I was today years old when I learned that there are people who don’t know what a mole is or at the very least doesn’t know what they look like and apparently people who see them for the first time as an adult often think they look disgusting?

I always thought they were super adorable even though they’re aggressive little buggers who can’t stand to be around each other except one day a year for procreation. Even the starnosed moles just look like adorable little Lovecraft horrors to me ❤️

I used to think having boobs and vagina meant I was doomed to wear uncomfortable bras and impractical clothes forever and spent millions on hygiene products so let me pass my knowledge on to you.

I much prefer to wear bras to avoid underboob sweat but they don’t have to be uncomfortable. You can either find a professional who can help you find your exact measurements or be lazy like me and use hookless bras like Sloggi.

First time I wore one I was so amazed at how comfortable it was I wore it to bed just because I could. They’re so good at making them now people can’t tell and as a bonus many of them are less visible through clothes than bras with hooks. My advice is save bras with hooks for special occasions and get the comfies for everyday use. As an extra bonus they also last longer than bras with hooks.

People rave about menstrual cups but as an intersex person who physically can’t use them but still have the “pleasure” of menstruating I’m happy to inform you that reusable pads exist. They are godsend because you buy one or two packs and won’t have to worry about remembering to get new ones for years. They come in all sizes and even at my worst period I’ve never bled through them. Also, they’re a lot more gentle to your skin.

I admit I was completely unaware of the whole “women’s clothes doesn’t have pockets” debate for a very long time because I just never bought pants without pockets. The only legwear I own without pockets are leggings and some of those at least have a pocket for my phone.

So live your truth and wear whatever you want but know you’re not alone in your complaints and people have found solutions to most of it. Trust me, before going “what about” at me try looking it up and there’s most likely an option out there. Go, be free.

Just read a perfectly fine fanfiction that took place in Germany but something that stood out to me was a chapter where the characters walk across a field and is approached by the farmer yelling at them to get off his land.

I’ve come across this plot point a few times and I feel like it’s worth telling writers that most of Europe has some version of Right To Roam. The laws aren’t the same in every country but generally you’re allowed to walk and rest on private property like fields and forests so long as you don’t destroy crops or leave trash, but not gardens or fenced in areas. Depending on the country you also have the right to pick mushrooms, berries, nuts and other edible things in forests but without chopping trees down or breaking branches. The owner of the land might put up a sign asking you to follow certain guidelines like no horses or keeping your dog on a leash but but there’s no real repercussions to not following the rules besides the owner eventually fencing the area off so people can’t enjoy it anymore.

I’ve personally walked around on a field while the farmer was harvesting potatoes with his big ass machine and collected the leftovers while my dog was trotting calmly besides me and he looked straight at me and didn’t care one bit because Denmark also has an old tradition of letting people collect what’s left as a form of charity (for my fellow Danes, that’s what “rev vi marken let, det er gammel ret, fuglen og den fattige skal også være mæt” means in the song Marken Er Mejet) This is just a tradition and not a law however so it depends on the farmer.

The very north of Europe like Norway and Sweden even give people the right to put up tents and camp on other people’s private land (except gardens and such). Again, the laws vary from country to country but as a rule of thumb you have more right to roam the further north you go and less the further south but if you want to write in a specific country look up the laws there.

Don’t think I didn’t notice the Merchant covers as much skin as possible (especially in the remake) while Duke let it all hang out.

I already drew Duke and Merchant friendShip. Now it’s time for some shippy ship. Apparently I just want to draw ships nobody asked for these days.

More on my journey into Scandinavian folk magic.

The idea of luck as a tangible thing was a fundamental part of Scandinavian magical beliefs. It was like good soil or water. A thing that just existed in nature and some areas had more of it than others. You could give your share of luck to others or take it. So if a person suddenly seemed more lucky than the rest of the village it had to be because they were stealing it from everyone else and they were viewed with suspicion. That explains why even today Scandinavians don’t take kindly to people flaunting their wealth. Now it has more to do with our countries having high taxes and a general idea that that’s okay because we’re trying to help each other so if you’re super rich you’re hogging the wealth. It’s easy to compare it to the idea of hogging luck. Suspicion of well todo people was already there.

Because a lot of people wanted to know, I’ve been reading “Djævletro og Folkemagi” “Heksens Håndbog” “Folk og Fæ” and just generally talked to older people who remember their parents or grandparents doing folk magic. No idea if any of those books exists in your language unfortunately.

I was sitting in my mom’s garden with my family when my nine year old nephew came over and placed this on the table with zero explanation and went back to drawing.

I have no clue what this is but I love how much it looks like old folk art or some hidden message from an ancient civilisation or a creepy omen about something horrible hiding in my mom’s house that he wanted us all to know about. 12/10 perfect art ✨👌✨

Reading about old Scandinavian/Nordic folk-magic before it got influenced by modern Wicca for a comic I’ll hopefully make and it’s fascinating.

For example, binding knots was extremely powerful and was used for almost everything from trapping bad spirits to getting rid of warts, and the four corners of the world were all connected to the element of Air/Wind instead of Water, Air, Earth and Fire so people did certain types of magic depending on the direction of the wind (North for Resistance/Trouble/Harming Others, South for Personal Growth/Happiness/Health, East for Solutions/Luck/Love, West for Darkness/Evil/Illness) and while I know it will be tempting for people to connect this to the four elements that’s not how people at the time thought of it at all. It was all Wind to them.

This style of folk-magic is just intended to act as background flavour to give the world a more distinct Scandinavian feeling but it’s super fun to read about anyway.

Just some follow up thoughts/responses on my last post.

When I say I’m a cleaner people on the internet often feel like they have to be nice about it but it’s okay. I know it’s seen as demeaning low-paying work in a lot of countries but here in Denmark it’s considered a proper respectable job that pays pretty well. I’m paid way more than people who answer phones at call centers (like when you buy a ticket over the phone) and only slightly less than my sister’s job as a journalist despite her getting a fancy degree. I’m only balancing on the poverty line because my ADHD is keeping me from working full time, but at the same time cleaning is perfect for me. I get to move around a bunch and I don’t work the same place every day.

And the pandemic really made people understand the value of cleaners. At the start of the pandemic most businesses didn’t feel safe having someone like me visit them because I visit a bunch of places and is around strangers all the time. They thought “Yeah it’s not going to be as nice as usual but surely we can swipe our own floors” That lasted all of one month before they changed their minds. People are messy (especially with coffee) so keeping a workplace clean requires dedicated time. Also, so far I haven’t had Covid once because, you know, even cleaners like to stay clean.

Trust me, if you’ve ever had the thought “Oh well, gives the cleaner something to do. It’s their job anyway” after spilling something you might as well start being rude to waiters and cashiers too. We have plenty to do even if nobody ever spilled anything. Do you think the dust just blows away? Or alternatively, have you been wondering why your workplace is so dusty? Might it have something to do with the coffee stains on the wall that keep disappearing? Cleaners aren’t talked about a lot in conversations about treating essential workers better because we usually show up after you go home but that doesn’t make it any less rude.

And talking about essential workers, remember that list that made the rounds on the internet during the pandemic of what jobs should be considered essential and non-essential and how people got really up in arms about artists being on the non-essential side? As someone who literally got half my pay from cleaning and the other half from working as an artist at the time, my job as a cleaner was a 100% more important during a pandemic. “But people are stuck indoors. They need entertainment for morale and not going stir crazy” I’m sorry but there’s an almost limitless well of entertainment on the internet you haven’t consumed yet. Yeah, I want to see (and make) new art too but trust me, it would mean nothing if we had to walk around in filth. There are a lot of other situations where artists would be more important than cleaners but a pandemic ain’t it.

And finally, I kept saying robot cleaner instead of Roomba in my last post because Roomba is a brand name. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Roomba in the wild despite seeing loads of robot vacuums.

Have a lovey, hopefully clean day ✨

One of the offices where I clean got robot vacuums. The first time I showed up and saw them buzzing around the people working there looked all apologetic but I could not have been more thrilled about it!

People who have never worked as cleaners are always really focused on the cleaning toilet part when in reality that’s the least of it. It would be like being focused on nurses having to clean bums. When I think of my job it’s 70% cleaning floors in my head. It takes up so much time that could be way better spent. Those little robot angels mean I can get straight to washing floors and suddenly the whole place is so much cleaner because even if they got the robots that wash the floors too I wouldn’t have less work, I’d just have more time to clean coffee splatter off the fucking doors and window frames! More robot vacuums in workplaces please!

Unrelated, but I always inform the owners if I find signs of mice in a business. I kept telling this one business that a mouse was chewing up the trash bag in the kitchen and they were like “yeah yeah we’ll take care of it” but they never did and today a huge mumba of a yellow-necked mouse fell out of the bag as I pulled it out of the trash can and it’s been a while since I laughed that hard. I’m not afraid of mice or rats other than I don’t want them to bite me so I got out of the way and let it run off and I’m like “I’ve told them a million times that you and your family is here so fuck it. Godspeed little buddy” There’s your start to that children’s book about a magical relationship between a mouse and a human I know you always wanted to write.

Just cleaner things ya know?

They showed one of my favorite “bad movies that I know are bad but enjoy anyway” a few nights ago, Ronal The Barbarian.

I thought it would be funny to draw a serious looking poster because I’ve learned over the years that if you just describe the characters, plot and overarching theme it sounds like a really cool, serious fantasy story that was crammed through an immature jokes machine.

The overarching theme is “gender roles are bullshit”. Ronal’s whole thing is rejecting stereotypical masculinity.

Zandra is a take on society expecting women to be strong, independent bossassbitches but also expecting them to be subservient to their husbands and how many women internalize that.

Aliban thinks he’s a loser if he doesn’t get laid and even believes men can’t be sexually assaulted by women because men always want sex…until he’s assaulted himself.

The very effeminate gay elf Elric is strongly implied to be a top, while the very masculine general is the most overtly sexualized character and clearly in a kinky Dom/sub arrangement with his master Lord Volcazar while also acting as a Dom to the orc army.

Inside the elf library male elves are protected by an army of female warrior fairies.

The hyper masculine Barbarians and hyper feminine Amazonians are held up as ridiculous gender extremes.

The movie is also chock full of “show don’t tell” lore. For example, how many people noticed the evil priest is an elf? His pointy ears rotted away along with his nose and cheeks but he’s wearing elf clothes.

But anyway, I already made a post (LINK) about how the English dub throws all that out the window by making the characters sexist, homophobic and just generally mean for no reason.

For anyone wondering why I’ve been so inactive, it’s been a rough couple of months. Marie died from unknown causes despite the vet’s best efforts, most likely from something brain related. Then I was suddenly committed to hospital, picked up by an ambulance and all, because the doctors thought I had a blood clot in my heart or lungs. Turns out it was “just” stress and admittedly I had been feeling myself spiraling a bit but I didn’t think it was that bad. A week later we had a death in the family though it’s not someone I was personally close to but other family members I care deeply about were so I’m trying to be there for them.

So yeah, rough days. I still draw because I love it and it’s relaxing to me but I had to put a hold on anything that could be considered creative “work” because it stress me out too much mentally to a point where it’s wrecking me physically. So when I post drawings or comics it’s because I want to and had fun doing it so please no “Don’t stress yourself out doing this” or anything like that. I’m here to chill and I’ll leave the bubble wrapping to my doctors.

I’m going to gush a bit about dogs so if you’re not in the mood to hear yet another dog lover ramble on please just move long. I just want to talk about something that gives me warm fuzzy feelings.

Most people know that dogs who haven’t had much (if any) contact with humans are still a lot quicker to trust humans than other animals which makes sense because studies have shown that dogs seem to read human faces the same way humans do so there’s some deep seeded biological part of them that “knows” humans.

But what’s really crazy is that it seems to go the other way too. There are accounts from Europeans who contacted people who lived in remote parts of the world who had never seen a dog in their life but somehow just knew this wolf-looking creature could be trusted. I forget the names of the people involved but there was this one islander who was kidnapped by Europeans. He was terrified and confused but when he saw the ship dog he immediately hugged it. The island he came from had nothing that even remotely looked like a dog and yet some part of him “knew” this creature.

And yeah yeah, people can give examples of angry dogs and people who don’t like dogs but even in those cases it’s usually because there were negative experiences between humans and dogs beforehand. I’m talking about humans and dogs who had no prior knowledge of each other.

And how crazy is that? That’s the kind of stuff we think only happens in fantasy stories where elves have a special connection with dragons or whatever. We actually have that in real life. We lived so long with these creatures that we’ve become connected to them on a biological level. That’s so cool!

I arrive at the audiobook recording studio after sundown. The whole house is dark but I notice a bike with a helmet in the basket outside. Someone has to be inside then. I punch in the security code at the door and sure enough the alarm has already been disabled. When I turn on the light in the hall I see a woman’s long overcoat and a scarf and notice that the door to the soundbooths has been closed, the in-house sign for “someone is in here recording a book”. I reason that whoever she is she probably went in while it was light outside and didn’t bother turning on the lights as it got dark.

I start cleaning but about an hour into the job I begin to wonder why she hasn’t come out. They usually pop their head out when I arrive just to see who it is. In the basement I notice a window that has been unlocked but pushed closed. I lock it and continue working.

As I’m finishing up the thought hits me that she might have fainted or otherwise be in trouble. Nervously I go into the recording area and look through the windows of each booth. I finally find her, standing by the microphone. I breathe a sigh of relief and turn around to leave when her door is violently torn open and she yells “Hey!?” I jump, she looks confused and scared. I raise my hand “Don’t worry. I’m the cleaner” Then she laughs nervously “Oh god, I’m so sorry for scaring you. It sounds ridiculous but I’m recording a murder case and then I saw someone move around in the dark”

And that’s how I thought she was dead and she thought I was there to kill her. Classic meet cute.

Warning, racial violence/bodily harm strongly implied in the trailer.

The script was written by Anna Neye who also plays the main character, the free black woman Anna Haagaard, seen here with her slaves.

Among them is her best friend Petrine (woman in blue dress) whom she also owns. Anna is in a relationship with the colony’s leader Peter von Scholten and living a life most black people could only dream of so when a slave revolt starts she’s torn between her emotional and political interests.

The story is about the last Danish slaves on the Virgin Islands and takes place during a really interesting time where more and more black people became free but it only highlighted the horrors still taking place. The revolt that followed is unusual because Peter Von Scholten chose not to try to prevent it or fight back and instead declared them all free without asking the king.

I’m captivated by this trailer. Anna Neye describes the movie as an absurdist comedy which the trailer captures perfectly. The clash between bouncy music, pastel colors and violence is very much on purpose. Even Anna herself is best known from comedy. In the into the Danish king says “Peter von Scholten, you have created a true paradise” and when we later see the revolt starting the king can be heard saying “Long live Denmark! Hurra! Hurra!”

It’s the first Danish movie I’ve been excited to see in a very long time. The English title is Empire.

I call upon you yet again to help me figure out what I was reading as a child.

It was about unicorns. The main character was the unicorn prince (I think) who nobody believed was worthy to take on the role of king because he wasn’t black like his father. As a coming of age ceremony all the young unicorns are taken on trip somewhere else but the prince gets separated or runs away and meets a different kind of unicorns on the steppe and he sees visions of horses being kept in captivity by humans but there were no actual humans in the entire book. I remember cloven hoofs vs one big hoof being a whole thing. My version of the book had a black and a cream unicorn with absurdly long necks and huge eyes trotting through a thunderstorm on the cover. I was told later that it was part of a series that was apparently pretty popular?

Hans Christian Andersen is best known for his cute fairytales but he also wrote some nightmare fuel.

The Shadow is about a young man who jokingly tells his shadow to sneak into a room only for it to actually disappear. It spends a few years getting rich by spying on people from the shadows, seeing them do horrible unspeakable things and blackmailing them, then returning to it’s former master and forcing him to become it’s shadow.

Here’s a bit of fun folklore.

The largest rock in Denmark is nothing much to look at if you come from an area with mountains but Denmark is mainly made of sand and dirt that was pushed down from Sweden and Norway during the ice age and they gifted us a few big rocks in the process.

The biggest rock came to rest on Funen and became the focus of much lore. People couldn’t figure out how such a huge rock ended up in the middle of a field and eventually named it Damestenen which means The Lady’s Rock (or very directly and literally translated to LadyStone)

It was named so because people believed it had been thrown by a woman. Sometimes a human woman, sometimes a magical witch and sometimes a troll woman, but either way she supposedly got angry at Svindinge Church and threw the rock at it but missed.

It’s not uncommon to explain large or weird rocks near churches as someone wanting to destroy it. Roskilde Church where all the Danish royals are buried has this stone nearby

It’s said to look like that because the devil or a troll threw it and his fingers dug into the stone.

But The Lady’s Rock is the only one believed to have been thrown by a woman which is pretty fun.

The most common reason why I can’t get into an anime is the hysterical screaming and shouting. You know the one. When someone gets desperate or crazy or angry/sad. It’s like nails on a chalkboard to me. I immediately lose all sympathy for the characters doing it just because it’s so unpleasant to me. At least the majority of those scenes happen near the end of the anime but it’s very unfortunate when the main characters do it because I suddenly don’t care what happens to them. Very effective when the villain does it though but the overall anime goes down two stars for me. I explained it to a friend of mine as “Imagine if there was always a danger that a character would start eating something very wetly, smacking their lips and slurping while they delivered an emotional speech”

That’s why Ghibli movies are so relaxing to me because they don’t do that shit. Even when little girls scream and shout they sound like normal fucking people.