#my siim

[nooboosimmers]

some "highschool things"

[cinamun]

@nova-siims turns out, Jay sucks lmfaooooooooooo

now if young adults can shoot marbles too imma lose my shit.

[atsucry]

Beyond the Thorn Vines

𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝐈𝐈𝐈

𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝐈𝐈

Malleus Draconia x gn!reader

warnings: Incredibly boring. Actually this chap is jst like PURELY info dump so like if ch. 4 is out you can like siim over this and move on. COUGH COUGH this was made on a deadline.

content warning: none

3:12 pm, Royal Sword Academy. Dorm room

"Could you stop it with that?!" You reprimanded your friend, balling your fist and slamming it down on the bed by the side of your lap. As you read, Che'nya has been swishing his tail back and forth nonstop over the book and flipping the pages.

He laid floating above your canopy bed, enjoying the elevation over ground. And when he bent backwards to face you; it was an uncanny sight.

"You've been analysing that for a while now, don't tell me you have trouble with comprehending the material!" The cat snickered.

"Ya know…you could ask for my help," he suggested. "If you want!"

You slouched back into your pillow, holding the book open over your stomach. "Oh please, you'd word it as more complicated than it already is." You hadn’t noticed, but your eyebrow started slightly twitching.

Taking a double look at the page, you found that you still hadn't understood it, not one bit! It had messed with your head all morning, that or it was just Che'nya's interruptions.

The feline flipped over on his stomach and looked at you with owlish eyes, resting his head in folded arms. "Hm, Tomorrow's Magi-shift against NRC. You comin' to watch or are ya just gonna watch from the sidelines?"

"Ugh," you let your head drop to the side. "but the headaches…" You grumbled in displeasure. It was one of those headaches that would feel like knives that stabbed into your cranium. An awful one Indeed. You swear that one of these days you would pass out from the severity, though, hopefully not sooner or later.

"I'll get ya headphones if the whole stadium is too loud—!"

"It's not the noise!" You shouted in a whisper. Somehow you could never watch past anything near the championship round, so you never really saw who the winners were. Though you were certain that it was always RSA. NRC hasn't won against you all for 99 years.

Your friend grinned from ear to ear, a bemused noise left him and nodded his head from side to side akin to a bobble-head figure. "By-the-bye," he interrupted. "If you want to get rid of that 'awful headache' as you say…" Che'nya had always been the type of friend who you could never anticipate what action they might pull off next. But you could always tell If it leaned on more mischief or genuine goodwill.

"You should try seeking someone."

What he said was so stupidly blatant that it might've been a bigger, mind crushing headache than the ones you got occasionally.

"I've already tried that! I mean—of course I'd go to a doctor for migraines that won't go away. Who wouldn't—"

"That's not what I was referring to, silly," He chuckled, pressing his fingertips against his lips to…attempt to conceal the mockery. "But take it as ya will."

You raised your brow, He looked at you knowingly. His intentions weren't quite clear to you, but you could only hope for it to be rational, but what were you kidding?

"...Are you withholding information from me? Or what?"

"Aha! no no! not at all! I'm only suggesting, as any good friend does," He said with a dismissive hand wave, ascending down slowly at the foot of your bed to lay down, stretching his arms before flipping to face you.

"...You sure do love messing with me, don't you?" Your friend only responded in an amused shrug. "Well, I'll be off. Knowing you, this conversation won't go ANYWHERE till you turn over every rock. Buh-bye!" Che'nya's laugh resonated throughout him, trembling. He disappeared starting from his tail, his body followed. His legs were next and then his head—leaving behind a grin before it poofed away too. He frequently crashed at the Heartslabyul dorm to meet up with his childhood friends, his ability to turn invisible helped him stay low.

"Oh..that cat…" You wondered if Che'nya's teasing had a grain of truth to it—was there something more to what you were seeking, something you hadn't yet realised? The idea nagged at you, even as you tried to push it aside.

You managed to push yourself off the bed, tidying the sheets and led yourself to the front of your door, turning the knob to head for somewhere, anywhere. Though, no clear intention really presented itself to you. 'What to do with myself…I suppose a change of scenery could do me some good. For once. Not that I had anything else to do.' You thought to yourself.

After a few minutes well into aimlessly wandering, you stood at the threshold before walking inside, the mouth of the library engulfing you and its doors magically closing on their own—crashing in with a loud thud. The smell of old parchment welcomed you.

It seemed to only be you here. And the librarian.

You made a beeline for the literature section, the bookshelf was curtained in dust. Most thought of old things as borish, so it's to no one's wonder that it hadn't been touched.

You pulled out a book from the fourth shelf using a ladder, a book of turquoise leather binding and a golden spine. The cover had an engravement of a simple rose, peculiarly, its centre spiralled inwards and sometimes shone at you. You read the title: 'The whispers from no end, the collection.' It was a small thing. No bigger than your hands by 2 inches. The cover was still intact and wasn't actively rotting away in your hand…deducting that you were its first reader in ages. Atleast that's how you thought it worked.

Its charming cover attracted you, almost as if handing itself over to you. you slid down the ladder to make your way to one of the desks as you already began flipping through the pages.

You settled for a random page and began reading.

And when shadows swirled

around a solitary candlelight,

aware that it was seen

only by virtue of its glow.

At an opportunity to take leave

it scampered toward the exit,

yet with every step,

a cold breeze pushed it back.

In a moment of realisation,

it retreated into the depths

of the desolate manor,

unfurnished and shrouded in darkness.

You murmured the lines to yourself, jotting down notes for dissecting later. The notes didn't necessarily have to be done neatly, but just legible enough for you to understand.

From the right of you, you heard a sudden crack. Your eyelids burst open as you picked up the sound of glass shattering, but the windows in front of you seemed intact—The mystery of it confounded you.

Your eyes landed on the book you had just picked up, bringing it up close to your face once more to inspect it. It shone yet again in your eye, forcing you to jar your head and avoid the ray. At once, you picked up on a glass bead at the centre of the spiralled rose.

A crack ran along the delicate glass, atypically managing to break itself with no external force, that's what you thought, anyhow.

Your attention was engaged to the peculiar object, it almost lured you in. "...What could've possibly happened to you?" despite being something inanimate, you spoke to it as if you were referring to something that was animate. People would wonder why they'd always catch you doing this.

Your fingers ran along the fissure, untill it cut the tip of it. Pulling your hand back to your body, pinching the fingertip and swiping away the droplet of blood. Your blood seeped into the glass. Dropping the book and leaving it open.

It was that awful jabbing headache again. You've had almost enough of this tantalizing torture. But there was little to nothing you could do. "And if I had sought medical help, I'd have to down another useless pill."

Knowing that practically every item in here was laced with magic, you knew that you must have managed to involuntarily trigger something. And with such an anomalous appearing cover nonetheless.

"Agh…No, wait! Ack! I already have a curse on me—! I don't need another!"

With the senses that you had left, you managed to clasp the book shut with a loud slam—the pressure and force could've compressed the pages back into its former crisp and straight state. And by luck, your troubles were gone—and it only puzzled you even more so than answering anything.

Even the library seemed to hold its breath, anticipating another sudden outburst to happen. But nothing came after. And this became your telltale sign that it was time to leave.

Cautiously picking the book back up, you checked to see if it would come back alive, which it didn't—fortunately. You didn't bother to ask the librarian if you could borrow it—not wanting to show that you have…broken it.

By then, the hallways were painted in orange hues that reflected off of the pristine marble pillars and floors, your heels clicked against the tiles and echoed throughout. You eventually made it to the grand staircase that led up into the dorm rooms, though quite a hassle to walk up—since by every stop you'd have to catch your breath—it was gorgeous nonetheless.

You stumbled a bit on the way, but you ultimately made it back to your room safe and sound, removing your shoes— lugging the book onto your desk and crashing into your bed—Allowing yourself to melt into the sheets. Inward and outwardly exhausted.

"I can't exactly sit here and do nothing…can I…? Haha…" You chuckled to yourself. picking yourself up and sitting down at the edge of the bed, swinging one leg over the other. "'Go seek someone' He says! I've already gone to a doctor before, and if it did work, I wouldn't be complaining now!" You sighed into the palm of your hand.

“Every time I think I’m getting somewhere, it’s like I hit a wall. What am I even missing?”

“Well, at least the day's winding down,” you said, shifting uncomfortably on the bed. “Maybe a break will do me some good. It’s not like I’m making any progress here.” With a resigned sigh, you pushed the thoughts aside, resolved to get some rest. You lay back on your bed, letting the soft mattress calm you.

As you closed your eyes, the room fell silent, save for the faint echoes of your own thoughts drifting into the night.

Note: HEYEYEY srry for the lobg update i was dealinf with problems, my bad gng🙏 APOLOGIES FOR ANY WRITING ERRORS😊

[sybilius]

Old Internet Fridays #12: Sandatlas.org

Sand Types - Sandatlas

What’s this?

What’s this website?

Pretty much what it says on the tin! It's a website of informational materials on sand, and related minerals. It's maintained by one Siim Sepp, from the about "a geologist (PhD student) and nature photographer from Estonia." Thanks Siim!

Okay, how did you find it?

Welllll today was a bit of an "ah fuck, the Fridaypost" thursday. I had lofty plans to look into the longevity of various "big name" internet social spaces, what with the shutdown of Omegle and the tumblr fuss. Instead I remembered to log in at 11PM, saw my screensaver had a picture of a big desert (yeah I still use Windows and have the default "shows me a picture of a location" load-up screen) and thought, hey, let's go looking for some sand info. A few moments later on DuckDuckGo, here we are!

How's it doing on Internet Archive?

Real great, at 171 saves! Seems like Mr. Sepp (Dr. Sepp?) is keeping it up great.

What delighted you the most?

The colors in sand gallery! The way the website hits a sweet spot in well-meaning scicomm type stuff in what could be a really deeply technical space also was great. Unsurprisingly, this fella also is active on Wikipedia. So thank you sir, for your sand knowledge and enthusiasm and for taking the time to share it in several places.

[themediogre]

My Splatoon 3 Octoling!! Her name is Siim! <3

[leprosycock]

What do you think about other lud ships? (Like slime, Aiden, squeex)

i really don’t care for any of them at this point.. i’m very singleminded when it comes to most ships and i don’t gaf about lud with anyone aside from j. i used to like sIimeIud but sIime just became so horribly sickeningly fucking annoying and insufferable that i fell away from it and i never cared for aiden and lud at all. i loved lud and schIatt in a strict yaoi sense ages ago when they made a lot of content together but other than that it’s like…… bleh. i’d also rather suck my own toes than view squeex in an erotic sense too so that does not help

[simsby-meg]

HERE THEY ARE!

The NEWBIE Collection, my first three hairs combined for you to enjoy them!

Get them now for FREE at my patreon!

@maxismatchccworld @mmfinds @mmoutfitters

[cybercity-sunrise]

intro post!

hello! welcome to cybercity-sunrise. I post lots of art, science and sustainability content, updates about my grad school experience, poetry, and social justice resources. i'm hoping to meet people with shared interests and would love to connect with other grad students.

about me: my name is avery; i'm 24 and currently based in the southwest USA. i am a first-year phd student in environmental engineering, with research focused on bioremediation. in undergrad, i studied plant biosciences and philosophy, both of which fueled my interest in building a world where everyone can enjoy a clean, healthy environment.

aside from school, i love being outside, reading (esp by huxley, butler, leguin, burroughs, and nietzsche), raving, drawing, gardening, and hanging out with my cat.

frequent tags:

#sunrise-says: any original posts with text

#grad-school-journey: original posts + some reblogs that just resonate with my experience

#art: all kinds of art!

#thoughts: quotes, literature, philosophy, interesting little snippets

#free-palestine: resources and updates regarding the ongoing genocide

#sustainability: news, resources, and ideas related to sustainability

#solarpunk: aesthetic and political solarpunk content

#nature: photography, art, and information regarding the natural world

Feel free to shoot me a message if you want to talk further about anything posted here or just want to say hi!

[background credit: luc schuiten avatar credit: mirjam siim]

[beachyserasims]

Thank you for the tag!! @hannahssimblr

💓 Favorite Three Ships:

This is really hard to just pick three!!

@lost-souls-story its so hard to choose between Orion with Arturo or Matteo with London, cause the 1stLITERALLY transcends time and space... but the 2nd is just so fricken cute.

@cinamun with Indiya and Darren because I love to watch them grow with each other into their old age so gracefully while supporting each other soooo much, beautiful!

@ex0ticgen with Jenesis and Denzel because they are both superstars working their way to the top and so fricken gorgeous doing it

This extra one isn't romantic but I wanted to share it anyways @fallstaticexit with Adie and Orion because the motherly love is so genuine and they care so much about each other <3

🎧 Last Song: Pressure - Ari Lennox

🎬 Last Movie: The Hobbit 1

📖 Currently Reading: I read a lot of blog stories everyday <3

🌶️ Craving: Time with my family cause I live so damn far away

👯‍♀️ Relationship status: Engaged

🔎 Last Thing I Googled: probably functional liquor bottles

💫 Current Obsession: making a penthouse for the Geneva Island Legacy!!

I'll tag everyone above who hasn't done this yet & @shesthespinstersimmer, @eljeebee, @acidheaddd, @nova-siims

Feel free to skip if you already have done this or don't want to <3 <3 Much love!!!

[everydaygremlin]

MY SIIM NAMED LONDON OKEEFE I AM SO SORRY FOR STEALING YOUR HAIR

[coffeeballadeer]

Okay but imagine the Brazilian luffy in marineford. BENÇA A TODOS OS MAIS VELHOS AQUI, MAS EU VOU ENCHER VC DE PORRADA E SALVAR O MEU IRMÃO

Translation:BLESS ALL THE OLDER PEOPLE HERE, BUT I'M GONNA FUCK YOU UP AND SAVE MY BROTHER

And when he meets White beard

HEYY VELHOTE, BENÇA!!! MAS EU QUE VOU ME TORNAR O REI DOS PIRATAS

Translation:HEYY OLD MAN, BLESSINGS!!! BUT I WILL BECOME THE PIRATES KING

MDS SIIM

when garp appears in front of him: EU RETIRO MINHA BENÇA PRA VC, VÔ!! (I TAKE BACK MY BLESSING FOR YOU, GRAMPS!)

and garp gets really pissed off about it, but meh who cares? Luffy has a brother to save

[cinamun]

Y'all......

So remember how @nova-siims was like "Aye girl, wassup with the homie Sean?" <- And I was like "glad you asked because some shit done went down....."

Well... it gets even worse. I fell down a damn rabbit hole and I need y'alls help because I'm just over here like

So basically.... I decided to check in on bro because I don't appreciate all these extra shenanigans without my consent. I find him, chillin where I found him last time

and I decide to open up CAS and that's when I learned.... some shit

Bro... like? That's not even your BABY bro?

ITS A WHOLE NEWBORN SEAN LIKE??? When did you marry Sienna and when did the baby get here? DID SHE CHEAT ON YOU?

So now I need answers because I think she's lyin and we need a DNA test. Anyway, I decide I now gotta pull up

Y'all tell me why the baby is in the barn..?

And tell me why Sean is the happiest man in Chestnut Ridge not knowing this ain't his damn baby in the barn?

So I pull up his relationship panel just to confirm

Bruh... the newborn is just an acquaintance? Okay, bet. We bout to find this baby's daddy because I, The Watcher, do not condone these shenanigans.

We go ahead and age up baby Huy and

......... we all looking confused at this point and I got the same question mark on my forehead as baby Huy but I'm determined to find this baby's daddy ESPECIALLY since he has special needs. So we go ahead and up MCCCCCCCCCCC

AIGHT BOOM!! We're getting somewhere. Now I just have to find who the fuck Ku Kahale is. I go scrolling through the household bin. I don't see that last name, so I scroll again and STILL don't see it.

Y'all something told me to just look at the ancestors and

YALL!!!! Tell me WHY THIS IS AN ANCESTOR BABY!!?? HOW SWAY??? What am I supposed to do now? I can't delete the baby the ancestors will come for me. If I divorce them then the poor legless child will have to go to therapy and Sean will probably be cursed or some shit. But why is a SPIRITUAL BEING a deadbeat father???

I can't even play no more.

[drkwaifu]

people i'd like 2 get to know better! (/V \)

tagged by: @faestelle

last song: Agora Hills (Lives In My Head Rent Free)

fave color: Pink & Lavender (I’m Literally Just A Gurl)

currently watching: Sxx Education (On S4 But Gonna Drop It) & One Piece (Few Episodes Behind Finna Catch Up :3)

last movie: Marry My Dead Body

currently reading: Uh I Read Multiple Stuff At Ones🫣 Reading A Few Mangas/BL)

sweet/spicy/savoury: All But Deffo Spicy/Savoury

last thing i googled: Effectiveness In Management For A F&B Operator (For My Course)

current obsession: MY NEW TABLET I GOT FOR COLLEGE SPENT A FEW HOURS ON IT TO MAKE IT LOOK COOT HOPING TO MOTIVATE MYSELF.

(Totally Didnt Skip Classes Today)🫣

currently working on: How To Stop Procrastinating / Learning Spanish/Japanese/Norwegian + Studying For My Drivers Theory Test (Anxiety Is A Bitch Im Scurred) But Typical Me Procrastinating :)

tagging: @minimooberry @minaevesmoths @nova-siims @simsofrunesday @sadgirr 🤎🤎🤎

[helloavocadooo]

I was tagged by @therichantsim and @nova-siims. I would definitely wear that outfit but I can't say all of this is my vibe.

[caixxa]

A1,A 2, B6, B9, BASICALLY ALL OF THE C QUESTIONS! PLS I WANT TO KNOW! (if you feel like responding lmao) thank you, love you and hope you are having a really nice day! <3

Sorry that it took so long to answer! I had a hellish day and we live on almost opposite time zones, so.

A1: When did you start reading fanfiction?

Summer 2016, after Euro 2016. As an adult, well past 30, I rediscovered the fun of being A Fan.

A2: How did you find your first fic?

I googled, learned new search phrases to google until I found the stuff I really liked. I think the first searches were like "Gareth Bale fan fiction" and the really effective one that I think finally led me to Ao3 (I have no idea what the first sites were) was more in the way of "Cristiano ronaldo gareth bale m/m slash" lol. I read only as a guest user for months, I didn't make my own account until I wanted to write and post my own work.

B6. What is your favourite story trope? Why?

Friends to lovers with sexual exploration on the way. Seductive younger man developing in a twisted power balance/imbalance relationship with an older man. Stuff with sexual tension and a vibe of something forbidden.

B9. Who is your OTP?

I'm such a multi-shipper! I always say it's Aho/TT because they are soulmates and the Finnish connection and two cherubs who share a brain on the ice and fly together and are stupid codependent bros. But I've come to think that the true OTP is Sepe/mentors and authority figures. I came to that conclusion when I heard on the Canes Corner podcast that in his first interviews, he always mentioned Ron Francis, and I couldn't but nod along. Of course he did. A franchise legend who drafted him, of course. He still mentioned him on the Siim Liivik podcast like last summer, you know. He loves Rod, he loves Pekka, he loves Justin Williams, he was so into Burns being traded to the Canes. He's a fireball on the ice but off the ice, his daddy kink can be seen from SPACE.

THe C section:

What trope are you tired of reading? Why? Self-harm or suicide as a romantic plot point. It should be self-explanatory, I detest all variations of the trope where romantic counterpart saves the protagonist from shit they should figure out with themselves first, especially if there is a "love as a miracle cure" element to it. I feel similarly about th "you deserve better, let me save you from your abusive relationship by making you mine". No. If this happens from a base of friendship and they develop love later, that works, but falling in love as a cure because The One Sees Your Beauty When Others Don't is yucky. Elaborate proposals in front of an audience gathered specifically to celebrate the occasion as peak romance is so weird too, maybe I just don't get American wedding culture. (These tropes are more present in m/f imagines than m/m rpf, tho)

What word or expression always makes you cringe when you read it? "Too" when it's supposed to be "to" is the only one of those that I often see in fic writing, but in general, "Their" when you mean "They're" or "it's" for "its" when native speakers do it... IT'S YOUR OWN LANGUAGE! HOW CAN YOU NOT GET THE EASY ONES RIGHT?

Is there anything that makes you nope out of a story? What is it? Double spacing between each paragraph. I know that it's mostly because the Ao3 rich text editor doesn't copy/paste google docs right. I will have to be REALLY drawn into the story and want to read it really bad to struggle through that.

What thing that fandom loves do you actually kind of hate? Why? Hockey fights. They're so unnecessary, they're just an example of the American fixation on violence and vigilante justice. It's okay to me that hockey is a rough game, cross checking and body checking is absolutely fine by me, but dropping the gloves.. it's such a stupid, primitive thing to do. Hockey does fine without it. I know this is unpopular bc y'all love violence. I see all the wrestling posts y'know, and all the "hot" tags in hockey fight posts. *points at all directions, staring judgementally*

What character that fandom loves are you just kinda “meh” about? Why? Hockey players: Anthony Beauvillier. This is just about his looks, I don't see what most people see, he looks so plain to me.

Is there anything in canon that made you want to quit the show? What was it? Why did you hate it? Are we still talking hockey/sports because all i read is sports rpf? Well, I used to like F1 but Ihave very little interest in it now. I just don't think that a motorsport that is done on vehicles for no other use than driving on these extensive tracks made of concrete and asphalt just for it is just gross. In rally, there is at least something organic (lol) and relatable. Also, the last Cristiano Ronaldo fic I read was after his transfer to Juventus, after that I think he's made a fool of himself.

Who is your NOTP? Sepe/Seth Jarvis, Sepe/Jordan Martinook. I think it's bc I have zero attraction to the other guy haha, plus Jarvy only gives me goofy little brother vibes, not ship vibes. Also, Cressi was the big ship when I entered football rpf and I could see the two superstars, rivals, el clasico etc etc intellectually but I just sensed no chemistry between cr7 and messi whatsoever so it's always been kinda NOTP for me.

What is one plot twist you wish people would stop using?  Do all the plot twists your heart desires, man, writing is supposed to be fun! But what I said in C1 counts here too.

What show did you really try to watch, but you just couldn’t? This happens with all the shows. I watch a few episodes but can't find the time to finish them. I also skipped a lot (most) of NHL games last season because I need to sleep.

What book could you just never get into, no matter how hard you tried? I don't try hard with my reading, if I don't like the book I quit. The hardest I've tried was probably War and Peace which I read so slowly that I eventually forgot what had happened before and kinda drifted off it after maybe 20%.

Thank you for the ask and have a super duper fine summer!!

(the ask game post is this)

[mariacallous]

In Estonia’s parliamentary election earlier this month, the ruling Reform Party claimed a landslide victory, while its chairwoman, Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, won re-election with the highest vote count in the country’s history. The 45-year-old former lawyer’s decisive win came despite the fact that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has hit Estonia’s economy harder than that of any other E.U. country. From a political standpoint, this means the country is likely to maintain its current course, which embraces active support for Ukraine, an uncompromising stance towards the Kremlin, and close coordination with the E.U. Kallas is the face of this course, and her political star has risen not just at home but across Europe in the year since Russia launched its full-scale war. According to some, she’s destined for a future in international politics — perhaps even as the secretary general of NATO. Meduza tells Kallas’s story.

Her mother’s forced deportation and her father’s political career

In many ways, Kaja Kallas is a typical northern European politician. She doesn’t have the streets blocked off when she travels by motorcade, and on normal days, she’s comfortable walking, running, and biking right alongside her constituents. She has a Twitter account, speaks English well, plays the drums, and likes to dance.

But like many Estonians, Kallas doesn’t have to look back very far to find a painful chapter in her family history. In the late 1940s, her mother was deported east after the USSR annexed Estonia. “My mom was only six months old when she was sent with my grandmother and great grandmother to Siberia in cattle cars,” Kallas said in an interview last year. The women spent 10 years in Krasnoyarsk, not returning to the Estonian SSR until 1959.

In 1999, Kallas graduated from the University of Tartu, where she studied antitrust law. At 27, she became a partner in the major law firm Luiga Mody Hääl Borenius and Tark & ​​Co. “I thought, ‘Is this really all there is?’” she said later. “The other partners were over 60, and they would play golf for days on end. I played with them too, but the whole time I’d be thinking, ‘Is this really how I’m going to spend the rest of my life?’”

Kallas isn’t the first public figure in her family; her father, Siim Kallas, has been a well-known politician since the Soviet era. A member of the Communist Party, he led the Estonian branch of the USSR Savings Bank from 1979 to 1986. After Estonia regained its independence in 1991, he headed the Bank of Estonia until 1995, then went into politics and founded the Reform Party. He went on to serve as the country’s foreign minister, its finance minister, and, in 2002–2003, its prime minister. After that, he served as the vice president of the European Commission from 2004 to 2014, but he’s since returned to Estonian politics and was elected to Estonia’s parliament alongside his daughter on March 5.

On the one hand, then, Kaja Kallas’s political career seems to have been inevitable. But she insists that her father’s accomplishments scared her away from politics for a long time:

When I applied to university, I thought I definitely wanted to be first in whatever I did. And so, I decided not to go into the fields where my father, my mother, or my brother had already made names for themselves, so as not to be compared to them.

But after her accomplishments in the legal world, Kallas said recently, politics was simply the next logical step: “When you practice law, you see what could be better. And you give advice.”

To Brussels and back again

In 2010, at 32 years old, Kaja Kallas joined the Reform Party, and just one year later, she was elected to the Estonian Parliament, or the Riigikogu, where she headed up the Economic Affairs Committee. Next, she ran for the European Parliament, and won that election in a landslide as well. In the fall of 2017, Politico named Kallas as one of Brussels’s most influential women, and VoteWatch included her on a list of the 70 most influential European deputies.

Kallas’s next election, an intra-party one in 2018, forced her to return home to Estonia. Then, in the following year’s parliamentary elections, she ran as chairman of the Reform Party and won again, prompting the country’s largely ceremonial president to nominate her as prime minister. When she proved unable to put together a majority coalition, however, other parties formed one, electing Jüri Ratas, the chairman of the Center Party, as prime minister instead. Then, two years later, he resigned amid corruption allegations.

After Ratas’s resignation, Kallas’s bid for prime minister found support from a majority of deputies, and her first cabinet began work on January 26, 2021. Kallas became Estonia’s first female prime minister, and her government contained more female ministers (seven out of 14) than any previous one.

From COVID-19 to the war in Ukraine

When Kaja Kallas took office as prime minister, the coronavirus pandemic was raging. The peak of the country’s restrictive measures had passed, but she still had to handle scandals involving the purchase of rapid tests for schools, provide subsidies for businesses, and implement vaccine passports, among other tasks. By all measures, she succeeded: Estonia finished 2021 with economic growth at 8 percent (after a disastrous -0.6 percent the previous year).

Then came Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. From the start, Estonia proved a resolute and generous ally to Kyiv, and Kallas’s personal position played no small role. Estonia donated a higher share of its own GDP to Ukraine in 2022 than any other country and was the only country to donate more than 1 percent of its GDP.

“Every weapon we’ve provided to Ukraine has weakened our enemy and strengthened our own security,” Kallas has said.

Also straining the Estonian economy was the sudden stream of Ukrainian refugees, 122,554 of whom have entered the country since the start of the war (and 66,762 of whom have remained there). The Estonian state budget provides them with temporary housing, one-time rental compensation payments of 1,200 euros, and benefits of 200 euros per month. Meanwhile, in fall 2021, months before the war, Russian gas supply disruptions caused inflation to accelerate, and in 2022, it reached 25 percent (Estonia fully banned the purchase and import of Russian gas beginning on January 1, 2023).

Amid all this, the country’s spending on security increased, resulting in a 1.2 percent GDP deficit for 2022.

And against that backdrop, a domestic political dispute erupted around child and family benefits, causing a split between deputies in the Reform Party and their allies in the Center Party. In response, in June 2022, Kallas asked President Alar Karis to dismiss all six ministers representing the Center Party. Afterward, the Reform Party created a new coalition with the Social Democratic Party and the center-right party Isamaa. In June 2022, Kallas resigned as prime minister so that a new government could be formed, and her second cabinet was sworn in, just days later.

By late 2022, Estonia had undergone a recession, become the only E.U. country whose GDP shrank, and had the highest inflation rate in the E.U. (19.4 percent). Estonia prides itself on its low national debt (15.8 percent of GDP), but the country’s budget deficit forced it to borrow at a fairly high rate (4 percent for ten years). For comparison, Latvia, whose national debt is around 40 percent, borrowed money at a 3.5 percent rate for five years.

So say Kallas’s supporters

One of the biggest reasons for Kallas’s popularity at home is that Estonia has begun to play a more significant role on the international stage under her leadership. She’s become known for her unyielding position both domestically and internationally, even earning the nickname “Europe's Iron Lady” for her refusal to compromise with Vladimir Putin.

The New York Times recently named Kallas as a potential future candidate for secretary general of NATO. The Washington Post described her as a “fluent English speaker and prolific social media user” who is “widely quoted in international media and has been credited with raising Estonia’s influence in the European Union and around the world.”

“Kallas has told Western Europe about the things that worry us here in Estonia [and] about our history and our fears. That’s important because the Western world still underestimates these problems and doesn’t know what life is like for people in the Baltic states and in Eastern Europe,” Estonian journalist Neeme Korv told Meduza.

“If nobody knows about you, nobody will notice if you disappear one day,” Kallas herself has said, presumably referring to her country’s annexation by the USSR, when Estonia’s formal allies didn’t come to its aid. “So, we’re trying to become visible.”

In Korv’s view, “with her popularity abroad and the attention she gives to foreign policy, you might compare Kallas to [popular Estonian writer, director, and former President] Lennart Meri.”

Because Kallas was unable to form a coalition after her victory in Estonia’s 2019 parliamentary election, two years passed between the promises she made to voters and her rise to real power. Nonetheless, she’s already made good on several campaign vows. After years of slow progress regarding the country’s linguistic transition from Russian to Estonian, Kallas’s government recently implemented a radical plan: beginning in 2024, all first-grade students in Estonia will receive schooling in Estonian, and by 2030, no students of any age will receive their education in Russian.

Neeme Korv reflected that the collapse of Kallas’s ruling coalition last year seems to have worked in her favor. “Kallas didn’t have enough experience to solve such complicated problems. But on the other hand, by going through that, she became a mature politician in the eyes of the population and gained voters.”

So say Kallas’s critics

So far, Kaja Kallas has managed to avoid corruption scandals of her own, but not everyone in her circle has been so fortunate (or, perhaps, scrupulous) — including her own father. In the late 1990s, Siim Kallas was hit with fraud charges related to the disappearance of $10 million back in 1993, when he was the head of the Bank of Estonia (he was ultimately acquitted).

Siim Kallas was charged again in the spring of 2014, this time for allegedly issuing 10 letters of guarantee back in the 1990s for a total of about 1.3 billion kroons that weren’t reflected in the Bank of Estonia’s annual balance sheet. The case never went to trial, but the scandal appears to have caused Kallas to delay his return to politics for several years, possibly costing him the prime ministership.

Kaja Kallas’s second ex-husband, Taavi Veskimägi, who heads the Estonian national energy company Elering, has been the subject of some controversy too. Last year, when Estonia was frantically searching for a substitute for Russian gas, Elering sparred publicly with the country’s largest private energy company, Alexela, about the construction of Estonia’s first LNG terminal. And in a recent interview, Alexela majority owner Heiti Hääl called Veskimägi “the person who decides what’s best for the Estonian economy” and pointedly suggested that the interviewer ask Kaja Kallas how this became the case.

Kallas must also manage the frustrations of Estonia’s Russian-speaking population. That much was clear from the results of the most recent parliamentary election in Ida-Viru County, which borders Russia and has a higher share of Russian speakers than any other Estonian county. There, the most popular candidates were former deputy Mihhail Stalnuhhin (who called the Estonian government “fascist” in September for taking down a Soviet-era tank statue in the town of Narva-Jõesuu) and Aivo Peterson, who traveled to Ukraine’s annexed Donbas region shortly before the election.

Due to the nature of the Estonian electoral system, neither Stalnuhhin nor Peterson made it to parliament, but Ida-Viru County is likely to pose a challenge for Kallas’s third cabinet.

At the same time, Estonia’s more radical politicians — whether the openly pro-Russian ones or the Eurosceptic Estonian nationalists — appear to have scared some of their voters away. “I think that, in the end, Kallas won some of the protest votes,” journalist Neeme Korv told Meduza. “Many in Estonia share European values and want to develop along with the E.U. In addition, we love and value our army.”

A consistent Russia stance

Unlike many European politicians, Kallas has taken an unyielding stand towards Moscow since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. In January 2022, even before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, she proposed supplying weapons to Kyiv. “When the war started, people started to tell me, ‘You were right, and we were naive; we should have listened to you from the very start,’” Kallas said in a recent interview. “But now, I’m hearing once again that I may have been right then, but that now they know better.”

In April 2022, after the world learned about the atrocities committed by Russian soldiers in Irpin and Bucha, Kallas wrote in The Economist that “indifference is the mother of all crimes” and warned that the horrors in Ukraine were not over:

Here I am speaking from the experience of my own country. For Estonia and many others after the Second World War, peace meant the beginning of the Soviet occupation with its huge human cost. It brought renewed suffering through mass killings, repressions, mass deportations, and other crimes against humanity.

Kallas has warned elsewhere that to give in to Russia’s demands right now would be dangerous: “In four years, they’ll build up their forces and do the same thing again. We’ve already been through this — for example, with the Minsk agreements.”