I grew up with two older brothers and one of them has almost always been deeply into comics. I say almost because he had stopped keeping up with as much for the last ten years or so, so during Free Comic Book Day, our oldest nephew and I were filling him in on Miles Morales, Kate Bishop, etc. Anyway, he made me watch the animated shows, he had a bootleg of the original Punisher movie, tons of comics AND he gave me comics and SUBSCRIPTIONS. I don't know when Marvel stopped doing this, but you used to be able to have a mail subscription like you would for a magazine. You just needed to either pay Marvel if you were in the United States or whichever distributor was in charge for that country and it'd be sent to your mailbox. It was like the gift that kept coming all year. He gave me subscriptions for Muppet Babies and Thundercats because those were my favorites. However, when they stopped being published, I didn't get more subscriptions. I began getting magazine subscriptions instead.
I found out later that this was due to the subscriptions coming in brown paper wrappers, similar to pornography, and my mom was embarrassed that it looked like her five year old daughter was receiving pornographic magazines. I was also a little turned off because I liked to read and look at them because they were fun, but my brother had turned into...a collector. He was worried about how I was handing his magazines so I could only read them with permission. Instead, I just stopped reading his which led to a very spotty comics knowledge between 1991-1999...honestly, I'm not sure I missed much. A lot of stuff in the '90s just seems very messed up.
Anyway, the Marvel looks have always been ingrained in me so Thor not being blond, Loki not having black hair or Sif being a blond always seemed WEIRD and WRONG, lol.
It's kind of hard to decide for Sif. On one hand, she's important enough that her hair is created at the same time as all these other important objects but then at its heart, it's not an important tool or weapon, it's hair. It feels like it's confirming a woman's importance based on her beauty.
For Marvel, again her hair is created by Dwarves and makes her even more beautiful but I like that it's not a plotpoint. It's not the important thing about her. My headcanon is that cutting her hair freed her from being expected to be pretty above all to being able to decide her own fate, like being a warrior. I know I'm not alone in this because there are even some fanfiction stories where she ASKS Loki to cut her hair.
I like how one of the deleted scenes in Thor took the hair myth and twisted it. In Lokasenna, Loki refers to his sleeping with Sif and some have theorized that this is when he was close enough to cut her hair. In the deleted scene, Sif is playing with and forced to turn over a very distinctive dagger. In other materials for the film, it's actually identified as Loki's dagger. Many think she stole if after sleeping with him.
I have wrestled with how many myths portray them so differently and whether I should address that in my story and if so, how? So, I came up with a headcanon for it. In the 11th century, Thor, Loki and their cohorts caused too much damage in the mortal world, including fathering Harald Hadrada, so Odin banned them for a thousand years. As such, the Norse began to forget exactly what they looked like. The only person still in contact with Midgard was Hela. Hela is amazingly, stunningly beautiful with red hair and green eyes. They start basing what Thor and Loki must look like based on her, but time passes, she stops visiting as much and the old prejudices come in. Death is associated with the basest, most ugly form of humanity. It doesn't make sense that she would be so beautiful especially with Loki's other children to consider so they make her into a monster even though it's not reality.
Part One
I grew up with two older brothers and one of them has almost always been deeply into comics. I say almost because he had stopped keeping up with as much for the last ten years or so, so during Free Comic Book Day, our oldest nephew and I were filling him in on Miles Morales, Kate Bishop, etc.
Anyway, he made me watch the animated shows, he had a bootleg of the original Punisher movie, tons of comics AND he gave me comics and SUBSCRIPTIONS.
I don't know when Marvel stopped doing this, but you used to be able to have a mail subscription like you would for a magazine. You just needed to either pay Marvel if you were in the United States or whichever distributor was in charge for that country and it'd be sent to your mailbox. It was like the gift that kept coming all year. He gave me subscriptions for Muppet Babies and Thundercats because those were my favorites. However, when they stopped being published, I didn't get more subscriptions. I began getting magazine subscriptions instead.
I found out later that this was due to the subscriptions coming in brown paper wrappers, similar to pornography, and my mom was embarrassed that it looked like her five year old daughter was receiving pornographic magazines.
I was also a little turned off because I liked to read and look at them because they were fun, but my brother had turned into...a collector. He was worried about how I was handing his magazines so I could only read them with permission. Instead, I just stopped reading his which led to a very spotty comics knowledge between 1991-1999...honestly, I'm not sure I missed much. A lot of stuff in the '90s just seems very messed up.
Anyway, the Marvel looks have always been ingrained in me so Thor not being blond, Loki not having black hair or Sif being a blond always seemed WEIRD and WRONG, lol.
It's kind of hard to decide for Sif. On one hand, she's important enough that her hair is created at the same time as all these other important objects but then at its heart, it's not an important tool or weapon, it's hair. It feels like it's confirming a woman's importance based on her beauty.
For Marvel, again her hair is created by Dwarves and makes her even more beautiful but I like that it's not a plotpoint. It's not the important thing about her. My headcanon is that cutting her hair freed her from being expected to be pretty above all to being able to decide her own fate, like being a warrior. I know I'm not alone in this because there are even some fanfiction stories where she ASKS Loki to cut her hair.
I like how one of the deleted scenes in Thor took the hair myth and twisted it. In Lokasenna, Loki refers to his sleeping with Sif and some have theorized that this is when he was close enough to cut her hair. In the deleted scene, Sif is playing with and forced to turn over a very distinctive dagger. In other materials for the film, it's actually identified as Loki's dagger. Many think she stole if after sleeping with him.
I have wrestled with how many myths portray them so differently and whether I should address that in my story and if so, how?
So, I came up with a headcanon for it. In the 11th century, Thor, Loki and their cohorts caused too much damage in the mortal world, including fathering Harald Hadrada, so Odin banned them for a thousand years.
As such, the Norse began to forget exactly what they looked like. The only person still in contact with Midgard was Hela. Hela is amazingly, stunningly beautiful with red hair and green eyes. They start basing what Thor and Loki must look like based on her, but time passes, she stops visiting as much and the old prejudices come in. Death is associated with the basest, most ugly form of humanity. It doesn't make sense that she would be so beautiful especially with Loki's other children to consider so they make her into a monster even though it's not reality.