Suddenly I’m drawing a pic which is not based on fanfiction. Is anyone up for collaboration? It supposed to be after retelling of the snake story at Valkiries apatment, in-ragnarok or post-ragnarok. I see it as Loki actively bottoming here but who knows whats’s going on… the only thing I’m 100% sure that nagas (as snakes) have two dicks. Yes, going side by side like horns. Not so curvy as loki’s helmet horns but… omg I caught myself with this joke.
Write me here or @twitter for ideas or writing collaboration.
I’ve seen a lot of videos going around of urban-dwelling critters coming to humans for help with various problems, ranging from boxes stuck on their heads to young trapped down a storm drain, and it’s gotten me to thinking:
On the one hand, it’s kind of fascinating that they know to do that.
On the other hand, setting any questions of how this sort of behaviour must have arisen aside for the nonce, does it ever strike you how weird it is that we’ve got a whole collection of prey species whose basic problem-solving script ends with the step “if all else fails, go bother one of the local apex predators and maybe they’ll fix the problem for no reason”?
well, come to think of it, we’re at the top of the food chain but we almost exclusively hunt and kill prey out in the country.
raccoons and possums and foxes and crows all succeed in an urban environment because they’re opportunistic and observant. and almost none of them would have observed us pounce on one of their species and then start eating it, you know? a lot of them would have observed that we scream and chase them out of wherever we don’t want them to be, but other animals are territorial too. but there’s a number of situations where humans feed whoever’s bold enough to take them up on the offer, and we do tend to pull garbage off of other animals as soon as they slow down enough for us to catch. ‘a human got me but nothing bad happened’ is a much more frequent thing than ‘a human got me and tried to eat me’.
anyway like, we’re masters of our environment, we make weird shit happen all the time, we have lots of great food and sometimes we share, and we almost never eat someone. it makes sense for urban animals, over the last century or so, to just keep an eye out for opportunities to use us, and to pass the habit on to their kids.
It really is a weird, funny thing. Like yeah, technically they’re predators, and they get pretty screamy, especially if you try to take any of their stuff… but given the chance it seems like they’d rather help us out and sometimes they’ll just randomly give you food, so???
I mean, I guess in fairytales and myths we’ve got our fair share of stories about dangerous people/creatures who might well kill you or otherwise ruin your life, but to whom people nonetheless turn for help in desperate circumstances. So it’s not like the perspective is exactly a foreign thing to our own mindset, really… It’s just that, y’know, we can’t actually go make a deal with the faeries when there’s something we can’t figure out.
(Which brings me to an interesting thought about the ubiquitous rule about never eating the faery food lest you find yourself forever unsatisfied with anything in the human world – and the potential parallels to the dangers of feeding wildlife human food lest they become addicted and too tame and dependent to be safe for either themselves or us. Hmm.)
Okay, but that last bit with the Fae…makes almost perfect sense.
Of the stories I’ve read, the food of the Fae, its origins and effects, are often strange and/or obscure.- Just like our food to most animals.
The Fae are strange beings that seem to know weird things that give them power or an edge over us.- Just like us to animals.
The Fae work and live by strange rules also often nonsensical or obscure to us.- Just like us to animals.
The Fae can easily obtain vast amounts of things we consider rare/precious/desireable, and have no problem with dishing it out wantonly for no other reason than amusement.- Just like us to animals.
The Fae sometimes are amused by having us around, but only on their terms and IF it amuses/intrigues them.- Just like us to animals.
GUYS, I SENSE A PATTERN….
-they have arcane social conventions and the punishment for not paying the correct respects right is banishment, if you’re lucky, and death if you’re not.
-they have wild and unexpected parties where you’d least expect to find them, but if you’re bold enough to entertain them they’ll feed you and caress you and play with you all night.
-time runs strangely in their realm. their homes are summerlands: warm and bright, no matter the season. there is always fruit on their tables. but not everyone who comes in from the cold is let back out again.
-their games are cruel and complex and unfair, but if you can beat them by their own rules you will access riches beyond imagining.
-sometimes they just fucking fuck with you, the fuckheads.
-they will absolutely steal your children away. when your children return— if they ever do— they will come back strange. they will know things they shouldn’t. they won’t know things that they should. your strange children might survive, might even prosper, might take wives and husbands and have children of their own. but they will always be marked by their time away from your world.
-the price for pissing them off is always death. sometimes just you. sometimes your whole community.
-if you are very good, and very smart, and very brave, they will grant your wish.
My eyes just got wider and wider the further down I read.
Ok from where you’re sitting right now I want you to try and slowly scan the room from left to right in one smooth motion. It’s not possible- instead, your eyes move along in little jumps called saccades. Now I want you to lift your pointer finger up and move it along from left to right, following it with your eyes. You’ll now notice your eyes no longer move in saccades but follow your finger in a swift motion known as a “smooth pursuit”. This movement allows our eyes to closely follow a moving object and evolved to aid us in catching prey or keep away from predators. People with autism, abuse victims and those under the influence of alcohol or drugs often show a lack or defecit of smooth pursuit.
HEADCANON TIME: In the MCU it’s long been impossible for Loki to be Hela’s father (and it’s not true in the comics, either), we can handwave a lot away by, oh, comics like to do that thing where Asgardian magical villains like to wear green because, hey, that’s true.
BUT WHAT IF SOMETHING ELSE?
Things we know: – Approximately a thousand years ago is when Odin battled against Jotunheim and brought baby Loki home, after he was abandoned. Thor never knew that Loki was adopted, so he was young enough that he doesn’t remember this, which would also put his birth at about a thousand years ago. (Give or take a bit.) – Hela and Odin’s conquering ways were at some point between 5,000 years ago (the last Convergence when Bor was still king) and 1,000 years ago (when Odin went to war against Jotunheim for their invasion of Midgard), her banishment likely closer to the 1,000 years ago point.
– Hela said, when talking to Thor, about Odin’s change of heart, “And then, one day, he decided to become a benevolent king, foster peace, to protect life. To have… you.“
– Laufey was shown in the mural as an important peace treaty, the only one we know. Most likely a reference to the first movie (because this movie was all about references to previous movies) but bear with me. – Laufey’s talk with Loki has a strong undercurrent of him waiting to see where this goes, that he says it was his decision to leave baby Loki out on the rock, but he is very clearly trying to play along with this to see what he can get out of it. I don’t trust anything he says in that conversation. – Odin is the one who says that the baby he found was Laufey’s son, but we don’t know how he knows this.
What if one of the realms that Hela conquered last was Jotunheim, brutally savaging their civilization and so Odin felt responsible, that it was important to make a peace treaty with them, even after they invaded the far weaker Midgard, because of what Hela had done to them.
Hela, while there, took a war prize of their king, whether because she was in the mood or as a way to humiliate him because he was weak and she wanted to show that. And became pregnant with a half-Jotunn baby, maybe she wanted to see where this would go, what kind of monster she could birth, like her beloved Fenris, maybe one who had magical powers like her.
But the baby only half as strong because he was also half of this pathetic race, so she left the baby out in the cold, let Laufey do what he would or wouldn’t with it.
Instead, Odin found the baby, who recognized the touch of an As, who shifted to As form that looked just like his mother’s form.
It was no surprise to fate then, though no one else knew, that the baby would grow up with inky black hair and a talent for magic and favored black and green, along with a fondness for chaos and mischief.
You’re spot on that Odin loses the eye during that fight with Jotunheim–when we see him on Midgard, during the Jotnar’s attack on Earth, he still has both eyes:
But by the end of the preface, when he finally defeats Laufey, he’s obviously lost the eye very recently:
How does Hela know about the missing eye, since he clearly had it at this point? It’s possible that she simply saw him missing it from the murals she destroyed, she doesn’t mention it until after she’s seen those. (We’ll set aside however much she may or may not have been able to see from afar while she was imprisoned.)
Going back to rewatch the opening, Odin says this:
With the last great war ended, we withdrew from the other worlds, and returned home, to the realm eternal… Asgard.
In the movie he almost assuredly means withdrawing specifically from Jotunheim and Midgard, but Ragnarok is a movie that is very, very aware of the movies that came before it, there are dozens of references back to them, so what if it’s recontextualizing this to mean that this is “the last great war” in the sense that this is where Odin started to become a better ruler?
Hela says,
“And then, one day, he decided to become a benevolent king, foster peace, to protect life. To have… you.“ to Thor… and the war with Jotunheim would have been when Thor was too young to remember it.
What if this was the point where they split? Jotunheim had to be stopped, they were invading a vulnerable realm that couldn’t fight back against them, they were slaughtering humans. And what if this was where Hela wanted to keep going, wanted to crush Jotunheim but also Midgard? And Odin was tired of war, was tired of blood and death, wanted to protect these people who needed help, wanted to foster peace and life? And Hela refused, so she’s out there somewhere with the Jotnar or she’s freshly banished or even imprisoned by this point (the war likely lasted several years, if it was a “great war”) and her disdain for the Casket of Ancient Winters being “weak” is because the Frost Giants lost, even when she lent her aid to them.
Toss in that she had an “alliance” with Laufey (or some other Frost Giant), didn’t want the baby and so left it behind, Odin picks it up and maybe realizes he’s Hela’s or maybe has no idea at all that he’s picking up his grandson, only sees a baby that reminds him of his lost daughter and vows to do better by this child, to raise him better and love him and protect him and guide him to something better, along with Thor.
Maria Grazia Chiuri created the, now already iconic, Tarot Card coat that reportedly took 1,500 man hours to make.
She recruited Maison Vermont, an embroidery atelier in Paris, to create the intricate surface of the coat made using different materials, including satin and mastic.
What happened to the gods? the rabbit wants to know.
Better ask the humans, replies the fox. My da told me
they forgot them or ruined them or cast them down
but I don’t think that’s true. I think they ate them,
teeth sharp; wiped them off their hearts and ate them.
Can you do that? the rabbit’s breathless now. Can
you just smooth a thing away like that and eat it?
If you’re hungry enough, confirms the fox. If
you’re hungry enough you can stop caring about
anything for as long as it takes to eat it.
taken from Adevism, to be featured in my upcoming chapbook THEOI. (via elisabethhewer)
I’m loving all these Space Moses Finn motifs, Lucasfilm, keep it up
YEEES!!!! omg i’m so glad someone noticed this too!
it’s extra good when you consider that the role Boyega played in another movie (Attack the Block), that got him the attention to be cast, was called “Moses”
Loki is the Philosopher King 