what you absolutely cannot stand in any deck

Everybody really has different tastes, it's so interesting!
Personally I like collages, don't mind photos at all, dicks and general nudity is fine with me, I love decks that show the modern world and I think a simple, thin (maybe even white) border is excellent for protecting the artwork. Artist signatures - I actually like them, as long as they are not very large. Small enough so that you have to look for them to see them is just fun, to me it makes the art feel personal. Maybe I like it because I'm an artist too. I like to see that there is someone behind the image.

I don't like:
- overly decorative frames, or borders that are unnecessarily thick (don't take away from the art!!!)
- copyright notices on the front of the card (stay off the art! On the back is fine as long as it's not huge, Druidcraft is a good example.)
- titles or text in ugly typeface that either doesn't fit the art style or is too fancy and unreadable (won't somebody please think of the art?)
- CGI (I find those people look too perfect, stiff and creepy)
- decks where the women look young and sexy and the men can look however (I don't mind cheesecake or nudity but if it's there I want it equally distributed - and I mean equally, not twenty nude ladies and three men who still keep their pants on!)
- also "come-hither"-looks and "sexy"/revealing posing and clothes for the women, but not for the men, really turns me off a deck.
- those multilingual titles. It feels slightly condescending. (Two languages are fine, though – but six are too many.)

But all these things may have exceptions. IF the rest of the deck is absolutely wonderful and fantastic and all that.

The one thing that I absolutely can't stand in ANY deck is: BADLY DRAWN HORSES.
It's like scraping fingernails on a blackboard to me, I swear. Augh.
And I don't mean horses drawn in some odd but stylized way that is consistent with the rest of the art in the deck, I mean horses that are drawn badly because the artist has absolutely no clue what a horse looks like or how it moves, so they just draw something like a large dog, put a saddle on it and call it a day...
It's just a telltale sign of a lazy artist. It's supposed to be a horse, not a cow, not a dog! If you don't know what the thing you are trying to draw looks like, PLEASE FIND A REFERENCE PICTURE, especially if you are trying for some sort of realism in the rest of the image. It's just so careless to not bother when there's TONS of reference pictures for horses and riders, there's Google and there's books and tv and whatnot. It's not difficult.

(That's actually the main reason Robin Wood was the first deck I got – that deck had the most natural and well-drawn horses of all the decks in the shop at that time, hands down. I still think they are lovely.)

Phew! Rant over, thanks for listening...

Oh! I forgot!

On used decks: greasy stains and black grimy edges.
I like used decks, but I also like them dry and clean and will never understand people who shuffle with perfume oil or lotion on their hands.
(Please don't take offense if you are doing it – I'm not saying it's evil and wrong, I'm just saying _I_ would not be going for _that_ particular deck in case it's ever up in the Trading forum... )

Oddity said:

I don't like: - decks where the women look young and sexy and the men can look however...- also "come-hither"-looks and "sexy"/revealing posing and clothes for the women, but not for the men, really turns me off a deck...- those multilingual titles.

Click to expand...

Hear, hear! I couldn't have put it better myself.

To this I will add: Excessively white backgrounds (eg: Old Path, Northern Shadows, Oz)
Anything modern, especially people and their clothes
Photo-realism (as opposed to symbolic imagery)

I don't like decks by people I find unlikeable. Unlikeable, meaning, self-centered, mean-spirited.

I see their personalities in the art and can't get past it.

Usually I don't like their art anyway but in a few cases it's a real loss, makes me sad.

bad and boring backs on the cards. If you've made such an effort to make a lovely deck, for goodness sake, please expend the same effort on the back - it should be at least somewhat decorative and pleasing to the eye...I shall never forgive the creator of the Wildwood for the crappy all-mono-green back. Makes me feel like I am staring at a pool table ;p

ETA: also poorly drawn decks. Can't stand that. The art has to be at least good in a perspective sense...unless you have deliberately set out to do a stick man kinda deck, which is fine, and even amusing...but there is nothing worse than seriously bad art which pretends it is good!

Debra said:

I don't like decks by people I find unlikeable. Unlikeable, meaning, self-centered, mean-spirited.

I see their personalities in the art and can't get past it.

Usually I don't like their art anyway but in a few cases it's a real loss, makes me sad.

Click to expand...

Yep you have just made me add another to my list. I have a deck in mind that falls under this umbrella, and it really is sad. Yet I know if I used it, my heart would not be in the reading. Therefore, I wouldn't be able to have faith in what the cards told me.

i hate borderless decks and i hate that even though many of the lo scarabeo tarot decks are beautiful, they have the name written around the border in like 100 different languages. i mean yeah sure its great that they can be understood by many i just think it looks really really ugly. i also hate unillustrated pips, but thats only because i'm a n00b reader haha

Just thought of another: when you buy a deck and book set and they only give you a one-size-fits-all box for the deck, and not a box designed specifically for the deck (I'm looking at you, LLewellyn!). I like to store my decks in their original boxes, but I really cant with those decks.

It IS really funny what people like and don't like.

I like decks with a modern, contemporary setting (and have a bit of subcollection going on).

And I like decks with lots of white space. I have since passed along my Old Path, but the white space is one of the things I really liked about it!

I also like renamed cards for a quick take on the creator's unique view of tarot.

Now, what I don't like . . . Hmm, for everything I can think of, I have an exception in my collection!

Blood and guts (but I do have the Gothic Vampires, which is quite bloody).
Fairies (except for the Fey).
Self-consciously gothy art (gothy vampires don't count!).
Anything that's a RWS look-alike with something else pasted on, like the Herbal and Unicorns (except the Chakra Arcana, which is more like the RWS images are pasted on the chakras!).
Keywords, but titles and renamed titles are ok. (Hey, maybe I don't have any exception here. I DID trim the titles off my Thoth!)

I'll have to think some more . . .

?

shadowdancer said:

Yep you have just made me add another to my list. I have a deck in mind that falls under this umbrella, and it really is sad. Yet I know if I used it, my heart would not be in the reading. Therefore, I wouldn't be able to have faith in what the cards told me.

Click to expand...

I totally understand this viewpoint, and would agree... but how do you know if the deck creator is mean spirited etc....? I wonder if that could change in a kind of backwards way from people who are good buying the deck? Sounds fanciful but..... I am in one of those moods this morning it seems!