So! This little baby (in addition to all of my zine work really picking up go follow @lyrebird-zines for more info on that) is the reason why this blog has been so quiet recently! It all started from an ask exchange between me and the most wonderful amazing mun of @askanordic , @mwuuh about Norwegian and Danish vikings in Ireland, and from there we started talking and became friends (yay!) and soon we started talking about NorIre as a ship spawned the idea of doing this collab together!!!!
I’ve always headcanonned that Nations can only receive permanent scars from events that were extremely significant to their history or personhood in a way, and that in addition to this, that they can hide their scars at will as like a form of shape shifting if that makes sense. I’ve always loved the idea of nations having subtle otherworldly abilities like that. Most of the time they keep them hidden, but sometimes in the comfort of their home they prefer to not hide them. Which can lead to triggering of memories for both parties involved. Vanja’s part of the comic is set in the late 9th century during the viking raids of Irish monasteries. That tall tower is called a Round Tower, a building often found in monasteries, the key feature about them is that the door is several meters off the ground and could only be accessed by rope or ladders. There are several documents of these towers being used as shelters by Irish monks against the viking raids (although as in the comic, they sometimes didn’t work.)
As for my part of the comic set in the modern day, I wanted to get the idea across that this issue of talking about the past is a long standing discussion between the two of them, especially because Ireland would often prefer biting his own tongue off than speaking up about something that’s been hurting or bothering him, while Norway pretends to not be affected by the past in order to not make Ireland feel like he has to hide his scars or can’t talk to him about bad memories and thus the unstoppable force met the immovable object.
They’re getting there, slowly.
Thank you so much to Vanja for being so so patient with me while i got my half done and for doing this with me at all!!!! I had so much fun, thank u for your Norway :3
Written at 11 at night, completely from memory, and with no internet connection to check whether I picked the right parts of the Monopoly board. Needless to say this wasn’t a very popular game in our household. With only three people, games can go on for days, and my Mam normally gets so fed up she puts the board away before we ever finish.
A gift to mwuuh, or askanordic, for being a really quality blog. Based on this post. So I hope you enjoy, sweetie! And keep up the amazing work~ (I couldn't help borrowing the idea, because this post has been stuck in my head for so long now that I couldn't help myself!)
To put it simply, when you place a group of five men with slightly imperialistic tendencies and an inability to lose in a room and ask them to play Monopoly, it will never work. And that’s not even some stupid line put in to make the story more foreboding. Rather, it’s an actual fact.
They didn’t argue about the roles. It was weirdly straight forward. Norway declared himself banker under the reasoning that he had the best economy of all of them. It was accepted with only minor grumbling from Iceland, who had asked to be the banker in the first place, but had been shot down almost immediately. He didn’t see how his economy was at all relevant, but there you go.
Picking pieces was strangely straight forward. Sweden ended up with the iron, which didn’t seem to bother him. Denmark jumped at the chance to be the racing car, and Finland had asked rather politely to be the dog, which no one had really turned him down for. The only pieces that had been left then were the iron, the kettle and the top hat, which Iceland had jumped for and lost to Norway, until Denmark grabbed it from the both of them, put in on his head as a fake hat, and declared that he looked fabulous. At which point Iceland had jumped in, grabbed the racing car (to the Dane’s great distress), leaving Norway to have the kettle, and Sweden with the iron.
Every step forward was another small argument. They all had different strategies and different ways forward. It was a weird sense of half-enthusiasm and half dreaded energy as they worked hard to push towards earning money from people.
Denmark was an impulse buyer, buying pretty much whatever he had at hand. Finland was more or less the same, but a bit more controlled, so he tended to avoid the brown properties at the beginning and wait until he was in the yellow, if not the pink, section. But he’d only ever pick a few properties and try to build them up quickly. Sweden, Iceland and Norway were a bit more calculating. They’d pick places where they could get the whole group, and Sweden was known for his ability to pick up all of the Utilities and the Railway Stations. Iceland always went for the high hitters, buying hotels on each just to annoy people. Norway didn’t do much, really. Simply went around the board with maybe two or three properties, not gaining much money but also not losing a lot, either.
About two hours into the game (when things were starting to get tedious and repetitive, as they always do with Monopoly), Finland made an annoying noise of complaint. When questioned, he said it was nothing, but as soon as he rolled a five, landing on a Question Mark card, he glowered angrily.
“Is there a problem?” Norway asked calmly, leafing through his property cards as if he wasn’t really paying attention.
The Finn pulled a face, his tongue sticking out a little as he reached for a card. Eyes scanned quickly, before he cursed rather colourfully, earning a look from the Swede sitting next to him.
There was a pause before Iceland spoke up. “So? What does it say?”
“It says I need to give three thousand to Parking,” he said with a sigh, reaching over to his pile of earnings (remarkably small) before shaking his head. “I don’t think I have the exact money, though… Norway, you can change some for me, right??”
The Norwegian smiled. “Of course.”
Money exchanged hands, paper notes were counted, and the game continued.
A few turns later there was another hitch, as Denmark landed on the infamous ‘Go to Jail’ square. He pulled a face, looking at the dwindling pile of money by his feet, twitching his toes, and then shaking his head. Moving his money quickly to the Parking space, he jumped over to ‘just visiting’, and handed Finland the dice.
Needless to say, he still looked rather flustered, eying the pile of money under Parking, before turning to look at Norway, and then turning back again. His eyes flickered like he was thinking through something complicated.
The dice rolled a three. Green square, with a hotel. Which meant it probably belong to the Norway.
Finland pulled a face. The he stood up, dropping everything onto the table, and shaking his head, shaking his head.
Sweden – more of less silent up until that point – had stood up at the same moment. Glancing around the remaining players, before looking towards the other, and then back around again. But as Finland moved, he reached a hand out to grab him, following as he had to. “Fin, come back-”
“No! I’m sick of this game! You can all go fuck yourselves!”
Iceland glanced around, checking on the other two before he watched the door swing shut behind Sweden, at little startled by the level of violence that was being shown. Denmark looked a little worried, but not too much; Monopoly was just one of those games. He looked more worried about the horrendously small pile of money in his hand.
Norway, on the other hand, looked positively smug.
It stroke Iceland as suspicious, but he didn’t say anything. Instead the remaining three decided that they should continue to play, at least until they lost completely. So, they moved to the next set of turns, manually paying the two that weren’t there and taking their change themselves. Which was about the moment that Iceland realised how little money Finland had, considering how many properties he’d started with and how much money he should have had.
Then he realised Sweden looked a little short, but not as much. So did he. Denmark definitely was. In fact, the only person who wasn’t was-
“Argh!” An annoyed growl cut him off, as Denmark once again landed on a square saying he needed to pay money to someone.
Jumping upright, the Dane also dropped everything on the table. “I have you guys! Fuck this shit!” he said with a strange air of finality for what was being said. Then, with a surreptitious slam of the door, he was gone.
Iceland glanced towards the only other remaining player. “Is that why you want to be banker? So you can give the others incorrect change?”
Norway smirked. “I have no idea what you’re on about.”
aaaaaaa there are loads of blogs i want to write something for because they're massive cuties but i'm too scared to ask them??? eeep can't i just tag them in this post so they know ahahaha i should do that and see if they notice and what they say yeah!!
