Reading meme

[dhampyresa]

What did you finish reading

Nothing.


What are you reading now

The Gospel of Loki, by Joanne Harris: I'm only about 5 chapters in (Svadilfari just cam on the scene, for those familiar), but it's great so far. I love the Loki voice between the humour ("I sat up and tried a winning smile. No one around me seemed to be won.") and the contrast between young!Loki the story is happening to and old!Loki telling it to us and the way old!Loki's venom occasionally peeks out from under young!Loki's:

Who needs friends when you can have the certitudes of hostiity? You know where you stand with an enemy. You know he won't betray you. it's the ones who claim to be your friends that you need to be aware of. Still, that was a lesson I was yet to learn.

I like Loki's "never trust X" rules, although they are sometimes heartbreaking: "So, until then, remember this: Never trust a friend." Oh, Loki. I like the insights into Norse mythology ("Still, you'll notice that history doesn't reveal what happened to Odin's other brothers, the legendary Vili and Ve.") and the clever way it gets played with ("My father was a lightning strike and my mother was a pile of dry twigs (no that's not a metaphor) which, to be fair to Yours Truly, made for pretty poor parenting."). I loved the beginning of the "Odin and Loki become bloodbrothers" scene

'It seems to me that someone like you could be a big hit in my camp.'
'I bet they could. What's in it for me?'
'Well, freedom, to begin with. Freedom and opportunity.'
'Freedom? Do me a favour. Do you think I'm not free?'
He shook his head. 'You think you are?'

but I hated the way it ended, because OMG NO WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK? If there's one moment in all of Norse mythology where Odin and Loki are truly equals, it's that one. I mean, I know the myths don't give us the story, but I can't think of that moment as anything else. If Odin forces Loki into being his brother, like here, then their relationship looks completely different and makes them both look like idiots, frankly: Odin for placing even the smallest measure of trust in someone he has no reason to trust and Loki for just going with Odin on it. Take the rune and run, Loki, you'll save yourself a world of trouble.

Other than that, I still have my familiar problems with Harris' Runemarks series that this is a prequel too, but maybe that'll change by the end of this book.


What are you reading next

I don't know yet.

Comments

Re: Part Two

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

That subscription thing is pretty cool, I wonder why they stopped?

I have this weird, irrational annoyance at collectors. BOOKS ARE MEANT TO BE READ, OKAY?

Well, iirc, Thor's hair colour is never mentionned, only his beard colour and since I have a Norwegian friend with blond hair, a red beard and brown eyebrows (all natural and the colours are similar be distinctly not the same), it's entirely possible for him to be blond in the myths. I completely understand your feelings of WEIRDness and WRONGness, though. that's how I feel about any adaptation of the myths that doesn't have redhaired Loki.

All the adaptations I've seen that dealt with the hair cutting myth have had it happen after Loki sleeps with her. (I really really like the interpretation that she asks Loki to do it.)

I had no idea about that piece of trivia from the deleted scenes, it's awesome. Instant headcanon.

That's a pretty cool way to merge film canon to myth canon, although 11th century seems super late to have the Aesir visit Earth: not only is that when the Norse religion starts losing ground to Christianity, but it's often thought that Fimbulvetr refers to the Little Ice Age circa 600CE. I certainly place the Aesir/Frost Giant war on Midagrd shown in the first movie at that point in time.

It was super cool. Yay, conventions! (Although, from what I undersatnd, French conventions are slightly different from US conventions.)

Aww, man, that is super cool! I shoudl definitely start paying more attention to costuming.

Over here, although the art is kind of terrible, hahaha.

Lol, yeah, it's going to take a while, unless you assume that conscience!kid!Loki has a physical existence inside Noh-Varr's ship (because of the imagination engines). And then he could troll the Young Avengers, who have no idea he's not their Loki!

It's pretty annoying, because the US-comics-in-english store only sells US comics in English and fuck it, maybe I just wanted to pick up Les Quatre de Baker Street at the same time as Black Canary/Zatanna: Bloodspell, you know? So I mostly buy my comics at the local comc store which sells French comics and US-comics-in-French, but I don't buy US-comics-in-French, for reasons. (Reasons: a) Panini publishes Marvel and used to publish DC and the translation work is atrocious (why is Sue Storm's first name suddenly Jane? Why do you translate Hawkingbird two different ways IN THE SAME FUCKING BOOK?), b) Urban Comics publishes DC, but it's all nu52/postreboot stuff, which, lol now (unless it's Demon Knights. I might make an exception for Demon Knights) and more importantly, c) I made a deal with myself a long time ago that my book buying habot would follow this pattern: original language if I can read it, whatever's easiest to find if not. /tl;dr)

That is awesome!

There's really not that much incest in Norse myths. I mean, they're not Greeks (Greek/Roman mythology's entertaining enough, but damn if it isn't rape-and-incest central).

I feel kind of awkward discussing film canon, because I know shit all about it except what's in the movies themselves. I mean, I could blather on and on about my theory that Idunn's apples + genetic drift is what created the Aesir/Jotnar divide, if there exists a physical divide at all and not one that is mostly cultural in the myths, but for the movies I'm like... "the Odinsleep wasn't convinient, it was Odin having a heart attack when faced with Loki's rage. Take heart meds, Odin".

Hum, this is embarassing. I don't want to come off like I victim-blaming, because the incident described in the Gesta Danorum is pretty fucking clearly rape, but. It's the Gesta Danorum and when I was a LOT younger, I decided I wouldn't read/take as canonical anything post-Snorri (possibly including Snorri) himself, because they were ~wrong and ~biased and ~anti-pagan/pro-catholic church propaganda. So that's why I never knew aboout Rindr.

That said, I am saddened to say that I am not really surprised by how well rape-by-seduction-by-seidr fits with Odin's overall personality.

On a less depressing note to end this on, have you heard My Brother, My Enemy?

Re: Part Two

[ericadawn16.livejournal.com]

So, I checked it out and it turns they never actually stopped! They just don't advertise it anymore.

http://subscriptions.marvel.com/

I notice it specifies free shipping on "domestic" shipping so they might do overseas orders now.

My brother did get over the collecting stuff. He doesn't even care now.

Here are some stories with the different hair interpretations:
http://archiveofourown.org/works/1032969
http://archiveofourown.org/works/1138737

Marvel gives the year that Odin defeats the frost giants and adopts Loki as 965 AD so that's how I came up with 11th century. Before that point, I assume there was much freer travel between worlds.

My fanfiction is fairly AU at this point since I had Kate Bishop meeting Clint Barton before Cassie.

I looked at the comic book store after your comment and they had no languages for sale but English. I even realized how some are translated from other languages and I never noticed before.

Well, there's Freyr and Freyja and Der Ring des Nibelungen. There might be more than that, not as much as Greco-Roman or fanfiction authors obsessed with Thorki, but yeah, incest does happen.

The fact that Jotnar and Aesir can breed and produce fertile off-spring proves that they are the same species.The movie makes it seem like Odin wanted to have an Odinsleep but wanted to wait for Thor to be on the throne. I think the Odin-sleep is a regular occurrence...most think it's due to his magic usage although Loki and Frigga never appear to have any problems?

That's an interesting song. Another person who's watching the Loki anime said that she thought it seemed like Loki and Odin were brothers in that one, too. I felt like Loki and Thor were brothers, but it was very ambiguous.