#and i'm very much still in the process of norwegian

[diluc33rpm]

oh boy 200. here we go:

1/2 Do you speak multiple languages? Which do you dream in? What language would you want to learn?

a few. but i'll have you know i dream exclusively in whatever the fuck this is

[prisonhannibal]

Hi, I'd just like to say how it's just so incredibly cool to me that you're making indigenous ( specifically sámi ) art. Though just "cool" might be too small a word to describe it.

As someone who IS sámi but. Kind of doesn't feel like they are / has a whole lot of their own complicated feelings about it (didn't speak the language at home and that sort of stuff yk), it's always so special to me to see anything about it online. Always makes me want to get a hold of myself and actually connect with my culture, it's so so important to me and seeing your art makes me really happy :'))

And honestly? Seeing stuff about us online makes it feel like it's not too late for me, that I don't have to just put "finnish" in my bio anymore. ( Though I can't really start thinking it's too late if I'm still a minor now can I?)

Sorry if this got a little much, but I wanted to let you know how important your art can be, don't feel pressured to answer this, if you want to you can just leave it or delete it!! I'm a scared guy hiding behind anon anyways :'))

Hi ❤️💚💛💙 Don’t apologize it’s not too much and I’m glad you chose to reach out instead of dealing with it alone, that’s a step in the process of reconnecting ❤️ There is a specific loneliness in not having connections to your people. I don’t know your circumstances or if it’s a completely disconnected situation or if your family grew up calling themselves sámi but not participating in the culture, so some of this might not be relevant to you but I’ll answer as if you have very little connection just in case, so I can cover too much instead of too little. I’m sorry if this is all unnecessary and preachy and you didn’t ask but I have things I feel like saying.

The language thing doesn’t say anything about how sámi you are, I didn’t grow up speaking my heart language (that’s what my áhkku calls it and I think it’s beautiful) either, the majority of sámi people don’t speak any sámi language. You have to remember that the damage done to our communities is so severe that I literally feel like I’m in a privileged position for growing up with our culture and traditions in a proud sámi family and that I got to wear a gákti as a kid, even though our language was taken from our family before I was even born. A lot of people don’t even get that. It’s not our fault, whatever we lost during the norwegianization period (and similar policies and laws in the other “countries” in sápmi) was taken from us when they beat and forced it out of our great grandparent and grandparent generation.

It’s not too late for you, or for anyone. I know many people who got their first gákti late into adulthood. I’d celebrate someone reconnecting in their 60s. You are so so so young, you have so many years left of life where you can have this, if you choose to take it. You’re also lucky that you’re young bc there’s many youth organizations across the borders. I work on the board in one and we work on organizing social stuff and duodji courses and stuff like that to create meeting spaces for sámi youth! I was actually just in Helsinki to meet with some of the organizations on the finnish and swedish side and they seemed very nice :) I would recommend looking into what’s available in your area, and if you’re interested in learning languages or duodji I wish I could help find resources, but I don’t speak finnish, but I imagine if you contact your local community they’ll be able to help you with that.

Connection is healing 🌸 Both for yourself and for our people, because we are still here and we always will be. The only people who win when we are quiet is the people who did this to us. I want all of us back and together and with the sámi spirit that ČSV stands for. There is no obligation to do anything and you should never feel guilt for not being able to do things, but I like to think that if my family from the past who weren’t allowed to do the things I do now could see me they’d be happy. When I took sámi classes I thought that the people that came before us when boarding schools were a tool to get rid of our language would be so happy to see that we’re allowed to learn now. I hope that thought can give some comfort and strength no matter where you are or what you do in this process ❤️

After the 2023 protests I was really fucked in the head, so I went home to my áhkku and she cooked reindeer meat for me and taught me how to sew a gákti, and that felt like it healed something in me.

Anyway, this was a really nice ask to get. It means a lot to me to hear that my art is meaningful to other people. I wasn’t always sure there was an audience for it, but I always made it anyway because I think sámi art and happiness existing is a beautiful and important thing ☺️

I need to say again, you are so so young, there’s so much time and so much you can learn and do, and there’s no rush. I have heard many from the older generations say how proud they are and emotional that our youth is taking our traditions and our languages back, we’ll be happy to have you. I wish you all the best

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

Why aren't prison islands really used anymore? I think that is actually a great idea and would love my story to have the majority of prisons on such islands. Is there something I'm overlooking that makes them less feasible these days? Does it depend on technology level? I'm building a world of my own so all the geography and stuff can be made to suit this better. Honestly, it makes so much sense because the world should have so so many uninhabited islands all over the place - lots of land that sound perfect for prisons away from the main populations. Perhaps the guards can even live on the island and go home on rotations and crops could also be grown on the island if there is an issue with constant travel and supplies.

Tex: Prison islands are primarily used, in a mostly descending order of priority, for political prisoners, people who committed very severe crimes, somewhat indiscriminate venues for torturing random people, and (for Australia) a processing center for immigrants.

There’s a significant amount of overlap in the first three reasons, so a major cause of these prisons being shut down is a change in overall political opinion. This may not always line up with a government’s political opinion, and thus the people who hold the purse strings of any given country, but historically speaking a more humane approach to foreign relations generally means there’s less of a reason to put people into prisons on islands, and thus less funding to keep these prisons open.

Utuabzu: Honestly, the main reasons are probably cost and the inconvenience of getting staff and basic services to and from. It’s expensive to build anything on an isolated island and logistically difficult to get people, food and basic services there, which only adds to the cost. The isolation also makes it harder to have proper oversight of the prison staff, making corruption and abuse more likely. But, I suspect it’s mostly just a matter of cost. Prisons are already expensive and there’s little political benefit to spending money on one that is too isolated to provide an economic boost to any particular community.

Where you do still get these, it’s either because the government doesn’t really care that much about public opinion (various dictatorships) or because the whole point is to isolate the detainees away from the mainland (Australian immigration, Guantanamo Bay, etc.) So you can have an island prison, just figure out why the local government is willing to go to that much effort.

Licorice: According to the American Federal Bureau of Prisons, “On March 21, 1963, USP Alcatraz closed after 29 years of operation. It did not close because of the disappearance of Morris and the Anglins (the decision to close the prison was made long before the three disappeared), but because the institution was too expensive to continue operating. An estimated $3-5 million was needed just for restoration and maintenance work to keep the prison open. That figure did not include daily operating costs - Alcatraz was nearly three times more expensive to operate than any other Federal prison”

https://www.bop.gov/about/history/alcatraz.jsp

China apparently still has an island prison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongguan_Prison

And so does Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ognenny_Ostrov

And so does Norway. Bastoy Island  is sometimes called “the nicest prison in the world”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/25/norwegian-prison-inmates-treated-like-people

[anidiotwithfanfiction]

An excerpt from a Nickles fic I'm scraping.

I'm still writing one, this just isn't what I want for it.

Warning for very brief gore

A scream rips through the room, the sound sending a shiver up the singers spine.

He's used to blood and guts.

Gore and viscera.

It's a casual, horrific delight he's grown numb to.

It's like chaos seems to follow him.

Ever in his shadows, just a step behind.

It's strange, how seldom shock comes to him.

But as the pretty little redhead on screen gets ripped to shreds, something in him stirs.

The fear in those vivid green eyes. Her flushed freckled cheeks splattered with crimson.

And it isn't real. It's just some shitty movie banned in just about every country for 'graphic material'. The plot's not even that engaging.

But Nathan, he's really connected with this character.

She's sloppy, abrasive, sexy and witty. She hot, man.

The ideal girl really, even if she makes for a shit protagonist. Not meant to appeal, not meant to connect with the audience. You're supposed to feel some kind of catharsis as she's slain, that's what the critics say at least. But as white knuckles grip a little tighter at the cushioned arm rest, all Nathan can process is this sort of profound grief.

He didn't want her to die.

The credits roll, the rest of the band shuffles to their feet. Murderface snoring obnoxiously. At least that was better than the first half of the movie, in which he had spent it interrupting every five second to say how lame it was. Skwisgaar stretched, and it wasn't hard to see the way Tokis eyes immediately glanced down to the patch of flesh revealed as his shirt rode up. The Norwegian's face flushing red.

And Nathan was a bit slow. He could be dense at times.

But everyone excluding the pair noticed how head over heels the two were for each other.

It made him want to cringe. He hoped if he ever fell to the same fate someone would give him the courtesy to at least smack him out of it.

But despite how much the band has hinted to the two their obvious feelings for one another, they never seemed to get it. Like to love or be loved was so out of the realm of possibility for either, that the concept simply didn't exist to them.

Cold digits glide atop his hand. Realizing he's still clawing at the poor seat, he relinquishes his grasp.

Looking over, those friendly green eyes look through him. He doesn't have to say anything, Nathan knows what that look means.

"It's nothing" he mumbles, standing up with the rest. Pickles follows him, his hand sliding down to the small of the singers back. He hides it, not that he needs to. With Murderface asleep and Skwisgaar and Toki in the same room as one another, they might as well be halfway across the country.

Red dreads brush against his shoulder, a shudder running through him. Barely above a whisper the drummer asks

"Drinks?"

He pulls back, and Nathan turns a bit too quick. Their faces close. He brushes off the jump in his stomach, it can be nerve wracking. He's lived so much of his life isolated. Being around others like this would always be new to him. It was an even greater leap to get accustomed to Pickles. The guy was just so touchy. He's like that with everyone. As though he's starved for the slightest bit of physical contact.

Nathan shakes his head, shelving those thoughts. It's small enough to go unnoticed, even under that perplexing glare.

"Hell yes" he smiles.

"What'd ya think of tha movie?" The red head asks before taking a puff of the blunt. They've shuffled off to his room, leaving the others to themselves.

"Was pretty shitty. I mean, the plot made no sense"

Pickles chuckles as he passes the bud.

"Dood I know, like, why'd they have that five minute shot of tha fucking church that literally never came up again?"

"Who the fuck picked the movie this week?"

"I think it was Skwisgaar, somethin bout tha gore being really good"

Nathan's stomach churns. It was a little too good.

"That chick was hot though" it slips. It's not like it's something they avoid talking about, hot bitches come up pretty often in this lifestyle. But as of late, he's done his best to avoid the topic around his drummer.

He can't put his finger on it, but the conversation always steers... somewhere else.

"Which one? The brunette chick? She was okay" he hits a bong at his bedside. The singer jolts a bit, quickly taking a puff of the blunt before passing it back.

He watches as clouds of white pour elegantly from those plump pink lips.

"No, I mean yeah I'd do her-"

There's a glint in those green eyes as Pickels cuts him off

"The redhead" the tip of his tongue pokes out of the corner of his mouth, prominent canines pressing against it.

"Seems about right" he teases.

"She was hot dude"

"I think yew've just got a thing for redheads"

"I've got a thing for women, okay" the singer refutes. "Hot, sexy women."

The drummer rolls his eyes "Hey nobody's objecting ta that" he raises his shot glass, with a heavy handed pour of scotch. Nathan looks down, not surprised to see the same awaiting him in the drummers other hand.

He takes it, rough hands lingering a moment too long.

They clink their glasses and throw the shots back.

Bottles are scattered across the room by now, a deadly mix for your average Joe. But Nathan's still got his wits about him.

For the most part, anyways.

Pickles has been doing double time, it's impossible to keep up with the guy, and the singer gave up a while ago. No one can out drink him, and back when he used to try... well things didn't end up so well.

But that was many years and many E.R visits ago. Now the singer knows his limit. Not that he adheres to it, but he knows.

And on the fourth bottle of bourbon, he's quickly approaching it.

Between the liquor and the weed, he's struggling to stay upright. Resigning himself to sprawling out on the drummers bed. It's comfortable, even if the decor in here screams '80s rockstar'.

Pickles passes him the joint, how weed always magically appears in the guys hand, still evades the singer.

He pulls slow, feeling the smoke clamber down his throat. His lungs expanding, filling with the intoxicant. The hum of the t.v quiets, the shitty sitcom they've got playing fades into the background. The drumming of the singers heart comes into focus.

It's soothing, a steady beat comforting him as he tunes the world out.

He's fucked up.

He was shitfaced five drinks ago, green out of his mind three joints back.

It wasn't something he was unaccustomed to.

But shit, this was intense.

Probably the strain, or maybe even the Vodka, but right now, he was out of it.

A cold hand taps on his shoulder, and his eyes dart to the redhead. Those pretty lips are moving, but he's not taking in a whisper of it.

The freckled hand is back, snapping in front of his eyes. He blinks, hard and slow. Tries a little harder to listen.

"Are ya deaf?"

"Huh?" Glazed over greens match the drummers, as Nathan grounds himself a bit.

"I said are ya fuckin deaf, jeez dood" he seems so exacerbated.

"No... no." He shakes his head, scooting closer to where the drummer lies beside him.

"Just fucked up is all" he manages, slurring only half of his words.

He can't help as his head falls to the redheads shoulder. Too far gone to notice the way the man jolts. Chilly bare arms wrap around his frame, pulling him closer.

"Cahm here, let mama Pickles take care a' ya"

He nuzzles his face against the worn black fabric of the drummers shirt. His cheeks brushing against flushed skin.

"Soft..." He mumbles, more to himself than the room.

And that icy hand is gripping his waist just a bit tighter, pulling him in. They're pressed together now, Nathan cradling the drummer, his cool flesh like the cold side of a pillow. Refreshing, calming, intoxicating.

"Mm just gonna take a nap"

"Yew do that buddy" he can hear the smile in his voice.

"So fucking comfortable" he mutters, burying his face into the drummers chest. Breathing in that sweaty smoke stained musk. His ear propped to his chest, he listens to the drummers heartbeat. The quick pace soothing, as he drifts off.

[solradguy]

hi! can you tell your whole process for learning japanese on your own? where did you start? what resources did you utilise? how did you find and manage your time and maintain discipline? also, how long did it take you to reach fluency?

I am sooooo far from fluent hahaha I'm stumbling through this language Gromit-style

Ok, so, circa 2014 I was studying Norwegian because I really wanted to learn a secondary language (thx American school system...) and I really liked the cadence/feel of Norwegian. That was my entire reason for studying it, I just liked how it sounded lol. But by 2016 I'd learned enough of it from Duolingo that it was time to move on to more difficult study materials.

Which I could not find for the life of me.

I got frustrated and decided it'd probably be best to pick up another language. Japanese was the one I saw the most since a lot of my favorite artists are Japanese, some of my best inking supplies come from Japan (with Japanese packaging), and there used to be a really good local Japanese restaurant too (RIP). Duolingo had just launched an absolutely shit Japanese course that motivated me to look for better practice materials.

I think I started practicing the kana through just writing them a whole bunch before finding out about Tofugu's hiragana and katakana mnemonics-based study articles. From there I did the three free levels offered by Wanikani. Wanikani is awesome, I learned a lot through that program and wish the full version one-time purchase was more affordable... It's worth it, I'm just broke haha

After a while I lost interest in studying Japanese because it's so difficult/time consuming and tried out reconstructed Classical Latin (HARD!), Norwegian again, and just barely dipped my toes into Esperanto. About a year before I got into Guilty Gear (2020), I picked up Japanese again by refreshing my progress on Wanikani. The Duolingo course still sucked but it had gotten a tiny bit better with its kana study tool, though I dropped it again before long. What helped the most this time were books. I tried out these:

Genki - Not bad. I liked how it broke down parts of grammar. However, it's definitely written for a classroom setting. The topics/vocabulary were all school themed and, on top of feeling like I was missing vital information by self-studying, it just got boring.

Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese - This has a physical version but I read it through the free app/website. Much more advanced than Genki, but made for self-study and as a grammatical reference tool. It went a bit over my head and was too fast-paced, I learn kinda slow... Now that I'm much better at Japanese, I should try it again.

Japanese From Zero - My favorite of the books I tried. Goes slower, made more for self-study, and has some free supplemental materials on their website.

While Japanese From Zero was working great, I was losing interest again because my brain CRAVES variety. Straight up translating stories has helped me more than anything else. Japanese Short Stories for Beginners by LingoMastery was a good investment alongside Barron’s Japanese Grammar by Carl and Nobuo Akiyama and Japanese Verbs & Essentials of Grammar by Rita L. Lampkin to help with grammar concepts Japanese Short Stories doesn't expand on enough. IMABI (website) is also a very good grammar reference guide. It can be a bit dry, but I like that. It doesn't waste time and is very direct.

Lingodeer has been invaluable too. The free version is smartphone app only, but that's fine since I usually study right before bed anyway. It has a 5 minute quiz that's just snappy enough to refresh my knowledge without being so long that my brain gets bored of the repetition. The lesson modules also do a really great job at explaining grammatical concepts. There are some other study tools, like specific ones for practicing grammar and vocabulary, that I like.

Then in 2021 I got into Guilty Gear. Boy, did I get into Guilty Gear. Translating GG books has helped me more than all of these other materials combined (except the Tofugu kana articles). HIGHLY recommend going a little crazy for a piece of Japanese media if you wanna learn the language.

I can't speak it for shit though, to be honest lmao. But I set out learning it to read things so that's fine; there are very, very, few Japanese speakers where I live anyway. What I mean by this is that I don't have any materials to suggest for learning how to speak it or to improve listening comprehension, sorry...

If I'm not currently working on a translation project (which counts as studying!!), I try to do at least one of these forms of practice each day:

10-15 minutes of Lingodeer

Do Anki flashcards until I get bored. There's a deck that's all 60 levels of Wanikani, though Wanikani itself is still better.

Practice kana stroke order for the ones I still sometimes struggle with （ツ、シ、ン、ソ......）and at least 5 kanji

Read something in Japanese. Lately this's been Japanese-English Translation: An Advanced Guide by Judy Wakabayashi

There's a page on my Neocities with some study tools but it needs updated with a few things I've since found that work better:

[fall-shorter]

It's Indie Animation Day, so um...HERE'S GANG FOR RENT:

Hi, I'm Shorter, and I'm working on GANG FOR RENT which is an adult animated series about daily, disastrous shenanigans of a small gang and their unhindged leader who dreams of being a big shot in the underworld but fails miserably!

In the Norwegian town of Morkland which is overflowing with the worst kind of living garbage, Sziliana, a mentally unstable leader of an equally low-life gang “38 Boys”, while dreaming of eternal fame as a king of gangsters came up with unusual business for her group - They can basically do anything as long as you pay them for it! If anything illegal comes to play, these five got ya covered. Well, unfortunately finds out it's easier said than done, especially since one of the conditions of getting rich and famous is not dying like an idiot and exploding everything in the process.

Each episode will show the gang dealing with the most insane and random tasks. Some brought by their "clients" and some by their own not very well thought out ideas.

WHAT'S THE PLAN FOR NOW?

For now my biggest goal is to gain enough funds to make ~10 minute pilot episode. The script is ready, but the cost of voice actors, bg artist, animators, clean-up artists and storyboarders is not little, so it might take a while before I can truly work on the project. So if you want to support the show follow me on my social medias and share them around! HERE ARE ALL MY SOCIALS

WHY AM I MAKING THIS SHOW?

I wanted to make cartoons since I was 9. I made these characters when I was still a beginner artist, but I managed to keep them for over 7 years now and I think that just shows how much dedication I have for this show. I know there is audience for hot gangsta boys out there, so I hope some people could enjoy these little goobers as much as I do!

VISIT GFR WEBSITE FOR MORE INFO:

[void-galaxy-shenanigans]

Yet another “I'm more non-speaking/nonverbal than I thought” post.

Hi. This is Nico. Our body is autistic. When I first found that out I thought we were “high functioning”, because we weren't as disabled as others seemed to be. But we were just very high masking at the time, & the mask is peeling off in painful layers.

I perfected my ability to write from 5 years old till now (we're 23), in part because speaking aloud is difficult. (But I thought everyone struggled to speak words & that I just....wasn't dealing with it well.) Because of that, this will be written in much better grammar & clearer words than I am capable of aloud right now. That does not mean I can speak aloud, nor that autistics who can't write like this don't exist or aren't super valid. That also doesn't mean I won't use wrong words sometimes, because I do still mix up words or have an inability to find the word I mean.

That disclaimer aside....

I thought I was hyperverbal. Because we also have ADHD & C-PTSD, the tism didn't seem to affect our speaking much.

The hyperverbal speech was part autism mask, part ADHD hyperactivity (or, externalized symptoms to be more accurate), & part PTSD (got abused & punished for not speaking).

I am currently medicating my ADHD with a balance of sugar & caffeine that works short-term. (I will eventually seek actual meds but there's a shortage right now & I am a tired bitch who doesn't wanna deal with doctors right now.)

I was trying to sing along to my music playlist. That's typically one of my most reliable self-soothing tactics. Even as we've started unmasking the tism, I didn't notice much difference in my singing—as long as I'm singing with backup music, I can still sing when words otherwise don't wanna work/translate/etc.

It came out in soft babbles, “bah bah bah” (lip taps with air), “bleh bleh bleh” (basically just tongue taps with air), & faint humming. I could follow the general beat/tune of the song, but couldn't make any of the lyrics come out.

This followed a session of flirting with my autistic girlfriend, & her making me laugh nonstop for a solid 20mins, until my brain decided “I'm safe right now” & words failed me. My mouth wouldn't do it.

I can still make noise in my head. Some of my thoughts are words (in a jumbled mix of the languages I know (Spanish & French, & bits n pieces of Norwegian/German/Italian/Irish Gaelic/Russian/Greek)). But most are pictures, feelings, vague concepts that I couldn't translate if I tried. None of the thoughts, even the ones that are words, will come out of my mouth. I can't make them come out.

That said, after around 20mins of incoherent noise I was able to sing along again not by understanding the meaning of the words or by saying the words, but by mimicking just the sounds. Ignore that it's a word, let the meaning float in nonexistence, & I can repeat the sound. But I don't know what the fuck I'm saying when I do that, because I can't think the meaning or process the words at the same time as I mimic it.

And that's the same reason that I sing almost exactly the same notes, accent, tone, etc. when I sing, 99% of the time. I'm just mimicking—I'm not actively singing. In order to actually sing, I have to wait for my brain to have enough processing power to spare to not mask, not mimic, process the words, process everything around me (lights, sounds, etc.), associate the words with something or someone, preferably a memory (usually it's my girlfriend who comes to mind right now, but sometimes it's family or friends), AND still make the words come out like they actually mean something. And that takes...so much out of me.

I can't make meaningful words happen right now. Just meaning-detached sounds.

So...yeah.

I thought I had no problems with speech. I thought words were just “a little difficult sometimes”. But I can only word so much in a day before I run out now, & I mean hard stop, ‘can't even mask to save my life’, can't talk to my loved ones, ✨run out✨. My girlfriend pointed out I'm unable to word speech more often than I'm able to now, & suggested I might be more non-speaking than I realized. Because I can usually word inside my head, for most of a day (especially if I take a nap), but I cannot word aloud for more than 2 or 3 hours if I'm not masking, & my mask starts glitching & breaking (stutters, wrong scripts, etc.) after about 5 hours at work now.

So I was never high functioning. I was destroying my brain to mask, & now I'm so burnt out & destroyed from what I did mask through that I can't even mask most of the time. I am now “high support needs” (incorrectly dubbed “low functioning”) autistic, because of how masking destroyed me.

Once I graduate college with a degree that lets me get a job where I can be myself (preferably my own boss), I will never be masking ever again. I can't. It's so taxing.

Speaking isn't supposed to be hard. It's also not supposed to be an act of mimicry 24/7 (sometimes it is mimicry, but not this much). And this is news to me, and I am devastated for child me who thought he was just not trying hard enough or was broken or was just missing a tool.

He was always disabled. We were always disabled. I will honour that disability now, to the best of my ability. Because I love him, because we're worth it, because I shouldn't have to pretend to be neurotypical & able-bodied when I'm not, because that little kid deserved better.

I will learn other ways to communicate. I will learn other languages, but also non-word ways. I don't always have to speak.

And that's okay. I'm allowed to be disabled.

So into the future we grow.

~Nico

[disdaidal]

super late but i just saw the gif related asks in my likes that u rbed, so: 1, 8, 9, 32, 34, 36, 41, 49! i'm nosey as shit and love hearing u talk about ur gifmaking skills 🥰💝

Awww Melia 🥰🥰😍😍💖💖

1. What are your top 3 favorite sets you’ve made?

This is such a tough question because having to choose three sets out of everything that I've ever made?! I've made hundreds of gifsets in different fandoms, how could I possibly choose only three?

Okay, okay, here goes:

JJ/Emily from Skins UK. I thought they were so cute and I just really like my coloring here. :3 I really miss this show and I keep thinking about making new Skins (gen 2) gifs every once in a while.

Sarge/Cleo from Cleopatra 2525. This remains one of my all-time favorite sets because a) it took me several hours to make it b) it was actually my first 2-gifs-in-1-canvas set ever and c) again, I just really like my coloring here. :)

Billy in purple. My favorite boy in one of my favorite colors. :) I just really, really like this one.

8. What gif trend do you hate?

I can't exactly remember what year it was when people used to make those colorless/washed-out gifs all the time? 2014? 2015? Anyway. While I kind of liked the look of some of them (and I made a few myself so I'm not so innocent heh), when literally everybody was making them, it made my dashboard quickly look so fucking dull and lifeless. I kept asking: where are all the colorful gifs / why do you guys hate colors so much? Ugh.

Also some of the recent trends... You know when people make those transitional b&w glitchy gifs? I go back and forth about it. Like, in a way, I kind of like the look. I think the effect looks cool and I can tell it's taken a lot of time & effort to make it happen. But I also have this thing called astigmatism in my eyes, and that glitchy effect makes me go all 😵. So I'm not a huge fan of that trend because of that. I still think it's cool though.

9. What/who inspired you to start making gifs?

Honestly, I can't even 100% remember anymore. XD I think I always just thought that gifs are cool and I guess I was just hoping to see more gifs about X and Y and couldn't find them, so, I figured I gotta do it myself. I made my very first gifs in the J-rock fandom and later, as a fan of the Norwegian actor Kristoffer Joner (who has like 5 fans on Tumblr, including me haha), so, I'm guessing I got my original inspiration from there. And here we are.

32. What is your favorite tool/adjustment layer in Photoshop?

Color Balance! :)

I nearly always use the same tools for my base coloring (curves, levels, b/c) and then finish it off with vibrance and curves. But obviously, coloring/color correction is my favorite part of gif-making. And I love Color Balance because you can make such powerful changes to your gifs with a minimum of fuss - also give them depth if you adjust Shadows and Highlights as well (and I nearly always do that).

I also like using Photo Filter, especially before Color Balance - especially when scenes are strongly tinted in yellow, blue, or green (ugh). It generally works great as a color neutralizer (or an emphasizer) and saves you from a lot of cursing and swearing most of the time.

34. A set that took you a long time/was really hard but you’re really proud of how it came out.

There are quite a few of those sets and some of them really didn't do quite well in the sense of popularity. XD

I would honestly say that most of my color palette, fake scenes, and lyrics edits all took a fair amount of time and most of them are something that I'm quite proud of.

In my less popular fandoms - Young Hercules, Hercules: the Legendary Journeys, Fear the Walking Dead, Z Nation - I spent hours, even days to rip them & convert them from my DVD/BR, not to mention the whole process of finally gifing them and all, so. They definitely took me a lot of time to make and I am still quite proud of them. Even if some of them are very old now and don't necessarily look as good anymore (thus why I've already started working on some fresh remakes :D).

36. Do you gif with something specific in mind or do you just wing it?

Both. Sometimes I have such detailed plans for gifsets (even now I have so many different projects in mind, just very little time or energy for all 🙃) and I spend so much time planning them and working on them (and then they get 30 likes and 2 reblogs, one from me lol). Then sometimes I just want to make something, fuck details and plans, I don't want to think about it all lmao. So I just make these simple character episode gifsets or random scenes that I liked etc.

41. What is your least favorite part about your gif making process?

Oh, let me see. Using software that requires at least 16GB RAM to run effectively, and my poor laptop only has 8GB, so. 🙃 Not always being able to run other programs (like Spotify) in the background - or having to restart PS - or occasionally having to wait for several minutes for it to even fucking import anything, then having to wait a few minutes more for it to crop and resize the goddamn thing - yeah, I love it so fucking much. 😎🤗 Not.

Not to mention how PS keeps crashing occasionally (especially CS5, which I no longer really use for that reason + crappy fonts and it's a shame because it actually works faster on my laptop so kjkgjkggk), plus countless other, lovely errors that may occasionally pop up with this otherwise lovely, "user-friendly" Adobe feature. Thus, I am so 🏴‍☠️☠️ this shit. Not sorry. 😇🤭

49. How much would you say you’ve improved since you first started giffing?

Some of the first gifs I've made (somewhere between 2012-2014 I think):

I think there's a clear improvement compared to my most recent ones 1 & 2. :) I try to pay more attention to the speed of my gifs now - I no longer try to make them slow or skip any frames if I have to. I also strive to use mostly HQ videos these days (albeit sometimes you really just can't find them anywhere and that's something you just gotta deal with 🙃😎).

Albeit I actually still do like even some of my older colorings, I no longer usually have to spend hours and hours (except on very rare occasions) fiddling with different coloring settings and feel depressed every five minutes because now I have more experience and knowledge with different PS tools. Of course, now that Tumblr also allows us to upload even bigger gifs (from 1MB to 10MB ftw), it's obviously given me more freedom to explore and improve myself as a gif maker. :D There's still much to learn ofc, but then again, there are still people who make such awesome gif tutorials here, so I love to take new tips from them whenever I can.

—

gifmaker questions 💜

[therealvinelle]

Brief thoughts about language and brains (and vampires)

@madam-melon-meow tagged me in this post, and I decided to just make a post.

Another semi-relevant post.

So, to give a somewhat serious answer, "bilingual humans tend to think in their birth language" is at the core of what cognitive research in linguistics is even about.

This isn't something I know too much about, let me very clear on that. I'm happy to be corrected. However:

Recent studies indicate that language isn't compartmentalized in the brain, that is to say I don't close my Norwegian box and open the English one when I'm on tumblr. I'll be using English, but Norwegian will still be there in my brain and may interfere.

That is to say, without getting into how we're defining bilinguals (is complete mastery required? Regular use? Language context, i. e. if a person't native language is French, they're living in Sweden and speaking Swedish, but their workplace uses English, what results will Edward get following them through the day? There are many definitions of bilinguals. And of course, there can be multiple birth languages (and what is a birth language?)), to say that people tend to think in their birth language is... well it won't hold up in court.

When it comes to what language people (not just bilinguals) think in and the degree to which they think in language, researchers have yet to be able to give concrete answers (that I know of) but they do research code-switching (when you switch between forskjellige språk in the middle of setninger). The hope is that understanding how and why people code-switch will better the understanding of how our brains process language and, question of the hour, how we think in language, to the extent that we do, but there are not yet any definitive answers.

(Though it's worth mentioning I don't know much about code-switching at all, and am far from the person to ask about the subject.)

A common theory worth mentioning is that when code-switching between two languages occurs, one of them is the matrix language (the "main" language) and the other is the interfering language. That is to say, you'll be predominantly be using one in a given context but code-switching by borrowing from the other.

All this to say the question of how language is processed in the brain is at the core of linguistic research and I for one have no idea which it is, certainly not how Twilight vampire brains would process them.

(Thanks for coming to my TED talk.)

[m-notes]

'Going home or visiting your homeland?'

Whenever I think about travelling to see my family & friends, I always get thoughts about how foreign I might feel in the place where I'm from. I am fully aware that there are plenty of immigrants that are constantly homesick which leads to being happy and confident when it comes to travelling to the place where they grew up. Unfortunately, I am not one of them, I always have doubts, and many times visiting Latvia felt like a chore even though I do in fact love the country I'm from.

But I have always felt that I never really belonged in my hometown which is why moving to Norway was so easy in the first place. Each trip to Latvia had been giving me anxiety for the past nearly 6 years until my most recent trip which happened after 3 years of not visiting at all. That was finally the experience that I could call fully fun.

Don't get me wrong, my past visits were great as well, but there was always this bitter aftertaste because of small things that happened. Or constant anxiety about what could happen. I clearly remember counting days till I would return back to my routine in Norway. I was willing to kiss the Norwegian soil the moment I stepped on it. That just didn't feel right.

As I am typing this text right now, I also feel how the tables have turned. For the first time ever I felt I was dreading coming back to Norway. Not in a too substantial way. Simply because it meant returning to my routine, my stress & the worries that everyone has. Basically the real "coming back from vacation" experience. How did it change so much?

Well, probably not visiting motherland for 3 years had something to do with it. I felt like I was suddenly disconnected from my past worries there. I felt free, sort of? I was not reminiscing too much. I was experiencing new things or re-discovering old ones instead.

It truly felt like a real vacation for once. At the same time it also was my first great experience of "going home". I can't really say "going home" without using brackets because I have reached the point of Norway being my main home quite long ago.

A few more things made the most recent visit very special. I can talk about the tourist experience I've had (and I mean real tourist activities, not just taking a stroll in the Old Town once), I can talk about how a lot of things changed including my family moving away (but not far at all) from my place of growing up. Or I can talk about the people that have been surrounding me. That's actually a very interesting bit.

Besides my family, I haven't spent time with a single person who I used to hang out with before my moving to Norway. All of them are the people I had been acquainted with for some years before that, but we actually became very close only during past 5 years. There is some special sort of magic in that.

Not being defined by the kind of person I used to be; not being haunted by the ghosts of the past (this sounds more dramatic than I meant it lol); still getting to know each other as adults instead of just catching up and bringing up irrelevant memories.. I can go on, but what I really need to say is that I really appreciated how it felt.

Adult friendships that are not based on growing up together are so cool and precious. You end up getting close with people when your own persona is almost fully established, & setting up the right boundaries. You're not feeling vulnerable because you do indeed have a decent judgement on who's here to gain something from you & hurt you or who's here to be here for you as you are here for them. And if we're talking adult friendships within my most recent experience, one thing I really appreciate is how relaxing it feels to spend time with the people I've become really close with only during past few years. You're just straight up vibing, you spend time learning & experiencing new things together which inevitably leads to discussing them in process or afterwards, so you get to know each other on a different level which feels so great. At the same time it's also wonderful to spend time together in silence, just enjoying the weather, the views, the music — everything that surrounds you, knowing that there is a big chance you're perceiving this exact moment in a very similar way.

Another interesting thing to experience was seeing how my family has changed. I mean, they literally grew up. That often is a very stressful bit because before each visit it always feels like they are going to treat you as a kid you were when you moved away. But it was just not cool of me to underestimate them like that, to be honest. I grew up and so did they. I have my own life, habits & views, and they respect it. They are more fun to spend time with as we're reaching the age of deeper mutual understanding even though I have always enjoyed their company. All I felt while spending time with them was warmth & comfort.

Finally, I have to mention how the choice of season really affected this trip. Being in Latvia in October is something I wish to do more often (sucks that there's only one October per year, right?). Not only it's great to enjoy the falling leaves of all possible colors & crisp cold air, but it's also very inspirational. This period there has always been my favourite, I don't remember a single October in Latvia in my life I didn't enjoy. I do romanticise this period & it seems to romanticise me back.

Answering the question that I posed in the title, namely 'Going home or visiting your homeland?' is very difficult. In one hand, it was a completely new experience, full of activities that locals usually don't do, nor do the immigrants who really come home (instead, they simply run errands most of their time in their hometown what I used to do too). On the other hand, this was the cosiest experience that I definitely associated with the great comfort of coming back home.

For once, I'm really looking forward to doing it again.🍂

[zorlok-if]

hello dearest author!! hope you're doing well :) i'm so very excited for this and i was hoping for a little more info on our rival hunters lucia and ciel (because i may already be simping for both of them teehee XD) thank you!!!!!!

Aw, thanks! Hope you're doing well too!! And I encourage simping for them, so, I'll happily oblige:

Lucía Reyes

Growing up, her mother worked for the government and her family moved to different countries, she spent much of her childhood in Norway.

Has five siblings and a large extended family, but they mostly still live in Europe or on the East Coast.

She speaks fluent English, Spanish, Norwegian, and Icelandic.

She is autistic and has sensory processing issues.

Action is her favorite movie genre but she also enjoys watching romances (particularly regency era ones like Pride & Prejudice); she cries easily/frequently at films.

She plays drums, is really good at sewing/knitting, bench presses 160 lbs, and makes damn good omelets.

Cool rain is her favorite weather, her favorite smell is petrichor, and her favorite sound is rain softly falling against a window.

Ciel Renault

They're from Montréal and have dual American and Canadian citizenship; Québécois is their first language.

They have chronic pain and use a cane as a mobility aid during flare-ups.

They always say that blood red or black is their favorite color but it's secretly lavender.

They love dark chocolate (it's their go to comfort food) and will try almost anything with dark chocolate in it.

They love film; film noir is their favorite genre and The Big Sleep, The Prestige and Howl's Moving Castle are their favorite films.

They're fascinated with medical science and considered going to nursing or medical school but remembered how much they hate school.

They've only ever been in either Québec or Washington but they really want to travel the world.

[meimae]

31/08/21

I'm quickly writing this late at night as I have plans to 100% continue my really good reading streak in September. I managed to read close to approximately a million characters this month across all reading materials - something I've been aiming for for a while now - so you can understand how much I want to keep it up.

For the past few months of doing these updates, although enjoyable as they are for me, I've noticed that they take me literally the entire day to write which is a dumb use of time especially at the start of the month. So without further ado, here's my August Immersion Update! Right on the dot for once!

ANIME

Same shows as last month and leaned more towards るろうに剣心 than NANA although both immediately got dropped for dramas instead. Really have not been in the mood for anime, old or new.

BOOKS

本好きの下剋上

A staple read to fill up time at this point. Also listened to the chapters I've managed to read so far.

海辺のカフカ (上)

Yet another book that gets started and left to gather dust. Was mostly read to 試す if I improved or not which I kinda did, but with 村上春樹, there's always so many things to keep track of both vocabulary and plot wise that it feels like I haven't improved at all. I really have no idea how I managed to read Norwegian Wood as my first book without dying in the process. Probably because it's essentially just SoL without the fantasy hullabaloo that 村上春樹's fond of.

Read 62.25k characters total.

DRAMA

僕のいた時間

Reminiscent of 1 Litre of Tears. Excellent drama for a good cry if you need something gut punching.

あさが来た

Finally finished this 朝ドラ! Dropped it for a bit because I was so worried about picking up the sounds for yet another dialect. It's a common thing for morning dramas to introduce many different traditional, cultural, and regional aspects of Japan through the lens of mostly female pioneers, and while it's all so very interesting, I have to be careful as to not pick up anything beyond the standard speech and pitch patterns. Forgot how awesome the female protagonist was (based on a real person!) and needed to remind myself how much she stepped beyond the expectations for a woman during her time. What an absolute legend.

まれ

Another 朝ドラ, and much like あさが来た, another dialect, so almost immediately paused to make way for other listening material.

コードブルー 1

Fast paced, pure medical drama and an excuse to watch more of ガッキー. Wanted to listen to harder stuff and I got it with this one. Really good show that I plan on watching the other seasons next month.

3年A組 ���から皆さんは、人質です

Excellent drama that you have to watch for yourself if you haven't already. Easily up to par with Kazoku Game.

MANGA

魔法使いの嫁

Missed the anime and thought I wanted to read the manga, but immediately paused for visual novels.

カードキャプターさくら クリアカード編

Something I read for nostalgia's sake and to take a break from harder stuff. Caught up to volume 9 and 10.

Approx. 20~30k characters total.

VISUAL NOVELS

白昼夢の青写真

Finished! Read my review here!

剣が君

TMW's VN pick for September. A win for otome games! I literally started this four days ago now, and I've already read 285k characters, finished an entire route, and started the next one. Just now, I finished reading 100k characters all in a day for the first time ever, and if I didn't have to sleep, I would have loved to continue.

This is my first otoge, and I feel like this is what I have been missing. This hits all my favorite genres in a read all at once - female protagonist, drama, romance, action, historical fiction, fantasy, comedy - you name it, this VN has it, and I couldn't be more pleased that this won the vote because I wouldn't have known about it otherwise. So excited to read the rest of it!

Read 894.19k characters total.

-☆-

That's it for August! This was a marathon write up for the month, but I hope it was still as well written as the rest.

Thanks for reading, and as always, updates in the future!

[lokiondisneyplus]

Although Loki has been a fixture of the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2011’s Thor, the character has never had his own musical identity. That all changed with Loki - the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s latest Disney+ series - and the music of Natalie Holt. The innovative, versatile score is a perfect match for the God of Mischief’s sensibilities and is easily among the best sonic works we’ve heard in the genre.

As such, we were excited to sit down with Holt to discuss the inspiration behind the score’s instrumentation, sticking up for her music in late-night dub sessions, and being part of the MCU.

I want to start right at the beginning. What was your reaction when you booked the Loki meeting?

I just knew that it was the biggest opportunity I'd ever had, and I really prepped hard. I went into the meeting with my ideas really fleshed out, and quite a lot of my responses to the script seemed to by some lucky coincidence fit with the directors. That was cool. I then got to do the pitch after the meeting, so I had to score the time theater scene in episode one, and I totally went to town on that as well. I really wanted this job so much because I felt that Loki was a great character and I was a big fan.

You and director Kate Herron were immediately on the same page in regards to using a Theremin for Loki. What was it about that instrument that appealed to you for this project?

A friend of mine had sent me ‘The Swan’ by Clara Rockmore ages ago, and I just loved the sound of it. I had also been listening to lots of BBC Radiophonic workshops, and I'd seen this documentary about Delia Derbyshire as well so I had all these 1950’s, analogue-y synth sounds buzzing around in my head. Tom Hiddleston has a Shakespeare-like quality to his performance, so I thought this needs to have some kind of classical, weighty grandness. So it was a fusion of those two things.

You weren’t on set for Loki, and I know that is something you like to do. In the absence of that, what sparked your creativity the most?

It was engaging with the character in a really deep way. The storyline really got under my skin and inspired me. I had the Loki theme in the pitch, so that’s been there from day one. And as for the riffs in the theme, I feel like Loki is the Salieri to Thor’s Mozart, so I was listening to lots of that. There's a bit of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ by Wagner in Loki’s theme as well. That was all in the pitch. Then I had a month to write the suite. That was the Mobius theme, the Sylvie theme, and the Variant theme.

For all the hi-tech stuff we see in Loki, the TVA is also very analogue in some respects and you’ve clearly taken that into account with the score. How quickly did you catch onto that and are there any other ways that are reflected in your score?

I sampled lots of clock-ticking sounds. I worked with Daniel Sonnabend - he’s got lots of old analog tape machines - and we were messing around with that. The tape machine player almost became its own instrument. We had this big church bell for the timekeepers at the beginning of episode four. That was sampled and then downgraded, so it gets glitchy as it goes on to signify what’s happening in the story. I was just messing around with a lot of that in the background, and it's all over everything. There's always an urgency and a time-ticking feeling in the background of lots of tracks.

How long does one spend listening to samples of clocks before you find the right one?

I've got a lot! I'm sure they'll come in handy at some point.

I’ve read that you wanted a score that “reflected Loki’s personality.” What were some of the characteristics you were looking to emphasise and accentuate with your score?

Something that I touched on with Kate, from reading the scripts for the very first time was Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange. In that film, Alex commits these horrendous acts and he's extremely violent, and yet somehow you connect with him. I feel like Loki is the same. He's a likable villain. In the series, he comes to terms with his fallibility and it is quite painful for him. So I suppose my job is to help him reach those emotional depths. When he sees his mother in episode one, his past is calling to him and that's when we hear those haunting Norwegian instruments that suddenly seem to shine. Yearning for your mother is something we can all relate to.

We’ve spoken a bit about the use of the Theremin. What drove your selection of the other instruments?

I did this amazing lockdown project for an ad agency. They kind of got all of their artists to play Pass the Parcel with a theme, and we just did this lockdown piece. I'm not sure how successful it was, but the person that I got sent the material from was Charlie Draper who's a theremin player and a theremin enthusiast. So he was in the back of my mind, and I knew I really wanted to collaborate with him at some point. He played on my demo. And then the Norwegians... I saw them at a concert in Stoke Newington about three years ago. They're in this group called the Lodestar Trio. They're amazing, and they play with Max Bailey. I've known him for years, and I just went to this concert. He did all these interpretations of Bach, but with a kind of Norwegian folky twist. I just loved the instrument combination of the Nyckelharpa, the Hardanger fiddle, and the violin. It sounds mystical and magical and amazing. It felt like the perfect pairing with Loki’s past.

I read that you started with the finale and worked backward. Is that an unusual way of working for you or do you do that often?

This whole show has been a departure from anything I've ever done before, in terms of the scale of it, and, you know, the resources. It's all just been different. I think Kate and Kevin [Feige], the producer, saw it as a six-hour film. They didn't want it to be a TV show. The thing about scoring a film is that you do have that time to really craft themes and to have more of an overarching narrative than you sometimes get to do in TV because there's usually a quicker turnaround. And I guess because of the pandemic as well, I had more time.

I didn’t want to just work my way through the score in a linear order. I wanted to know where I was going and then seed it. I think writing a suite before starting on a picture, and having those themes in my mind before seeing the footage was super useful as well. I think I'm always going to do that from now on.

Are we ever gonna hear the full suites somewhere down the line?

I had never done one before. And I was like, “have you got any examples from anybody else?” So they sent me suites from a couple of other composers, like Ludwig Göransson’s one for Black Panther. I was totally geeking out on that. I heard Mark Mothersbaugh’s suite for Thor: Ragnarok as well, and that was kinda intimidating. But it was really good to hear that they've all gone through this process.

You get to see these epic moments in Loki before there’s any music to it. Was there any particular moment you watched that you were excited to work on?

I read the scripts, and I had Mobius in my head as something very different. I saw him being a bigger person who was quite slow, like a kind of cheeseburger-eating cop. The way Owen Wilson brought that character to life was so brilliant, as was the chemistry between him and Tom. I loved watching their bromance. It was really fun to score them as their relationship blossomed. When Mobius is pruned, that was so awesome. I loved episode four. I had seeded everything and built their friendship up. That moment where Tom walks down the corridor in slow motion with tears in his eyes… I loved scoring that.

Loki is a man of many multitudes, and the show goes down a lot of strange avenues. I love the tracks where you really get to do something different from the main body of the score, like ‘DB Cooper’ or ‘Miss Minutes’.

I had a bit more time for episodes one and two. Like, I had a month to score episode one. By the time I got to episode six, it was really frantic. So, with the tracks you mentioned, I just had the time to do it. Kate was like, “we've got a source track that sort of works, but wouldn't it be really fun if we could do a version of it with the Loki theme?” And I was like, “yep, cool, let's try it.” It was one of the upsides to the pandemic, that we had more time to work on it and do stuff like that. I did a film before with where I got Chris Lawrence - he's like a bass player in London, and he plays in orchestra’s but he also plays at Ronnie Scott’s - and he did the baseline on ‘D.B. Cooper’. He’s so good. And I sang on that track too!

‘Miss Minutes’ felt like a moment to tip your hat to those sci-fi shows and do a pastiche. So I got the theremin and the choir and had some fun with that piece. And again, that's got the TVA theme in it. I think that’s really nice, and it's something they did with WandaVision as well. There's cohesion in the score. Even when you're hearing this jazzy track, you're still getting the Loki theme and you're hearing a different side of his character.

You mentioned how you had more time to score the earlier episodes. Was there anything positive about having less time on the later episodes? How do you prefer to work?

I remember reading something about people who can see colours with music. I feel that I have the same thing with a scene. I can watch a scene and I can start hearing it in my head, and as I get more into a project... I remember watching episode six, and because I was so into the project and into the characters by that point, I was like, that's what needs to happen. I could hear it as I was watching it. I feel like sometimes if you’re spending ages working on something, that instinct can get a bit boiled down. Episode six felt like my most instinctive version of the music because I didn't have time to fiddle around with it. It just felt like that was my very undiluted response.

I like it. Natalie Holt uncut.

I just kind of sketched it all out on the piano as I heard it. It was very quick.

How long did you have to work on that particular episode?

I think it was a week. It was a very quick turnaround with the orchestral recording, and I thought we were going to need more time.

How involved were you with the track Tom Hiddleston sings in Asgardian?

They had found a Norwegian song, and he'd already recorded it. I was like, I think we need a musician in the background. There should be someone on that train who’s a little bit drunk and has an instrument, and it's a kind of space-age fiddle, and they're going to accompany Tom in the scene and I think that's going to really help. Kate and Kevin were like, yeah, that could really work. So I did a few versions where I just took what Tom had done, added some violins,  and then improvised a bit in the middle where Loki sings to Sylvie. And they're like, yes, we've got to do this. So they went back in and shot a pickup of an alien musician in that sequence because I insisted. I really wish it was me!

We know that season two of Loki is in the works now. They better have you on camera.

Oh my god, I'm so up for it!

How did you find it working remotely? Were you involved in the mixing stage at all?

It was kind of frustrating. Getting picture to work in the orchestral recording sessions was a problem. Marvel is very strict about how a picture goes out because they don't want any leaks, so that was quite challenging. I could never send people the picture to play with. It's kind of nice for the musicians to come in and see what they're playing against, but there was none of that. That was a bit of a downside. With that said, it was easier to get hold of people because everyone was at home and really happy to be working. I don't know if I'd have got the job had it not been for the fact that everyone was suddenly happy to accept more remote working than they would have done in the past. So I feel like it's opened some doors. The frustrations and the benefits seemed to be in balance.

Speaking of opening doors, you’re only the second woman to compose an MCU score (Pinar Toprak scored Captain Marvel in 2019). That feels significant.

We're in a time, certainly, where I think people are very consciously opening up opportunities to all sorts of people that wouldn't have had those opportunities before, which I'm really grateful for. A few years ago, I wouldn't have gotten this opportunity until a bit further on in my career. So it accelerated things. We are moving forward. But the thing that I really struggle with… I went to a state school and I got scholarships to study music. It wasn't prohibitively expensive to go to university. I did a master's and I didn't come out with 30 grand of debt. The opportunities are here for me now, but I think if I was young and I wanted to go to film school I wouldn't be able to afford it.

So what bothers me is social mobility. I still think we're opening up our industry, but we're not supporting people being able to study music and being able to get into film, and being able to spend those years doing low-paid jobs from the ground up. I still think we've got a long way to go with that. But I think at my age and my level, I'm just privileged that I did have those bursaries and those opportunities to study music, and I hope they're still there for my daughter's generation.

You have a lot of synths in this score. How tricky was it to find that balance between the classical and modern instruments?It's a blend. There’s some in-the-box stuff. Some of the synths are recorded, and then I ran them through the analog tape machine to dirty them up. I've got a Juno 60, so I've got some analog synths going on. It's such a weird process, isn't it? Creating something and being like, no, that's right! Jake Jackson - who mixed the score - must feel like I’m a complete control freak. I was like, “yeah I really like your mix but can you just go back and basically listen to my demo?” I was quite specific with him. He did an amazing job. The D.B. Cooper track... I cannot believe that he made it sound like that. I've never worked with him before, and handing your work over to an engineer does feel a bit like, oh, how's this gonna be? But it was a really, really great experience, and I think Jake is a genius. He really gets it, and he was really collaborative and respectful of my intentions with everything. I never felt like he was trying to put his mark on anything. It was a really smooth part of the process.

What conversations do you have about how prevalent your music is in the mix when it comes to the TV side of things?

I was so obsessed with Loki that I couldn’t let it go. I went to the dub even when it was two o'clock in the morning. I just wanted to check in and I was calling Kate and asking her, “please can you turn the music up here?” I was like a dog with a bone until it was ripped out of my mouth and they were like that’s it now, this episode is locked. I definitely fought for things to be turned up.

You had a 32-piece choir for the last 2 episodes. What was it like to get that recording in? Are you watching as they’re recording it from a remote location?

They were a Hungarian choir. The male singers could really go down. I was adding notes in at the bottom for those guys to sing. I didn’t know anyone could sing that low. That was cool. I had never recorded a choir before, so it was a new one for me. I was really lucky to have Andy Brown from the London Metropolitan orchestra. He assisted me with the Brass and singing sessions.

I imagine that one of the cooler things about scoring something like Loki is that you are now part of the wider MCU universe. I think I heard hints of Alan Silvestri’s Avengers cue a couple of times…

I put in a Loki version of the Avengers theme at the end of episode 4. Also, at the very start of the season before the title card, it goes from an Alan Silvestri cue and then segues and then I take it over. It was really cool to get to play around with the multitrack from that. I was always a big fan of the Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther scores, so those were kind of my inspirations. I was just kind of honoured to be in the same league as those people and those scores because I thought they were great and quirky and had all these interesting flavours and textures.

I love that you’ve been given the freedom to be as bold as you’ve been with your score.

I wanted to do something a bit different, and Marvel's TV ventures... they're wanting to do something a bit different and challenging as well with this new direction that they're taking. It felt like there was a lot of creative freedom being dished out with this series, in every department. Kate was like, “let's try this DB Cooper scene with the theme, if it doesn't work then it's fine.” It was just trying things out and seeing what stuck.

I remember handing over my score for episode one, just before Christmas 2020. I'd scored the whole thing and was very nervous because I think it was the first time Kevin Feige and the execs were going to hear my stuff. I’d really worked hard on it, and it had a lot of live stuff. There was just one note back from Kevin Feige - push it further. I think that's so cool. As we went on the execs were really happy with it, I got calls from Victoria Alonso and Louis D’Esposito [Marvel producers]. They both rang me and just thanked me and they were like, 'we're just so happy that you've taken the ball and run with it'. I couldn't have asked for a nicer bunch of people to work with. I wasn't sure how it was going to be, I was a bit intimidated. I thought it might be a bit more terrifying. But actually, it turned out to be a really amazing, fulfilling experience.

Welcome to the world of Loki YouTube covers! How far down that rabbit hole have you fallen, and how much are you enjoying that side of the MCU experience?

It's really flattering. I’ve posted some of them on my Twitter. It’s just amazing how quickly people will post music from the show after episodes. They sound almost the same as my demo, and they’ve knocked it out in about two hours the minute after they’ve watched the episode.

Once your work on Loki was complete, how did you detox? Do you delete all your voice memos?

I've still got them. The TVA theme actually came to me as I was walking down the high street. I've got some in the bank for the future as well. I'm always noodling and sketching things down on manuscript paper. How do I detox? I just bought a new piano. It’s 100 years old. I haven't had a piano for a bit, so I've just been playing a lot of Bach.

[sweetbitterpdf]

thinking about the fact that i've started reading again and picked up norwegian again the fact that i'm almost done the first part of my latin course and the fact that come september not only will i be living closer to campus than i ever have before but that i'll be living with someone who i've been friends with since high school and who i love very much and the fact that i lent a book to a pal and she was super happy about it and about the fact that despite my province being in its most strict lockdown yet (that we're in the process of coming out of) i've still managed to make a new friend and that we hang out on a weekly basis and the fact that i'm going to be ok! things are going to be ok i think!

[dandthegods]

Can you explain/sum up the overall attitude Hellenics have towards Riordan? I loved his books when I was much younger, and they're what got me into polytheism (I'm now much much more educated and take the books with a grain of salt). I just find it frustrating that polytheism is now such a trivialized religion. If people did a quarter of what they do to Polytheists to Christians, they'd absolutely freak you out. Also I love your blog!!

Thanks for the compliment, I’m glad you enjoy what I post.

Ooooookay, Riordan. In my opinion, he isn’t respectful to the religion and the Gods and the worshippers of them. On his website, giving an otherwise academic account of the earlier struggles of native Grecians trying to establish religious presence in Greece, he says, “We just found this posted from Associated Press — another story about an attempt by a tiny fringe group of Greeks to revive the worship of the Greek gods. For years, worshipping the Greek gods has been against the law in Greece. Now, this group is seeing how far freedom of religion can go. I love Greek myths, but why anyone would want to worship the Greek pantheon is beyond me. Still, it’ll be an interesting court case to watch.”

Now, there’s nothing wrong with his approach to modernizing the myths. He makes the main demigod characters relatable to kids that don’t get much representation. He makes it funny. He creates an odyssey of adventure in the books and creates new conflicts. He changes the god characters as they change in the traditional myths. Which is all fine. They’re meant to be entertaining and that is what happens.

BUT what changes and frankly sours many polytheists, myself included, is his attitude towards the religion itself and the people. He said the above quote along with these (sources I don’t have access to but here is the link to the post that gives them):

http://practical-magick.tumblr.com/post/116366161150/you-should-tell-us-about-how-rick-riordan-is-a

“It’s strange to think anyone would still worship the Olympians seriously” (X)

“I didn’t realize some people still worship the old Viking gods. Very strange, and a little scary…In my opinion, the more you learn about the mythology, the more impossible it is to take it seriously as a religion… after you’ve met Odin and Thor in the stories, who in their right mind would ever want to worship them?” (X)

“As long as we recognize them as stories that are part of our heritage and long-since stopped being any kind of serious religion” (X)

“Early in the book, the character Chiron makes a distinction between God, capital-G, the creator of the universe, and the Greek gods (lower-case g).” (X) “I don’t have the words for how much I hate this sense of religious superiority” (@ccconfidence )

“…Cernunnos is a bearded guy with horns, and he’s got… a torque, around each of his horns. Was he the god of playing ring toss games? Did you win a stuffed animal if you got one around his horns? I don’t know.” (X)

“…that horrible Disney animated movie based on his life” (X)

If you can’t tell in these quotes, Riordan takes the myths at face value and thinks the ancients and modern day worshippers did/do too. He treats the myths and thinks we treat the myths as many (if not most) Christians take the Bible: as canon fact of the deities.

Now, this contrasts greatly with Neil Gaiman, another author that modernized polytheistic gods. He focuses more on Norse Mythology in both his “American Gods” book and his retellings in “Norse Mythology”. Both are fantastic books and I recommend them. In “N.M.” he introduced it by explaining his process to writing these stories. He went through months of research, cross referencing CLASSICAL versions of the myths, asking and getting editorial advice from classicists and academics in the mythology. Essentially, he shows RESPECT for the mythology and the Gods. And that, I’ve never heard him say it, brings the feeling he would respect the worshippers of the Aesir and Vanir. In “A.G.” he creates versions of Odin and Loki and other gods of MANY pantheons that he expresses are not THE gods. Even at the end of the book (spoiler alert) he shows the actual Odin who explains the version of himself that the story was driven by was not, in fact, THE Odin.

At the end of the book, in a note section, Gaiman explains how his version of America in “American Gods” is not a true America as it is. He feels, and so do I, that he has made an America that is entirely fictional and other. I feel he accomplished that same aspect with the gods he wrote and kept it entirely fictional.

Okay, now that I’ve defended Gaiman, I’ll explain. When Gaiman writes about other people’s gods, even those who are not living any more (as many segments of American Gods illustrate) he shows respect and reference towards them. Riordan on the other than, does not. He mocks the religions his books’ mythologies are based on. He, when given the chance to acknowledge respectfully that others worship the Gods, outright mocks people and devalues us.

I’ve seen things and articles about him and his interviews and he seems to act like an authority on the mythologies he writes about. Greek, Kemetic, Norse, all of them he boasts a “superiority complex” when it comes to his knowledge. And I personally don’t think he should. If he takes them at face value and doesn’t see the reason for myths as entertainment, lessons, and pure FICTION inside of the religion, then he doesn’t understand the myths and isn’t as knowledgable as he claims to be. Gaiman, on the other hand, says in his exposition in “N.M.” that he wishes he could write about the lesser known gods and giants in the Norse mythos but he doesn’t and says it wouldn’t be right for him to assume he can. He shows more understanding of the purpose of myth than Riordan.

When I first saw that he was coming out with the Magnus Chase series, i honestly got upset. Not only was yet ANOTHER pantheon and its worshippers going to get the same treatment, but it was the heritage of my family (my family is 100% Norwegian and as Norse as it goes outside of the worship). So Riordan’s words and attitudes follow him wherever he goes, in my opinion. IF he ever did apologize, earnestly and honestly take back the words he has said and actually LEARNED about the religions he so openly and unfairly mocks, then I would give him a little forgiveness, but as that has yet to be even alluded to, I still say he is an asshat.

So, in short (as I could go on), Riordan is disrespectful towards the Gods, religion, and the worshippers both ancient and modern of any polytheistic religion he decides to incorrectly appropriate with his books. He is unapologetic towards his words against our beliefs and doesn’t see us as sane, moral, and valuable human beings. And he takes the myths at face value and thinks he’s an authority on them. Furthermore, this attitude seems to rub off on his fan base and fandom making it to where they think they know the myths and everything because they read his books. This makes it incredibly hard for worshippers to go through tags and find good, religious content, and for us to hold reasonable conversations and NOT be seen as simply book nerds who take it a little far.

Hope that answers your question. If you want to discuss it more, comment on this, or send me a message and I’ll be happy to reply!

Cheers!-D

[breelandwalker]

Ok. I'm bored at work and doing a one on one which means I am the one looking after only one resident. As it's the overnight shift and he's sleeping, it's been very very boring. So. I'm stalking your blog. And have been for two hours now. (I had a two hour nap on my break). I keep seeing reference to Christians stole Christmas? Is there a link you can point me too? I'm just curious as I've heard this for years. Thanks in advance 🤩

HOLY MOTHER OF MITTENMICE, CHILD. Back away slowly, you know not what madness you toy with. It is an unholy can of worms which opens each year around this time and believe me when I tell you, there are many of us who dread it like the clomping hooves of Krampus upon our doorsteps. It is a wraith of woe and suffering which visits us not once, but SEVERAL times each year, resulting in much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The whole mess makes me want to deck the halls with barfed-up holly and when I see those posts start to make the annual rounds, I always need a little Christmas right this very minute. If by “Christmas” we mean “copious amounts of Irish whiskey.” It makes a witch wish fervently for a silent night.

-sigh- Well, the lid’s off. Best get this over with.

There is an annual debate…and I’m using the term very generously….which centers around the juxtaposition of Christmas and Yule, the key points of which generally hinge upon the inability of some pagans to tell the difference between cultural integration and outright theft.

Key terms in this debate are “syncretism” (the blending or amalgamation of cultures, traditions, and philosophies over time) and “conflation” (the merging of two or more similar or related ideas into a single concept, not always correctly). It is largely the latter that is the cause of our pain, namely in the mistaken assumption that since Christmas and Yule occur at the same time of year and share a number of traditions and symbols that they must be the SAME holiday and/or that the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus is entirely adapted or “stolen” from older pagan festivals.

Which is about as correct as saying that because there is a Dublin in Ireland and a Dublin in Pennsylvania, both sharing a large population of Irish people, a similar climate, and a surrounding of dairy farms, that they therefore must be the same town and/or the more recent settlement’s ways were maliciously purloined from the elder.

If you’re already frowning and saying, “Wait, that makes no sense,” you’re beginning to get an idea of what several of us have to deal with every winter solstice. And every Halloween, every Easter, and more recently, on Walpurgisnacht as well. It’s maddening and headache-inducing, and trust me when I tell you, the battles get ugly.

The short version of the stance held by witches who are students of academic history (rather than whatever Llewellyn is limping to the barn with) is that Christmas and Yule share festival traditions and symbols because of generations of coexistence and cultural blending between the Church and the pagan country folk. Christmas is as much a secular holiday as it is a religious one, and many pagan traditions became secular traditions during the process of conversion. This is particularly true of symbols and celebrations connected to solstice festivals. Ergo, over time, formerly-pagan secular traditions were adapted and adopted into the secular festivities associated with the Christmas season.

Yule, as we know it in modern paganism, is largely adapted from Gerald Gardner’s interpretation of the older Norse holiday of the same name. In Scandinavia, Christmas and Yule are celebrated as one and the same. In fact, the word for Christmas in Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, and Icelandic is some permutation of Jul or Jól. (It’s their word and their festival, they can conflate the two as they see fit. Are you gonna tell them no? I’m certainly not.)

The trouble arises when witches who are students of authors who were students of Gardner (or at least his writings) claim with the majestic authority of having-no-one-around-to-say-them-nay-back-in-the-1980s that Christians, the ostensible enemy of all things pagan, are still persecuting us in the present age by daring to have a holiday with shared history and traditions to one of our own. Ravenwolf and Buckland, we’re all looking at you. Glaring, even.

(Please note that despite similar timing, traditions, colors, and symbols, nothing is EVER said of Yule and Hanukkah being conflated, which illustrates the other part of the problem: some pagans just seem to need the crutch of perceived Christian oppression in order to feel validated. And so they see fit to ruin everyone’s holiday cheer by complaining about problems which are either hundreds of years dead and gone or which never existed in the first place.)

There’s SO much more to it than this, but it begins to delve into minutiae and I’ll just wind up writing yet another book. Suffice it to say, it is far wiser and far more in keeping with the spirit of both Christmas AND Yule to offer each other peace and goodwill, rather than bickering over who really owns the religious version of intellectual property rights to decorated evergreens and flying reindeer.

Hope this answers your questions. Have a very merry holiday season! :)