and polyamorous. Shelley’s sexuality is less clear, but he was viewed as a subversive atheist and disinherited. Both might consider themselves nonbinary today. Shelley especially seems to have had a strong gnc presentation. Both left England for more liberal Europe.

I feel the costume department must’ve made a very deliberate and informed choice regarding Stede’s shirts post season one, but I don’t feel it’s the one some people think it is. I know part of DJenks stated aim was to ‘make Rhys Darby as sexy as possible’, but it’s not about appearing more masc. just because he’s showing more flesh. It’s about appearing more Stede. Stede is expressing a new-found confidence in his sexual identity and gender expression, by choosing a more freer, less structured, less traditionally masculine way of dressing, associated rather presciently with future Romantic liberalism. It seems poets and pirates have more in common than we realise. And both were considered dangerous for questioning the system.

However, Stede is also an individual in flux and he circles back to a part of his former self. The Red Suit is a sort of hybrid male/female costume. The cuffs, detailing and shirt itself are femme. But there are elements of traditional masculinity which are quite toxic. The epaulettes reinforce the inverted masculine triangular shape. Anyone who grew up in the 1980s will remember their mothers feeling forced to wear exaggerated shoulder-padding as they entered male-dominated workspaces. They also enforce military rank. Stede thinks he needs this imagery to ‘be the Captain’. He doesn’t. The exaggerated coattails are also absolutely synonymous with upper class male power. It’s masculinity as performance and power-play. Stede needs to let all of this cursed patriarchal nonsense go.

As so often’s the case in OFMD, external struggle, this time with the crew over the Red Suit, could also be a manifestation of Stede’s internal conflict and shifting identity. It’s a final letting go of patriarchal ideas, especially around captaincy. The crew certainly don’t want it. Stede is (more than) adequate just as he is. At the end of all the pushing and pulling, Stede keeps the most relevant bit of the outfit - the shirt. It’s the least restrictive part, the more feminine and therefore, the more subversive on a male body. It’s a sartorial representation of a changing Stede.

The three shirts worn in series two are deliberately opened-collared and low-cut, showing more and more of Stede’s chest. This is a traditional feminine aesthetic which historically on a man, at least in the anglosphere, was considered subversive and dangerous. And Stede couples his shirts with a different sort of masculinity, a leather trouser. Class-wise, this is a traditional working man’s garment. Through his new choice of clothing, Stede is rejecting entirely his previous role within patriarchal hegemony, both the imposed status and imposed gender norms.

A signifier is a card which, for the duration of the reading, is given a special meaning - it signifies something specific.

Signifiers may be shuffled back into the deck - making it very special if they show up in the reading - or they may be placed down ahead of time to "anchor" the intent of the reading.

Perhaps most commonly, a card is assigned to signify the seeker (the person receiving the reading). Usually it is a court card, but it may be any card.

Signifiers can also be selected to represent the question at hand. If someone is asking about a very tough period at work, the reader might choose the 10/Wands, or perhaps the 8/Pentacles (Reversed) to represent the situation.

Seekers may choose their own signifiers but often rely on the knowledge of the reader to choose one for them.

What type of card you select as a signifier may be important:

A pip signifier may establish that the reading is about a common, everyday situation.

A court signifier may establish that the reading is more about an individual than a situation.

A major arcana signifier may establish that the reading is about fate or "big picture" ideas.

Signifiers are especially powerful when assigned to very specific things:

For a spiritual or religious reading, you can assign specific gods or spirits to signifier cards.

For a social reading, you can assign people to various court cards.

You can assign specific outcomes to certain cards. For example, you may decide that for this reading only, the 10/Pentacles means moving to a new house, but the Ace/Cups means staying in your current house.

Assigning specific identities of involved parties to cards can help a lot when faced with deciphering sometimes vague and confusing identities. In a social reading where four court cards appear, it may be confusing to decide which card is what person.

But if you have assigned identities to each card, the job becomes a lot easier (even if court cards appear to which nobody was assigned).

Signifiers can help readers because they can anchor the intent of the reading into something specific. It is a visual reminder for what the reading is really about.

Signifiers can gain an extra level of meaning when they are shuffled into a deck:

A signifier appearing in the reading can indicate an especially clear or enthusiastic response.

Signifiers can indicate that the seeker's intuitions are correct ("you think the situation is about X, and yes, it is!").

A signifier appearing reversed can indicate that intuition about the situation is incorrect (or vice-versa if the signifier was chosen as reversed).

The directions that characters on signifier cards face may also take on special relevance, whether the card was set out first or is shuffled into the deck.

What cards are the signifier characters looking at?

What cards are their backs towards?

When you place the signifier without shuffling it into the deck, obtain more utility in character direction by putting the card in a central location and placing shuffled cards in a line below it.

For some readers, a ritual of focus and intent is important. Searching for the best signifier in a deck can encourage meditation on the question at hand and may be a valuable part of a focus ritual.

For readers who value tarot as a tool of introspection, having to choose a tarot card to best represent their situation may lead to useful processing and insight.

As a reader, it may be tempting to require your seeker to choose their own signifier, ostensibly relying on some intuitive power. It is my experience that this can make seekers uncomfortable, especially if they are unfamiliar with tarot.

If you need the seeker to choose their own signifier, consider selecting a few cards and explaining the nuances between each. ("This card is more about your actual work load, but this card is more about the relationships with your bosses.")

A deck collector might enjoy assigning permanent signifiers to special decks. An example is a pagan who venerates multiple gods using a special deck for their religious practice, in which certain cards always indicate certain gods (whereas in their other decks, those cards retain their normal meanings).

Signifiers may assist in interpreting a spread. If a signifier is a watery Cups card, and every other card drawn is a Cup or water card, that is significant. It is also significant if every other card is a fiery Wand. An astute reader can compare the spirit of the signifier to the spirit of the spread and therein gain insight.

Signifiers may be used before any reading. All that is required is that the reader choose a card and affirm, internally or otherwise, what the card means for that reading.

A fun and simple way to use signifiers is to shuffle the signifier in the deck, then hold the deck so the cards are revealed to you. Search through the deck until you find the signifier. The card on top of it is the answer to the inquiry or the future; the card beneath it is the antonym of the answer or the past.

(I cross mine from R to L, but Jake does his straight through)

I was watching a kdrama and they were tallying a vote and I was just like: 😍😍😍😍

Cus I’d never considered the cultural implications of tally marks. Lol, I just thought lines to five are lines to 5, ya know? Then I read the whole wiki page and now I want to learn more!

Luke: [age 16, during breakfast] "Some guy in Japan just broke the world record in damage."

Me: "You mean in Apex Legends, right?"

Luke: "Yeah. He had over 10,000 damage in one round. The last record was set by some Twitch streamer."

Me: "That's kind of funny, how we talk about people we only know about from their online activities."

Luke: "What do you mean?"

Me: "The first guy you identified as Japanese, but the second guy you identified as a Twitch streamer. As if Twitch was its own country or something. The Japanese guy is probably a streamer too, and the Twitch streamer certainly has a nationality."

Luke: "Actually the guy in Japan is a YouTuber, now that I think about it."

Me: "But that's not how you identified him at first."

Luke: "I guess. Internet platforms are sort of like nationalities. Like, you align yourself with one. Or you become a member of one."

Me: "Almost citizenship, at least in a social sense."

Luke: "Well, yeah, to people in my generation. It's like YouTube and Twitch and TikTok and all those things are different countries. Some people are citizens of one, while other people are citizens of another. Some people are in multiple countries but you still think of them as mainly in one or another."

Me: "But when you /talk/ about it, informally, over a bowl of Chex, your language latches on to whatever signifiers have stuck out in your mind for some reason. Like 'Japanese' versus 'Twitch streamer'. As if those were directly comparable demographics."

Luke: "I guess. It probably says something about which streaming platform I identify with."

Me: "That sort of thing makes me think about our own biases and how we identify the world around us. If I had read the news, I would probably describe them in a different way. But that's not necessarily better or worse. Just different."

Luke: "I guess this is what you think about over your morning coffee, while I'm thinking about how this guy actually scored all that damage."

Me: "I'd probably care more about how he did it if I was younger and didn't suck at modern Battle Royale games."

(GIF by @horrorandhalloween​)

Last time, I introduced the court cards with all of their quirks and complexities, but I didn’t really talk about how to read them. Below are a few methods for using the court cards in readings from the obvious to the more adaptable.

Court Cards as People

(GIF by @nawtacop​)

One of the most clear-cut ways to read court cards is to understand them as representations of people based on their archetypal traits. (I should note that though some of those traits are heavily gender-biased, you don’t need to include gender to read court cards as people, but more on that later.) It can also be useful to consider the cards’ motivations when you choose to read them this way. For instance, if you pull a page, is it indicating a youthful person that you are interacting with or is it asking you to look at your own progress toward a kind of message, knowledge, or adventure? 

When you read them this way, it is important to remember that a court card may represent you as well. A lot of this depends on context (what question did you ask for your reading?) and the cards that might surround the court card in a reading, too.

Court Cards as Timeline

If you haven’t already noticed this from the story of the Major Arcana, tarot cards share connections with one another. One of those connections is within the small family of court cards which can be seen as a kind of cycle on their own. This cycle is not nearly as expansive as the Fool’s Journey, but when read as timeline, the court cards can provide you with a different kind of perspective. 

Here’s the timeline:

Page —> Knight —> Queen —> King

Youngest—————————-Oldest

While I have defined the timeline above in terms of age, there are other ways to use these four cards to understand progress (experience is one I am particularly fond of). To understand this, as I have pointed out previously, it is useful to notice the parallels here between the court cards and the Major Arcana. 

Pages act (on a smaller scale) in the role of The Fool but with more advantages. If we meet The Fool as a kind of baby, we meet the pages as tweens. They are eager, but not completely blind. There energy comes from possibility rather than the blank slate that drives The Fool. 

Queens and Kings operate similarly to The Empress and The Emperor in that they can be guides and they have a specific level of maturity that allows them to make solid decisions in different ways. (I do not rank the king above the queen. Instead the queen and king are at a similar level of maturity but approach things differently, the queens with diplomacy and the kings with snappy decisiveness.) 

Knights might be tied to both Strength and The Chariot for various reasons, but I tend to let knights stand alone in the court card cycle as the adventurous in-between of the excited pages and the more collected queen and king. 

The most important thing to note when reading these cards as timeline is that you can’t understand one without the others. (This is similar to considering the upright when pulling a reverse card.) When you pull a knight, how might that knight’s rash go-getter attitude be an indicator that you need more of a queen’s perspective? How can the page push you to grow? (Growth is not an indicator of value either!)

Court Cards and Gender

(GIF by @animatedtext​)

It always comes back to gender, doesn’t it? I’ll spare you a rant about gendered correspondences and instead say this: Though “court cards” are tied to images of people, we don’t need gender stereotypes to understand them. 

For instance, I resist the idea of the queen and king as parental figures. For one, we already have enough of this with The Emperor and The Empress (who are doing a fine job and also don’t need to be gendered, by the way), and beyond that, the idea of the queen as a mother or the king as a father diminishes their presence in the deck. The queen is a diplomat. That is a card that takes a decision and considers it in a philosophical way. The queen’s experience has taught them that consideration and success go together. The king has learned that authority lends them the space to make decisions unquestioned (for better or for worse). Gender is not tied to this. Active/passive (which I also find to be pretty gendered) is not really tied to this either. Those binaries are too reductive and prevent the court cards from acting as complex indicators in a reading.

Focus on the energy of these cards and what they have to tell you, not hypothetical and often-forced gender roles.

Ok—maybe that was still a bit of a rant, but you get the point.  

All of these work in tandem with the general understandings of each cards and their suits, of course. You can use these methods individually and set out to read in a specific way based on context of your reading. But you might also consider combining these methods and considering everything! (For instance: How does a court card’s space in a particular cycle impact your understanding of it as a representative person?) Court cards are complex. Always consider the possibilities.

So Hero Forge just released a whole slew of flags and war banners for miniatures! Because it’s me we’re talking about, I started with a signifier design, complete with standard (laurels instead of an eagle, unfortunately), mail, gladius, and bear-skin headdress.

Oh anon - this is an almost imposssible question to answer, because there is so much context behind it.  There was a whole twitter thread I saw recently that was basically ‘what feels posh, but isn’t posh (might be a place to start).

Everything is a class signifier in the UK, but it’s important to understand that ‘posh’ is contextual rather than absolute.  So being the poshest member of 1D is a very different proposition than being posh at Manchester University.