#tuulikannel

[heyhellohihowareyou]

Hi! For the character meme, how about Kaede and 2A? As her (fake) birthday's approaching, maybe she got a birthday pudding XD

Sorry I’m late, my energy disappeared for awhile 😗

Happy Late fake B-Day to Kaede

Ask thingie

[tuulikannel]

That poll I reblogged, about having another name than your birth name, led me to think about my online nick... I can't remember for sure when it was, but I think it might have been around the year 2000 when I discovered fanfiction.net and started reading fanfics. And then I figured I should come up with some consistent nick to sign my (anon) reviews.

I've never really had any nicknames, so at first I didn't have a clue what to use. Then I thought that maybe something from Finnish mythology would be nice, and in the end ended up with Tuulikki. Tuuli means wind, -kki is an ancient ending for female names. It was also my mother's middle name, and I think this was relatively soon after her death (which means it'd have been in 2001). That made the choice pretty obvious to me.

Honestly, back then I had no idea I was picking a name I'd be using for years to come, everywhere online. ^^; I just wanted something with which to sign my reviews... After a while I dropped off the -kki ending (Tuulikki is very prone to being misspelled by non-Finns, I noticed ^^;;) and so I ended up with Tuuli. As both Tuuli and Tuulikki are often taken, I sometimes use other variations, like tuuli-chan (heh) back in the old days of LJ, or tuulikannel (wind harp) here on tumblr. That latter one's fitting also in the sense that I play kannel (or kantele as it's more commonly called. A Finnish traditional instrument.) Sometimes I've also used tuulentupa which literally means wind's cottage and figuratively, castle in the air. (We're not that fancy here, we just have cottages, no castles XD)

Another reason I like the name tuulikannel is that there is a poem by Eino Leino by that name. It made a great impact on me when I first read it, and only way later I've fully understood why. I did see myself in it. I have no idea what the poem really is about, but the beauty of poetry is that you can have your own interpretation... and I see someone aroace in it. But I think I'll put the rest of my poetry analysis behind a cut, cause I feel like I'm really going off on a tangent here, I was just gonna make a short post about my username... XD

Here's the first verse of that poem, in original Finnish followed by my extremely literal, not-even-attempting-to-rhyme translation:

Muut sydämen saivat, ma kantelen, muut murehti, nautti, ma en, ma en, en kurja ma elää, en kuolla voi, kun sykä ei syömeni, soi, vaan soi!

Others got a heart, I, a harp, others sorrowed, enjoyed, but not me, I, poor wretch, cannot live, nor die, as my heart doesn't beat, it only rings!

This makes me so strongly think about that comic about an aroace girl whose heart is blue, not red like everyone else's. (This one.) That feeling that there's something wrong with your heart - with you - when you can't feel what others feel. That feeling of being different, and the loneliness it brings.

Third verse (it's a longish poem, I'm not going to go through it all)

Mun syömeni tuulikannel on, sen kielissä laulu on lakkaamaton, se yössä, päivässä, yksinään soi ilmahan ijäti väräjävään.

My heart is a harp of the wind, in its strings an unending song, in the day, in the night, all alone, it echoes in the shivering air.

From the aroace pov, this is interesting to me. There is a song in the heart, but it sings it alone. Should the heart have a rhythm then, rather than a melody? A rhythm it could share with someone (two hearts beating as one...) But why is rhythm more important than melody? Or is the problem the loneliness of the heart? Perhaps the heart is longing for another one to join the song. Or perhaps it has simply been conditioned to feel that way, by the surrounding society. A lonely heart isn't a good thing, we all know that, right? And if you're alone, you got to be lonely! But surely the song of a single heart can be beautiful, too.

Jumping to the end of the poem, now:

Kiro katkera, julmuus jumalien: Itse orja, ma vapautta veisailen, itse lemmetön, lemmestä laulan ma, itse tunnoton, viritän tunteita!

A bitter curse, the cruelty of gods: I, a slave, hum freedom, I, loveless, sing about love, I, unfeeling, evoke emotions!

This ending. I've always felt it pretty strongly. Sure, I don't write much romance, but it does exist in my stories too. Yet it is something I personally know nothing about, and never will. I would not call this a bitter curse, though, but I do understand that view. Again, I'm think of that girl in the comic... I can understand how this could feel like a curse to some.

I first used tuulikannel for my writing journal on livejournal, and this poem was pretty much the reason why. It felt so perfect, back then. I do connect to it now, too, but I would like to give the poet a hug. ^^ Let your heart sing its songs! I do rather have a kantele as my heart than a drum, anyway. ^^

[dreamperson-poll]

match #15

Evil(?) wizard dreamed by @tuulikannel

The supposedly evil wizard who serves a monster but really wants to kill it. (This dream took form as a book by Le Guin)

boat guy :) dreamed by @seafoam-taide

theres a moat around a building and in that moat is the boat guy. hes in a boat. we're friends. we talk a lot. it's pretty awesome.

Evil(?) wizard vs. boat guy :)

Evil(?) wizard

boat guy :)

Voting ended onJun 21, 2023

[dreamperson-poll]

match #93

Skeleton god dreamed by @tuulikannel

An evil skeleton god. (I'm honestly sharing this more for the whole story than this character. Cause I want to tell this story... it's long, but bear with me, I think it's overall one of the best dreams I've ever had. If not the best.)

starbear dreamed by @toby-draws

He’s a white outline of a bear covered with stars, and translucent. He lives in space.

Skeleton god vs. starbear

Skeleton god

starbear

Voting ended onJul 17, 2023

[dreamperson-poll]

Evil(?) wizard

dreamed by @tuulikannel

The supposedly evil wizard who serves a monster but really wants to kill it. (This dream took form as a book by Le Guin)

This dream’s so old I almost forgot about it! Good thing I’d written it down…

I was reading a book in the dream. I don't remember the books title, but it was written by Ursula K. Le Guin, published in 1939 (eh… she was ten years old then, apparently…) and translated into Finnish in 1989. (I looked at the title page, you see.)

The book… was kind of an Earthsea book. The main character was Arren from the third book, though he wasn’t a prince here. Ged was still the archmage, though. They met somewhere in a forest, I think this was somewhere close to where Arren lived. Ged had come to get him to do something, but I don’t remember the beginning too well.

Then Arren did something he wasn't supposed to do (don't remember what) and the Evil Wizard caught him. And… he apparently remained the wizard's prisoner for the next 20 years. Ged was trying to find him, I think, but I'm not quite sure of what happened to him. At some point the Evil Wizard told Arren that "the Ghost Ship took him." I remember being a bit disappointed in Ged. He was supposed to save Arren, be the strongest wizard in the world and so on, you know, and then he goes and loses to some random Ghost Ship. He wasn't seen in this book after that.

Anyway, 20 years had passed, and the Evil Wizard was taking Arren to some monster thing (a dragon?) that he was serving. The monster was supposed to eat Arren, but I'm not quite sure about what happened. It had something to do with who - or what - Arren was… Somehow he killed that monster just by being there, and it turned out this was what the Evil Wizard had wanted, so I guess he wasn't that evil in the end. Apparently, the Evil(?) Wizard had been serving the monster, but in truth wanted to destroy it, and he knew Arren would somehow kill it if he brought him there. Why they had to wait 20 years, I don't know. Perhaps the timing had to be just right?

After that the More or Less Evil Wizard just told Arren "Go home. You've been cursed by old age, and you'll anyway die soon." And then he left, and then Arren left, and the book ended.

It didn't seem weird (or boring…) at all to me in the dream, in fact I liked the book. I did think it was a bit sad, though… and I also thought I'd have to write about the book in my LJ [yes, this tells you how old this dream is], in the case others don't know about its existence. And I was vaguely disappointed when I woke up and realized there is no such a book… ^^;;

[dreamperson-poll]

Skeleton god

dreamed by @tuulikannel

An evil skeleton god. (I'm honestly sharing this more for the whole story than this character. Cause I want to tell this story... it's long, but bear with me, I think it's overall one of the best dreams I've ever had. If not the best.)

The dream started with me and my school class being kidnapped and taken to an island. We were in this big auditorium where the kidnappers were explaining to us what was going on (I don't remember any details, though) and they were pretending(?) to be very kind and said we had nothing to worry. I remember thinking at that point something like "yeah, right, anyone who's seen Death Note should be worried by now." (I think the dream-me confused Death Note with Battle Royale there.)

Anyway, then some boys found guns somewhere and they killed all the kidnappers. We were left alone on this farmyard (farmyard that has an auditorium? Well, it's a dream.) There were some cows and horses out in the pasture, and we decided to take the horses in. I was thinking about riding around (with the pretty dapple grey! <3) to see if I'd find anything, but the bridle was all in pieces and I couldn’t put it back together.

Then (after an interlude at my grandparents’ house, involving panties with similar patterns as on one of my mother's nightgowns - wtf brain?) the dream changed a bit. We were still on this island. We weren't a school class anymore, though, but apparently belonged to the US navy. (For the record, I’m not American.) Our ship had sunk close to this island and now we were stuck there.

We were all searching through the area, and I came to this weird place where there were all kinds of … wooden … things … statues…? on sandy ground. I don't remember it too clearly. There were, among other things, two big doors, but there were no walls around them, just the doors standing there. There were signs above them that were some kind of riddles, and apparently those riddles told you where the doors led, but I didn't dare to go through them as I couldn't decipher the riddles. There were also things hanging from the air… and this big platform that had stairs leading up to it - that also hung in the air. I almost started climbing up there, but hesitated and poked it a little first. It started swinging, and only then I noticed that there was this wooden chair on top of it, and there was a skeleton sitting in the chair. (For some reason, even though I was looking at it from the ground, I could see it from above.) I expected that the skeleton would wall into pieces as the platform kept on swinging harder and harder, but instead it suddenly woke up and started laughing. I dove into cover hoping it hadn't noticed me.

Apparently this was some kind of an ancient evil god, and I had just woken it. Go me. (I don’t know how I knew that, I just did, at the moment.)

Anyway, then we suddenly found some other people on the island, natives. They knew something about this skeleton god, but I don't think they told us much. Just something about storms that had been more and more frequent lately. We were asking them how we'd get away from there, but they said no one came close to this island because of the skeleton god except for one Inuit woman who sometimes was fishing close by. Right then one of us noticed her, and when we shouted she came closer so that we could talk to her. (She had a weird boat. It looked like a pedal boat.) (And this, btw, was a tropical island, so why the heck was there some Inuit fishing around there?)

We asked her to take us away, but she didn't say anything. One of us said that we'd pay her, of course, ten dollars per person, or hundred… or thousand, as she still was hesitating. (At this point our leader yelled at the one making the offers to take it easy, we didn't have that kind of money.) Now, the Inuit said that she had had dreams about a young man with mohawk who'd defeat the evil god. She was looking straight at me. (For the record, I’m not male, nor do I have a mohawk… but apparently I did, in the dream. Even tho I was in the army?) Unfortunately, at this point my alarm went off, so we’ll never find out how I defeated that skeleton thingy on its swinging platform.

[lucasallencook]

Kalmankantaja -Tuulikannel featuring a painting of mine in the layout. From Hammerbund.

[lucasallencook]

My artwork for the Kalmankantaja - Tuulikannel EP special limited editions releasing February 15th on Illuminandi Service. Excellent design and packaging on these.