unseemingowl
Unseemingowl
Lizzie, fic writer, fandom frivolous (i.e. this tumblr is a mess), In Europe
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Last Seen Blogs
ddlish
D(*)(*)D
fuckyeah-subwaytosally-blog
Subway to Sally
wispmundraws-archive
Art by Wispmun
bokaroheadlines-blog
Bokaro Headlines
shatterstar
to the victor go the spoils
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Tristan Dyer as Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein, The Royal Ballet © 2019 ROH || Frankenstein, Steven McRae as The Creature, Federico Bonelli as Victor Frankenstein, Royal Ballet 2016 || Wei Wang as The Creature and Federico Bonelli as Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein, The Royal Ballet 2019 ROH
Photographs by Andrej Uspenski
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Hermann David Salomon Corrodi (1844 -1905, Italian) ~ Fisherman and Mermaids in the Blue Grotto on Capri, n/d
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hannibal follows several trains of thought at once without distraction from any…and one of the trains is always for his own amusement.
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Yves Saint Laurent couture spring/summer 1999 ,Laetitia Casta
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california quails they’re unforgettable. small and round, black feather on top.
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Saga Anderson, and Nordic rep in Alan Wake 2
Early on in Saga Anderson’s exploration in Alan Wake 2, she runs into Ilmo Koskela. Fiercely proud of his Finnish heritage, Ilmo gregariously makes note of Saga’s Nordic sounding name and the familiar design of her knitted sweater. Perhaps a fellow Finn?
Alas no, Saga’s mom is Swedish she informs him. Immediately Ilmo’s face falls. I’m not sure if it’s actually just the animated character defaulting to his resting face, but either way the timing is too perfect. Cue uproarious laughter from me. People in the Nordics are on friendly terms of course, but we gotta have the tiniest bit of… scornfor each other. All in good fun of course. It’s traditional.
Now, I’m Danish, not Finnish, but still, I feel right at home in the towns of Bright Falls and Watery in Alan Wake 2. All of the little nods to Nordic culture and mindset feel so wonderfully familiar to me. The melancholia, the irreverent sense of humor, the affection for the Finnish and Swedish quirks of the characters. The game feels all the stronger in tone and narrative for Remedy embracing the Finnish roots of the studio.
Which is exactly why it sucks that I almost immediately saw the charm of those narrative decisions weaponised against Saga.
I first watched the scene between Ilmo and Saga on a lets play when I was trying to figure out if I should finally dip my toes into survival horror and buy the game. Delighted by the writing I took a look into the comments to see if people were vibing as hard with it as I was. They were. But I also saw a comment that made me frown.
Paraphrasing, it basically went, come on, like hell a guy like Ilmo would make the assumption that a black woman is Finnish. There are a multitude of reasons why I think that person was wrong, mainly that Nordic people love it when we run into each other in other countries, but it also just made me sad.
Saga being black does not negate her Swedish heritage. Formally, she is American, sure (I assume, not sure how that works in the US), but she’s raised by her single Swedish mom, of course she’s going to identify heavily with that part of her herself. It’s a profound and essential part of who she is.
But hey, I’m a white potato Dane, so I’m not gonna argue that I know much about the experience of being biracial. I’m gonna stick to what I know, which is that Saga is a very moving and beautiful example of something that I’m actually not used to seeing much of - a story about connecting with your Nordic heritage and roots. And it’s part of why I love her so much.
When Nordic people show up in big, international productions, it’s usually as Vikings, and sure, it’s fun to see our wild ancestors, but contemporary questions of Nordic identity and heritage is not something I often see explored. Not even in our own productions.
So much of Saga’s story is about family. Fighting for her current one, Logan and Casey (and sure, David too, lol), and rediscovering her first one. Tor and Odin.
Her discovering her ties to Tor and Odin is profoundly moving and made me teary-eyed several times over. And sure, a lot of those ties are fantastical in nature, but they still feel very much grounded - and what makes us Nordic if not the ties to our myths and legends that Tor and Odin have made themselves the living avatars of.
While Saga’s mom, Freya, had good reasons for leaving the Anderson seer magics behind, seeing them as part of what made her family fucked up, she also cut Saga off from the fullness of her capabilities. It is only through Saga reforming her family, healing its scars and fully embracing the Anderson heritage that she becomes as powerful a parautilitarian as she is at the end of the game. That’s beautiful.
And in fact I think Saga being black only deepens the richness of those themes rather than negate them or make them irrelevant. Because yes, Saga’s story would have been moving if she was a white character too, but I am very well aware that a lot of biracial people of Nordic ancestry can feel alienated from that part of themselves. Not least because questions of who gets to claim a Nordic heritage can get pretty ugly around here. There are most definitely people who share the racist mindset of that commentator. It adds an extra dimension. Which is why seeing Tor and Odin’s eagerness to claim Saga as part of the Anderson heritage is all the more moving. Through her magics, she’s just so obviously an Anderson, and they’re so damn proud to call her theirs and fight alongside her. Because they all got that wild Viking blood in them. They’re part of her and she’s part of them.
Roger Ebert, the film critic once called movies empathy machines. I think games, when they’re at their best, can be an even more intense variation of that. Which is exactly why it baffles me that some people can play through Alan Wake 2 and still think Saga is a stunt-woke character rather than someone fully and beautifully integrated in the narrative. A narrative which, at its most basic level – in my opinion – is about the mystical bonds we form with each other and the rest of the world through art and love and blood and family and heritage. All the great horror doesn’t negate that either, it amplifies it. Kind of like that clicker.
#I really didn’t mean to write like… a fucking essay#so this is probably gonna flop#but I love Saga so much#and as a Scandinavian woman#I feel so seen by her#and I hate that people are being so vile about her character#Saga Anderson#Alan Wake 2
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You two! We're at the end of the universe, all right? Right at the edge of knowledge itself and you're busy... blogging!
DOCTOR WHO (2005 -) I 3.11 - Utopia
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Challengers
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waiting for guffman (1996) dir. christopher guest
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Penguins attend classes on the first day of school at the University of Antarctica, 2007
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for the book ask game: 15,37, 44? i think i know the answer to 44, but i can't believe i don't really know the answer to 15 ...
15, Favourite genre: I'd probably say fantasy. Though it's such a wide genre these days that it feels a little... well, non-specific. And if you count the sci-fi-crossover it becomes even wider. Though I gotta say I actually struggle finding new fantasy books that I truly enjoy these days because the market is so over-saturated, the last I remember truly enjoying were six of crows and crooked kingdom. It's strange to think back to my childhood when every fantasy novel felt like such a gift because so few of them got translated into Danish. That's why I learned English at a very early age.
37, The only example of your least favourite trope being written in such a way that you enjoyed it: Nix, this one threw me for a loop! I really tried to think of something, but I don’t really have tropes I’m resentful of. I am of the firm belief that people mostly just hate inferior execution of something that’s already done better before. For example I’m not overly fond of love triangles, because usually it’s treated with a lot of loud drama, but without any actual meat to it. Or is about two people obviously meant for each other, and then some guy or gal who’s just sort of there. But then novels like ‘the Wings of the Dove’ also exist. So obviously it can be done really well. (I'd be curious to hear your take on this?)
44, The books whose stories have become part of your very makeup:
Look, His Dark Materials, The Hobbit, Harry Potter, Wild Magic, A Wizard of Earth Sea, Jane Eyre and Persuasion and Pride & Prejudice are probably the most foundational books for me, but just for fun, I'm gonna throw in a few that I read as I was older and I felt rewired my brain, as I read them: Never Let Me Go, The Bloody Chamber, After Dark, Crime & Punishment, Go Tell it On the Mountain, The Name of the Rose.
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THE X-FILES
↳ 2.24 | Our Town
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Old man yells at cloud
#digging that old man yells at clouds vibe#so glad we don’t still have snow here#but fuck me its still so cold!#it’s almost may goddamnit#Sam Lake
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