I have no idea what I'm doing

WIPs and things

lokiofsassgaard — Sat, 13 Mar 2021 09:14:39 GMT

I just realised I accidentally deleted a post somewhere, so here we go.

There's a pseudonym on my AO3 account that collects old WIPs from over the years. IDK if I'll ever be getting round to finishing them, ad some are quite old. But instead of letting them languish in obscurity forever, I decided to post them.

That said, if there does seem to be enough want for a particular fic to be picked back up, it's not out of the realm of possibility. For some of them, I even still have all my notes and outlines, but for one reason or another, just ran out of steam with them.

Feel free to subscribe to whatever fic you found this post from, but don't expect any kind of regular update unless it's moved to a different pseud.

Also

lokiofsassgaard — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 04:14:36 GMT

I've renamed my fic journal thing. I still haven't posted much to it, but the old name didn't make a lot of sense at all.

isaytheehelnay

I'll probably post stuff there eventually. I'm like, really bad at it tho.

Thor & Loki: Double Trouble #1

lokiofsassgaard — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 03:15:18 GMT

Spoilers? IDK. Cut just in case.

I remain... unconvinced. I think that's the word for it.

It's not thrilled me. I'm not sure if it's the incongruity in the art that I find distracting, or something else. But it feels off.

It feels like fanfic.

Now, I say this as a prolific writer of fanfic, so this isn't meant as some massive dunk. But fanfic is inherently off. Every fic writer has their own versions of the characters, and their own ideas of how Asgard works, etc. And so far, this comic feels like fanfic.

Aside from the fact that Loki is hilariously tiny and looks like Edward Elric, he feels wrong. It feels like it's some sort of pre-canon romp; a flashback to when they were kids, but it's not that because they've gone with the Ikol character model where he's dressed like an Asgardian pimp.

It's cute. It's a fun romp. But it lacks substance. There's no emotion or soul behind it. And maybe that's just highlighted more by whatever the hell is going on in the main Thor title, where last we saw Donald Blake, he fucking ate Frog Thor like a goddamn lunatic.

I think the baseline insanity that is the main continuity is always going to be difficult to live up to, especially when you're going for a family friendly title. And that's probably why it feels like fanfic.

I wrote some depravity

lokiofsassgaard — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 12:42:10 GMT

Enjoy, if you're into that. Or don't if you're not.

I have no sister (7212 words) by LokiOfSassgaard
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: Thor (Movies)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Characters: Loki (Marvel), Thor (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Dark Thor (Marvel), Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), violent rape, Breeding, Violent Sex, Multiple Orgasms, POV Alternating, cervix abuse, Sibling Incest, Incest
Summary:

Sometimes when Loki is in a particular mood, he wears a female form to seek a bed partner for the evening.

Thor thinks this behaviour is obscene, and sets out to teach Loki a lesson.

ship lol

lokiofsassgaard — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 03:56:32 GMT

I was looking around for some prompts to fill last night, which is tough, because all the Marvel prompt/kink memes have been dead for years. I found a few prompt challenges on AO3 and started scrolling through to see if anything sung to me.

I saw one that was for Thorki that was almost interesting enough for me to try, despite this not really being my jam. And then at the bottom, "NO BROTHER CALLING."

Like. What?

The setup was very clearly not AU. They definitely wanted the incest siblings thing. But apparently calling one another brother, as they do so frequently in all versions of canon, was a step too far.

I only recently even had an "Oh, I get it now" moment with this ship. People who have known me for a while are aware that things like fluff and romance are foreign languages to me sometimes. Every attempt I've ever made at these things turns weird. I miss the days of After Dark communities on LJ, where depravity was the lingua franca. So having this fucking juggernaut ship that seemed to consist of a lot of misplaced fluff never really sat right with me. But that's what Tumblr perpetuates, and unfortunately the MCU was timed to perfectly coincide with the fall of LJ. So all us darkfic fuckers never found a good place to congregate. But insomnia has been kicking my ass for the last few weeks, and I've fallen into this bizarre rabbit hole on AO3. I've read a LOT of really messed up shit, after accidentally clicking on something after not reading the tags properly.

And there it was. That "oh" moment. I understand. When it's framed as the messed up shit it is, it works. Like, a lot.

So then I see this prompt that looks like it wants to go in that direction, and then it veers hard away from it by asking the filler to avoid all of the icky connotations. And this is exactly why I've spent the last decade not reading the majority of fic in this stupid fandom.

References, Inspiration, and Callbacks for Loki Annoys the Marvel Universe

lokiofsassgaard — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 08:28:27 GMT

This is going up as a "chapter note" for chapter 10, but it really has nothing to do with the chapter itself. I just had nothing to say about that chapter that hadn't already been said. So this felt like a good moment to take the time to discuss where I got a lot of the stuff in this series.

So, I haven't actually much to say about this chapter. And since there's been but a fish's breath whisper of a reveal, I want to take this moment to talk about where a lot of stuff actually comes from in this series. Because something hilarious and wonderful happened. This entire series became almost canon compliant in the most ridiculous way and I love it.

Let's look at the series start date. August 19, 2012.

Journey into Mystery was still going. Ikol had not yet stolen Loki's name and body for himself.

I wanted to play with this young Loki, and all his manic energy in the context of the MCU. The little boy, who within hours of returning to Asgard, whips Odin into a rage with a single sentence, and then steals a car. This ridiculous little boy, with his love for Midgard and memes, funny animal companions, and the ability to make friends and keep them just long enough to give him hope before he somehow pisses them off. This funny little version of Loki who didn't know what to do with all these weird feelings when he saw Daimon shirtless. This version of Loki who was a shitlord in training, aware of his heritage and role within the universe, who loves his brother very much, but occasionally feels that perhaps he might benefit from a brick to the face.

I extrapolated a lot from this. Aged him up to his early-20s, sent him out on adventures, and allowed him to fall in love with Midgard in a way Thor never did, embracing all the petty, material folly that makes humans what they are. Oh. And now that is precisely the Loki we have in canon and I love it.

A lot also came from Straczynski's run, in the lead-up to Siege. Though not for characterisation, but worldbuilding. Some of the earliest descriptions of Loki's physical appearance came from this, mixed up and blended with the way MCU frost giants look. The black fingernails, the black marks that come from behind his ears in a way that suggests horns. Except I've also inverted it. Because he's drawn a bit lighter in tone than Laufey.

In fact, when you see him out in the sun, he's downright pink. This is obviously not Odin's doing (word of god for the MCU has Loki's appearance being the result of some sort of Odin magic). He is so distinctly different from the other frost giants even without being small. Almost as if he's some kind of funny halfbreed.

And this is why the soldiers and lords and jarls with Jötunn brides don't have sons who get bullied and beaten up. Because these little boys can blend in. The daughters, though not really discussed for being outside of Loki's own context, blend in as well, appearing just foreign enough to be desirable brides. There are some secret hidden rules I've devised for how halfbreeds "work," and what makes Loki different from all the others. And it basically comes down to who the father is. In a world of magical beings, I figure we can throw genetics out the window a little bit.

I also really wanted the horns. I've said elsewhere that I like symmetry with these things, and since the fire giants are drawn with horns, it seems weird to me that the frost giants are not. The fire giants are also drawn with tails. And do you know what other popular comic book character has red skin, horns, and a tail?

And I just loved the way he was portrayed by Ron Perlman. Especially those horns. Look at them, like spicy snakes poised to strike. Uff.

This is how my fire giants more or less look, as established by Midgard Legends. That was a sublte little thing that I'm very glad people picked up on. But I didn't want the giants to just be red/blue coded, so both Marvel fire giants and Hellboy having these big, massive prehensile tails falls into this perfectly. They are a different race, with different physical characteristics. In the film, Red had horns as an infant. Loki's cut later in life. And I know that the fanon for Loki having horns does seem to kind of come out of aesthetics, but there is good reason to believe he should have horns.

Do those little markings on this gross Doom clone's head look familiar? There's an issue of Fantastic Four somewhere, and I can never remember which one it is, where Doom has created an entire army of these disgusting things, all weirdly mutated and wrong for reasons I cannot remember. But a consistency between them was that they all had horns. It's just annoying that it doesn't jive with how frost giants are drawn. But whatever. Let's say frost giants do, because Loki does, and he's a frost giant. Or supposed to be.

But I have taken Loki in a slightly different direction from all this. Which only begs the question, who is Loki's mother? And why does everyone in Hvítá seem to know, or at least have a vague idea? Because here he is in a What If. He is a darker, if less saturated shade of blue than the dead guard behind him. But when I say recent, this one was released in 2018. Well after I established all of this in TWHM. He still has no horns, nor do any of his frost giant bretheren, but whatever. Marvel is inconsistent at the best of times.

Loki being a halfbreed didn't come out of nowhere either. It's often speculated that he MUST be in 616, but it almost never actually gets discussed at all. He's just "born small" whatever that means. And I hate it. But there is Ultimates, which is just overall a heap of garbage. But in Ultimates, there is actual real background for who and what he is.

He's a halfbreed. And they know it. And more than that, his mother is not Jötunn. If anything, she seems to be some sort of war bride, which is an idea Frigga has tossed around earlier in this fic.

So, who is Loki's mother? The answer is in the comics, though not Ultimates, because Ultimates is trash. It's also stated as fact two or three times in Those Who Hunt Monsters. I'm not going to state it outright here, for those who are still puzzling it out, but it shan't come from nowhere. Reveals that come from nowhere are the worst sort. This one will obvious as day once it is revealed to Loki properly.

So he's got half of a reveal. He's got some context, which is so meaningless to him, he spent not even two seconds to dwell on it. He will later though, and he will know as much of the full truth as it will be possible for him to know by the end of this fic.

But there's a greater context Loki still lacks, because he has once again been fed a lie and accepted it as straight truth. And this one came from the MCU. Because this isn't just comic Loki fucking about. This is comic Loki fucking about within the MCU. Except it kind of doesn't have anything at all to do with the MCU at all. Because this truth didn't happen in the MCU until after I started working on Midgard Legends, well after I'd finished TWHM and set up this mystery. I made some bullshit up, extrapolated from some arc I can't remember (probably during Fraction's run; that's where all the really bizarre stuff came from), and then Feige apparently came up with the same bullshit reasoning and ran with it as well. So maybe it wasn't as bullshity and ridiculous as I thought it was. I thought I was being kind of silly and stupid, but now it's just canon. Whoops.

Another thing I've taken from the comics is Loki's use of a bow, which is just absolutely nowhere in the MCU. But he heavily favours one in Ultimates, and often is shown having one in flashback sequences in 616. The fact that the MCU gave him throwing knives, and with another one of his preferred weapons in the comics in a whip, I liked the idea of him favouring ranged combat overall.

Something that will keep his enemies farther away than the length of a sword. But he also definitely favours a sword as well, and that's not something I wanted to take away from him. In fact, in TWHM, he even got to have a little bit of angst over wanting to be better with one than he was. This has changed by this point in the story, and is something I would very much like to play with more. But lately he's been playing more with guns and bows instead. Which, uh.

I want this work of art on my wall.

Another fairly random detail that didn't come from nowhere is Loki being afraid of water. Admittedly, this detail came from some really weird Silver Age worldbuilding, in which Loki's magic just doesn't work when he's wet. Thor says this comes from legend, but I don't fucking know what he's talking about. Maybe it does and I've just forgotten where it came from. Or maybe Stan Lee was just making shit up.

But I liked the potential for this. I felt like he needed a couple of internal obstacles -- something that would occasionally present problems for him without being something born of strife or conflict. He's supposed to be 6'4" and 525lbs in the comics. There's no way he can swim with those stats. Dude sinks like a rock. And it can still come back round to his magic not working when he's wet, because if he is actively drowning, he's probably panicking and not thinking about how to turn himself into a fish.

In fact, I think the only thing I mostly made up was Loki being left-handed. There is nothing anywhere in the comics to back this up, but it was one of those things that seemed like a good detail; something he would obstanantly refuse to even attempt to change, no matter how much of a pain in the ass being left-handed is. In fact, I got this one from Avengers 1, and it comes entirely from the choreography when Loki uses the sceptre to boost his magic. He holds it with his right hand, and casts with his left. It's feeble, but I liked it enough to just completely riff off of. But that too is something he will be actually addressing at some point as well, because let's be real. Being left-handed is a constant ballache. Once he gets back from this little adventure, he's going to need to start doing a lot of stuff that will necessitate him learning how to use his right hand.

Loki isn't the only thing to come straight from the pages though. That wolf he treats as a puppy, as big as a horse, and obviously too small to actually be Fenrisulfr? Oh, what's this? I came to really like the idea that Jötunn fauna is simply to scale. Big wolves, big reindeer, big horses, to suit a world where even its people are big.

I went with blue eyes, over red, because I didn't really like the idea of Loki having something that could be viewed as a literal demon dog. I chose the name Fenrir because of all the different spellings and kennings of that stupid wolf. Fenrir? Fenris? Fenrisulfr? Well, guess what. In the MCU he turned into a she named Fenris, so well. That kind of spoiled that a little bit. Fenrir was never going to be That Wolf. He's clearly too small, and too much of a dumb puppy. This is just Loki, being bad at names, and calling his dog "dog" in Jötunn, basically. An idea I got from JiM, where he gave the magpie his own name, backwards. Granted, there were real, logical reasons for it, but I never stopped laughing at it. And then he went and got a dog and named it Thori, so maybe Loki is just Bad At Names. But Fenrir was always a red herring, and now that's out in the open and I guess I can't be coy about it anymore.

Odin's sons were not chosen by random either, though I did use different spellings for Baldur and Viðar for pure aesthetic reasons.

But I liked Odin having four sons, and these four in particular for reasons I go into a little further below. I don't know where Baldur went in the movies. Viðar gets pretty handily ignored in the comics too, because characters that don't speak are amazingly difficult to pull off well. Of everything I've pulled directly from the myths, I think Viðar is the most blantant. There's a lot more that shows up incidentally in the background. Basically, the myths have been used to pad out things where Marvel gets a bit weird or vague. A lot of background characters and general worldbuilding come either from myths or sagas, if not directly then because I liked their name. I've kind of cobbled together a lot of stuff from a lot of sources for all of the incidentals, without really doing anything too specific for any of it.

In fact, I'm deliberately not going with the myths as much as possible because Thor 1 invalidates all of it, and I wanted to stick with that. Poor writing actually led the way for some really interesting concepts I've only really just started to play with. Loki was an infant in 945AD. He was not the God of Lies or anything else. And Thor was not the God of Thunder, if he and Loki are the same age. And Thor ain't no 1500 years old, either. Fuck off with that bullshit, Infinity War. Even if he was, he'd still be a child during the Viking age. But that's where I got the idea to make them twins; or at least, have them raised as such. With the timeline established by Thor 1, there was just no fucking way to hide Loki being a frost giant. It just wasn't going to happen, and I hate how it was presented as some big damn secret that nobody knew, without explaining at all how it was hidden. The easiest way to hide it would be to present the lie with a concrete truth. Frigga was pregnant, she had a baby, and it was a stressful and chaotic time for everyone. Why not say she had twins, and use a truth to cover a lie?

Thor 1 gave us a very concrete date and timeline, which was stupid and pointless and completely broke all of the mytholgy. That's why there are two Lokis in this. The one you are reading about, and the psychopath he was named for. And this is another thing I established before Agent of Asgard played with the same concept, with Loki going back in time to be a thorn in Odin's side.

I got this idea from the same place Loki gets his fear of birds. When he met Hogun for the first time, he was terrified of that eagle, and he did not know why. Later on, on Jötunheimr, Volstagg mentions giant eagles that would carry men off. That came from a myth, in which Loki and Odin were camping on Jötunheimr, and Loki was carried off by a giant eagle. (The eagle turned out to be a frost giant, but shh.) I like the concept of genetic knowledge, with Loki responding to birds the same way someone who has never left the city will respond to a lion's roar. Just a visceral, instinctual nope.

Before Loki became Norse Satan, he and Odin just shitlorded around the Nine. I had this idea from the very beginning that the Thor and Loki in this series were both named after people Odin used to shitlord around with, and that's where Loki gets this mad, manic streak to do the same. He heard these stories about dear old dad being a raging lunatic in his youth, and wants to do the same. And then Old Loki was executed, and Old Thor... who the fuck knows. Drowned after drinking half the sea probably. Then Odin grew up, took the throne, had kids, and named his twins after his two BFFs.

And then Ragnarok happened, and uhm. In a weird way that seems to be exactly what happened. Odin plastered over all the horrible, stupid shit he used to do and pretends to be this regal old fart instead. So that's cool. I have plans for that whole thing too, because it fits perfectly into this narrative I've already established by having Loki not be the one he's supposed to be. I don't think it would be too much of a spoiler to say that Hela is Loki's daughter. Just not the Loki you're reading about. And I can do that and still keep it perfectly in line and compliant with what Ragnarok presented.

You'll also notice I am very inconsistent with my spelling in general. I use some of the Old Norse, Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, and English spellings, all randomly cobbled together. Sometimes it's picked again on aesthetics, sometimes for certain consistencies. The use of Jötun, Jötuns, Jötunn, and Jötnar is probably the most obvious one, because especially right now, you're seeing those words a lot. This is just the noun and adjective forms, in singular and plural. In the very first drafts of Those Who Hunt Monsters, I did the same with Æsir and all its conjugations. But ultimately threw it out and mostly replaced it with Asgardian because that's what canon does. On Asgard, it felt distracting.

Another thing I've been very careful about doing is how different races are described by other characters. It was established pretty early on that "frost giant" is more of a slur than anything. Same with "orc." Polite society uses Jötunn, Dökkálfar, etc. Elf sits in this middle ground, where Álfar is preferred, but "elf" is used pretty liberally. Mainly because Loki has not yet interacted with any of them, really. That said, Thor and Loki both throw "orc" around like they don't care. It's this little bit of inconsistency and hypocrisy that I really like with Loki's character, because it keeps him off that high horse for the most part. It's like in Midwinter, when he chastised Thor for stealing from a vendor, only to be shut down because he's known for being a thieving bitch himself.

There's a plot I badly want to play with, but cannot find a good place to fit it in where Loki loses his Alltongue. Because I want to explore the Asgardian language more, and force Loki to learn English properly and become literate in it. In my mind, it isn't and wouldn't be Old Norse. It would be similar, but not the same. And I think the way in which it would be similar, but not the same, is the same way Norwegian is similar, but not the same as Danish. I just really love the idea that the language of the gods sounds a bit like someone code switching between Faroese and Old Norse around a mouth full of hot mashed potatoes.

So that's why the spelling is inconsistent. It's the common ancestor of Nordic languages, and what Old Norse evolved from. I wanted to kind of evoke that as much as possible by having it not tied down to any one particular set of rules.

And Loki being illiterate is something that's always bothered me, both in the comics and the MCU. Yes, he speaks this magical language that allows him to understand and be understood, but it never explains how he can write and type in English. He writes fanfic and hacks government systems. The man's obviously literate, but there aren't any rules established for how. So right now, he is illiterate in Enlgish. He can read, through the Alltongue, but he cannot write. And I need to force that upon him or he will never learn.

Another thing that came from the comics is one that has been peppered throughout Norse Marvel since Venus in the 40s, but actually got some good page time finally in Journey into Mystery. This non-interference pact, signed by all the pantheons.

I think I started working on this series around the time that arc was happening in JiM. It was such a fun idea, and one that worked very well as the crux of a lot of the plots I wanted to do. It served perfectly as a vehicle for Loki to run around on Midgard unchecked. Because let's be real, that pact has not been enforced at all from the moment it was first mentioned. But what if it were enforced? What if gods who found themselves on Earth found a wide open planet, free of cosmic law as a result, where they could do as they wished as long as they were comfortable living as a criminal? This sung to this chaotic, playful version of Loki that Journey into Mystery was giving us. What if this little boy, born centuries earlier, had a realm all to himself? How would he abuse this precious thing he has found? Or would he hoard it for himself, a secret treasure only for him to play with?

Also, I had no reason from the comics to ship Fandral/Loki. That came entirely from the way they briefly interacted in Thor 1, and my love for stupid crack ships. Fandral seemed to be the only one on Loki's side in a few scenes. Then again in TDW, he had no goddamn problem going on this wild adventure with him. Though a lot of Fandral's personality did come from the comics, especially Fraction's run of Thor. There's just something about him; some pervasive thing where he often seems like he's going out of his way to prove his straightness. I know there's a tendency to want Asgard to be above such petty intolerances, but there's plenty of backing for this sort of cultural bigotry, both toward Fandral himself and toward Loki when she wore Sif's body.

One thing that is pretty clear, if you look at it, is that Asgard is not a shining beacon of wealth and enlightenment within the cosmos. Odin is a tribal king in some relatively undeveloped backwater. They still use swords and siege tactics. What travel technology they do possess seems to be limited to local travel, or else is magical in nature. When the dark elves attacked in TDW, nobody knew what the hell to do with that ship. When Thor and Loki tried to steal one, it was pretty obviously new technology for them. They didn't know how to fly that shit. They just kind of made it up. So it makes sense to me that this fairly isolated, out of date society would have fairly isolated, outdated cultural beliefs.

And then this happened, and it's canon, and my mind will not be changed.

Also, if you read the Many Lives and Deaths of Luke Olson, I hope you got as much of a kick out of this shit as I did. I really need to go back and expand on some of these little adventures of his.

And while we're here, I do want to talk a little bit more about Odin's sons, and his legacy. I'm not sure if those names were picked deliberately in Disassembled, but these four particular sons of Odin paint a very bleak picture of his line. The comics tend to go the direction that none of Odin's children are the result of sex with whoever his wife at the moment tends to be. They're all fostered, or half-siblings, or the result of affairs. Not a single one of them is a natural child of the marriage bed. Loki is fosterd/adopted, Thor's mother is Gaea, Viðar's mother is Grid, and Baldur's mother is Frigga, who is apparently not Freyja, because Marvel is confusing as fuck. The wiki lists Freyja as his mother, but it was pretty explicitly an afffair with another woman.

I don't like this, tbh. It feels very much like an attempt to make sense of the original source material where Odin is literally the father of all the gods, but when translated to a patriarchal society where the male heir inherits all, it falls apart. I took out all of the foster and affair elements, save for Loki. And so we have Odin's four sons — itself something to celebrate. The king has four heirs. Four sons to carry his legacy. Something will have to go very poorly wrong for the line of Odin to fall apart.

First there is Loki, tecnically his eldest, but last in line. Taken as a thrall, but adopted and raised as a twin to Odin's true heir, Thor. He is the only of the four who seems to have taken any serious interest in his role, and yet spends more time in other realms than Asgard itself. As long as he is betrothed to a woman none can find, he cannot wed, and cannot produce a true heir. If Loki inherits, something has gone dreadfully wrong. For this to happen, all three of his brothers would have to die before producing their own heir.

Then there is Thor, strong and mighty and poised to one day take the throne. He is arrogant and a bully, often selfishly serving only himself. This is the son who will one day rule Asgard as a tyrant. His prospective marriage is rather unlikely at this point, with Sif shifting to ally with Loki instead of him. But as King, at least he will be able to take any bride he wants. There will likely be an heir eventually.

Then there is Baldur, second in line. The spare. Largely disinterested in his role as a result. Knows very little about what goes on in the palace, despite rarely leaving. Doesn't seem to like any of his brothers much. Doomed to die and end the world, if one chooses to believe certain interpretations of myth and prophecy. At least he hasn't completely screwed up his marriage prospects, though he's also still fairly young and hasn't yet taken his Rite.

And then, Viðar. Another embarassment. He doesn't speak, and therefore cannot take any active role. Third in line, and still a child. Were the throne to somehow fall to him, it would be chaos. Were the throne to fall to Viðar, Loki would surely rule as regent. Likely seen as slow, or unintelligent, Viðar's chances of producing an heir are slim to none.

Somehow, Odin's line is in shambles, despite having four sons. He has one who revels in enforced bachelordom, one who has severely damaged his prospects, and one who likely will not be able to wed. The best thing that can be done is install Thor on the throne early, further open his prospects, and produce an heir. He could technically have any woman on Asgard, but perhaps it would be better for him to take a bride from another realm. Though I think he'd be more likely to try to win Sif back, out of sheer stubbornness. Never mind the fact that he has completely pissed her off to the point that despite everything, she has come to trust Loki more than she does Thor.

And she still doesn't even trust Loki either. You can see that very plainly in Blood Price. He terrifies her. And he's still preferred to Thor when it comes to important matters. That's how badly Thor has fucked this up.

No matter how Odin tries, his line is forever in shambles. And this panel from Thor Season 1 is one of the only times he ever seems to admit it.

I want to do more with this when Loki returns to Asgard. Odin has his motives for what he does, and they need to be explored. Because every one of them comes back to his children, and how none of them are doing what they're supposed to. He's stuck in this really uncomfortable position where his children are largely embarassments or disappointments for various reasons, though he tries not to admit it. Somehow, none of them have been even remotely prepared to actually do the job they're supposed to be doing, despite everyone's best efforts.

Thor, destined to be king, is an entitled bully. Loki, destined to be Thor's right hand, is distrusted and despised by literally everyone who matters. Baldur, the theoretical "spare" has taken exactly zero interest in even pretending to learn what he's meant to be doing. And Viðar, who can't even speak, is barely expected to learn how to dress himself. All Odin sees is a very bleak future for Asgard unless these brats get their shit together. Which is unlikely if one's trying to start wars with other realms, another keeps fucking off to other realms every time he's presented with responsibility, and the other two are plain and simple incapable. (And King Baldur was a terrible, terrible fiasco, and even he admits it.)

Somehow, in my quest to avoid the Odin's A+ Parenting trope, I accidentally made him the most sympathetic damn character in this entire ordeal.

Which is cool, because lately he's pretty much the only person on Asgard to not only be on Loki's side, but actively seems invested in his future.

Fandom wank, and a hill I will die on

lokiofsassgaard — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 08:54:34 GMT

It's quieted down a bit over the last couple of days, but there has been some bizarrely weird wank on Tumblr lately. Wank that harkens back to awful 2011 fanon that made me want to tear my eyeballs out then.

TL;DR, people are PISSED that they keep giving Loki knives and weapons and having him fight in the MCU.

Now, granted, they definitely de-powered him for some odd reason, and his magic seems to be parlour tricks at best. But man, that fanon from a decade ago, that Loki is a delicate flower who is nothing without his magic has really held strong. And I don't get it. I guess, Eir-Gram, Gram, Lævateinn, Jarnbjorn, and his unnamed whip mean nothing.

Look. Loki should be both fighting and casting forbidden magic. He can do both! idk why people seem to think it's either one or the other, when doing both has been a big part of his edge for so long.

The MCU is a fucking mess, and I would love to know why they went in the direction they did with pretty much everything in the Thor movies.

I am so tired

lokiofsassgaard — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 03:08:41 GMT

The last couple of weeks, I've been having a really hard time getting to bed at a good hour. My bedroom is on smart switches, everything shuts off at 12:00 and cannot be turned back on without a lot of hassle. At 8:30, the main light shuts off, leaving only the rope lights and the TV, which is usually just playing music at that point.

We do this because we're on vampire hours, and it's easier to get to sleep with a consistent amount of low light and noise than with whatever is going on outside the bedroom window. We have blackout curtains, but they still don't make the room completely dark once the sun comes up, especially since we've also got an AC unit kind of janked in that window at the same time. It's just nice, ya know.

So last night, we put on some Yogscast shit or something, I don't even remember. Around 7:00, I just passed out. Could not keep my eyes open, rolled over, and was done.

Until about 10:00, when I found myself wide awake. I pissed around Tumblr for a little bit, and read some fic, and still couldn't get back to sleep. When everything shut off, I was like, welp. This is it. Still wasn't happening. The last time I remember checking the time was just after 2:00.

The bedroom turns back on at 4:30. I managed to sleep until about 6:00.

I am so tired and I do not feel well and augh why. I'm going to try to resist taking a nap today, but that's always about as successful as resisting a falling brick to the head. I'm so annoyed and augh.

Second Rite: Tafl

lokiofsassgaard — Sun, 28 Feb 2021 04:23:46 GMT

Second Rite (45964 words) by LokiOfSassgaard
Chapters: 9/?
Fandom: Thor (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel, Loki (Comics), Thor (Comics)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Angrboða | Angerboda/Loki (Norse Religion & Lore)
Characters: Loki (Marvel), Thor (Marvel), Angrboða | Angerboda (Norse Religion & Lore)
Additional Tags: Action/Adventure, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Jötunheimr | Jotunheim, Marvel Norse Lore, Mystery, Body Horror, Body Dysphoria, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Squick, Don't Have to Know Canon, No Canon Knowledge Required
Series: Part 3 of Loki Annoys the Marvel Universe
Summary:

After Loki returns from the war on Midgard, he finds it difficult to adjust to life back on Asgard. Eveything is too loud, too bright, too busy. He would much rather be left alone to nap as much as he wants.

But there are secrets being kept, lies told, and rumours spread around him. Exhausted and at the end of his rope, he cannot rest without knowing the truth. With another war looming with Vanaheimr, Loki escapes the realm once more for some peace and quiet. Seeking cold and snow, this time he goes to Jötunheimr.

Part 3 of the series in which the MCU is invaded by the wrong version of Loki, and everything slowly gets thrown out of whack.

Note: I've squicked myself three times with this fic so far. idk what's wrong with me, but here it is.

Chapter Notes: Tafl

lokiofsassgaard — Sun, 28 Feb 2021 03:45:52 GMT

Cool. Done it again. Went and fuckin squicked myself. This fic is just gross and I can't help it.

After the last chapter, I said that once Loki gets comfortable with something, he is not going to stop. Well. That's what's happened. He's getting comfortable in this little village, and now the Loki that is a massive shitlord is coming out to play.

One of the things Loki has a habit of doing is finding things from other realms, especially Midgard, and sharing them with his friends. Teaching the kids to play checkers is just a continuation of this habit. It's also continuing this manic streak of his. He's not only shaved the kids' heads, but now he's drawn all over their table. In charcoal, at least, so it will come off. But he still drew all over their table.

Earlier, he told Bjalfi and Hrapp that he has enough silver to pay for a guide. This was a doubtful claim, and they had a logical reason to doubt it. And now Bjalfi comes home and finds these strange, foreign coins being used for play. Whether they're worthless, or whether Loki has no concept of their worth, Bjalfi doesn't know. He just sees a bunch of coins from somewhere that isn't Jötunheimr, scattered around carelessly.

I think the only normal and expected thing Loki has done yet is getting rid of his fucked up tooth. That he did it himself (or tried, at least) might be kind of weird, but whatever. So far, he's presented a very conflicting image to these people though. On the one hand, he shows up in what appears to be (from a tribal village POV) fancy clothing, well-educated, and speaking of a large family. On the other hand, he is 100% self-sufficient. He hunts, he cooks, he tends to his own wounds, and apparently, attempts to pull his own teeth.

Having Sigtrygg do the actual pulling was something I ran by a few people, and the response to it was very mixed. About half the responses were immediately "do it," and the other half were worried about the implications of a twelve year old being put into this position in the first place. Which honestly convinced me to do it even more. I think that uncomfortable feeling is required for a lot of the stuff that Loki runs into in this fic. Loki lives in two different societies, and neither of them are really societies in which children are overly sheltered and coddled (things were changing on Midgard by this point, but they were also still very different to how things are today). He has no reason to think that these children would be unexposed to the realities of life. By the time Loki was 12, he was training to fight in battle (or, was supposed to be, but semantics). The children Loki most recently saw on Midgard were running messages to soldiers and fleeing from Nazis. Sigtrygg is old enough that he has likely helped tend to wounds -- Vigdís even intended to a few chapters back, when Loki was thrown from the horse. Sigtrygg has likely butchered animals, and even killed a few himself by this point. Pulling a tooth is another part of life for a tribal boy out on the tundra.

Then at the judgement, what Sigtrygg hasn't been desensitised to yet is violence. There is a gaping chasm of a difference between "this person needs to remove a broken tooth" and "this person is being flogged." Sigtrygg isn't old enough to be a man, but he is old enough to participate because he needs to be desensitised early. If he isn't desensitised before he's old enough to make his own decisions, he might not punish poor behaviour appropriately when it's his turn. He doesn't particularly want to go to assembly, but he understands that it's required of him. There's no complaining or trying to get out of it, because unlike a certain pair of spoilt, privileged princes, he does not have the luxury to balk. He's displaying a level of maturity Loki had to go to war to develop.

As for why I had him remove his tooth at all, there's no real point to it in the narrative. It came about entirely because I'm annoyed at how inconsistent his character design is in the comics. His appearance at the very end of Agent of Asgard was so goddamn charming, in this rough and tumble way. And a big part of that was his missing tooth. But they can't even consistently colour his nails black, so I'm not surprised this detail got lost. idk if we're supposed to believe that Asgardians/Jötuns grow back missing teeth, or if it's just plain and simple nobody cares, but I'm properly annoyed AoA went out of its way to show it as often as possible, only for it to never show back up again.

But it was pure spite over inconsistent art. I fell in love with that design, and it never appeared again. Though some artists do still draw his coat all fucked up, so at least that's something I guess. I actually find it more funny that he hasn't replaced that after everything it's been through.

Another thing I wanted to highlight, because he's never really done it before, is that Loki knows how to deliver one hell of an apology. Because he absolutely needs to be able to apologise. You can't manipulate people without being able to regain their trust when they find you out. Which, he isn't manipulating Angrboða here, and I don't want to imply that he is. But that's definitely the reason he can say he's sorry and have the other person believe it. And being able to do it when he's not genuine makes it all the easier to do it when he is.

And it's the final nail in the coffin for her. He's so fucking weird, and nothing he does makes sense, and he recognises that. He's not just weird because he's weird. He's weird because he's foreign. Loki knows he's been caught, so he doesn't deny it, but he's not going to give her any more information than that. Because that's another thing I love about where Loki's been going in the comics lately. He's the God of Stories; not lies. He'll lie by omission and misrepresent facts before he tells a straight up fabrication. That's something I've always tried to stick to with this series, and had him doing long before he was rebranded as the God of Stores. Loki has told very few lies unprompted throughout this entire series. When he does, he does it only to perpetuate what someone else has already said, or occasionally to twist the truth and misreprensent something. His lie that he is from Iceland came from someone else. The name he uses on Midgard came from someone else, because he utterly tripped over it and just sputtered nonsense. The few blatant lies he does tell are all fairly tame, and few and far between. Everything else he says is true. It's just grossly misrepresented. And every time he gets caught in a lie, his tactic is to own it, and occasionally deflect. "Oh jeez, you got me."

It makes for much better lies than if he were just making up shit as he goes along. It's why he cannot find a lie to stick to. He doesn't know enough about the society he finds himself in to know what a good lie would be. Nobody's offered him anything he can just run with. So now he has this bizarre image of being two things at once, and it's just confusing and weird for everyone involved.

Another thing that I think is slowly starting to come out in this fic overall is how Loki's mode of speech is shifting. He speaks more and more like a human the more time he spends with them. It's something that's happened with Thor in the films, though I'm honestly not sure if it's intentional, or just ever-increasingly lazy writing. But Loki's speech has become not only more loose in general, but peppered with slang and idioms, and even occasional profanity. It's one of those things I expect probably annoys people who come into this fic without reading the first two, but it's been a fairly deliberate choice ever since Midgard Legends, where it really started. There, he was doing it to blend in, deliberately loosening his speech and picking his words to match those around him. But just like when you ironically say "that's lit, fam" 300 times, eventually it stops being ironic, and just becomes a thing you say.

Overall, not a lot happened in this chapter. It's all worldbuilding and slice of life for the next good, long while. Next week, I found myself with absolutely nothing to say about the chapter, so the notes will be something very different.

I feel like ass

lokiofsassgaard — Wed, 24 Feb 2021 07:50:50 GMT

We have company over for the first time in a fucking year, because it's relatively safe to do so. The problem is we are on vampire hours, waking as the sun sets and going to bed again as it rises. Company is not.

So I tried to go to bed around noon, but as soon as the lights were out, my husband's alarm went off, so he could wake up and spend time with our guest. Which wigged me right out, so I don't think I fell asleep until closer to about 1:30.

Then, he comes back shortly after 4:30 to wake me up, and ask when I wanted to go out for dinner. Which is actually breakfast if you're a vampire. With much grumbling and consternation, I hauled my greasy carcass out of bed and got dressed, so we could get there with plenty of time to spare before the place closed. We wanted shabu, which is just a whole event, but apparently they are not doing shabu right now, which makes sense, but also augh. So we got dolsot bibimbap instead, which was good, but didn't really hit the spot.

For some stupid goatfuck reason, we also ordered some soju. Mind, at this point, I've been awake for about an hour. And I'm slamming back soju because that shit is delicious. And then I decided to actually look at the label, and by myself, I've drank about 2/3 of this thing which is 13%abv. Yeah that was smart.

By the time we left, I was so damn ill from not sleeping right, and from making poor choices. The other two were going to the store to pick up wine and some noodles and things, but I just went home. Said fuck y'all have fun, goodbye basically. I got home and immediately crashed. Slept for another four and a half hours, and still don't feel right, but my eyes are open.

Then my husband comes back, and says I have to try some snacks our guest brought. Fine. I'm up. I get out to the front room, and am fed some cuttelfish snacks, which taste like I'm at a sushi bar. I want more of those. Those were great.

And then it happens. My husband goes into the kitchen and gets this pack of wafers, which he has put into a ziploc bag. And that's when I remember that our guest said she had brought some durian wafers with her. I'm side-eyeing both of them hard, because if they put this shit into a bag, then I'm already pissed off at everyone for bringing this into my house and opening it. Then he opens it and hands me one, and tells me to smell it. Bitch, I can smell it from here, and I am going to die.

I hate everyone.

So I stole a bag of shrimp snacks and am hiding in my room away from those shenanigans out there. bleh.

Early fic: Green

lokiofsassgaard — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 17:24:42 GMT

Not a chapter. A drabble for a prompt fest. Depending on which word processor runs the count, it's either 100 words, or 101. Feh.

He hadn't intended for green to become "his colour." It just happened, in that awkward way where a person makes a passing remark about liking something, and every gift for the next twenty years has something to do with that one specific thing, and suddenly the house is full of ceramic geese.

One seemingly benign choice, made in a fit of passive-aggression told everyone who mattered that green was the colour of choice. His clothes, his armour, his sealing wax; even his sigil became green, like an inescapable creeping wave over everything.

It was fortunate he happened to like green.

I did the thing

lokiofsassgaard — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 16:00:38 GMT

I went ahead and posted an addme thingy, so hello everyone new!

If you want to see fic before I post it to AO3, there's a post in my stickies to request access to the filter. I probably need to post some things actually. I've kind of got all turned around and confused about what's been posted and what hasn't.

Seriously, DW. Give me rich text input on the beta entry post page thing. That would be cool.

Chapter Notes: Trickster God (42)

lokiofsassgaard — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 13:59:47 GMT

This is a rare instance where I'm opening up a chapter with an author's note.

I don't think it's any secret at this point why this fic was initially abandoned. If you're reading my main series, which got caught in the crossfire, you probably already know the story. If not, here's what happened.

This fic went to dark places. It will continue to go to dark places. Hell, it opened up with fucking vivesection. There is nothing tame here. This fic is tagged and warned appropriately, with no subversions. And where it really went south for me was when Darcy was raped. Which she was, back in chapter 37. Up until that point, I was indulging my id, and thought most of the people in the comments were on the same page. That said, a lot of comments have now been deleted. I spent entirely too many hours arguing with people in the comments about my own intent with this fic.

There will be no rape=love in this fic. If you are looking for that, go elsewhere. Because that is not the trope I am playing with here. I hate to spoil it by putting it right out there like that, but I had also thought that it was pretty obvious that's not where this is going. What I am playing with is the mindfuckery that will make a victim think that rape=love.

So, I'm going to take a moment to lay it all out on the table. If you wish to proceed after this, please be aware that I will not entertain comments that wish to fight me on this. I will simply delete them and move on with my life. This is some good, old-fashioned darkfic. And darkfic is best when it apologises for nothing. If you do not like this kind of fic, find something else to read. Period.

Darcy has been kidnapped, used as a human shield, raped, and nearly killed multiple times. Her mind's ability to process all of this is next to zero, and she is so far down the rabbit hole at this point of the story that she is projecting sympathetic motivations onto Loki. Because that's what Stockholm syndrome does to a person. It doesn't make you fall in love with them, or join their side. Darcy knows that what Loki did was wrong, and horrible, and that he deserves to face consequences. But she also has convictions, and it's those convictions that have allowed her to get so tangled up inside over what has been done to her. She saw firsthand what was done to him. She continues to see it every day. She sees the suffering and the damage, and she has to believe that everything he's done to her is because he is as terrified as she is.

Loki had a plan. It was kind of half-baked and nebulous, but he had a plan for getting off Midgard. He was going to find somewhere to hide out for a while, regain his strength, and yolo the fuck off this rock. He may be a tough frightened, but mostly he's pissed. His plan was disrupted, and now he's being dragged all over hell and creation by this loud obnoxious woman who won't give him a moment's peace. At the same time, if she's allowed to escape, she'll have done so after putting his face on every screen in North America. He needs to move quickly in a foreign realm, with rules and magic he doesn't understand. He's not going to do that without Darcy. He needs to keep her on a short leash if he is going to get out of this alive. And if Darcy sticks around because she thinks he's scared, he's not going to correct her. She's easily manipulated through this, and as long as he can continue to keep up the lie, he's got a bargaining chip for when things go sour.

Keep in mind. This is told from Darcy's point of view, by design. If you read Tarbell, I did something thematically similar. Loki let Darcy think he was in a vulnerable state, because it benefitted him to do so. But in Tarbell, I changed the formula and showed his point of view as well, making it clear that they were not on the same page. And people saw the ending coming. I don't think anyone was surprised they didn't get together at the end of that one. But apparently by obscuring what I thought was a lot more obvious than it seemingly was, people are taking the narration and projections at face value. And what resulted was some truly disturbing comments on this fic. I think I've managed to delete most of them, if not all, but if you come into my comments telling me that I am wrong, telling me that Loki is acting out of love or affection, telling me that Darcy needs to get over herself and kiss him already, etc, it will not be tolerated.

And I'm sorry about coming out of the gate on this defensive and angry, but this is the fic that single-handedly made me burn out of fandom and delete most of my social media a few years back. It started off as just taking a break from this particular fic but the comments kept coming on it, some straight up bullying and cruel toward the end.

But I want to finish this. I've had enough time to step back from it, and I do hate having such a huge piece sitting unfinished on my profile. Especially since it is my most popular fic literally ever. So I'm going to plough through it under my original outline, go where it was always intended to go, and try to figure out how I came up with the end chapter count that's listed on the upload.

And if you want something that's considerably less fucked up, well. I'm also working on a sequel to Tarbell. And might have accidentally talked myself into doing an eight-part series with it because fuck me I guess.

Chapter Notes: Temptation

lokiofsassgaard — Sun, 21 Feb 2021 03:04:26 GMT

We are getting into a section of less plot, more slice of life worldbuilding. I've said before that one of the things I really wanted to do with this series, and this story in particular is to humanise the other races. Especially the traditionally villainous ones. And there are a few really good ways of doing that, so why not do them all.

Loki is right now some kind of weird interloper in these people's lives. They have welcomed them into their home, and have even given him a small area that is his, but he still does not truly belong here. He's mostly an observer, completely foreign to this way of life. And yet, he knows that even if he had remained on Jötunheimr, and somehow grown up and thrived on this realm, he would not have grown up in a place like this. He was found in Utgard, a place he is well-familiar with. He's spent a lot of time there with or without approval, and Utgard is all he knows about the realm. Abstractly, he knew there were other places in Jötunheimr where people live, but to him that's like telling a person that there is a random deli three towns over. It just absolutely, fundamentally does not matter, and has never been worth a moment's thought beyond processing the sentence as it's spoken.

In TWHM, two things were made clear in the trip to Utgard: he is known as a prince of Asgard, and he is known to be half-breed. For Loki, one of these was a given, and one of them was a lame insult. Utgard is a noisy, messy, chaotic place, not unlike Asgard in many ways. And now he's out here in this tribal village, slightly alienated and uncomfortable by this completely different way of life. All the horrible, boring, tedious crap he had to learn as a boy is useful out here. Why should a prince ever need to learn to hunt, or build a fire, or muck stables, or or or. But I think before the war, it was much more common for even Asgardian nobility and royalty to travel the realms. It isn't so much anymore, but the traditions of preparing them to do so have remained intact. Except everything's a farce. It's peer pressure from dead people without the context of why it was done before. Kids take a week-long camping trip, and come back with a chipmunk, and somehow this means they're a hunter. They spend a year in exile, and piss it away in ale houses and brothels, and apparently come back knowing more about the world. Aside from training to fight, they don't really learn anything useful.

Loki is a rare Asgardian who still travels. He's the only person he knows who has taken everything he's learned and applied it. And this is probably a big part of why Odin allows it and looks the other way. He could very easily put a stop to Loki roaming the Nine, sowing chaos and mayhem in his wake, but every time he returns, it's with brand new perspective. On the surface, he travels the realms to piss away his time in ale houses and brothels, but he always comes back with knowledge and treasures and a new appreciation of the other realms. Something Odin himself would have done at Loki's age.

He has never seen a tribal Jötunn village, and he is fascinated by it. He hasn't even seen that much, because he's been hiding away for one reason or another. But there is zero reason for him to stay. He could have very easily zipped back to Asgard, waited out the bad weather, and returned to finish his task. Instead, much like Vigdís' willingness to step in sheep shit when she marries the sheep boy, Loki is choosing to live in squalor for the experience. He chooses having to hunt for his next meal, and not being able to bathe. He chooses dirt beneath his feet, insetad of polished stone. And in choosing this, he sees a side of Jötnar culture he has never witnessed before.

He obviously knows that these people are people. He doesn't need to be told this. Jötunn mead halls are no different from Asgardian ones, attracting the worst of the worst. But he's never seen Jötunn culture at its best. He's never seen their family squabbles, or what their children are afraid of. And he wants to.

So he gets to see all of this slice of life mundanity. He gets to hear about the sheep boy, and the excuses children use to get out of chores. But he also gets to know their Adult Fear. All the best horror is Adult Fear for a reason, and Loki gets to see this village at its worst, even if it is just from his isolated corner. A family has gone missing in the storm, and the entire village disrupts their own safety and stability to go out and find them. This is not a culture of every man for himself. If it were, Hrapp and his wife and child would not live in Bjalfi's home. Instead, they're bunking up to combine resources. Even now, from just this small window Loki has, it's becoming more and more clear that the village operates as a single unit.

Angrboða is another part of that. The kids are between 10-12 years old. They probably do not need a constant babysitter while their parents are out searching. Having someone pop in to check on them likely would have sufficed. But with Loki injured and unconscious, it was safer to have another adult in the house at all times. At this point, he has become part of the collective. Angrboða was there to make sure that he would be taken care of and informed should he wake up.

And she may have even stayed, had the night not gone so horribly wrong. But she 100% left because it got awkward. Because there's a culture clash here. And a big one. And Loki does not really understand that his attempt at not being the worst guest ever came across as a massive rejection. He grew up in a palace, where there are strict rules about everything, and everyone has their own space. Even the king and queen have their own separate chambers. Now he's in a small house where the entire family shares a single bedroom, and holy cow nope, this is super uncomfortable. He is not going to have sex with anyone with children right there in the next bed. Their parents might, and surely have, but that thought has not even crossed his mind. And ultimately, why should it? This is an entirely foreign culture. He doesn't know their rules, or what's acceptable, or completely forbidden. So he goes to bed frustrated and angry, and accidentally humiliates someone he would 100% smash under almost any other circumstance.

And he sort of realised that the second she said she was going to leave.

The whole scene with them in bed was a surprisingly difficult one to wrote too. Aside from Fandral, Loki has never had a relationship with anyone. And he and Fandral parted ways when they were 16. It was not only a very immature, hormone-driven relationship, but it's one that was vaguely predatory at the same time. Loki's first sexual experience was kind of coerced. He didn't not want to, but he also didn't really want to either. At least up to the point where the scene cut, he was not an active participant at all. I don't think that in and of itself necessarily shaped how he approaches sex, but the relationship as a whole definitely did. It's never explicitly stated, but one of his first dalliances after Fandral was visiting Salem (or somewhere nearby) as a woman to get absolutely used, and ended when he was tried for witchcraft (proably for being a ho). Both times he's with someone else in Midgard Legends, it a hurried, almost rough affair; something extremely temporary and meaningless.

Loki has very rigidly defined ideas for how different types of relationships work, and relationships that involve sex are not gentle, languid things. I'd wager very few of his platonic relationships can even be called this. And now he's being touched in a way that turns him on, and he doesn't understand why. I also don't think he has ever once had sex in his natrual body. I think he has fucked Jötunn women, and been fucked by Jötunn men as either gender, but nobody has ever been allowed to see him this vulnerable and exposed. So now he's just confused and horny, and and ten shades of uncomfortable and the only thing he can do is run away. Only in trying to avoid making what he perceives as a big mistake, he winds up making an even bigger one. Were the kids not right there, that scene would have ended very differently. But ultimately, it's good for him that it didn't. Because it's going to force him to examine the best way to move forward.

Another way of really humanising these people is having Loki spend really good moments with the kids. I am struggling with what to do with Vigdís, if only because putting him alone with a twelve year old girl feels kinda icky, just on a fundamental level. The next chapter will definitely have more with all three of them though. But the kids are raw and open and completely lack filters, and are asking questions their parents are too cautious to ask. Sigtrygg doesn't fucking care if it's rude to ask if Loki's a witch. He's gonna ask it. He's also going to completely throw Loki under the bus the next time Ozur doesn't go chop the damn firewood, because he is sick to death of doing it himself.

And this is Loki, once again sowing chaos and mayhem without even trying. Gudrun even told him that Sigtrygg would do it, but Loki didn't even consider that this was the sort of task she meant. At the end of the day, there aren't many things I think Loki is truly incapable of around the house, even if the scale is a little bit off. But it's not like everything is comically large. He's just the size of a ten-year-old, if a ten-year-old were six and a half feet tall. Everything is just a little too tall to be dignified. So he sits on the floor, like a fucking weirdo, because at least he's in control of the situation that way.

And as someone for whom the entire world is just a little bit too tall, yeah. Half the time, the floor is just the better place to be tbh.

Loki has also been entirely too dour and cagey here, but he's needed to be. He's been learning from them more than anything else, and he's been worried about overstepping or revealing too much. So he's just quiet and polite, and keeping himself out of the way for the most part. And now, they have made the fatal error of putting him in charge of their children. Loki would never harm them, or even allow them to come to harm as much as he could help it. But he is alone with them for less than an hour, and he is already shaving their heads and giving them mohawks because a twelve-year-old told him to. He truly does have a fundamental inability to say no. Whether that's because Thor has worn it out of him, or because curiosity and temptation are strong forces, who knows. Maybe it's a bit of both. But twice in this chapter, he has put himself in a dangerous position by just rolling with something because someone else suggested it. But this is also the first time he's allowed himself to truly relax and just be his dumbass self since arriving on Jötunheimr. And he needs to. It's good for him.

Of course, the problem with Loki is once he gets comfortable with it, he will never stop.

Chapter notes: Clear Weather

lokiofsassgaard — Sun, 14 Feb 2021 07:31:42 GMT

I do not necessarily want to make it a running joke that Loki makes questionable choices that get him thrown from horses, but it's kind of becoming a running joke that he does exactly that.

Loki's entire experience on Jötunheimr so far has had him on the wrong footing, so the opportunity to do something he is familiar and comfortable with is not something he was going to pass up. This is another one of those ways in which he's grown up and matured, and we saw it in Midgard Legends as well. Learning to hunt was the last thing Loki wanted to do as a boy, and now he's got to a point where he's not only skilled at it, he will seek out the activity. And he's picked up skills that have allowed him to improvise in very different and unexpected ways, which I think Volstagg would be proud of.

I've been debating exactly how much magic he should be using while on Jötunheimr, and the answer keeps falling back to very little. He is trying to hide, and magic will call him out. He's already in danger from whatever this family thinks he's fleeing from, and word is no doubt spreading by now that they have him. If this runty little traveller also happened to be a skilled magic user, word would travel even faster. Best case scenario if he's found, he gets back to Asgard and has to abandon his quest. Worst case, a bounty is collected. But getting out to hunt, even for a few hours, is exercise and stimulation he sorely needs.

This whole chapter was another one that was outlined before I even knew where this series was going. I really loved the idea of Loki taking human weapons on a Jötunn hunt, and the Jötuns having no idea what to make of it. The line about the rifle looking Elvish comes from the comics, where light elves tend to be portrayed as these ridiculous Victorian gunslingers. It's a weird aesthetic I'm not even sure that I like, but there it is. It's a convenient cover story rooted in canon.

This hunt was also important because the people he's staying with needed a good way to really start seeing the truth from the lies and misconceptions. So far, Loki has been all talk and no walk. He's literate, but it's not enough. He needs to have skills that run in the face of what they believe. The very thought that he can hunt is ridiculous. Bjalfi doesn't believe he can ride a horse, and seems to think his grasp of how effective a bow actually is is low at best.

And then Loki makes an impossible shot on a caribou, and knows how to gut it, and what organs to keep. When Bjalfi agrees that he should get the pelt and antlers for trade, this is him accepting that maybe this strange visitor has actually been travelling the realm and getting by just fine on his own. Then, Loki knows his own limits, and stays the hell back from the polar bear. He also claims to have killed one before, but Bjalfi has seen his scars. He's torn between believing that Loki is serious, and dismissing him again. And then Loki can not only ride a horse, but ride one effectively bareback, while leading another. When the mammoth becomes a problem, Loki again does not hesitate to help once he finds a way to do so without making the situation more dangerous. He does not just run in screaming. He takes a calculated approach and does something that is both absolutely insane, and provides the extra help they need.

Mammoth hunts are absolutely a thing for these people, but they are not a thing you do with two men. Bringing home a mammoth had not been in the cards, but they weren't given much choice when every attempt to evade it only pissed it off more.

When Loki fell off the horse, I changed Bjalfi's line a few times, because nothing he said really seemed to capture the emotion. I eventually settled on something that called back to the general sentiment of Midgard Legends. I wanted him to not only survive something he probably would not have been expected to survive, but be able to more or less walk away from it. There is something fundamentally wrong about him on every single level, and as he spends more time on Jötunheimr, I want him to realise he fits in even less here than he does on Asgard. Not just because he's small, but because he's just wrong, in every single possible way.

As for what exactly is fundamentally wrong about Loki, he has spent 22 years living on Asgard. In Thor 1, the frost giants are pathetic. A little poke from an Asgardian blade, and they go down. I don't think they're quite that fragile, but there is something about Asgard itself that changes the people who live there. Hogun is human, and yet has all the strength and ferocity of any Asgardian warrior. Loki is tougher than he should be simply because he is a god.

And Angrboða is the first one to call this out directly. Eir expected his horns to start cutting around the time he was 15 or 16. Loki now has a benchmark for what that actually means. He has a rough age by Jötunheimr's calendar, and even finding out what his actual age is, his horns are still five years late. Even on Jötunheimr, he is missing milestones. He was not just born small. He was born wrong. Angrboða also calls out something else. Loki not only has someone who cares greatly for him, he is extremely pampered. He's had a life of adventure and mishap, but he is not experienced with hard work or strife. His injuries are the results of gunslinging and hunting accidents and childhood folly. They are not the restult of whatever she expects them to be.

I'm still somewhat vague on how far I want to take this relationship. I can tell you it's not going to be endgame, and he is very likely to break her heart by the end of this. And part of me wants her to end this story pregnant. Loki has not had a real adult relationship through this entire series, and whatever he had with Fandral doesn't count. I think, in that ridiculous, over the top teenage way, he did love Fandral, but they both lacked the emotional maturity to carry their relationship beyond mad teenage hormones. They both made mistakes at the end of that relationship, some bigger than others, and Loki has avoided attachment ever since.

I think I want Angrboða to terrify him. I want him to be so scared of having these emotions that the only way he copes is to break her heart. Real relationships are new, and scary, and he doesn't belong anyway.

But I wanted her to see him as he is from the very beginning. She has to recognise that what she has already been told is not the truth, even if she does not know what the truth is. She's younger than the others, and that plays a big part of it. Because she's also missing a certain amount of context. There is something the older adults know that has either not been discussed, or not been adequately explained. And without that context giving her any pre-conceived notions, Angrboða is quicker to make her own assumptions. Her observations are more easily reconciled with the truth. She doesn't have this thing at the back of her mind, telling her that everything Loki says is a lie.

She doesn't see whatever it is they see. She sees a man who's short and scrawny, with a terribly interesting secret. He's well-mannered, educated, tough as nails, and a little bit forbidden.

Loki is also doing something else new. Something he did not do during Midgard Legends. This time, he is giving Heimdall a brief chance to see him, to know that he is alive and all is well. He still does not like to be spied on, so he conceals himself otherwise. But he is not leaving everyone completely in the dark.

All in all, it's a longer chapter that mostly reinforces everything in the previous one. At the same time, if Loki had not yet been convinced that he is staying somewhere safe, he is now. When he returned injured, he was cared for. His things were respected in more ways than one -- not only did someone prepare his antlers and hide for him, and leave everything packed neatly, his rifle was respected in a different way. Bjalfi saw that thing and wanted it nowhere near his children. It wasn't taken and removed from the house, but instead put somewhere high, out of reach. It means it's also out of Loki's reach as well, but he knows where it is. He can get it later when he wants it.

Chapter Notes: Dangerous Skills

lokiofsassgaard — Sun, 07 Feb 2021 17:28:24 GMT

Let's talk about Loki's horns real quick.

So, at this point, the Hellboy crossover in Midgard Legends was pretty obviously (I think) not incidental. Broom was a convenient character to include, but Red's the important character here. He does not know it, but this child has made Loki's life a living hell. Surtur and Muspelheimr don't get enough love in the fics, imo. And I think part of that is their existence as faceless enemies in the comics. Every other realm-defining race has had their sympathetic moments, except the fire giants. Rude.

So I wanted to humanise them in the most basic and human way possible: a grieving father looking for someone to blame. Surtur does not even have to be on screen for this to come across. He has put a bounty on Loki's head based on a rumour, because at this point, this is the only way he can get any kind of resolution or closure. A few times, it's been discussed that Odin has gone through this as well, but has grown used to his wayward child disappearing. The difference is Loki comes back. An infant can't be expected to come back, and the Vanir princess is not expected to come back on her own. Even now, Odin has had to come to terms with the fact that he cannot keep Loki on Asgard, and that this time, Loki may never return. He will leave the realm, even if it kills him. And there's nothing Odin can do about it except try to make his trip shorter and allow Loki to leave with his blessing.

But humanising the fire giants wasn't the main goal. I needed Hellboy specifically to justify the entire mcguffin for this story. Loki needed a reason to get stranded on Jötunheimr. There's absolutely nothing stopping him from going home, waiting out Jötunheimr's spring season, and returning in the summer. Except if he does that, he's stuck in the same room he's been looking at for weeks. Staying with a family of Jötuns is at least new and interesting.

So, Loki has horns, which interfere with the easier and safer magic he uses to conceal himself. Completely changing his body to be Asgardian could mess up his development. Which, when he's got this painful transformation happening, the last thing he'd want to do is somehow make that worse. At this point, his aim is to let his horns grow out, and then do exactly what Red independently decides, and just file the fuckers down. Hellboy and his magnificent horns was kind of used to justify this. Fire giants are always drawn with horns, while frost giants tend to not be, and haven't had horns in any main continuity in a long time, if ever. Though sometimes they are drawn to have things that resemble horns growing out of their heads. Though I'm fairly certain that's just done to make them all distinct. Meanwhile, fire giants also tend to be drawn with tails, and look at that. Red's got one of them too.

I like symmetry and balance. Light elves and dark elves are fairly similar, with a few fundamental differences. So having frost giants and fire giants be fairly similar, with a few fundamental differences felt really natural. Everything about how Frost Giant horns look and are described comes from the scene in the first Hellboy film, where Red's horns magically grow back. Big, and curved like a striking snake, with black on the ends. It's such a good look, that yes. Absolutely this is what frost giant horns would look like, only blue. But there are enough differences between them that they're not just red/blue coded versions of the same species. Fire giants have tails, and are born with horns. Frost giants do not have tails, and their horns cut later after puberty.

Red just happens to also have a backstory that fits perfectly into another plot I wanted to do with the girl Loki is betrothed to. In a lot of ways, Red enhances this plot too, by distracting from the girl. It's not a damsel in distress plot this way. It's a "holy shit, royal children are being stolen wtf" plot. Iri's child being a girl is irrelevant. The girl being Iri's child is the important part. There's also a really pleasant balance to it, because there are three children at play. One girl, one boy, and one who is neither (though he has quite figured this out about himself yet). It's the one who is neither, who is already other for unrelated reasons, who is at the centre of the controversy.

On the subject of Loki not really understanding himself yet, this is a big part of the reason his horns coming in has destroyed him so much. At the end of TWHM, Thor asked when his horns were coming in. Loki said he hoped they never did. This has much less to do with him being Jötunn, and more to do with horns being such an obscenely masculine trait. He has never disliked his Jötunn form. There are things about it he dislikes, like his hair and his teeth. But he dislikes his hair just because it's always greasy and looks unclean, and his teeth were just in the way and and kinda gross. His teeth were fixable. His hair as well, but it's way more effort than he cares to put into it. But he can't just get rid of these horns by washing them away. He can file his horns, but they'll grow back. And even then, it's not like he can completely get rid of them.

He doesn't have problems with other frost giants either. He finds nothing about them repulsive or terrifying. It's his own horns, on his own body, that cause him more turmoil than he can handle. Mentally, he justifies these emotions as seeing himself turn into a monster, but there are more ways than one a person can feel this way about themselves.

This is something he will figure out eventually. And I think once he gets to this point where he understands more about himself, and why he is the way he is, being more obviously male might become more easy for him in a weird way. There's a lot he needs to figure out about himself before he can accept it. And I think the biggest shock of all in the comics is that Odin was the first person to openly acknowledge and accept this. It's kind of becoming this occasional little thing where people don't know what pronouns to use, but that's okay because either are acceptable. That's the point I want him to get to. Both are acceptable. Presenting as incredibly male is something that's so rigidly defined he just doesn't know what to do with it. And because he can't change his shape at all, he's not only stuck being obviously Jötunn until his horns stop coming in, but he's stuck being obviously male as well. He's beein experimenting with being female in one form or another since he was about 15. At one point, he went to Midgard as a woman with the sole intent of having sex as a woman. And it wasn't just a one and done experiment. The dresses and gowns he has in his wardrobe don't exist just to dress up and feel pretty. Loki fucks, in either form.

At the end of the day, I don't think Loki has any real issues about being Jötunn. If he did, his Æsir "makeup" wouldn't go out of its way to call itself out. He keeps his nails and hair dark, and his eyes the wrong colour. He wears his Æsir disguise entirely because not doing so puts other people on edge, and when other people are on edge, Loki is in danger. Nobody's forgotten that he's a frost giant, but without it right there out in the open, it's easy to ignore it.

What he absolutely has an issue with is who his natural father is likely to be. That's a big lie of omission, and one he probably should have been told much earlier. But at the same time, Odin's right. There's nothing to have been gained from it, because he cannot prove it. There's a lot of circumstantial evidence for it, but the MCU plays out very differently. In the comics, Odin takes Loki from Laufey's arms, and just straight up steals that brat. There is no reason to place a wanted infant on an altar in a temple, during a war. Which isn't even necessarily to say that Loki wasn't wanted. But there is no way that his mother would have been able to care for him in the destruction of post-war Utgard. He may have been placed there to appease the gods (the gods of the gods), as a sacrifice. Or maybe she was hoping an enemy soldier could give him the swift death she could not bring herself to do. Or maybe she was hoping an enemy soldier would take him as a slave; not the best life, but still a life. But she did not place that child there because she intended to keep it. The child was placed on the altar because it had been given up. That child just happened to use up a life time of good luck by being found by Odin himself.

And in this, Loki became a chaos god. The universe needs balance, and in sparing him, it's ensured that everything he touches is bad luck. Loki tries to make his own luck, but everything he does turns to mayhem. He can't help it. But he's not unlucky in a recognisable way. He's not the kind of unlucky where every waking moment is a coin toss gone wrong. He's the kind of unlucky that breeds worst case scenarios. His luck builds slowly, eventually spilling out onto everyone around him. There was no reason why Theoric should have died. It was a freak accident caused by a headache that sent Loki to bed early. There is no reason why Loki should be blamed for either of the other children disappearing. But he had established a pattern that makes him look culpable. As early as his first visit to Midgard as a child, when Odin took him and Thor, Loki's bad luck was present. Even as a little kid, he was still a lot heavier than he should have been. But not "break a perfectly healthy tree" heavy. And yet, ther he was, dazed in the snow after just that. Everything he did in Midgard Legends happened because his presence made everything worse.

So, this is Loki. Confused about what he is from every angle. He doesn't know why things happen the way they do. He doesn't know why he feels so disgusted in his own body. He doesn't know where he came from, and every answer he's ever got has been a maybe. And now he's not even truly Jötun. Being small and runty was easy to accept. Having an entirely new variable has not been.

And now he's on Jötunheimr looking for answers, and finding even less sense here. Bjalfi knows something. Or at least he thinks he knows something. The reason why Loki isn't asking directly is because he's using a very specific cold reading technique. He's offering these people nothing, in terms of information. And asking questions is information. If he asks them to explain what they think is going on, he is telling them that he is from another realm. There's something very fundamental, and possibly common knowledge that he doesn't know. If he doesn't know that, that's even more suspicious. If he tells them that he's from another realm, there are seven people in this house who may tell someone else that they have a guest from another realm - a runty little frost giant half-breed with freshly cut horns and obscenely good manners, who's also well-educated with the leisure time to train animals, and enough silver to hire a guide. Gee. Who could that possibly be? If that gets out, his trip is cut short because he'll have to flee from bounty hunters.

At the same time, these people are going to start to figure this out for themselves very quickly. I wanted to try to hint at what they think he's doing, and who they think he is, without the thought ever crossing Loki's mind, because it's something that he isn't aware is possible. The fact that he is well-mannered, well-educated, obviously loved and cared after tells a story all of its own. And it contradicts what these people initially believe. And they're going to figure it out before Loki does. Because Loki has already given them so much information. He's talked about brothers, and his father. He's had his teeth filed, and his horns did not cut naturally. He has a namesake. Someone loves this boy very much, and for some reason, that is a very difficult pill to swallow. And it's not like love itself is a foreign concept. Bjalfi has two children who he's very protective over. Bjalfi's brother and his family live in the same house. Bjalfi's daughter cannot wait for her boyfriend's horns to cut so they can get married. She wants to spend her winters stepping in sheep shit for this boy.

That Loki specifically is loved is the foreign concept. Why should that be?

With the type of scheme Loki is pulling, he needs to be a blank slate. But that blank slate is Asgardian, gilded and polished clean. It's not the rough, dirty, banged up slate one would find on Jötunheimr. Because he doesn't know what that looks like. His sole experience with Jötunheimr has been getting drunk it Utgard. And that's hardly a safe character to play right now. So he's just a humble wandering traveller, which unfortunately is the worst thing he could be.

This is something that I want Loki to slowly figure out. Or more accurately, have this be something that slowly starts to gnaw at him until he gets the answer. Which he will by the end of this.

These people know exactly who his mother is. Or, maybe not exactly who. But they can tell him exactly where to go to find her. Loki doesn't know this. He just knows they're suspicious of him, and the dangerous position he's in is preventing him from sorting this out. The very information that should isloate him from whatever danger they suspect he's fleeing from is the same information that will have his head separated from his body. So there's some miscommunication happening, entirely because information is deadly right now. And if questions are information, then asking questions is deadly.

Frigga introduced the concept that his natural mother might be a war bride. But even Loki doesn't jive with that. The timing is off. Loki doesn't know how old he is by Jötunheimr's calendar, but he knows when he was born relative to the war -- about two seasons before it. Which means even if a frost giant did take a Midgardian woman, Loki was born too early to be from any such union. If Eir's prediction is accurate, and Loki was born two seasons before the war, that's about 20 earth years. (The frost giants invaded Midgard in 945. And Loki is 22 in 1945.)

There are other wars Loki's mother could have been taken during. But even then the timing is a bit off. His mother is someone who has been in Utgard for a while. But Loki can't just go snooping around Utgard, asking around for anyone who would have given birth to a half-breed before the war. In part because wow that's dangerous for him right now, and in part because he's not going to be the only one. The fact that Frigga even thinks that his natural mother was a war bride suggests this is a very common practise. The amount of Æsir who have Jötunn wives confirms this. The fact that Loki is supposed to have a Vanir wife for the sole purpose of keeping Iri in line suggests that marriages amongst certain classes happen for heirs, and not for love. Thor lucked out, in that he and Sif actually got along and were onboard with the arrangment. Or they did, until Jötunheimr. And I choose to believe that Odin and Frigga were arranged for the same reason.

So the thought that Loki might be the product of an unwilling bride is so normalised that he doesn't even get hung up on that aspect. Simply not knowing the truth is what's doing him in. And he's done asking. Every time he asks, he gets some bullshit half-truth, and he's done with it. The only way to get the full truth is to find Gram. Whether he'll actually be able to follow through with using it is another story, given it only works when you stab a motherfucker with it. I don't think he'd be able to follow through.

what I wrote last night

lokiofsassgaard — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 01:49:33 GMT

He found Rogers pounding his fists into a punching bag, practising nothing but how to hit harder. Loki walked into the room, motioning for Thori to stay put by the wall before approaching any closer.

"You can hit and use a shield, but can you actually fight?" Loki asked, knowing that any man called Steve Rogers would not be able to resist the challenge.

Sure enough, Rogers stopped and turned to Loki. The look he threw Loki's way was hard and critical, completely without trust.

"What do you have in mind?" he asked.

Loki pulled Lævateinn from its hiding place and tossed it to Rogers, watching him easily catch it out of the air. Rogers looked down at it, studying the weapon for a long moment, before returning his attention to Loki.

"So what's the deal with this?" he asked.

"That one?" asked Loki, pulling Gram for himself. "Nothing at all."

He gave the sword a lazy spin through the air, cutting a wide circle at his side. A moment later, Rogers did the same. He nodded, and then stepped toward the centre of the room, away from the punching bag.

"I guess matching sets aren't required on Asgard," Rogers said.

Loki shrugged, following him to the centre of the room with long strides. "One was earned, one was stolen."

"Which is which?" asked Rogers.

Loki didn't answer. He swung wide, giving Rogers plenty of time to block. He knew Steve Rogers would also be an irritatingly quick study, so he moved just slowly enough, telegraphed his moves just right to teach him what he needed to do. He fought right-handed, giving Rogers one more slight edge in figuring things out.

And Rogers was a quick study. He spent only a few short moments on the defense, blocking and moving away before striking out on his own in the same wide, arcing moves Loki was using. They moved slowly, barely enough for any kind of work out at all as Rogers learned how to use the weight of the blade to his advantage.

"If we're friends where you're from, prove it," Rogers said suddenly.

The question was so blunt, so direct, it nearly distracted Loki from another loose swing. And Loki had expected to need to teach him to fight dirty.

"That's a rather loaded request," he said, tightening up his own attack. He started to move faster as he advanced low. "Anything I say is either very easily researched, or didn't happen." Rogers very nearly missed a block, narrowing avoiding catching Gram's edge with his side. "Your entire life is public record, and I don't exist in it."

Already, Rogers began tightening his own stance, adjusting to Loki's changes with fluid ease. It was almost starting to get fun.

"Then we must not be very good friends," Rogers said.

"You wound me with words, good sir," Loki said, pretending to be positively offended.

On his own, Rogers began to move faster, allowing the silver steel to properly sing with each strike, while Gram seemed to only get heavier and louder as the blades met.

"Hang on. We crossed paths twice before I knew your name," Loki remembered. He quickly dodged a swift jab, blocking Lævateinn's blade with Gram's as he stepped out of the way. "I watched you get your ass kicked at a news reel, and then managed to piss you off at a party." He could see Rogers hesitate, knowing something had rung a bell. This time, Loki had to pull his swing to avoid striking him with the blade. "Closing night of Henry V, the night Roosevelt declared war."

For a brief moment, Rogers seemed to forget what they were doing. He seemed almost lost, though he regained himself just as quickly. Now, he fought in earnest.

"That was in forty one," he said.

Loki suddenly found it awkward to keep up, having committed to his right hand while Rogers picked up entirely too quickly to be comfortable. He was definitely Steve Rogers.

"Yes, and?" asked Loki. "Did Agent Carter also try to murder you for sticking your tongue down someone else's throat?"

Rogers stumbled again, and then swung fast enough that Loki almost failed to block. Catching his own blade to the neck was not exactly what he had planned for the evening.

"We served together?" asked Rogers.

"And it's a shame it didn't happen for you, because you'd know I'm not right handed," Loki said.

He quickly switched hands and swung the blade in a wide arc at his side once more. This was more comfortable. It would also be more difficult for Rogers, while Loki was well used to fighting an opponent with his sword on the wrong side. Though he still held back and moved more slowly, he moved more naturally across the floor. For the first few strikes, Rogers seemed to struggle with the change in direction, but again caught on quickly. The silver steel of Lævateinn's blade sung loudly, echoing off the walls from all directions even as it sliced through the air. With each strike, Gram seemed to almost glow. Rogers kept pace with Loki until a bad side step. Loki took advantage of his awkward footing and tripped him, sending him to his back. With Rogers spread out on the floor, Loki held Gram to his neck, just long enough for him to know that he lost. Then, he stepped back and offered Rogers a hand up.

"Just might make an Asgardian of you yet," Loki said.

Rogers looked down at Lævateinn again, taking a long moment to study it before he handed it back. "So what's the deal with that one?" he asked, pointing it to Gram.

Loki handed it over, allowing him to inspect it as well. "It was forged from dragon's blood," Loki said. "It's distilled truth, shaped as a weapon. The weilder can know anything he wants if he uses it well."

Rogers looked up at him and frowned. Loki could see the temptation building over him. It was another test. But now Rogers was on to him.

"How'd you get it?" he asked, handing it back.

Loki stored both swords away again. "It used to belong to the man who ran off with my wife."

Rogers wore that look he always did when he'd stumbled into a topic he did not know how to navigate. That, it seemed, was also the same. "So how'd you earn the other one?" he asked instead.

Loki almost laughed. "Pissing around in Europe for a few years in the forties, making sure you idiots didn't blow up your planet with the Tesseract."

Rogers did laugh. "I'm almost starting to believe you," he said.

My adventures in putting my fandom self back together

lokiofsassgaard — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 04:46:13 GMT

Goodness, some of this was more difficult than it needed to be.

So, I recently got back on Tumblr, and was incredibly surprised to find that whoever had been squatting my old URL gave up, because lo! It was available! Neat. Except, I'm an idiot, and put it on a sideblog, because idk. That was fine for about two weeks, but like, it's really hard to build up any kind of a social presence when everything you do goes through a completely unrelated name. Can't reply to people as me, follows come from some random business account, etc. I don't want that.

So I got fed up enough with it today that I set up a new account, and very quickly switched my URL over. So now I am me, on a main blog. Neat. Except, Tumblr is dumb and I could not figure out how to work out the queue. Like, a wholeass button was gone. Couldn't find it. After accidentally spamming about 50 posts to my blog, instead of my queue, I finally found it buried in some hidden settings menu.

But, anyway. Hey. I'm back on Tumblr, operating a horny on main thirst blog, as the gods intended.

Then I figured I might as well go whole hog, and put my username back as the default on AO3. Which was surprisingly easy, and took about three seconds. Tumblr could learn something from that.

Early Draft: some random bit in the future

lokiofsassgaard — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:47:30 GMT

"You know I've never been trick or treating?" Natasha said.

Loki looked over at her, and realised he hadn't either. "Neither have I," he said.

"Really?" Natasha asked. "I would have thought that would be right up your alley."

Loki shook his head. "By the time it became a thing, I was already a too old to get away with it."

He watched the sly smile spread across Natasha's face. "We should borrow one of Barton's kids," she said, her tone just playful enough for Loki to think she wasn't serious.

But now she'd put the idea into his head.

"I have a nine year old brother," he said, offering her the same sly smile. "I'm sure Mother wouldn't mind if I liberated him for the evening."

They looked at one another for a long moment, waiting for the other to call their bluff. When it didn't happen, Natasha stood up.

"Go pick up the little bro, and I'll wrangle up some costumes," she said.

Loki did not have to be told twice. He was on his feet and back in Asgard before Natasha even left the room. It wasn't even worth changing for appearances, if his entire goal in the realm was to kidnap his youngest brother and be out before anyone noticed. Or, almost anyone. Before seeking out Viðar, Loki found Frigga in her gardens, tending to her many flowers.

"Loki, what in the Nine Skies are you wearing?" she asked when she spotted him.

He looked down at his hoodie, emblazoned with a red, white, and blue shield, and faded blue jeans. "It's quite fashionable on Midgard right now," he said.

Frigga frowned at him, but stepped close. "I know you are happy there, but I wish you would spend more time at home," she said, bringing her hand up to touch his face.

Loki bit his lip. "About that," he said, trying not to wince at the damning look Frigga was already giving him. "There is a new holiday, for which participation requires the presence of a child."

Frigga's expression turned cold. "Loki, your father will not approve."

"It will only be for a few hours. He won't even notice," Loki said.

When Frigga said nothing, Loki leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. "I'll have him home in a few hours," he said.

He left before she could protest further, and headed off to find Viðar. Unsurprisingly, he was in the nursery, where he spent most of his time. As soon as Loki let himself in, Viðar got to his feet and ran over. Before he could make his feeble attempt at a tackle, Loki swept him up from the floor and hoisted the boy over his shoulder. He ignored the startled cries of the nursemaid, and got Viðar settled onto his back to carry him for the journey.

"Oh. My lord," the nursemaid said when she was close enough to recognise Loki. She looked at his clothes with confusion, but said nothing further.

"I'm only borrowing him for a bit," Loki said.

He ran out of the nursery, carrying Viðar on his back through the corridors. "Would you like to go on an adventure?" he asked.

Loki looked back to see Viðar nodding excitedly. He had never travelled with the boy before, but had been getting good enough at taking others with him that he felt confident the quick trip would not be too terrible on him.

"Hold your breath and close your eyes," Loki said.

Viðar squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. A moment later, Loki stepped from Asgard back to the office. Part of him half expected to get puked on, but Viðar only opened his eyes to curiously look around at the fluorescent lights and sparse furnishings. As he picked up a Rubic's cube from one of the shelves and passed it to Viðar, the door opened and Natasha walked in, carrying several stuffed shopping bags. Her face lit up as she saw him, and she walked over.

"Hi, I'm Natasha. What's your name?" she asked.

Viðar looked at her, and then down at Loki.

"Viðar," Loki said.

"Hi, Viðar," Natasha said. When he still didn't respond, she cocked her head and looked back to Loki. "Shy?"

Loki shook his head, in a quick, short little motion. He didn't need to say anything at all. Natasha read everything she needed to from his expression.

"Oh," she said. Then she smiled again. "That's okay. You ready to have some fun tonight?"

Loki let him down to explore, and took the bags from Natasha. "Did you rob a Spirit store?" he asked, looking at the huge assortment of cheap children's costumes.

"No, but I may have pilfered the evidence room," she said.

Loki dumped all of it onto the sofa to look through it all first. There was a little bit of everything. Ninja Turtles, real ninjas, animals, pirates. Even Captain America.

"Come pick a costume," Loki said.

Viðar walked over and looked at everything critically, taking his time to study each one.

"I can't help but notice these are all for children," Loki said.

Natasha shrugged. "Figured we could let him pick, and then go from there."

Viðar looked up at Loki, and then back down at the costumes. He did this a few times before settling on the Captain America costume. He held it up to Loki, and then nodded. Loki turned it over in his hands, reading the label to make sure it would fit.

"Well, if we're going to do this right," he said, putting the costume aside, "why don't I go get my uniform, and you find something to match?"

"Sounds good to me," Natasha said.

Loki crouched down to Viðar's level. "You stay with Aunt Nat for a few minutes. I'll be right back, and then we'll go on that adventure."

Viðar nodded, and then looked back up at Natasha.

"Five mintues," Loki said, a moment before leaving again.

This time, he went to his hall to dig through his wardrobe. His dress uniform was in a garment bag, stuffed in the back to never be worn again. He dressed quickly, tying his hair up to hide under his hat. The shoes needed a quick buff after decades in the back of the wardrobe, but he brought them to a good shine quickly. He took off his bracelets and rings, stuffing them into his pocket, and replaced them with his glasses.

He hadn't worn the uniform since Italy, and found it a little more snug around the shoulders than he remembered. But it wasn't impossibly small on him, so he returned again to New York. Back in the office, he found Natasha showing Viðar how to play with the Rubic's cube Loki had given him. Natasha looked up at him, her gaze turning critical for a moment.

"I didn't know you were a sergeant," she said. She got up and walked toward the door, giving Loki another of her sly looks. "It's a good look on you."

As she left, Loki tore into the costume package and took it out to look at it. It seemed like it should fit Viðar just fine, and looked every bit as ridiculous as the monstrosity they had made Rogers wear on stage all those years ago.

If only Rogers could see this.

"Let's put your costume on," Loki said.

He helped Viðar change into the ridiculous thing, finding it also came with a flimsy plastic shield that strapped to his arm. As soon as it was in place, Viðar looked down at it for about two seconds, before pretending to smack Loki in the face with it. Loki dramatically leaned back, holding his face and putting on a show of being terribly hurt.

"Oh, I think you almost killed me!" he said.

Viðar swung the shield the other way, just missing Loki's face. Loki turned with it, crying out once more.

"You keep hitting him, and you're going to knock out another tooth," Natasha warned.

Viðar grinned widely at her as Loki stood, taking in the dark pencil skirt suit she'd found. Loki turned to the unused desk in the corner and opened the drawer of many items and dug through it until he found a comb and a few hair pins.

"Like this," he said, walking over to her.

He quickly parted her hair and pinned it back, so it all fell behind her ears. Satisfied, he nodded and stepped back.

"Perfect." Tossing the comb aside, Loki returned his attention back to Viðar. "Now. How about that adventure?"

On the way out of the office, he picked up one of the empty bags, letting Viðar run ahead. The three of them gathered no shortage of looks as they walked through the building, though nobody seemed quite sure whether they should stop them, or ask questions about the sudden appearance of an nine year old dressed up as an old comic book hero.

"So what's the plan, Sergeant?" Natasha asked as Loki wrangled Viðar into the lift.

Loki hadn't put much thought into it. "Head to my building and figure it out from there?" he suggested.

"Sounds like a good one to me." She crouched down to Viðar's level to look at his shield as they rode the elevator down to the ground floor.

As they reached the bottom, Loki took Viðar's hand in a tight hold. "Stay very close," he warned.

Viðar nodded, already bouncing up and down as they stepped into the lobby. Drawing more concerned and confused looks, Loki wondered when Viðar had last been allowed out of the every-present eye of his nursemaids. Loki had memorised half the palace by the time he was Viðar's age, and suspected that the poor boy had only seen what Loki or Frigga had shown him. Loki made sure he had a tight hold on him as they stepped out to 7th avenue, pausing when Viðar stopped in his step to gape around the chaos and mayhem of Midtown Manhattan. Suddenly not trusting him not to get lost, Loki bent to pick him up and carry him on his shoulders. They could walk at a faster pace through the crowded foot traffic, while Viðar stared at everything around them.

"I may have created a monster," Loki admitted as they walked the few blocks to 39th.

Natasha tried to hide her laugh, and utterly failed. "What did it all look like when you got here?" she asked.

Loki considered the question for a moment. "I think I came to Midgard before it was even settled. But it had already changed its name by the time I made it this far west, I'm sure." He too looked up at the flashing billboards and chaotic traffic around them. "It definitely looked nothing like this."

They turned onto 39th, and into the setting sun. Loki adjusted his cap to shade his eyes, while the other two had to use their hands. Away from the chaos of 7th, the area quickly fell to a relative calm as they walked past building sites and other people making their way home. Loki let them into the old brownstone building, only putting Viðar down once the door had locked behind them. Again he rushed off to explore the small foyer. Loki let him, taking the time to check his mailbox while he was there. Finding nothing of value, he locked it back up and began walking toward the first door.

"Get over here," Loki called.

Viðar rushed back over, jumping into place at Loki's side as Natasha knocked on the door.

"Trick or treat!" she said as the door opened.

While Viðar tried to figure out what was going on, Loki crouched down to show him how to hold his bag open. The woman on the other side of the door gasped and grinned down at him.

"Isn't that the cutest thing," she said, dropping a few pieces of candy into the bag.

"Thank you," Loki said, watching Viðar peer into the bag for a moment before smiling up at the woman.

He got the hang of the game quickly as they worked their way through the building. By the time they made it to Verity's door, his bag was already half full with every type of candy available. Verity laughed at the sight of them, and then shook her head at the bag.

"Oh, no. That is not an approved trick or treat bag," she said, stepping into her apartment.

Loki followed her in, leading Viðar and Natasha while Verity disappeared into her bedroom. A moment later, she returned with a blue and white striped pillowcase and handed it to Loki.

"Have you gone to Chelsea yet?" she asked.

Loki shook his head as he helped Viðar move his candy to the pillow case. "Should we?"

"Oh, yeah," Verity said, picking up her bowl of giant candy bars. "That's where all the really good stuff is."

She dropped one of the bars into Viðar's bag, and then handed Loki and Natasha one each as well.

"Chelsea it is," Natasha said. "Thanks for the tip."

"So whose kid did you kidnap for this?" Verity asked.

"My little brother," Loki said, standing again and handing off the shopping bag to be thrown away, or stuffed into the drawer of countless other shopping bags. "My father may actually kill me over this, so if you don't see me tomorrow, that's why."

"Cool. Good luck," Verity said. "Try not to die."

Loki could never tell if she was serious when she said things like that. "I'll do my best."

Chelsea was a bit too far to walk, so they walked back out to 7th avenue to catch a cab. Through the entire brief ride, Viðar stayed glued to the window, watching the city light up around them as the final rays of sun faded. Verity's tip had been a good one, as they found countless other costumed children running door to door to gather their own sweets. They had mostly been alone in the building, but now with so many other children, Viðar was completely distracted. Loki had to guide him from door to door, keeping a constant watch to make sure he didn't run out into the street like a lunatic. Eventually he figured it out again, and kept a mostly-even pace ahead of them.

"So what's going on with him?" Natasha asked quietly.

Loki shook his head and shrugged. "I don't know. He's never made a single noise."

They caught up to him at the top of the next set of stairs as he pounded on the door with his tiny fist. They said the magic words for him as the door opened, standing back while he collected his loot.

"For all Asgard is concerned, he might as well not exist," Loki continued once they were on the move again. "Father keeps him locked away out of sight, where he can't embarass anyone."

"Well, he seems pretty smart," Natasha said. "Is he at least in school, or whatever it is Asgardians do?"

Loki shook his head again. "I don't believe so. If he can write his own name, I'd be surprised." He sighed and turned to face her. "Why do you think I left? Asgard is little more than a tribal kingdom, still squabbling with other realms over who has the pointiest sticks."

Natasha looked up at him in silence as they reached the next door. As soon as Viðar pounded on the door again, they were both back to cheery smiles and excitement, lasting just as long as the door remained open.

"I would have thought a planet with space travel would have these things figured out," Natasha said. She reached out, placing a hand on Loki's arm. "But you turned out all right, all things considered. And he'll probably never forget this."

Loki let himself smile, and then lunged forward, rushing toward Viðar to pick him right up off his feet. He was getting a little too big for it, but Loki still managed to swing him up onto his shoulders just in time to climb the next set of stairs.

They stayed out until porch lights began to go dark, signalling the end of the of the night. Loki had promised to take Viðar home after, but he was so energised from a long evening of play that it seemed almost cruel to inflict him upon the nursemaids.

"The party at HQ's probably still swinging," Natasha suggested. "We can take him back there for a little bit. Find another bag so you can give your girlfriend her pillow case back."

Loki frowned at her. "I have a few girlfriends, but she is not one of them," he said. "And she gets very angry when people assume that she is."

Natasha gave him that familiar wry smile. "What's the difference?" she asked.

"I'm pretty sure she'd castrate me if I even suggested anything," Loki said.

Viðar bounced around on his shoulders as they made their way back to nineh avenue. Hailing a cab was fairly easy, and soon they were back on their way to HQ. Natasha scanned them in with her ID, and they rode the elevator back up to their floor. By then, the party had indeed reached full swing, with some in costumes, and others still in their uniforms or pressed suits. As soon as they stepped into the crowd, they were approached by Coulson, who had at least shed his jacket somewhere.

"Heard you kidnapped someone's kid," he said, looking right up at Viðar.

"He's my brother," Loki said. "And I did not kidnap him. I liberated him."

Coulson nodded slowly. "Tell me next time. I need to know these things."

Natasha looked up at Viðar. "I think big brother's about to get in trouble. Why don't we go find some snacks?" she said.

Finding himself agreeing with that assessment, Loki put Viðar down so Natasha could take him away. For a moment both he and Coulson watched them disappear into the crowd.

"I'm serious," Coulson said suddenly. "I need to know these things. And I don't think I like you bringing a little kid here. Not without knowing what he's capable of."

Loki tried to turn that logic around in his mind, taking a long moment to catch Coulson's meaning. "He's nine," Loki said. "He's barely capable of dressing himself."

Coulson nodded, though Loki could not tell if he accepted this. "Tell me next time," he repeated. "When's he going home?"

"Tonight," Loki said. "I don't wish to inflict him on the nursemaids until he's ready for bed. I'm already going to catch Hel at home over this, so I'd like to minimise damage there as much as possible."

"So you did kidnap him?" Coulson asked.

"Liberated," Loki said.

He offered Coulson a wholly insincere smile and walked past him to find Natasha again. They'd gained the attention of several other agents, all apparently interested in the little boy with shaggy blond hair. They had him sat in a chair, feeding him all manner of cookies and other sweets.

"He's your brother?" Sitwell asked. He looked between Viðar and Loki. "He doesn't look anything like you."

Loki frowned at him. "I'm adopted," he said.

Whatever further remarks Sitwell had to offer died as he stumbled over his own tongue. He turned to Natasha, while pointing at Loki.

"Is he really?" he asked.

Natasha nodded. "Be a weird thing to lie about," she said.

Loki ignored Sitwell further shoving his foot into his mouth and bent down to Viðar's level. His plate was loaded with cookies shaped like cats and bats, marshmallow ghosts, and confections shaped like witch hats. Amongst the absurd amount of sweets were also small sandwich squares and cheeseballs made to look like spiders.

"How was your adventure?" Loki asked.

Viðar nodded as he worked through one of the marshmallow ghosts.

Loki took one of the cookies from the plate. "Shall we do this again?"

Viðar kept nodding, and stuffed the rest of the marshmallow into hs mouth.

"Cute kid," Sitwell said. "He doesn't say much, does he?"

"Nope," Loki said, looking up to watch as Sitwell once again tried to figure out how to navigate the situation.

"I'm gonna go somewhere else," Sitwell decided, already turning to leave.

Standing nearby, Blake watched him go with a chuckle.

"Did you have fun out there, champ?" he asked.

Again, Viðar nodded, and then pointed to the stuffed pillowcase on the floor.

"Wow!" Blake said. He bent to pick up the pillowcase, pretending it was almost too heavy to lift. "You got all this?"

He put it down and feigned breathlessness, while Viðar grinned at him. Chuckling at the whole thing, Loki stood and looked around the open room.

"Is there anything I can give him to drink that won't get me shouted at?" he asked.

Loki was fairly certain the fairy piss beer at the party was even weaker than Asgardian small beer, but somehow he didn't feel like pushing it.

Blake looked around as well, taking a deep breath through his teeth. "I'm sure there must be something."

In the end, they found nothing that hadn't been spiked or messed with in some way, save the water coolers which had all been completely emptied. Rather than leaving Viðar alone much longer to go searching further afield, Loki grabbed a bottle of whatever garbage was left in the cooler, and poured half of it into a plastic cup.

"You're awfully casual about giving a little kid beer," Blake said as they returned to the table where they'd left Viðar.

Loki handed the cup down to him and shrugged, taking a drink from what was left in the bottle. "I've been out-drinking my eldest brother since we were six," he said.

Blake nodded, as if he was not sure what to do with this information. He watched as Viðar picked up the cup and downed half of it.

"All right," Blake said.

Soon Viðar grew restless again, and Loki let him wander and terrorise the other party-goers, while he stood by and kept a close watch on him. At some point, Natasha had slipped away, and returned with an empty duffel bag to transfer all of Viðar's sweets and the clothes he'd came wearing, so Verity could get her pillowcase back. When he noticed Viðar starting to yawn, Loki said his goodbyes and gathered Viðar. By the time he'd returned to their corner to pick up his bag, Viðar was already asleep in Loki's arms. Loki returned to Asgard, heading straight to the nursery where he found Frigga waiting. As she looked up at them, he could see a visible wave of relief crash over her. She stood quickly to take Viðar from Loki, pausing only briefly to look at what they were wearing.

"He's been fed," Loki said, making sure Frigga had a good hold of him before letting go. He hefted the bag for her to see as well, before putting it down on the floor. "And this is his. Not to be shared."

Frigga looked at him and sighed, a confused and exasperated noise. Loki waited while she put Viðar to bed, careful not to wake him. She lingered just a few moments, watching him as he slept before turning back to Loki. As she approached, he gestured to the door, silently asking her to walk with him. Only once the door closed behind them did she speak again.

"And what do you call this now?" she asked, gesturing to him.

"My uniform. From the war," Loki said

"You wore this to battle?" Frigga asked.

"Not this one, no. This one was for ceremony."

As they walked, he took off his cap and unpinned his hair, letting it fall loose around his shoulders. With his hair loose, the cap didn't feel right on his head, so he carried it.

"Tell me why you needed to take your brother with you today, Loki," Frigga said finally.

"It's a tradition, and a fairly new one, for children to dress up in costume and beg for sweets," Loki said, watching his mother's reaction.

She did not seem overly pleased. "You took your brother to another realm to beg for sweets?" she asked.

"I did," Loki said. "I'd have done it myself, but there's an age limit on it. All adults must be accompanied by a child."

They walked through dark corridors, making their way to Loki's hall. The palace was quiet in the late evening, with few lingering about to overhear their conversation.

"And I suppose that's what he's brought with him," Frigga said. "An absurd amount of sweets."

"Several month's supply, I'm sure," Loki said. "I'd like to take him next time. He did rather enjoy it."

Frigga remained unamused. "Your father will not be happy about it happening once."

"Father doesn't have to know," Loki said.

He was surprised when Frigga's disapproval turned to something more sour. He had misstepped, and now she was properly angry.

"You can pull that stunt with your brothers, but not with me," she said.

"Apologies," Loki said quickly. "Shan't do it again."

It seemed to placate her enough that Loki did not immediately fear for the safety of his ears. He rarely managed to drive his mother to such anger, but every time he managed, she always seemed to choose his ears as the preferred method of teaching her lessons.

They walked down the stairs to the level below the throne room, where the palace was almost eerily silent.

"And when will my son return to Asgard for good?" Frigga asked.

Loki shook his head. As far as he was concerned, returning to Asgard was not on the agenda.

"I don't know," he said. He stopped outside his door, wondering when the guards had been dismissed from their post of guarding an empty hall. "In truth, perhaps never. I have been stripped of my duties, and only retain my titles because nobody has bothered to formalise anything. What use is my being here? On Midgard, I am out of the way, causing problems for no one."

"Except the nursemaids," Frigga said.

Loki meant to make a sharp remark about nursemaids needing a bit of trouble, but it stalled on his tongue. "About that," he said instead. "What studies has Viðar been engaged in? I know I am not here often, but when I am, I seem to always find him in precisely the same place. Has he no friends he plays with?"

Frigga looked up at Loki, unable to hide the deep sadness in her eyes. "What would he study, and how would he make friends?"

He had expected an answer like that, but it still hit like venom. "How indeed?" he asked. "He's smarter than you take him for. If you do to him what was done to me, you will lose him too."

Frigga reached out to take Loki's hand. "Have I lost you, Loki?" she asked.

Loki regretted his words. He looked down at his mother's hand in his, and then back to her. "I haven't decided yet."

Frigga pulled Loki into a tight hug, holding him as though she were afraid of what might happen if she let go. Loki let her, and hugged her back until she was ready to break away. When she did, it was with tears in her eyes. Loki regretted that as well.

"Are you loved on Midgard?" Frigga asked.

"I am," Loki said with a brief nod. "And respected, even by those I occasionally annoy. Which is why I will not remain in a realm where I am despised by all but a few."

Loki could see her fighting back the urge to cry in earnest. "What do you do there? Who is Loki of Midgard?"

He tried not to laugh at her phrasing. "When I am acting as one of them, I am a stage performer. I live very comfortably, and enjoy a small amount of fame. When I am myself, I break a few rules and help steer some of their important people away from threats and poor choices. They are not a primitive people. In fact, I believe they are only a few of their years from making contact without my help."

"The humans?" Frigga asked. Loki could hear the doubt in her voice, even as she held back her tears.

Loki nodded. "Yes. And when that happens, we can only pray they do not contact the wrong person. There is a woman who studies the Bifröst as we speak."

Frigga shook her head, losing her battle. "If only that will and determination were focused here, Asgard would be a force to be reckoned with."

"Well," Loki said. "If only I had been allowed to make that choice for myself."

He had misstepped again. Frigga nodded sadly as tears began to run from her eyes. The hate Loki felt for himself was hot and sour in his stomach, and all he wanted to do was leave. He leaned forward to kiss his mother on the cheek, and then bowed before retreating into his hall. He know Frigga would not follow him there, affording himself the opportunity to silently rage before returning home.

What I wrote last night

lokiofsassgaard — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 02:13:41 GMT

Loki looked to the other two, and when they offered no explanation, he returned his attention to the equipment scattered on tables.

"Impressive operation you have here," he said. "What exactly are you studying?"

"Space stuff," Darcy said.

"Gravitational anomalies," Erik said over her.

They both looked at eachother, and Darcy shrugged.

"Jane thinks the phenomenon we saw tonight might be some sort of bridge or wormhole," Erik said, picking his words with care to make sure Loki under stood.

This was bad. This was very bad. The humans even being aware of this technology posed a tremendous threat to his continued residence in their realm. He already knew both SHIELD and SWORD were working on expanding their knowledge on the subject, but if unaffiliated scientists were figuring it out, the information would spread like wildfire.

"A bridge to where?" Loki asked.

Erik shrugged. "Who knows," he said. "It's just a hypothesis. Before tonight, we didn't have any real data on it."

Loki wasn't sold. He needed to stay, and figure out a way to keep this knowledge out of the newspapers.

He shook his head. "It's all way over my head," he said.

What I wrote last night

lokiofsassgaard — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 01:20:47 GMT

"You're fired," he said to Sigtrygg after a long moment.

"What's that mean?" Sigtrygg asked as he picked the pot up from the fire.

"Means get lost."

Sigtrygg laughed and took the pot and pliers away. After a moment, Loki climbed up onto the bench and lay stretched out. A moment later, Fenrir trotted over and rested his head on Loki's chest. Loki scratched him behind his ears, digging his fingers into the dense fur.

"Do you want out?" Loki asked him.

He hadn't been allowed to hunt since they arrived in the realm. He needed to be allowed to run freely and kill his own food. He could not live on table scraps and off-cuttings forever.

But instead of moving toward the door, Fenrir settled down. He helpt his head on Loki's chest, a heavy weight that almost made it difficult to breathe.

As the house settled down, Loki dozed. The pain subsided to a dull but constant ache that was easily forgotten as long as he didn't do anything to upset the area. While Loki rested, the children returned to their game, taking turns playing one another into the evening. He was asleep in front of the fire when the door opened, and Bjalfi and Gudrun returned.

"What the hel has happened here?" Gudrun asked as she surveyed the mild carnage left from earlier in the day.

"He pulled out his tooth and then went to sleep," Vigdís said.

"What have you done with your hair?" Gudrun asked.

Loki opened his eyes to see Bjalfi standing over him, wearing an expression that suggested he was less than amused.

"Let's see what you've done to yourself this time," he said, while behind him Gudrun lamented the board Loki had drawn on the table.

Loki opened his mouth to show him. Rather than say anything, Bjalfi rolled his eyes and shook his head as he walked away. Loki nudged Fenrir off him and forced himself to sit up. For a moment, he watched Bjalfi inspect the coins he had given the children to play with, and pretended he did not see the suspicious glance thrown his way.

Chapter Notes: Keys

lokiofsassgaard — Sun, 31 Jan 2021 14:14:29 GMT

Well, I am 0 for 2 on this fuckin fic. I wrote a scene so viscerally gross, I squicked myself. Good job. Well done, me. Excellent work.

Bit of a shorter chapter here, but again, there's quite a lot going on. The first part of it was another idea that came very early on. I wanted there to be some sort of ritual with horn cutting, which Odin either doesn't know about, or doesn't care to follow. I imagine it's probably the second one. He sees no point in following a Jötunn ritual if it means his child must suffer for it. This wound up being fairly difficult to portray from the POV of a character who is completely ignorant to not only his own native culture, but to what is going on with his own body. So it's something I may wind up coming back to later, in a situation where more context can be given.

I thought about having Loki panic a bit more at Odin's line, but realised he was probably so delirious from everything else that he barely had time to contemplate the weight of what was said. He is the medical patient who is not of sound enough mind to sign a DNR. He doesn't even know what he's saying when he speaks.

But this whole chapter with Odin is just him trying to do right by Loki. This child is already so troubled, and pushed so close to the edge that he needs every spare ounce of compassion that can be given to him. And if that means that Odin has to take a blade to his own son's flesh, then that is what he will do.

This whole scene was really difficult, because of the close POV. Loki doesn't know what's going on around him. He doesn't have the mental capacity to reason and rationalise the actions of others, or to reflect on anything other than his own misery. He barely has room for thought at all.

So instead of having Loki panic, I realised I could twist the narrative and hold up a mirror. By giving no insight or reason, the reader is forced to fill in more gaps. Suddenly the goal for this scene shifted. If the reader does not come out of this scene uncomfortable and panicked, I haven't done it right.

I think there is a moment when Loki thinks he is truly about to die, and it's about half a second before the first cut. And he has spent this entire ordeal trying to man up about it. Even when that blade slices him open, it takes being slapped to get him to scream. Screaming helps, and he needs to release that. If he's going to suffer, he might as well do it efficiently.

Eir was going to have a line later about Odin cutting too early, but there are enough rules in place that this same information can come out differently later. But Odin absolutely cut him too early. But I took away this line because Loki needs to be different. It is no secret that he is not the only Jötunn in Asgard. Ever since the beginning of TWHM, it's been hinted that a bunch of Æsir men have Jötunn wives. Freyr and Freyja's stepmother is Jötunn. Odin has Jötunn blood. After the war with Jötunheimr, soldiers would have brought women home for wives. This is something that gels really well with how the MCU did the frost giants. They aren't these towering monsters, the size of sky scrapers. They're just pretty tall. When we see Laufey and Odin standing next to one another, Laufey is as tall as Odin is while atop Sleipnir. That's a good balance, I think. I feel like every time Laufey shows up in the comics, he's got bigger than last time, to the point that he swallowed Loki whole in his latest appearance. It's funny, but on a worldbuilding level, it just doesn't work. Are we to believe that occasionally, Jötunn women give birth like kangaroos, and these tiny little beans come out? WTF? Get your shit together Marvel.

Uh-uh. I'm not down with that. Frost giants are tall, but not hilariously enormous.

So little half-breed Jötunn children are not unheard of on Asgard. But Jötunn boys with horns are. Because it's Æsir men who take Jötunn brides. There are not likely to be many Æsir women taking Jötunn husbands. And to quote Game of Thrones, the seed is strong. For the sake of comic book world building, it doesn't seem too unreasonable to assume that certain traits would come from the father. Loki looks Jötunn because his father was Jötunn. Asgardian boys with Jötunn mothers look more Asgardian.

But this is how the adults in this situation are so confident Loki's natural mother is not Jötunn. It's not a case of "sometimes they're just small." He's small because his mother was small. He doesn't hit expected milestones for the same reason. His natural parents were from two different races, from two different planets. While they may be able to produce viable offspring, there are fundamental differences that come from mixing blood like this. Some races will have different life cycles and spans. And they may not always be compatible. I choose to believe that there is a common ancestor for all of the Nine Realms. That ancestor spread out, and the isolation changed them. But it didn't change them so much that they cannot have children with the other races.

The result of this mixing is Loki. The seeds of this were planted way long ago, in TWHM. So was the answer. But it was never a mystery Loki cared to have answered until now. He had learned to pass as Asgardian, and even became good at it to the point that people started to forget he isn't. To many of their mutual friends, Loki is just Thor's strange twin brother. One got all the brain, and one got all the brawn. Odin's lie was so good that some people are starting to forget the truth.

Then Loki learned a new trick on Midgard. It's one he's likely been able to do since his romp in Salem, but simply never thought to try. It's a trick he perfected on Fandral, and then adopted to turn himself into animals. Turning himself human was the first time he had ever tried such a subtle transformation, and it worked flawlessly. Now he's figured out how to make himself truly Asgardian, and in doing so change all these subtle things he hates about himself. Summer is no longer slow torture, even if he had stayed in his previous chambers. And at the same time, he can keep those things that do make him different. He can keep his dark hair and nails, and his green eyes by layering different magic. Once he built that template for himself, it's just a matter of using it.

Except now he can't. Because Eir has no idea what completely rearranging his body on a molecular level will do to him. And her words were scary enough that Loki doesn't want to know either. So as long as his horns are continuing to mature, he is stuck in these ugly forms he hates. He can't pass as Æsir, and I don't think he's really wanted to be Jötunn for a long time. He doesn't hate it, but it's more inconvenient than anything. He wants a vessel he can live in without having to fuss with it. The seiðr he uses to change his skin gets itchy and uncomfortable, and he can lose hold of it if he hits exhaustion levels. It slips and is dangerous. Once he shifts his entire body, he's done. He doesn't have to worry about it, because everything is set in stone. No more fussing around with it.

As for being Jötunn, it's just simply not beneficial for him. He doesn't fit in anywhere. He's too small for Jötunheimr, and too Jötunn for Asgard or Midgard. Having to use seiðr to change his skin only changes his skin. To change more than that, he has to keep layering spells. It doesn't change him or how his body behaves. It doesn't change what's beneath the skin. So either way, he's got these horns as a constant reminder that he will never belong, and never be what he sees himself as being. It's a cruel reminder to come at a time when Loki is starting to heal old friendships and build new ones, and finally getting comfortable in his own skin. Now he's got this new thing that troubles him on a visceral level so deep, he doesn't understand it.

It also comes with ridiculous timing. He has had symptoms since the end of Midgard Legends, but didn't know they were symptoms. But it has managed to completely deflect blame, and sow even more chaos. This is a thing I like to do with this series. There are a lot of threads from TWHM that went completely forgotten in Midgard Legends, because Loki completely forgot about them. Now those chickens have come home to roost, and it's hell. But he doesn't learn. With bounties on his head, he's fucked off to Jötunheimr to find a sword in some mouldy old box somewhere. And he's left a huge problem at home. He not only left a problem at home, he left it in such a way that Odin is the only person in Asgard who knows that Loki has left. People think he was poisoned, and nobody knows who to point fingers at, and nobody's claiming responsibility. And he just left that! He has his own drama to resolve, and damn anyone who gets in his way.

Basically, Loki is the god of ignoring your problems until they blow up in your face.

Another thing I really like doing with this series is subverting expectations about where the MCU itself is being woven into this story. The first time was at the end of TWHM, with a disastrous trip to Jötunheimr, and a big damn fight at the end. At the time that was originally posted, a lot of people expected that to be the point where it just jumped right into Thor's timeline and take over. But this isn't Loki Annoys Thor (okay, it kind of is). It's Loki Annoys the Marvel Universe. And that starts with Cap. So now he's slightly changed Steve's trajectory, and shuffled a few cards for down the line. Up next is still not Thor. Having this fight with Odin about who he is, and where he comes from was set up to mirror the same fight in the movie, but under a wildly different context. Loki is still vulnerable and overflowing with emotions he doesn't know how to process. He got the same big damn truth bomb dropped on him. The idea of Thor and Loki being twins partially comes from that argument from the movie. Not only does it just not make sense on a secret-keeping level for Thor to be the older brother, several times it's implied that Loki was brought to believe either one of them could be king. Odin telling babby Loki that he was born to be a king at the beginning makes no sense otherwise. This is a society where the royalty classes would be groomed for very specific roles early on. Yes, it's possible Loki could become king, but he would not be raised with this expectation. Giving him this expectation literally only serves to hint at who his natural father is. It's very poor writing, imo. Then later when Loki is shouting Odin down in the vault, he still seems to be holding onto the idea that there was a thought-out reason Thor was chosen, and not him. If Thor were older - propperly older - this would not even be an issue. Because in that case, of course Thor would be king. That's kinda how it tends to work. If they were the same age, down to a few minutes, that's trickier. I don't even know if there is any precedent for this sort of thing, but having twins and raising them both to expect the same outcome, only to abruptly change that down the line would of course sow jealousy. You told this boy he was destined to be a king, and then just shunted him aside. Fuckin rude.

It's that Phase 1 weirdness that all of the movies seem to suffer from. Really hasty worldbuilding to serve the plot, rather than a plot serving the worldbuilding.

Instead, Loki knows he was never going to be king. He knew this from a very young age. Loki was raised as the younger brother, and groomed early to take on a much different role. He was in on the scheme from the time he was old enough to know how to keep secrets. Then when he was about 16, he all but abdicated when the risk changed, and he learned he was the older sibling. As immature and irresponsible as he was even then, he was still sharp enough to spot the danger. If that got out, and anyone thought he might use it against Thor to take the throne, there would be so much bloodshed. In the movie, Loki says he never wanted the throne. He just wanted to be Thor's equal.

And I choose to believe that. So he actualised that, and made sure that he was permanently last in line. There is still the tiniest sliver of a chance that he could ascend to the throne, but he's put himself so far out of the way that it would take a pretty big calamity to make that happen. At the same time, it changes nothing. He is still more or less Thor's equal. His role is just as important, and he gets a certain amount of special treatment for him. This isn't a Loki who grew up in someone else's shade. There is a Loki who wishes he had.

So when he has his fight with Odin, the narrative is different. Odin still sits on the throne, and Thor is poised to take it soon. Potentially being the son of Asgard's biggest rival is a terrible blow, but this time it's purely emotional. He knows the whys and wherefores of why he was taken, and he doesn't doubt that. Not for a second does he doubt that. He just wants to know who he is and where he actually came from. Loki knows he wasn't taken as some bizarre political prisoner. He wasn't taken to one day overthrow Laufey. He was taken and trained to perform one very specific task on Asgard. And he was kept because he was loved. He was kept because Odin wanted nothing short of the very best for him, and nobody else would do.

And the task he was taken for is one he's clearly mastered, if he's doing it from bed for the extremely petty task of finding out who's gossipping about him.

It's the same reason he gets away with a lot of his bullshit, and doesn't get punished as harshly as he should most of the time. Dude just moves in to some diplomat's recently vacated hall, like this is mine now, and gets to keep it. He cannot be allowed to be bitter and resentful of Thor if he is expected to be Thor's advisor and secret-keeper. If anything, Loki needs a little bit of special treatment to foster the right attitudes. He needs to be a little entitled and have the confidence to know he can get his way if he throws his weight around. Unfortunately, it was a plan that was sabotaged by his secret getting out. All the special treatment in the world couldn't undo years of abuse at the hands of not only his peers, but those who were supposed to be teaching him and giving him preferential treatment. Týr thought he was doing Asgard a favour by keeping Loki isolated and untrained. Týr believed that training a frost giant to fight would only train him for staging a coup. But all he did was teach Loki that nobody has his back, and that if he's going to survive, he'll need to fight dirty. Loki may not have so wholly thrown himself into mastering forbidden magic had he not felt compelled to find a way to defend himself. Týr might not have trained him to be a fighter, but he did inadvertantly push Loki to becoming a truly terrifying magic user much younger than anyone had expected.

Which brings Loki right back to where he is now. Emotional, vulnerable, and seemingly without anyone fighting in his corner. At the same time, there's no jealousy or resentment to work through, because that dout isn't there. Odin's omitted truth turned out to be a very big one that he didn't expect, but it's not the world-ending devastation that it could be. This time around, Odin has also seen firsthand what rumours and hearsay can do. He cannot prove Laufey is Loki's natural father. He can suspect the hell out of it, but no good comes from saying it out loud. He has very good reason to suspect it, and may have even had it confirmed in other ways. But at the end of the day, it just doesn't matter. Laufey's blood may run through Loki's veins, but he gave up any claim to the boy the moment he was left alone in that temple.

And Loki doesn't realise it now, because he hasn't had time to process it. But if Odin is right, that's half of the puzzle. If Laufey is indeed Loki's natural father, that significantly narrows the search field for his mother.

What I wrote last night

lokiofsassgaard — Sun, 31 Jan 2021 03:28:28 GMT

Loki played without a strategy of his own, moving almost randomly. Though he still played with little mercy, pointing out errors and bad moves as he took each piece from the field. Even as Sigtrygg swore at him, he laughed, and Loki sacrificed enough of his own pieces to keep him engaged.

"You bastard!" Sigtrygg shouted when Loki took his last piece.

"Move over," Ozur said, nudging him with his elbow. "I can beat him."

Loki said nothing, and reset the board. He played just as chaotically as he had before, allowing pieces to be taken and ignoring obvious moves for the sake of entertainment.

"Move your back row, you coward!" Ozur shouted, leaning over the table in a mirror of Loki.

They both held their weight over the board with hands planted on either side of it, invading one another's space with each move.

"Are you sure you want me to?" Loki asked, holding one hand over a piece.

"Move it!" said Ozur.

Loki did, jumping over four of his pieces. As Ozur shouted at him, Sigtrygg and Vigdís broke into peals of laughter.

"Is this what you think beating him is?" Vigdís asked.

"Shut up!" Ozur shouted.

Loki let him take a few more pieces before ending the game. While Ozur made noises about cheating and rigged games, Loki turned to Vigdís beside him and held out his hand toward the other side of the table, gesturing for her to take the next turn. Slowly, she stood and moved to the other side, looking down at the board.

"May I be silver?" she asked.

"Absolutely," Loki said, switching up the pieces so he had the pennies.

She had been quietly watching the other two during their turns, and was slower to make her moves. Loki changed nothing, moving the first piece his eyes fell on, and playing with no goal at all other than entertainment.

What I wrote last night

lokiofsassgaard — Sat, 30 Jan 2021 02:18:00 GMT

"I want to shear the sides, like my dad has," Sigtrygg said. He ran his fingers through his own hair. It was shaggy, but not long, stopping just below his ears. "Have just the stripe, like a tail."

Loki paused to consider it. "I'm not very good at it," he said.

Sigtrygg shrugged. "I don't mind. If you want to, that is."

Frigga had long learned to avoid allowing Loki any amount of charge over his own younger brothers, and it had been a lesson learned from mischief gone wrong. As it was, the opportunity to try something new was indeed tempting.

"If you don't mind possibly going completely bald," he said. "Fetch me a comb while I finish up."

Sigtrygg got up and quietly rushed back to the bed room, leaving Loki to finish without interruption. Once he got everything he could safely reach, he washed his face with water again and checked himself in the mirror. It was not his best work, but given the circumstances, it could have been a lot worse. At least he had not cut himself. That was always a minor victory.

When the boy returned, Loki stood and tried to find a good way to arrange them so he could see what he was doing.

"On the floor," he said, pointing.

Sigtrygg handed him the comb and sat as instructed. Sitting, he was a little too low to reach comfortably, but there was no better way around it that Loki could see.

While his own hair annoyed and occasionally disgusted him, Sigtrygg was properly Jötunn. His hair was the same as Loki's, but it belonged on him, just as much as anything else did. It wasn't revolting to touch the way his own hair often was. Loki easily used the comb to separate an even where the boy wanted the sides shaved, though he had no clear idea of what he was doing. Once it felt about right, he opened his shaving kit again and pulled out the small pair of scissors from it. The scissors were small, meant for more personal grooming, but he didn't dare go at it directly with the razor.

"Last chance to change your mind," Loki warned, getting the scissors ready.

"Do it," said Sigtrygg.