Faye G's Writer's Block

Munin sits on the opposite shoulder of Hugo - where Hugo is the thinking mind, Moon is the one to never let the memory go.

I read that the ravens can be interpreted in two ways; either as bound to battle and death (eaters of the dead) or as representation of the all-knowing, the ability to take flight and move across dimension like a..... I don't know what the English word would be, 'frisjæl' - a free soul. Both of these fit with the story; they are part of O's deathly game and they ensure her reach feels unlimited, locating Jimmy and kidnapping Ghita seemingly without issue.

Of Moon specifically, I wrote:

Of Chinese descent, focuses on gun running. Is brusque and wolf-like.

Unlike Hugo, Moon is a mystery. In the game, the team digs up a file on a South-Korean young adult whom they believe to be Moon, but lol, that's not them! I had in mind to reveal this during some kind of follow-up conversation between Ghita and the henchmen, but the scene never materialised because I had to focus on the climax.

So, we never got the reveal that Moon is a complete mystery - her origin and her motivations staying hidden, even from me.

I put a lot of work into characterisation, but sometimes a character very stubbornly remains at arms length. Alba was one such a character and so was Moon. The defining quality of Moon is violence and animalism; unlike Hugo, they're driven by urges and acts in a way I would consider characteristic of a generic 'bad boy' but really is, at its core, feral behaviour. For example, at the mansion, they shoulder Ghita for no reason at all, just to assert dominance. And during the threesome, I'm fairly certain I described the male moon as not a very good kisser and once they're "going at it", he literally ignores Odin's instructions and finishes inside Ghita - like an animal.

Female Moon is not nearly as brusque, but she's very reserved and it makes her more closed up.

I think it's intriguing to write this type of diversity but when it comes to it, both Moon and Hugo are side characters. They're ridiculously good-looking but still side characters and serve a specific purpose. Several people have asked for Moon to be a love interest and as much as I think they might be the hottest sprite of all my books, what would their arc even be like? What would they talk about? Like, I get it, hot, but you cannot fathom the crickets in my mind when considering a Ghita x Moon arc. A fic writer would have a much better time churning out smut and AU.

Hugin is one of Odin's two ravens - ravens yes, not crows. The name means 'mind' (Sindet in Danish) and along with Munin ('memory' - Erindringen in Danish), they were seen as personification of the mind and the memory of Odin, sometimes referred to as the Raven God. In the morning, he would send out his ravens and when they returned in the evening, they would tell him about things that happened in the world.

Hugo was originally not a GOC - he was meant to be a slight man while Moon was a buff woman. I changed them because I felt weird about the sex scene; kinda silly to offer a man to a WLW player. I also liked the idea of Odette, Hugo and Moon being evil girl gang leaders, as a feminist I want to see representation of women in all areas of society, including crime statistics. Just cause you're a woman doesn't mean you can't plot the end of the world 😈

I spent way too much time plotting Hugo's background. Hugo is 27, of the Toubou people and described in the documentation as 'thin and long-limbed'. I also wrote:

Originally from Libya, where she now facilitates the odd people smuggling if needed. Deep voice, sultry and snake-like.

The Toubou people in Libya have faced massive discrimination, both under Muammar Gaddafi and in the following Libyan civil war. The more I read about the persecution of Toubou under the Gaddafi regime, the more I pictured Hugo as a person who grew up displaced, perhaps orphaned, and very quickly decided the only way out is through the suffering of others. North African gangs make a lot of money on drugs and human trafficking, and Hugo's slick, charming exterior would've made him an excellent handler.

I imagined him finding purchase in the criminal world and becoming highly respected due to his intelligence and ruthlessness, which eventually lands him in Europe and in some context (drugs? guns?) into the realm of O. The two of them hit it off, and O tells her about their their vision; Maybe Hugo wanted a change of scenery and thought this was a good deal.

Whatever happened, Hugo is the one of the two lieutenants to enjoy the mythology the most - he quotes poems and is closer to O in the belief that Ghita *is* the incarnation of vølven. While Moon is clearly the muscle, Hugo is the intellectual and in my mind, supports O strategically, perhaps even suggesting things for them to do to Ghita.

I think Hugo is intrigued by Ghita beyond just physical attraction, but that's just my headcanon.

Commission by @maedictus

Just wanted to finally share some coherent thoughts about the finale.

I think it was destined for me to fall in love with this story. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been obsessed with detective and crime stories. So when I saw the announcement I was really excited.

I liked the story from the very beginning, but to me, the first season has a very different vibe from the second and third. Season two was the point where the story completely got its claws into me. The plot, the vibe, the visuals - magnificent.

But what really got me in a chokehold was mythology.

My mum has always loved mythology (I mean, she literally named me after Helen of Troy), so I kind of grew up surrounded by those stories from different cultures. And I still find them absolutely mesmerising.

I do love that TM never became a supernatural story (as some people predicted). Maybe there’s a certain name for it (that I don’t know), but I absolutely adore that kind of symbolic storytelling.

It honestly makes me a little sad that not everyone resonated with the story…

So, circling back to the finale.

I think all of us were a bit confused, since the whole story had an absolutely Nordic noir-ish thing with its slow, deliberate pacing, and in the finale the climax unfolded almost entirely within a single episode

At first I was like “what? What happened? Did I make wrong choices? What kind of ending is that?”, but a few days later all of it kinda settled a bit in my head, and I think everything was pretty logical, anything else probably would’ve felt like pure fan service.

I was mentally cursing my Ghita when she refused to run away with O, but i guess that’s another thing that made TM feel different, that the MC actually made the difficult choice instead of the emotionally satisfying one. I’d like to believe that I understand both of O’s and Ghita’s logic in this situation, but it’s still so bittersweet. I guess it could be seen as some kind of reflection on what fans want and what’s better for the story.

And then there was the integrity route.

I just couldn’t finish the slot.

My heart is absolutely aching for my evil babies.

I saw other people’s screenshots, so I knew what’s gonna happen there, but when I started to play it was completely different.

I know they’re criminals. I know they’ve done a lot of shit. I know letting them go isn’t the morally “correct” choice.

…but emotionally? I just couldn’t jail my babies with my own hands.

I wanted them to disappear somewhere far away, finally rest, figure out who they are outside of revenge and crime, and maybe discover what kind of life they would’ve chosen if they’d ever been given the chance.

In your post about Norse mythology, you described the vølve as someone who has the power to influence the outcome of events.

Up until that point, Ghita is O’s vølve because she possesses something they desperately want.

But in episode 9, for just a brief moment, she truly becomes one. Because the future becomes something Ghita decides.

For one choice, we’re no longer just playing Ghita. We’re deciding O’s fate. Whether they get caught, or whether they run away.

It took me a few days to understand why the ending felt right.

It still hurts.

Thank you for telling exactly the story you wanted to tell.

It genuinely became one of those stories that I know will stay with me for a very long time.

P. S. Yeah, no questions in this message, but I’ll definitely be back 😈

Helen of Troy,

I've really appreciated your unhinged long-form asks and though the questions were increasingly difficult, I've enjoyed your enjoyment 😂

Love your reflections. It's a gift to be understood.

Personally, I'm really proud of this little gloomy story and when I return with a new book, I'm gonna lean into that genre the same way I did this and The One before it.

I wanted to ask if you will be going into detail on what inspired the different monsters that haunt Ghita's mother. I know they reflect her background/ethnicity, but would love to know more about how you chose each of them! I'm obsessed with Thai Lina's monster.

Thank you!

I wasn't planning to, but I can speak on it, of course.

It grew from a conversation I had with a Polish friend of mine, comparing national mythology. I knew I wanted to explore my own country's myths, but because I like mixed-race MCs, I realised it would make sense to reference a local myth from each of the backgrounds I was planning to include. The chosen nationalities of Ghita's mother was based on people I've met in Denmark and I simply researched local monsters to find something that fit.

That's really all it was.

While the monsters are different in nature, there's a high-level theme of women, children, blood and ostracism. I think European myth and 'fairy tale' tradition tends to be the baseline for storytelling in popular media, but for example African mythology is rich and varied and deals with a lot of similar themes, but in a different context which is completely ignored internationally. And while I think Chinese and Japanese mythology gets a lot of exposure, Thai (and even Korean) storytelling tradition is barely visible in popular media unless you seek it out.

This wasn't really your question, but I have this delusion that people would be interested if they knew a thing existed. So when I have an opportunity to sprinkle in some obscure stuff, I'll do it.

The big O - female edition!

I'm splitting up Odin and Odette because though they are the same person and maybe 85% of their lines are exactly the same, I still believe the characterisation of Odette ends up being different from Odin by the single fact that she is a woman.

And women doing evil things just hits differently.

The initial arc design looked like this:

In S1, Ghita meets him* by chance while he* is threatening Chief Hoier late at night in a quiet car park, before we know anything about the gang or who he* is. He* takes notice of Ghita and sends out goons to follow her. His* fascination is part resentment that Hoier treats her like a daughter and part romantic obsession.  In S3, his* motives become partly obvious. Hoier is killed and Odin* leaves a trail of clues for Ghita and the team to decipher. Hoier’s participating in weapons smuggling and eliminating rival gangs while ensuring Odin* could continue his* operation with impunity, is dug up and collaborators are identified. Odin* also puts Ghita onto Hoier’s old undercover work and the bad things he did to maintain his cover. Meanwhile, Ghita is harboring the witness, Sylvester, whom Odin* wants to get his hands on. 

I had a more explicit idea for Odette's entrance in season 1, but decided against it because Ghita would absolutely not have let it go if she'd seen Hoyer and Odette talking together early on. It would've made the whole doubting arc of season 2 unbelievable and lessoned the strength of Ghita and Hoyer's bond, which in turn, would've made his death less unambiguous as a tragedy at first.

If we turn to dynamic between Ghita and Odette, I think Ghita is the first person to go up against O and win. Even on the romantic path, even when O is allowed to escape, Ghita did cause irriversible havoc in her plans, which in turn is the deeper meaning of her role as Vølven. O was so desperate to control her because she knew she had this "power" but even as Ghita is seduced by O, she never actually gave it up to her.

O was originally conceived as a male character (because he was Hoyer’s twin) but at some point after the reworks, I realised nothing was standing in the way of making him gender-of-choice. 

There was the issue of the name, though—Odine is a name, but it’s so old, your grandmother’s grandmother is called that. On top of this, non-Danish people would pronounce it in such a way that it would lose its meaning. I wanted a female name that felt realistic but also sexy, and which wasn’t too far away from Odin. Hence, Odette.

I’ve done GOC before, and my preferred approach is that this is the same character, just gender-swapped. I adjust the pronouns and rework a few gendered mannerisms, but otherwise, the character says and does the same things. 

Except sex scenes.

Some might disagree, but the vibe of Ghita x Odette x Hugo x Moon at the estate feels VERY different from the Ghita x male version. The girls are more playful and they seem to connect much more during the scene than Ghita and Odin, Odette even praising Ghita afterwards. I guess it’s a bias within me, but Ghita x Odette feel more equal than Ghita x Odin; O still considers Ghita property and not a partner, but in a strange way, Ghita x Odette became somehow more involved. It also shines through in the scene at Odette’s house, where Ghita naturally is more involved in Odette’s pleasure. Odette isn’t just taking, unlike Odin who greedily wants to take.

Are WLW just inherently more emotionally involved? I don't think so, but when I wrote a scene as Odette first, she would feel closer, more intimate, with Ghita in a way that Odin never could. Her cruelty seemed more.... deserved, idk. It's easier for me to support women's wrongs, I guess 😂

A final note: Odette's nude character also has pierced nips and I was holding out to the last moment that we would try to sneak it past the app store's strict nudity rules, but no...... #freethenips

The big O - male edition.

I wrote of him originally:

The tall, mysterious mastermind behind the criminal network that becomes the focus of season 3. Favors opportunity over obligation, and seems to know things before they happen, hampering the investigation at every turn.

For this event, I've gotten so many questions about this character that I'm really having to dig deep to pull something interesting out of the darkness. I’ve forgotten exactly how O came to be, but I know the very earliest musings about this illusive character was as Hoyer’s twin brother; his physical mirror but polar opposite, who ran a criminal enterprise and took advantage of Hoyer’s position to evade justice. As it often is with character development, dynamics shift as the plot forms and some characters are halved and merged in different ways. Suddenly O was the abandoned child, suddenly Hoyer was Valentin and suddenly it became irresistible not to make the villain romanceable.

Would it also have been interesting to romance Hoyer's twin brother? Sure, but you know. That would've been a different story.

As with many other things in this story, the final scene with O was planned from the very start. An escaped O would catch Ghita off-guard somewhere and after a seemingly romantic reunion, pull out a knife and attack her. For a long time, I intended for O to cut out Ghita's eye (!) and then the story ending with her love interest finding her in a pool of blood and us, the readers, never finding out if he killed her or not. But the more I thought about it, the less it made sense - why would he cut her eye out? What's the romantic appeal of a guy who, in the end, just straight up kills you? I wanted realism not like.... true crime.

So instead, I went with mutilation and mutual mutilation, as an ultimate declaration of love.

Alexa, play Bad Romance ❤️‍🔥

I don't know if anyone really noticed, but for the literary nerds - I borrowed a bunch of elements for O and Ghita's love story from Wuthering Heights; the comparative deep-seated trauma, each feeling their own brand of alienation, having selfish and destructive personalities, and loving the other like a madness which will only bring pain.

I'm not a Brontë fan by any means, but she did nail the "let's make each other worse". I wanted the romance to leave players with a murky feeling of regret and longing, betrayal and devotion, and above all, a realistic ending for such a romance. Ghita getting away with it all on the corrupted path is a bitter realisation that justice is dead.

My final comment is about Odin and Mads' rivalry, which ended up being a lot less than initially expected - there simply wasn't space for it. O brings him up several times to let us know that he is well aware of the senior PA's hunt for him all these years, and I headcanon that he has a soft spot for him. I think, if Ghita hadn't been in the picture, O would've fixated on Mads and tried to bring him in by similar means; using knowledge of his family, his kinks, his insecurities, to break him. O loves a toy that he can do with as he pleases, and there's no greater pleasure than to break the strongest of the flock.

Delayed as I had some other things to attend to today and it ended up taking more time and so on - I made some of these in advance, but not all, so here we are. Woops!

The big man, the safe harbour; Kuno joined the cast in season 2 in the most dramatic way possible and became one of the most (if not THE most?) stable love interests of our girl Ghita. I described him originally as:

A Greenlandic dog trainer who befriends Ghita and her colleagues and supports them while they investigate in Greenland. Kuno was born in Greenland, but his parents split when he was young and his mother, a nurse, moved to Denmark. He stayed with her until finishing school at 19 and then made the decision to move back to stay with his father and pursue a dream of training sled dogs.  Now in his early 30s, he takes an interest in the investigation team and seizes the opportunity to be their guide and help them when the local police become inadequate. He is a kind man and down to earth. His build is large and sturdy. He falls for the main character quickly, but respects if she is unwilling to pursue a relationship.

Kuno is very much a 'he fell first and hardest' as his quick and sometimes shy attraction to Ghita is accelerated every time he gets the chance to spend time with her. I liked him being concerned and professional after saving her from the ice, but when they meet again, he's had some time to think and he just goes for it. I think it's so cute that he seemingly went "what the heck, might as well try" and stated his intentions.

There's something about it that I thought was very fitting with the setting. These small settlements are quite isolated along the coast, you can only get from one settlement to another via planes, so any outsiders come with a purpose. They're not there for long and they might never return. If you feel a spark with someone, it's honestly a race against time to sort out your feelings before they'll be gone forever.

I characterised Kuno as a very sociable man, someone who really needs human connection to thrive, and there's just something about the way he connects with Ghita - especially if you choose the Greenlandic background - that works on so many levels. His physical presence, his kindness, his spirituality; he was so acutely aware of his surroundings and at ease in the cold, harsh nature around them, that I think Ghita immediately felt safe around him and that's part of the reason why asking him to come to CPH without knowing him for that long didn't feel implausible. I do think we sometimes meet people that we connect with beyond knowledge and history, but really just that intangible soul connection. And Kuno really did feel deeply.

I wanted to address two things - first of all, the unspoken tension between Kuno and Mads. 🤫

Sometimes I get an idea and it is of zero consequence, but also is so obscure that I know, in advance, that this is more an inside hee-hee haa-haa to myself than to anyone else.... and I will add it.

Writing is supposed to be fun and stuff like this makes me smile.

Mads already gave a beautiful performance of "I'm not gay" at the front desk of the hotel if you're playing with a WLW Ghita, and this little joke chases him around until the end (him being weirdly specific about not arriving "together" with Yasin in the final scene like, yes, we get it, you're straight). The part of it I had the most fun with though, were these secret signals that Kuno was sending out to test if Mads was interested.

I'm not about to claim I know the first thing about how a man determines in the wild that another man is gay, but flirting is flirting and rejection is rejection. The fact that Mads recognises Kuno checking him out and changes how he speaks to him is just another one of those layers. Kuno on the other hand is pretty funny about it - in the breakfast scene episode 9, I couldn't help but phrase Kuno's address to Mads playfully, while Mads is rigid and dismissive, not impolite but just...... "hello stop flirting with me."

What can I say, it brought me joy!

Secondly, Kuno's role as the boyfriend. He was always meant to be unconnected to work once he was in Copenhagen. His quick adoption into Ghita's friend group and the sharp separation of work life and private life was very much on purpose. Kuno is perhaps the ideal "policewoman's husband" as Ghita can truly let go of work when she gets home to him. He's there for her to offload her burdens and he can shoulder a lot of her worries as he isn't himself involved.

In the dynamic with Alba, he offers the parts Alba cannot. Where Alba needs saving from Ghita, Kuno is there to pick up the slack. He will carry Ghita after she's spent all her energy carrying Alba. It's the first time I've done a poly relationship and I don't know if it necessarily added anything to the arc, but it was a good experiment. I also found that it changed the vibe of their interpersonal relationship, where Ghita (if I remember correctly) is much more stressed and worried about Kuno's giving nature on a Kuno-only route than she is on a Kuno-Alba route, simply because she needs more of him with a third person in the relationship.

Will it last? I don't know. Both Kuno and Alba challenge Ghita in their own way and with different motivations to reconsider her whole life. To me, they each seek a place to feel home and unfortunately, they're pulling in opposing directions. Compromises could be made, but at the end of the day Ghita's own dependency on her job, her police identity, could end up being the deciding factor. I don't know if she could settle for a bohemian life in Berlin, or wouldn't get bored in Sullulik.

I think Kuno is an important relationship for Ghita because he inadvertedly teaches her so much about herself, but given the kind of person she is, their happiness depends on her willingness to change for him too.

We're more than half way through The Missing Week and I want to thank everyone who's participated so far, it's been truly wonderful to be able to talk more or less freely about the story!

Today, I'm gonna talk about Alba and I'm gonna dive into some of the aspects of her arc that I think worked and some that didn't. Overall, Alba stayed true to her intended characterisation, but of all the elements of The Missing, she's the one who gave me the most trouble and whom I will always wonder what could've been.

In the design phase, I wrote:

Alba comes off as very forward, excitable and live-each-day-like-its-the-last. She’s playful but once you get to know her, you realize that she has very low expectations of other people and is driven by a desire to be happy no matter what. She lives with her brother, and they both work for the criminal gang that becomes the focus of S3. Despite this, Alba disapproves of Ghita if she chooses to go down the path of crooked. She dreams of leaving her criminal life behind and moving to Berlin.

It was always my intention that Alba was working with the Crows and could be both an ally and an enemy of Ghita. In season 1, their date at the end of the season, if you don't take the intimate scene, Alba asks Ghita a bunch of questions about things that means something to her, and I had initially expected to use this at the end of season 3 when it's revealed that Alba was, in fact, a honeypot and was sending information back to the crows about Ghita. O would've brutally taunted Ghita with knowledge she shared with Alba, driving home the betrayal. Alas, it didn't work out in the end.

This is also why, if you don't "bite" so to say; if her honey-potting fails, then yes, she doesn't really appear on your route and you were meant to be "safer" in that final stand-off with O.

During the course of the first two seasons, Alba turned out to be harder to pin down than I had anticipated. Her naturally flighty personality meant that Ghita had to chase HER a lot, forcing her to deal with things in front of her and slowly prying her open. Despite being a physical fast-burn, Alba's emotional arc is the slowest - and for good reason! She's literally deceiving her!

I miscalculated how hard it would be to juggle this with Ghita's work taking her out of Copenhagen in the first two seaons. With Yasin, the challenge was "just" distance and I didn't struggle to articulate their bond, but Alba suffered both distance AND her deceptive nature. I think I technically succeeded in illustrating how Alba is physically present and intense, but her emotions are miles away. Her exterior is so tough for a reason, and in hindsight, I probably wouldn't have even made her a love interest. As interesting as I find her arc, it's not really suitable for the medium.

I probably should've made Saga one instead.

Hindsight is, however, 20/20, and as I've said many times, once I'm committed to my plan, I have to keep it for my sanity. In season 3, we finally got to delve into Alba's mysterious circumstances and as much as I enjoyed unravelling her emotional state across the episodes, I recognise that Ghita already had a million things to deal with and that her lying girlfriend sorta drowned in the chaos.

Despite the carefree beginnings, Alba's route is not rainbows and butterflies. If you get involved with O, there's an ominous cloud hanging over her and while she will always try to sacrifice herself in the end as a doomed apology, the cheating Ghita loses her for good. Alba's arc is overall very tragic and across the romantic paths, it's the only one where Ghita has to do 100% of the work; she has to save Alba and I'm not really sure Alba offers anything concrete in return, other than distracting Ghita from her own pain. Which was the point, admittedly, but in a VN? It might be a little too realistic as a relationship dynamic 😅

When we add Kuno in the mix, their dynamic doesn't change markedly - Alba agrees to it, not because she's particularly keen on Kuno, but because she's on a mission and can't risk losing her mark. In my head, Alba is still loyal to the Crows by the end of season 2, but she's struggling morally with what she's doing because she actually cares for Ghita and is genuinely falling for her.

By season 3, Alba is in deep crisis - She's found something real with Ghita (and Kuno) and just like Hoyer, wants to step away from the Crows, but is acutely aware of the consequences. If you're romancing her, I head canon that O made sure to involve her brother in Hoyer's murder for an excuse to kill him, solely for the purpose of keeping Alba in check. Sylvester was freshly out of jail, sober, and with a sister already planning to make a break with the gang.

O loves to see people dig their own graves.

Again, in hindsight, I would've liked to give Alba a better chance at explaining herself, but that's only something I can reflect upon now that it's over. She gave me a chance to explore tragedy and bittersweet ending, and her resilience and unapologetic character was really interesting to work with, even if she caused me a lot of trouble creatively.

A final interesting fact - very very early on, I had many more potential hallucinations planned for Ghita and one of them involved Alba as a more pronounced enemy, pulling off her fake hand and revealing a knife hidden within it. Ghita wouldn't have known about the fake hand and been paralysed with fear. I also considered the hand having a camera or listening device inside it, but it felt overly James Bond-y so I stuck with the more "normal" microphone and camera plant.

the other thing that's commendable is how diversity is intentionally included in your characters and settings. what does research for writing different cultures look like for you? how do you keep it realistic rather than it reading like a wikipedia page?

and finally, i remember you saying you don't read fanfic because it might mess up your own ideas while tm was ongoing. now that it's over have you dipped your toe into fandom creations 👀

congrats on finishing tm!! 🤍 looking forward to your next work <3 (pls be slasher)

Hello you!

I love a writing ask 💜

how do events of the book pop into your mind? [usually as snippets of conversation and cinematics]

what does your usual plotting process look like? [I write everything down out of order in a huge document and keep filling it up with ideas over a period of time. I read through them again and again until some sort of pattern appears and then I make a structure where I spread each idea out on the episodes in some sort of flow]

do you have everything figured out in the beginning or is some of it thrown in from the middle? [I have the big lines figured out more or less conclusively before I begin (hoyer's death, Alba's betrayal, O's eye-slash ending, etc), then I have a thematic plan for the season and then I have scenes written down on post-its next to my computer, episode per episode, that I use to keep track of key pieces of information and unsolved variables. Nothing of great importance was added later (Moon and Hugo was always meant to be flings - I mean, look at them) but I did trim certain things down because I realised it didn't fit or its importance had diminished. It happens]

what does research for writing different cultures look like for you? [this is gonna sound so up my own ass but I tend to put myself in the position of "what sort of representation would I want if it was me?" and then go from there. There's a high chance of 'othering' when you're describing a culture or subculture from the outside, but in my experience, when you take away language, gender and religion, people love and hate in the same ways, they seek pleasure and leisure, they experience pain and disappointment, and share their joys and make connections very similarly. The cultural context is then added on top, but it's a lot less complicated than human experience imo]

how do you keep it realistic rather than it reading like a wikipedia page? [see above! but don't discount wikipedia, I've spent hours and hours on wikipedia, it's a great first source. For The Missing - take for example Yasin's background, I researched Syrian history and sought out online archives and academic work that could inform me a little bit on how many different religions are practiced, what social customs are on interfaith marriage, what type of tension would lead to Yasin's parents immigrating sometime in the mid-late 80s, what the immigration process was in Denmark at the time etc etc..... a lot of this is available online, I have something like 500 bookmarked pages on all sorts of subjects. Realism is to me about just enough correct information for a plausible arc]

Could a sequel be possible in any way? I know several stories have gotten either a sequel or an Au, so I wonder if we have any chance to see Ghita and the gang again.

Cough*andromanceMoon*cough

(I already predicated my love for that man but he made me go feral)

Hey!

😃?

The final yap is about season 3 and the treatment of nordic mythology. I initially wrote:

In the last season, the team is back in Denmark, it’s early summer and Ghita has settled into her detective role and her chosen romance. During a break-in, Chief Hoier is fatally shot. Mads is put on the case, but asks that Ghita and Safaa team up with him for the investigation. The trail leads to a local criminal gang called The Crows, involved in drugs and weapons smuggling. Ghita must locate one of the burglars, who has mysteriously vanished.

I had many ideas on how to shape the final season and when planning, I made several decisions to include or exclude subplots that would've dramatically changed the road to the ending. O's connection with Hoyer and by extension Ghita became the main focus, but some alternatives were:

A prolonged, organised undercover mission (discarded because it wouldn't make sense to have Ghita in the field and it felt kinda lame for her to be the backup in her own story)

An investigation into political corruption (the Danish parliament would've been the focus with Ghita infiltrating the sleezy back rooms of political deals but I couldn't really make it reflect nordic mythology so that was scrapped too)

A bigger kidnapping ring reveal (Alba's brother being involved in human trafficking so when he disappears, Ghita tackles human trafficking and manages to solve a lot of mysterious disappearances. Again, couldn't make it reflect nordic mythology, but it would've been a good way to circle back to her time with cold cases and then her mother)

A lot of these ideas still ended up as minor subplots in the third season, but as mentioned, I set out to write a folklore-inspired nordic noir crime story and by god, that was what I was gonna do.

There's been some really good asks so far this week that allowed me to dive deeper into several themes, including ragnarok, and reiterate the 'roles' assigned to the characters - O as Odin, Mads as Thor, Hoyer as Tyr - so I'll focus a little on Ghita and the role of 'vølven', the seeress.

A vølve was a real-life person back in the Viking age (end of 700 CE to 1050) who would be known in her community as deeply in-tune with 'sejd' (seiðr or the seid) which is a spiritual practice defines as travelling through other world or dimensions of the subconscious.

She (and it was always a she) would be considered to have prophetic abilities and the power to affect the outcome of situations. The practice was for some reason, I can't figure out why, connected to the concept of 'ergi' which was male homosexuality, and therefore reserved for women.

Yeah.

Anyway, what made it especially respected was that it was believed Odin himself was extremely interested in this power, potentially practicing it (secretly) but definitely consulting vølven and compelling her to tell him about the future and the destiny of the world.

He could be said to envy her this power and his insatiable greed for knowledge would bring him to her door again and again.

Another thing about vølven was that though she was respected and her powers were considered important, she was also seen as dangerous because like every other powerful woman ever.... she was a seductress.

I mean, can you really be powerful without being super horny too?? Obviously not!

In one of the poems about vølven, a warning is made about engaging in sexual relations with the seeress because you would run the risk being bound to her through some mysterious sex magic, and this would cause sickness. LOL.

While researching, I went to the national museum of Denmark in Copenhagen and visited a special exhibition they have on vølven. I recommend anyone who randomly happens to be in Denmark to go see it, it's really great, and gave a lot of insights into both the concept and history of vølven!

In season 3, the relationship between O and Ghita is informed by all of this, but made into a realistic, modern interpretation. I like to think Ghita's journey from the first season to this shapes her into the person she becomes at the end - a changer of fates, for good or for bad, who walks between world.