random thoughts

[fannishliss]

***April Swap.  Thanks to mahmfic for the awesome postcards! and to verdande_mi for the terrific fanmix! I am developing good ideas for your fics in response, and hope that I will get them done soon.  I am sorry that April is kicking my butt. But I will get the fic done soon

Comments

[bleodswean]

You're planning on studying Norse mythology? Or you mean the comics version of such?

I'm still astounded by this desire of so many today to romanticize him as some sort of a misunderstood anti-hero of the myths. The degenerate liar, the one who embodies ergi, the slanderer, the pervert. It's becoming fascinating to me, this appropriation of the mythology.

[fannishliss]

Yes, I've been reading about some of the mythological sources. Most were recorded very late into history after the mythological meaning of Loki had begun to degrade, or at least that's how I read it.

I'm trying to work free of the Marvel universe stuff, though it's certainly very compelling. Branagh clearly read the character as a Shakespearean bastard, which are always my favorites anyway... my husband never got to play Edmund, but we're still hoping for Iago. :)

As for the stuff about ergi, that's certainly a big part of my fascination with the character.

I guess I'm a little surprised, since you are so poetically attuned to images of skulls and skeletons and death, that you are not more drawn to Loki, who fathered the beasts of Ragnarok. I guess I really see him through a Yeats kind of lens... a crucial part of the endless cycles of destruction that are necessary to that gyre theory of the universe.

[bleodswean]

Loki is not a God of the underworld. As a matter of fact, he isn't a god, is he? He is destruction for destruction's sake. Again, with the projection backwards.

I am so wary, my Irish Catholic upbringing, of romanticizing personified Evil. It just feels...unlucky to me.

You sound as though you're creating your own interpretation of this mythological figure, combining Marvel, neo-paganism, and some of the mythology?

[fannishliss]

It seems unclear whether he's Aesir, if that's what you mean

[verdande_mi]

You’re welcome :)

Loki is a fascinating and interesting character, and an important one in the Norse Sagas and Scandinavian folklore. I don’t know him well outside of these, but of course I know he’s a big part of the Marvel-universe and popular culture in many ways. I do think he is made out to be more evil and demon-like than he really was. To have sources that pre-date Christianity in the Norse countries would be wonderful, but alas that is not so and the sources we have are tinted through the lens of a new religion and understanding of the world.

Good luck with your writing :)

[fannishliss]

Thanks for the good luck wish!

I seem to take on writing projects that are crazily ambitious. It is going to be very hard to extract Loki from the Marvel verse, especially because Tom Hiddleston is so good at making him attractive and compelling :D. Well, it's a long time from now until next Novel Month, so I have some time to ponder it.

I hope I'll be able to find out more of what folklore has to say about Loki. My hunch is that the everyday folklore might preserve more of the older conception of his function in the mythology. I love the thing above where he is responsible for those heat mirages. :)