Mae

Mae, honestly not all that surprised to confirm that giving herself an impromptu tarot reading at the behest of a whispered voice emanating from a black ring would have immediate and particularly harrowing repercussions.

(The creation of this image was one of the first times I had to stop and question just how intelligent DALL-E really is... As usual, I started with the girl's face and outpainted around/from there with a prompt something like "photo of a girl sitting on a sidewalk in front of a convenience store." At no point did I specify that either the girl or the street were located anywhere in particular, yet for an Asian face DALL-E generated a background full of Asian-looking gibberish text. I mean, I can't personally read any Asian languages, I'm just assuming it's gibberish because that's what it generates whenever it makes text with Latin characters as well...

Due to selective failures of cooperation on DALL-E's part, I had to resort to importing some elements from other sources here, including the sole of her Converse shoe from Google image search, the demonic red hand from a stock photo, and the tarot cards, which are from "The Magician Longs to See" Twin Peaks-based tarot deck by artist Benjamin Mackey. This deck was only physically produced in a limited edition in 2017 and is basically impossible to acquire in the present. Also, Mae has received the same 3-card reading as Nick Stahl's character Ben Hawkins in the premiere episode of the long-ago-prematurely-canceled HBO series Carnivàle. Yes, it remains important to me to stuff these images as full of as much geekery as digitally possible. [https://www.benjaminmackey.com/magicianlongstoseetarot])