#also! the eurovision is so good

[outlying-hyppocrate]

crispin khae outlyinghyppocrate lastname is in fact a published author yet again

[formerly-evil]

DONT FORGET TO VOTE IN THE EU ELECTIONS!!!

[chut-je-dors]

Hello! Do you happen to know any good resources for learning Finnish? As basic as possible, I literally started on Duolingo half an hour ago:) I know, I know, I'm a poser for learning Finnish *after* Käärijä, but the language sounds soooo interesting (although I've heard the grammar is quite difficult...). Thank you in advance and also love your blog:)))))

Hi!! So very very ecstatic that you've decided to learn Finnish! No reason to feel ashamed that you'd only start after Käärijä... believe me, in Finland people are just altogether very taken if a foreigner wants to learn Finnish, no matter the reason. (And all reasons for learning a language are good!) (And we're SO SO PROUD of Käärijä, he's done a monumental job of bringing our language to the public eye more than ANYONE ELSE BEFORE so, yup! He's a VERY good reason to start learning Finnish!!)

I'm not sure if I'm the right person to point you towards any resources... But I tried finding some for you! I've checked out the Duolingo course and it's a good place to begin! Here's also a drive folder that has some Finnish language books as PDFs.

Also here's a page for beginner's Finnish from our national news media Yle (it's like our version of BBC).

Here is a "picture book" kind of a page for learning names for objects, good to start with!

Here's an online course for beginners! This has grammar too, and links for further reading and studying.

Finnish is also notorious for having it's written language differ drastically from how people actually speak. We don't have accents per se, but dialects instead, which don't just affect the way we pronounce words (=accents, as in English) but the way we form them. So for example, the written Finnish "I am" is "minä olen", but in spoken Finnish it can become e.g. "mä oon", "mää oon", "mie oon", depending on where you live (and there might be some more variations as well but these are the most common ones.) Many foreigners find themselves in a spot where they can read and understand written Finnish pretty well, then the moment a Finnish person opens their mouth it's a bloodbath. But don't let it deter you! And Finnish people are more than happy to switch to written Finnish if you don't understand them. I found this website for learning the basics for spoken Finnish!

A good place is also good ole Youtube! Just type in "Finnish for beginners" and you're set to go!

Finnish is a difficult language to learn because of the grammar and lack of prepositions if your language has them... but look at it this way, I struggle with them in any language that uses them cos I haven't grown up using them. I still occasionally mess up with in/on or for/to (it's even worse with French and Swedish). Doesn't stop me from writing 100k fics in English apparently!

Welcome to learning Finnish! Remember that the most important thing is to learn the swear words, you'll go far with those. Just drop in a perkele and it's always the right thing to say haha.

Jokes aside, I'm very happy to hear this! Finnish is a very beautiful language and a very inventive one as well, which allows for more word play and creativity with the language than, say, English for example. And while Finnish is difficult, you'll find that once you've learnt the rules, there are no exceptions to them or the kind of hassle with the grammar as there is to English or French. I've known exchange students who've learnt near perfect Finnish in less than a year!

If anyone knows and wants to add more good resources here, go ahead!

[diathadevil]

Finally got around to scanning them!

Here's a couple of Käärijä sketches done on my sketchbook when I was at a cafe sheltering myself from the rain last week. 💚💚💚 Love this Finnish short king.

BONUS: His leggy stunt always kills me so here's a doodle of it too 😂

[lil-gingerbread-queen]

So... Multiple right-wing politicians and figures in France went to social media to ask people to vote for Israel at the Eurovision and themselves vote for her, because it is "antisemitic to boo Israel" or something... That's how you get Israel a ton of votes.

Btw, a lot of those politicians are in a political party that was created with a SS. The leaders are from the same family, the father being friend with the SS and Nazis and the daughter viewing Hitler as an uncle when she was younger. This party also denied the Holocaust and later declared that it did happened (because it's against the law to deny the Holocaust), but it's not as bad as we make it. Just to point out that zionists just want to get rid of Jewish people, they don't care about them.

And also, French don't care about the Eurovision, because we all agree that we suck at music. People barely speak about it. And suddenly, those mfs give a fuck about it (the other time they do is when we send a poc to represent France, that's a scandal for them 🙄)

[graysanatimony]

I JUST REMEMBERED SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED WHEN I WAS WATCHING EUROVISION 2023 WITH MY FAMILY

So In the flag parade part everything was going fine then joker out went on and I was like o.O and thankfully it was dark in the room cause I may have gone bright red I don’t know but my family started being all “oooo a******** look, good looking guys are any of them you type” and I was like no shut up (cause I don’t like guys but everyone in my family except my mum thinks I’m straight but she thinks I’m bi so yeah)

then the mocking stopped until they performed and then it started again, and for some reason they kept comparing them to lovejoy, even though they are nothing alike, anyway we do like scorecards for the show and I would have had them as my top scoring ones except that would have set them off again so I put them near the middle somewhere

[arabela25]

Non-qualifiers of semi-final 1

Dance (Our Own Party), The Busker - Malta 🇲🇹

Aijā, Sudden Lights - Latvia 🇱🇻

We Are One, Wild Youth - Ireland 🇮🇪

Tell Me, TuralTuranX - Azerbaijan 🇦🇿

Burning Daylight, Mia Nicolai & Dion Cooper - The Netherlands 🇳🇱

[juuret]

*throws sand around*

[sweetandslumber]

As an Irish person, it's actually embarrassing watching us willingly participate in the Eurovision. I do not care that we made it to the finals. Imagine being known as the country that openly supports Palestine due to your shared history of present-day colonialism, only to turn around and do this.

[caracolcondiarrea]

I believe that Eurovision this year has been a social experiment

[astralpenguin]

also. when will europe collectively stop voting for israel. come the fuck on

[twpsyn-who]

Talking a little bit about 'boycotting Eurovision' under Keep Reading, feel free to scroll down if is not what you want to see.

The most used argument on the matter of banning Israel from Eurovision is the fact that Russia got banned from Eurovision, which is the worst argument anyone could bring.

Kindly reminder that Russia didn't get banned because of the war with Ukraine. Russia got banned because many countries has threatened to withdraw from the competition. Sadly, that's a big difference.

Yes, the countries has threatened to withdraw because they support Ukraine and see Russia as the party in the wrong. That was their reason. EBU's reason for banning Russian was because those countries threatened to withdraw, not because the war was bad and Russia must be stopped.

This situation isn't the same. Why? Because many countries support Israel in their genocide. Because this time around Palestine is the party in the wrong. Because we're taught to believe that Israel isn't in the wrong here.**

Boycotting Eurovision won't work. There are people out there who don't know the truth and want to watch Eurovision. There are people out there who don't care and will watch Eurovision regardless of the situation. There are people out there who, despite having the facts, still don't see Israel as the bad guy in this situation and will watch Eurovision. Sadly, boycotting won't work unless everyone does it.

The only way Israel will get banned, in my opinion, is by going through the same thing as Russia. If other countries threatened to withdraw- and not any countries, but the ones investing the most in Eurovision, then yes. That will get Israel banned.

Otherwise? The only thing we do is hurt artists that don't deserve it. Artists who use Eurovision as a way to get more exposure and experience. Artists who deserve to be heard.

Don't vote for Israel's entry. Don't stream their song either. Heck, turn off the TV when is their turn to perform.

**This whole situation (the war, not Eurovision) isn't only black and white. Civilians die daily because of this, all of them from both sides. Innocent people who has no fault. Let's not forget that

[deep-hearts-core]

A post about the Loreen thing,

which I'm making separately so that it isn't hidden under the cut when I do my yearly review.

First of all it is necessary to state that I don't hate Tattoo. I have it fifteenth for the year. I liked Euphoria and I like some of Loreen's other music. I am not jumping on the hater train because I hate Loreen or hate the song. She sounded good on the night and the staging was, as we expect of Sweden, showy and mostly visually interesting.

HOWEVER. I think that there are two reasons that people are angry right now and both of them are justified. Firstly, it's because of the way the voting system works currently and what narratives work well on a television show (which Eurovision, ultimately, is). Secondly, it's because some more discerning fans are picking up on some of the circumstances surrounding Loreen's participation and win and have gotten out their red string.

To point one: This is the first time since the split voting system was implemented in 2016 that the winner of the jury vote won the contest. We've previously had entries who won neither, but there was too big of a split between the jury and televote winner (2016, 2019), an entry who won both votes (2017), and entries who won the televote (2018, 2021, 2022). Eurovision has changed a lot since its inception and in some ways the juries are a holdover from when it was a song contest rather than a performance contest (they were also reintroduced to combat bloc voting and then just made the bloc voting worse so do with that what you will). These days, the people like to vote!!! The people also like an underdog, which we went into the contest knowing that Finland was--or at least, the only other contender with a fighting chance of beating Queen Loreen. So seeing Loreen absolutely sweep the jury vote, country by country, with a margin of over 100 points, got boring and frustrating real fast.

I'm not saying down with the juries necessarily. I'm a somewhat serious musician who often loves jury bait songs and the juries have played an important role in supporting the songs I really like. And sometimes, the tension between the jury vote and public vote is okay! Sometimes it's interesting and makes for good television! But last night was not, narratively, good television.

I mean, maybe it was for some people.

Which leads me to point two: the red string. Now, I am not usually a conspiracy theory person at Eurovision. I mean, my first Eurovision was 2016 and I remember how the Russia fans got about that. My second Eurovision was 2017 and I hated APD with a burning passion at the time and I didn't get out the red string then.

But this... I think a lot of more serious fans are looking at the big picture. So, when a country wins, they get to be on the reference group and participate in decision-making about contest rules and such. The last time Sweden won was 2015. This win put them at 6 total, one behind Ireland. Sweden has made being good at Eurovision part of their national identity. The split voting system was introduced the following year, at the 2016 contest, hosted by Sweden.

Fast forward to this year. Sweden have placed 5th three times, 4th once, and then 7th and 14th which are less interesting, in the years since. Objectively very good results. But this year, the contest final was due to take place on Johnny Logan's birthday (Johnny Logan being the first, at that time only, competitor in history to win twice). The fiftieth anniversary of Abba's win is next year. And Loreen decided to come back to Melodifestivalen.

Loreen had previously tried to return in 2017 with the song "Statements" but wiped out in Melfest's second chance round. So it wasn't necessarily guaranteed that she would sweep. However, many fans felt that this year's Melfest entries were really weak songs, which made it easier for "Tattoo", with its flashy staging and name recognition, to soar to a win. In a real monkey's paw moment, I said after watching Melfest that the only way I could accept Loreen winning Melfest was if she Johnny Logan'd. Lol.

Even before Melfest, though, there were also the new voting rules. For the first time this year, semifinal qualifiers would be decided only through televote, not based on the juries. As I noted last night, this meant that the televote would likely be split among many songs--we'd still have a televote winner, but if the jury coalesced behind one song, the jury winner would win the contest. This... happened.

It's also worth noting that the current executive supervisor of the contest is Swedish, and that even before the voting sequence there were references to Abba and Johnny Logan throughout the night. That, in addition to the weak Melfest, timing of both voting changes, and the timing of the contest, adds up to a conspiratorial picture, for those who are so inclined.

And, lastly, I also think some of us are having fun arguing with Loreen fans, especially those who are like "well, YOU voted for her, so you don't get to complain!" Reader, I did not vote for Loreen. I in fact voted for Finland, among others. Most of us who are complaining did not, in fact, vote for Loreen. And look I don't wanna be like last year's Spain fans who to this day say that Chanel was the true winner of the 2022 contest but it is pretty fun to be a hater.

At the end of the day, it is what it is and there isn't anything we can do to change it, but it's fun to be angry in the meantime, and I personally had fun assembling all the reasons why people are angry into a nice little tumblr post for you all. Thank you and goodnight <3

[because-its-eurovision]

eurovision.tv

[w1lmutt]

So Loreen won huh

[mitamicah]

I guess I’ve felt a bit off from the rest of the kääryleet the last few days and I am not liking it very much.

I want to be in agreement with you guys and get excited like you do ... it has just been a bit harder this weekend which sucks since there’s a new song and cool new MV theories and I am here like: slow down would you for the old man? (me)

this doesn’t make any sense possibly but I guess I’ll just say sorry for not being up to speed and for being a bit moody/unamused.