13 cards // american au // masterpost
hearts | clubs | diamonds | spades
tl;dr ☁️ this AU is: "what if the clones didn't belong to Fëdor, but to some random american teen?"
⠀ this AU is partly based on my theories regarding, wait for it, the comic 'CriminArt: The Beginning', in which, spoiler alert, Joker, Spade and Waru are recurring characters, which logically shouldn’t be possible, because the CriminArt storyline is set in 20th-century New York, so it’s a bit of a mystery what Fëdor's clones — who supposedly only were summoned in 2014 in Rostov-on-Don — are doing there
⠀ the office where Joker sits in this comic is decorated with all sorts of artifacts related to fortune-telling and magic; there’s even a portrait of a fortune-teller on the wall, but, importantly, this fortune-teller isn’t the same one as in the 13 Cards series. my theory is that she is the fortune-teller’s predecessor from the series ('im a 3rd generation psychic' ahhh situation)
⠀ according to my theory, the owners of the deck of cards are also chosen on the principle of 'it was destined to be so' — that is, the fact that the owner of the cards in the comic 'CriminArt: The Beginning' and Fëdor both ended up with the cards was not due to chance, but because fate decided it so. the way the clones are depicted in CriminArt and in 13 Cards — their 'true' forms (in the sense that, regardless of the owner, they resemble one another in their basic physical characteristics) — is precisely because the cards ended up with the people for whom they were intended.
⠀ NOW IMAGINE THAT ONE OF THE FORTUNE-TELLERS IN THE FAMILY LOST THE DECK. HAHAHAHAHAHA
⠀ THAT’S HOW THIS AU BEGINS.
⠀ the deck that one of the fortune-tellers lost, in this AU's lore, isn’t the original, but a duplicate. the original deck is the one that ended up with Fëdor anyway. Formally speaking, the duplicate deck is necessary when the original deck is destroyed, because the duplicate deck itself, whilst the original deck still exists and is operational, does not function quite… as intended.
⠀ put simply — whilst the original deck of cards is with Fëdor and the clones are, so to speak, 'activated', the duplicate deck will summon not the ‘true’ forms of the clones, but… alternative versions of them? if we delve deeper into the canon lore and recall that clones are rooted in mythical beings — clones created by the duplicate deck are, in essence, less powerful variants; their personalities are more closely tied to the deck’s owner and, as a result, less… complex.
⠀ each of them embodies the personality traits of the deck owner, whether from the past or the present ☁️
⠀ now imagine that the second deck of cards, lost back in USA and washed up somewhere on the other side of the States, is found by a random american teen around 2017–2018, who bought the deck at a random garage sale.
⠀ that’s exactly what happens in my AU
⠀ meet the random american teen™: Avery. he... hasn’t been fleshed out as a character yet (beyond the traits i’ve chosen for his clones)
⠀ i’ll come back to his characterisation later, in other posts. i hope to sketch out some scenes from this AU as a comic one day ahh
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