ellerian-raina

[ellerian-raina]

Prayer Beads for Loki!

Been planning this sucker for a while now, but only recently did I get all the components I needed to make it. I’ll let you all know when it’s listed in the store! I just need our local bastard to bless it first.

[ellerian-raina]

Genuinely cannot get over how perfect Halbrand as a name is I would like to give the writer who came up with it a huge kiss.

Like, in the most common Sindarin interpretation, the name consists of the elements hall- "exalted, high" and brand "noble, admirable, fine." HOWEVER, hall- can also mean "veiled, hidden, or shadowed." Already, just at first pass, it's a great name for a Sauron in disguise, because it captures a duality and ambiguity that keeps you guessing, just like the character himself. It's also a callback to Sauron's first name, Mairon, which means "admirable."

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Tolkien often took name roots with Germanic origins for his human characters, particularly the Middle Men. In Old English, hal can mean "a secret place" or "whole, undivided" and brand can mean either "torch" or "sword"--a good combination of meanings, given that the entire Southlands arc revolves around a "lost king" uniting his country, only for it to be consumed in fire by a sword being put in a secret lock. Plus, there's the combination of "torch" and "sword" in brand that evokes smithing, especially with the more Modern English use of a "brand" being a mark that is made with heated metal.

And we're not done yet!

In Old Norse, the name element hall comes from hallr "stone, slab," and much like in Old English brandr means "sword, torch." Again, "stone sword" is a very apt name given that putting the hilt in stone is the way to open the floodgates. AND, I don't think it's any coincidence that there's another famous lost king who pulls a sword from a stone... yeah, they snuck a King Arthur reference in there!

Some linguistics nerd on the team really went, "I am going to give this dude the NAMIEST NAME THAT HAS EVER NAMED. It is going to be multilayered and work in several languages and remain just ambiguous enough that even if people [read: me] are crazy enough to look up its meanings they won't get a definitive answer." And that was so sexy of them, my hat is off to them for doing a fantastic job.

Update: I'm doing more name analyses! You can find them here: Arondir | Bronwyn | Theo | Waldreg

[ellerian-raina]

I am consuming a media and you are going to hear about it

[ellerian-raina]

petition-please help UK trans people!

hi tumblr-the conservative party is back at it again. 

currently, the GRA (gender recognition act) says to transition “legally”, trans people have to: 

 get two diagnoses of gender dysphoria (including one from an NHS gender clinic, which have a 2-3 year wait time currently), 

prove you have lived as your chosen gender for 2 years, 

swear to live the remainder of your life as such

and  do all of this in front of a “gender recognition panel”, a process which is very humiliating and largely depends on people deciding if you are “trans enough”. 

in 2018, the idea was put on the table to progress the rights of transgender people in the UK. Including: 

 allowing them to self identify as their chosen gender (including 16 & 17 year olds, who have previously been denied the right to)

demedicalising the transition progress, no doctors would need to diagnose gender dysphoria to transition.

removing the cost to have your gender legally recognised

allow non-binary identities to be recognised

it has recently been leaked that the current government has scrapped these ideas [source  source]. Our equality minister, Liz Truss, is horribly transphobic and wishes to backpedal on the few rights we have. 

trans people have said for years that the GRA is outdated and in need of reform, and have had the tiny ray of hope that it may be changed ripped out from under us behind closed doors. 

petitions on the parliament website are legally obligated to be responded to at 10k signatures and have to be debated in parliament at 100k signatures. please note you have to click a confirmation link in your emails before your signature is counted!

only british residents can sign this, but if you are not from the uk, please boost it so your british followers can see! 

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/327108

thank you-and fuck the tories ✌🏳‍🌈 

[ellerian-raina]

Bring Me The Boss Hog

[ellerian-raina]

2020 Interest Check

@cousinnick has generously volunteered to help facilitate another round of the Norse Readalong! I, for one, am really looking forward to this after months of zoning out in quarantine.

For those who weren’t around for previous rounds, this is basically an online book club focused on Medieval Icelandic texts, held in an asynchronous blogging format. We read and discuss a new section each week.

Discussion is held in English, and selected texts are typically ones readily available in English translations. However, we break the sections up in such a way that you should be able to follow along in your native language or the original Old Norse if desired.

While I am posting this in Norse pagan tags due to an overlap in interests, past discussions have tended to remain secular. Participation is not restricted to any particular spirituality or worldview. We also do not tolerate any exclusion based on race, ethnicity, gender, orientation, etc.

If we get sufficient interest, we’ll move on to voting on a text and getting things more properly organized. Please like or reblog this post if this is something you’d be interested in joining, and feel free to reach out to us with any questions.

[ellerian-raina]

Are you interested in Old Norse literature? Would you like to read some in an online book club format? Here’s your chance.

Voting for our 2020 text choice is open! Even if you don’t plan on participating, boosts are appreciated, since links showing up in the tags seems to be hit or miss these days. 

Please feel free to reach out with any questions or feedback.

[ellerian-raina]

K. Austin Collins, Empty Gestures:  Are We Really Going to Pretend That Gay Kiss in The Rise of Skywalker Matters?

[ellerian-raina]

Norse Stories

There are stories about Norse heroes literally defeating greed in the form of a dragon, a wandering god who explores the entire world to gain wisdom, and feuding farmers who question if their violence really satisfies their previous injuries…these are deeply human stories.

If the first thing you want to do after hearing those stories is to put down others, chase them away from the culture, and hate others…then you’re not actually listening. That’s not what those stories are about. That’s not why they told those stories, celebrated those heroes, and worshipped those gods.

If you default to hate instead of sharing those stories with enthusiasm, then you’re the root of the problem.

[ellerian-raina]

Surprise! I did a Loki Illustration AND worked on comics the comics I needed to! A lovely Loki illustration bedecked with beneficial runes to ring in 2019 on a positive note, also boasting scars of gold, tying in the concept of kintsugi, for if there are gods that embody the idea of being more beautiful for having been broken, Loki is definitely among them. For all my friends and followers, heathen and non-heathen alike, I hope good things flow our way and that we won’t let our broken bits get the best of us.

(Also the title card from the new comic 👀 coming to my patreon tomorrow!)

#comics #loki #heathen #pagan #norse #nordic #scarlips #illustration #aotd #artoftheday #artistsoninstagram #comicartistsoninstagram #art #artwork #drawing https://www.instagram.com/p/BsHclCoDN_G/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1mllzv6rdrtqn

[ellerian-raina]

🚫 THIS BLOG IS TAKING PART IN THE ANTI-CENSORSHIP PROTEST ON DECEMBER 17th 🚫

The owner of this Blog will be making as much noise at Tumblr Staff about how horrible this ban in on other sites such as Twitter or Facebook. 

The owner of this blog will be logging out of all accounts for the entirety of the 17th. Will Not run a queue. Will not even check the dash. Or give the money hungry executives a single page view to squeeze ad revenue out of

The owner of this blog believes in an ACTUAL positive, better, safer Tumblr and well be doing their part to fight for it by logging out on the 17th of December. 

[ellerian-raina]

An Open Letter to Tumblr about the Adult Content Ban and How it is Hurting Your Users:

Recently, Tumblr was removed from the Apple app store due to an incident involving child pornography. This incident is incredibly unfortunate, but it doesn’t stand alone. Tumblr was also removed from the app store due to the large influx of porn bots and pornographic spam, users claiming to be proud to be pedophiles, blatant Nazism, racists who are not deleted for sending hate and harassing users, and more. I myself reported someone for harassing me, but because I had blocked the person and couldn’t access the messages where they harassed me, they were still able to send me anonymous asks. Your support staff, with back doors to the website (presumably), claimed they could not access the messages, and I was left SOL. Many features on this website do nothing to actually protect your users from harassment, racism, homophobia, transphobia, Nazis, pedophiles, predators, porn bots, and more. 

You claim in your statement to us that you “have been working on these problems for a long time”. This is blatantly untrue. Please do not lie to us and patronize us. We’ve been here. We’ve seen you do nothing over, and over, and over again. 

We complained to you for months and months about the rampant porn bots, and you did nothing except add a report button on mobile which only reported sensitive content or spam at best. You could have addressed this problem with an effective algorithm, but you did not. We complained to you about being harassed and sent hate speech for being LGBT+, and you did nothing. We complained to you about blogs being randomly deleted, and sometimes you’ve restored them, other times you have not. We complained to you that there were people proudly claiming to be “Minor Attracted Persons”, or pedophiles, and you did nothing. We complained to you about people proudly claiming to be white supremacists, and you did nothing. All of these things are “against the community guidelines”, and yet over and over, you have not found effective ways to handle these problems or suppress the feeling of welcome that these users claim to get here. You have had a long time to work on these problems, but you haven’t addressed them. To say you have is untrue. 

 Multiple other social networking websites, such as Wordpress, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and others have effectively dealt with rampant pornography, racism, pedophilia, and other problems without causing massive issues for their users who are not misusing the platform. They are continuing to find new, effective ways to deal with these issues without causing problems for their userbase as a whole.  There is no reason that you are unable to do this effectively other than that you wanted to do it quickly. You have once again chosen your stock holders over your users. And we have had enough. 

You have already started to ban “Adult” content with a new algorithm. Here are screenshots of just a fraction of the posts you have flagged as containing adult content:

Your new system of simply tackling everything at once is not working. At all. And each of these screenshots is proof of your utter incompetence. None of these posts contain pornographic acts, “female nipples”, or any community violation of any kind. 

We, the users, have been asking you for months to deal with these problems - particularly, the porn bots and bots that spam. In order to block a bot from a side blog, I have to do it manually, even though they are in my side blog’s feed. This is a huge issue for mobile - only users. They keep cropping up in droves, taking over our posts and tricking google into making it look like a legitimate blog linked to a pornographic website. We have complained to you for months and months now, and your solution to simply “ban all adult content” is ineffective. I agree that children should not be able to access pornography - but this is not how you tackle a porn bot problem. Your system is utterly useless, allows for racists, pedophiles, porn bots, and Nazis to remain untouched. It also harms sex workers and real people who may use this website for some forms of adult content responsibly. Moreover, as seen above, it harms plenty of users who have in no way violated your terms of service.

 If you keep this up, you threaten your website and company as a whole. Many of us are backing up our blogs and planning places to go to. 

You already have a content filter for “sensitive” content (content inappropriate for younger viewers). You could have improved this, instead of attacking your entire user base. It seems to be a very lazy “solution”, if you could call it one at all, and one that harms your entire userbase.

If you are going to keep this filter in place and make Tumblr, a website that has never been known for being family friendly and has never claimed to be, you are going to lose millions of your users. We are already planning our exodus. It isn’t hard to follow. Censor us, and we will go somewhere else. That is not a threat. It is a promise. 

Sincerely, 

The users of your website. 

@staff @support

[ellerian-raina]

I love how their post says “A better, more positive Tumblr” as if female nipples are what’s ruining the experience on this website and not bullies, racists, homophobes and actual nazis

[ellerian-raina]

Sign it! Are you pissed off? Then sign it!

@saxxology @kittenofdoomage @wayward-and-worn @curly-haired-disaster @impala-dreamer @sis-tafics @webcricket @queen-of-deans-booty @anotherwaywardsister @angryschnauzer @bringmesomepie56 @bamby0304 @crowleysplaythings @ellen-reincarnated1967 @gaybnktop @holy-fucking-hell–literally @ibelieveinthelittletreetopper @just-another-busy-fangirl @jpadjackles @kas-not-cas @karlee-fay-my-wayward-son @luci-in-trenchcoats @leatherwhiskeycoffeeplaid @neven-ebrez @nsfwdestiel @purgatory-jar @rayofsunshinexx @rosie-winchester @roxy-davenport @roxyspearing @subcas @thejabberwock @teamfreewill-imagine @textsfromthe-impala @crowleylovesyou @crowleysplaythings @uselessace @ughcas

[ellerian-raina]

Wild Hunt Article on the Lokean Community

[ellerian-raina]

Group Lokean Letter the Wild Hunt Declined to Publish

[ellerian-raina]

“As the nights draw in and frost begins to crackle in the air, Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology comes to Radio 4, inviting listeners into a world of gods and monsters, fiery endings and new beginnings, tricks and trust.

Diana Rigg, Derek Jacobi, Colin Morgan and Natalie Dormer lead an exceptional cast, inviting us into these stories of old betrayals - and new hope.”

Wednesday 26 December, 3pm-4.30pm on BBC Radio 4