Some thoughts at the End of All

-pokes head from under covers- we good? Everyone has seen it? No one is going to get spoiled. I’m talking about Thor Ragnarok of course which has FINALLY opened in the US as well. What’s going on America. Has Marvel put you guys on timeout or something? No movies for you until everyone else has seen them? But I digress. My non-spoilers heavy review of the movie is that I love-love-loved it! I’m not saying there weren’t problems, but the overall movie left on the much happy/much feels end of the scale. Any more in-depth analysis will be very spoiler-y so you will find it under the huge-ass poster I am about to attach to this post! See you on the other side!

SPOILERS START HERE!

Ok, that should be enough warning for everyone. Now, this isn’t going to be an essay-length piece. I leave these to the professionals and really, I just want to talk about a few bits and pieces that got me thinking while I was watching the movie.

First things first: Odin’s death leading to Hela’s release:

This may be super headcanon-y on my part but I call bullshit. Odin might have had his (major major) flaws as a character but even with that I doubt he would be arrogant enough to bind the imprisonment of one he considered dangerous enough to kick-start the Apocalypse to his continued existence. Aesir are not immortal and Hela is the goddess of Death. Ragnarok or no Ragnarok, she would inevitably burry them all. What I think was meant was that Hela’s imprisonment was fueled by the power of the king of Asgard (which is all but outright said to be a reflection of the overall state of Asgard the realm. Conversely this is a motif very commonly found on Irish and Welsh legends, a great example being the Mabinogion). So here is what I think happened:

1. Loki mind-wipes Odin and drops him on Earth faster than you can say retcon. He assumes his place on the throne therefore ensuring that a king still reigns in Asgard, even if he does so under a glamour. (mid-Dark World until beginning of Ragnarok)
2. Thor all but outright rescinds his claim on the throne, pretty much cementing the claim Loki has, if only by virtue of having no one else to assume the throne (end of Dark World)
3. Thor returns to Asgard and exposes Loki, effectively nullifying his position as king. At the same time Thor himself does not immediately assume the throne and Odin is off to Earth doing who knows what. (beginning of Ragnarok)

This is where things begin to get complicated. Suddenly we have three different men with pretty equal claims to the throne, none of which is actually king. I think this is where the spell holding Hela back is beginning to unravel. Let us not forget that one of the major points of the movie is that Thor needs to learn to distinguish his own inherent power (and one might say ability to lead his people as king) from that which he has inherited from his father as an aid to get him started on this path (which is why I think they chose to destroy Mjolnir so early in the movie, instead of the final battle). So at this stage, let’s timestamp it as the period between Thor returning to Asgard and the two brothers finding Odin in Norway, the spell is falling apart without any fuel but keeps trying to go on on sheer momentum.

Which brings me to my next point. I think Odin is already dead (and I mean that in the physical sense) by the time they find him. Bear with me, I’m about to get symbolic. Before Frigga’s death in Dark World she jokes that she is the reason Odin has survived as long as he has (which I fully accept since she is made of WIN). Now that could be banter between the two of them but notice how quickly Odin deteriorates after she dies. A large part of that is fuelled from gried (again, entirely understandable) but grief alone does not explain how increasingly unhinged he becomes from one scene to the next. It also doesn’t explain how he doesn’t recognise Loki under the glamour. Far be it from me to diss Loki’s skills but one thing that wasn’t faked in that sequence was the stab wound he got. I figured a good chunck of magic is being used to heal him and keep him standing, and on the throne scene, where he is disguised as a guard, the glamour is slipping a little.

So here is what I think happened. Maybe Loki returned to kill Odin. Maybe he returned to deliver the news of his “death” and see how people would react. Maybe he just decided to pop by to raid the library. I think at that point not even he could make out his motives. Whatever the reason, he manages to trick Odin in thinking him dead. Odin is still grieving the loss of his wife, the one pillar of unquestionable support he had (in chess terms, once you lose the queen, the game is pretty much lost). Add to that the perceived betrayal of Thor who runs off to what for all they know is a suicide mission and now the loss of his other son….well…..after Dark World originally came out many fans theorised that Odin was in the Odinsleep rather than dead. I agree with that theory. It’s not the first time we’ve seen him go into that state when the pressure became too much for his mind to cope (i.e. first Thor movie). The major difference is that now Frigga is not there to protect him as she has done before (I think it’s Loki that says in the first movie that Frigga does not leave her husbands bedside when he Sleeps). What if this guardianship is not just an expression of love but her way of acting as an anchor, allowing him to find his way back to his physical body?

So Loki is lead with an unconscious Odin and a kingdom that someone needs to run. Sound familiar? Only this time he knows better. He works from the shadows. He mind-wiped Odin before dropping him off to earth, ensuring that even after (if ever) he wakes up from his catatonic state he will be powerless to interfere, even if his memories return since everyone would assume his words to be insane ramblings. Odin indeed wakes up as an amnesiac (and off screen dammit). It should have ended there, but clearly some of his magic was still active (perhaps the spell leaching off him since at that point “Odin” was still called king). Dr Strange finds him and lifts the memory spell. And here is where things get interesting. You’d think the second that happened Odin would march straight back to Asgard. He doesn’t. He goes to Norway instead, the site I assume the Asgard-Jotunheim war was waged back in the early Viking era (or the flashback sequence of the first movie, lol). Why? Perhaps he knows he is dieing and it makes him introspective. Perhaps he knows his death would potential release Hela and therefore he is uncharacteristically selflessly trying to draw her away from people. Maybe it’s both.

Or maybe, when Dr Strange lifted the spell, some of Odin was already lost either to the afterlife or to the void. Remember, when he “dies” in front of Thor and Loki, there isn’t a body left. He turns in the same star matter Frigga’s body turns at her funeral (which I thought was some kind of magic or maybe even an indication that she ascends to Valhalla since she died in battle). Odin doesn’t die in battle, he just kinda… fades away. No way he’s going to Valhalla in this continuity, I don’t care if technically it’s his hall. So maybe most of him is already dead and his spirit lingers just long enough to deliver his final messages. After all, Hela’s imprisonment start to visibly break before he’s fully disappeared. And let us not forget that his “mortal” form is the way he appears afterwards in Thor’s visions. If that was Thor’s subconscious trying to knock some sense to him, would Odin appear as a frail man or as the powerful king Thor would remember from his youth? Unless he is as spirit, projecting himself to his son’s mind for the same purpose (and the mythological Odin did have aspects of a chthonic deity so it’s not that unlikely).

Hela. Just. Hela.

My Lady Death was definitely one of the high points of the movie. She kicked ass, took names and looked absolutely flawless in the process. Surely there is nothing wrong with her, even if her death scene was hilariously anticlimactic (and seriously how can the GODDESS OF DEATH die? Oxymoron much?). Except for one tiny little detail. THEY MADE HER THOR’S SISTER! WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL (OR HEL, I’M NOT PICKY AT THIS POINT)??? Why would that be a problem since the Aesir/Vanir family trees had already be torn to shreds by the comics and subsequently the the earlier movies? Because even the comics did not shrink from acknowledging that Hela, Fenrir and (the conspicuously absent) Jormungand are Loki’s children. Through all the deaths, rebirths and universe ends, that fact remained. And yes, I know the Thor and Loki of the movies are meant to be younger than their comics counterparts. (much younger in fact. A fan figured out the Midgard-Asgard age differentiation and, assuming that Jotnar have the same life-span as Aesir, Loki is the equivalent of 18 in the first Thor movie. Let that sink in for a moment) My tendencies towards mythological puritanism aside, there are several other reasons why Hela’s character would have worked better as Loki’s daughter rather than Odin’s.

1. It pretty much destroys Frigga’s character as a protective and loving mother. Because let’s be honest, if Frigga was indeed “the only reason [Loki] is still alive”, do you think she would have passively allowed what happened to her first-born daughter? Or went along with her erasure from Asgardian history? I don’t think so. Therefore what happened? If I recall the Eddas correctly, Frigga is not Odin’s only wife so maybe the implication is that the whole Hela episode happened before she and Odin were wed? Notice how she is absent from the mural depicting Asgard’s past.
2. Hela as the scorned child of Odin would serve not just as the villain but also as Thor’s foil. A foil that is not necessary since any lesson that might have been learnt from such a conflict has been covered through his love-hate sibling relationship with Loki. To reiterate it is not necessary. I suppose she could be his foil in terms of mastery of their individual powers. After all she also used to wield Mjolnir but clearly grew out of needing it to channel her powers. Thor still relies to his magic hammer until at least halfway through the movie, and even then it’s touch and go for a while.
3. Still, villains are necessary for conflict and this is how Hela could have provided a more complex antagonist as Loki’s daughter. We have seen how Odin’s A+ parenting affected not only his children, but also (and since his governing style is similar) the Nine Realms as a whole. These are the immediate effects. But how about long-term effects?
   1. With as long as the Aesir life-cycle is these long-term effects could have a far greater ripple effect than what we might assume. A vengeful Hela returning to take revenge for her banishment would be one of those effects. It would add a further point of tension between Loki and Odin which would make any retrospective viewing of the Phase 1 and 2 movies more nuanced.
   2. It would also offer more tangible tension between Loki and Hela (other than the “gods, is that what I sounded like back in the Avengers?” vibe I couldn’t help but get). There would have been an undercurrent of bitterness, a question of why didn’t Loki do something either during his reign in Thor or later after he fell off the Bifrost. It would raise the question of whether he was following on Odin’s footsteps in terms of parenting (a terrifying idea if there ever was one…)
   3. Thor not knowing who Hela was could still be maintained. You could have Hela been on Asgard for a short time in her childhood, perhaps during one of Thor’s earlier quests. If her presence hadn’t be made known to the general public, it would have been relatively easy to hide her existence and banishment from Thor after the fact. Which, again retrospectively, would provide a further point that would drive apart the two brothers. In both the comics (especially the more modern ones) and the movies one of the major causes of conflict between the two is less Loki being an unrepentant villain and more the secrets kept from one another leading to feelings of mistrust and betrayal on both sides.
4. The question of genetics AND character design.Yes, any great diversion on Hela’s character model from her comics counterpart would have probably resulted in riots. And kudos to the costume department for making that headdress look less silly and more intimidating. I was honestly surprised. I mean come on! Look at this! How even?! But I digress. Case in point, she looks like Loki’s daughter in the movies. Dark hair, green eyes, similar armour colour skin, similar fondness for stabbing people…. Unless Odin’s (very) hypothetical first wife also coincidentally looked like Loki then the genetics don’t add. And don’t tell me it’s magic and her shaping her appearance to match her role (which, again, who does it remind you of?). No, what I think happened was that in an earlier draft of the script she was Loki’s daughter and then further down the editing process it was changed for whatever reason.

So yeah, these were my major complaints. Also, not nearly enough Valkyrie, but we dodged a bullet with her not being Thor’s maybe-lady for the movie so thank gods for small mercies. Still wish she had a name. Valkyrie is a title, it doesn’t count. Nor does it make sense since she’s sworn off that kind of life/service/calling/whatever. It just bugged me. And while we’re on the subject of potential love interests, what the hell happened to Jane? Or Sif? I mean yeah, I kinda assumed Sif was at the Collector’s House of Wonders guarding the Aether, since they have confirmed she is alive. But Jane? Her relationship with Thor was on of the core plot threads in Dark World. Even if Natalie Portman couldn’t appear in Ragnarok due to scheduling conflicts or whatever, there are a hundred different ways you can explain away the absence. Like her character or not, she deserved better than a who-dumped-who joke. (Although Loki’s little eyeroll on the side was pretty funny.

While on the subject, Loki as usual stole the show. And it was nice his character (finally) got some closure without him going full Jedi on us.

There is no reason for this gif. I just like to flashback to UNNECESSARILY deleted scenes occasionally. Because if you can’t see why this little bit was essential then you need to get your eyes checked. Ok… deep breaths …. Fangirl moment over, back to the serious stuff.

What do I mean? Well the hope of redemption has been a large part of the character’s wider appeal since he first made puppy eyes on the screen and Tumblr spontaneously spawned an army of fangirls (and boys, let’s be real). But up until this point the implication was that this was unlikely. The dichotomy between good!Thor and evil!Loki was too obvious, never mind both of them are as morally grey as they come. I’m not gonna sit here and say that Thor is Lawful Good when he damn near made a war out of a petty insult. Heck, it’s even been acknowledged by the character himself! In canon! “[Bilge snipe] are repulsive. And they trample everything in their path. When I first came to Earth, Loki’s rage followed me here, and your people paid the price. And now, again. In my youth, I courted war.” Thor’s own character development from movie to movie is also fascinating and I may talk about it more at some point but I seem to have sidetracked myself again…. I blame the gif!

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that the assumption was that Loki could not be redeemed because no way he could be good like Thor was. But Ragnarok proved that that was not necessary. Under his reign Asgard is flourishing (the director’s words, not mine) even there is a certain fatalistic sense to it. Thor accuses him of cutting of the Realm from their allies and basically letting the rest of Yggdrasil to go hang. But unlike Thor, Loki has had first-hand experiences with Thanos. I’m pretty sure he “failed” on Midgard’s invasion in the Avengers partially to get out of Thanos’ thumb (because you cannot tell him that was him trying his best.) I honestly don’t think Loki believes Thanos can be beat. So if all is to end, why not make the last few days or years or centuries happy and idyllic?

What is more, even with all the backstabbing going on in this movie (and wasn’t that a lovely lampshade that particular trope received?) and overall oaths he wants to see Asgard burn to the ground, when he comes back at the triumphant saviour (and that’s what a good payoff looks like by the way) it’s not just for his brother. It’s for the people too. He’s the one who stays close to the ship to make sure the people make it there before he gets called off to deus ex summon Surtur into the climax. Also that final scene between him and Thor before Infinity Wars comes a-knocking to ruin the mood. I can’t have been the only one who got weepy in seeing him finally in peace.

Still a little bitter that my two favourite sorcerers did not get to geek out but I’m holding out for Infinity Wars. And fanfiction.

….

I just had a look at the word count.

So much for this not being essay-length….

Ok, I’m gonna rapid-fire some more positives at you guys before I get to analysing again and we end up with a thesis to deal with.

1. The soundtrack was glorious and I will be getting my hands on it ASAP (which reminds me… I need to get the Dark World one too…)
2. Jeff Goldblum as the Grandmaster. I haven’t seen the character in the comics so I don’t know how loyal the portrayal was but for the MCU? Nailed it. And he wasn’t super-creepy, unlike the Collector, who always reminded me of a demonic David Bowie. You know. Less than…. David Bowie’s actual sorta-demonic, I don’t care if he’s called the Goblin King, performance. Before anyone shoots me, I do in fact love the Labyrinth, in all its cheesy, glittery, potentially LSD induced glory.
3. The fact the the Grandmaster and Loki were totally flirting and none of you can take that away from me! HA!
4. The Hulk as a character and not a plot device. Also the fact that he got character development and the fact that we don’t sweep under the rug the effect all this had to Bruce Banner.
5. Korg. Just. Korg.
6. The utter ineffectiveness of Skurge as a replacement!Heimdall. (“You had one job!”)
7. Heimdall also kicking ass and taking names.
8. The much wider use of magic and runes, because bog-dangit you’re space Vikings! Do something stereotypical already. And yes I will be going back to that scene and trying to translate what the runes actually say.
9. Asgard going BOOM
10. That fact that Asgard is canonically four elephants and a turtle away from being Discworld.
11. Doctor Strange being an absolute sassmaster and teleporting because he can.
12. The implication that some of Odin’s trophies are fake. Because, let’s be honest. It’s consistent with the character….
13. Alternatively that there were originally two infinity gauntlets. The thought fills me with the appropriate amount of dread
14. Surtur not being taking seriously until he must be taken seriously
15. Stan Lee as a psychotic cyborg barber. Nothing ever tops the confirmation that he is the Watcher (and the subsequent potential 4th wall breaking) but still pretty close
16. The fact that Loki and Thor could finally act as themselves and not the roles those surrounding them expect them to act as. (note to self: do another blogpost on this) 

I could go on but this post is over 3000 words already and I am seriously getting hungry now. See you folks next time!

The trouble with great ideas

The other night I was running commentary with a friend over some episodes from Season 11 of Supernatural (particularly the one where Chuck makes his -dubiously- deus ex machina return). Here be SPOILERS so you have been warned. Since Amara’s character was introduced I figured she was the elder sister, and frankly Chuck’s nigh-constant whining about her points to younger sibling, no offence intended to anyone reading this. All questions of sibling dynamics for beings on the higher end of the divinity scale aside it got me thinking and going all head-canon-y. The Supernatural verse is frustratingly vague in terms of how-things-work on the subject of Creation, though, to be fair, in a show were all religious pantheons and Darwin’s evolution theory coexist the explanation would no doubt make somebody’s brain explode.

And it’s so annoying cause I am so close to marrying all these potential Creation and End-of All stories in one cohesive explanation! It’ll probably be something I’ll work on over Christmas, since I really want to talk about it, but it is also the type of post that will require research and diagrams and possibly me bugging a friend or two to beta-read it before it goes up… And therein lies on of the major issues that most often hold me back from writing. I think I’ve talked about it before but telegraph version is that:

a. There is no true correspondence from language to language

b. I tend to think in several languages simultaneously -and sometimes non-verbally- when working through a complicated problem

c. Have fun translating to words of a singular language the mental equivalent of a fractal, especially in the subjects of existential philosophy and Jungian philosophy….

I had a go at it when I was writing my MA dissertation (because analysing archetypal mythological Aspects and their evolution sounded fun in theory) and let me tell you, my first drafts were a textbook case of “It’s funnier in Enochian”! And I can’t even read Enochian! But yeah… it took a lot of reworking and rewording and the end result doesn’t say nearly as much as I’d like it to but at least it’s accessible to people who did not spend a few years of their lives reading up on mythology, Campbell’s theories of the questing hero, Jungian archetypes and, yes, even trope characteristics. I suspect this upcoming post will go through a very similar process… Hey, if you guys fancy I can scan the original, handwritten post too for comparison’s sake! We’ll see. Either way, bless my ability to remember dialogue from movies/episodes/books. Much as I wouldn’t mind rewatching the show there’s the small issue of days having only 24 hours… And me, for better or worse, needing to do other things with my time too…

Stay tuned however! I’m not about to let a damn good headcannon go wasted!

Until then, cheerio!

In which I am doing a “Dear Diary” thing

Which really is a fancy way of saying I’ve managed to hit new lows on the whole how-to-human thing and this will result either in a breakdown of some sort (I suspect it will involve plenty of walking in the cold and/or cooking) or in a spectacularly bad piece of writing (even by my own standards). Funny thing is, if I’m to be 100% honest here, for once it’s not entirely my fault! Cold comfort but hey!

So how did I manage to dig myself even deeper in my hole? It started when, after months of nagging from certain parties, I finally joined Tumblr. For obvious reasons I will not be linking THAT account with this one. Ever. For those who don’t know why that is obvious, let me sum it up with two gifs:

This is me excited about my fandoms and wanting to talk about it with someone: 

And this is most people I am on regular speaking terms with:

Btw, Dean you are not fooling anyone! (But that’s beside the point….)

Well, not everyone and not all the time but often enough that I figured joining a platform that’s famous for it’s geeking out on any and all subjects might be in order. There seems to be this misconception that storytelling is confined entirely to the literary medium, that other modes of expression are somehow….less everything. Less valid, less important, less worth your time…. But I love storytelling in all its forms and expressions, good or bad, thought through or impulsive. And no, not like this jackass:

For me a novel, a TV show, a movie or even a song stand on the same ground. But so does fanfiction and fanart and all those little head-canons that are the inevitable results of late night conversations with those friends that also get it. And this is where I’ll go all academic on you, but dammit it used to be that oral storytelling was just as important (if not more) as its written counterpart! Has anyone paused to consider that maybe, just maybe, in our digital age, the explosion of expression that is summed up as “geeking” or “fangirling” is the natural evolution of oral storytelling. We study mythology and folklore, always with the caveat that this is merely one expression (the transcribed one that is) of a story that has been reworked no one knows how many times. Be it memory deficiency, adapting it to different audiences or even tailoring it to the storyteller’s personal beliefs, so long as the heart of each story stayed true it remained current and loved. And you cannot convince me that there has never been a skald or a bard or a minstrel that’s been booed to silence because he messed up a beloved story. Want a more recent example? How about the recent explosion over Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and whether or not it stayed true to the source material? Or the changes made in adaption from book to movie for the Percy Jackson trilogy or even the Hobbit? We love our fandoms because they are our generation’s mythologies, so it stands to reason that we’d want to talk about them and defend them.

This little rant out of the way, you’d think, since I feel so passionate about the subject, that Tumblr would be a virtual paradise for me. In some ways it is. So much more material for me to access on all my interests. People with the same likes just as eager to talk about them. I don’t have to hold myself or my enthusiasm back, at all! It’s like the first day in a new school all over again! Which, for someone who makes this awkward nugget…

…look well adjusted  on her worse days, is not the best of scenarios. I didn’t think it’d be possible to get tongue-tied writing anything other than covering letters (which I’m blaming on whoever is currently taking credit for bureaucracy) but it has actually happened! I read once that people who cover their mouth when they smile, usually, have been repeatedly told that they don’t have a nice smile/white enough teeth/something else equally stupid. By that logic, being told too often that being passionate about something and eager to share it is wrong/boring/irrelevant/immature (and yes, I’ve heard all these, most often followed by or preempted by “What are you up to these days”), will eventually lead you to hesitate sharing anything. Even in an environment where you know it is safe, nay welcomed to do so. I guess it goes hand-in-hand with my eternal question “how do you make friends?” but when I have to stop myself from typing “sorry for bothering you” when I am giving an episode reaction/recap to a friend even after being expressively told that it’s cool…well…. There’s a reason I tend to identify with the socially awkward and/or antisocial characters.

What am I gonna do about it? Most likely take it in stages, move at a glacial pace and hope for the best. The whole social-butterfly boat sailed but when I was five but maybe I’ll find a few more quiet, screaming-inside people and we can apologise and share fun facts to each other like the world’s weirdest game of Chinese whispers?

In which I found the one thing scarier than interviews

Filling out forms. Have you ever noticed how scary these things are? Passive aggressive language, legal jargon, pretty big consequences if you make a mistake, (in my case) tight submission deadlines….-shudder- It’s an anxiety attack waiting to happen. Of course all this not-so-internalised drama could be just me craving chips and being too busy to pop by the kitchen and heat some on the microwave… Or me being new to the whole “adult” scene (which is rather sad coming from a freshly-minted 23-year old…).

Regardless! Remember how I used to moan and gripe about my dissertation? I’d like to humbly apologise for that. Compare to my day today, the dissertation is more than relaxing, it’s soothing! And I am at the re-drafting stage! Also affectionately called the bizarro stage where I need to be my own hardest critic if I’m to get any editing done BUT I also need to be my number one fan in order to not convince myself that my baby isn’t going anywhere. Still! With this fine gentleman as my main topic it’s so worth it!

Alright, hold your horses, I’m not just doing Marvel Comics, I do have a degree in Viking (and other stuff) studies to prove my competence on. But modern adaptations play an important role to the overall result.

I’ve also discovered that I can make some damn fine connections and arguments between midnight and 4, dosed up on coffee and chewing dried prunes. If your stomach just rolled a little at the prospect, good! Your lifestyle is probably much healthier than mine. I don’t get it. I’m not a night owl, not by choice. There was this one very memorable instance when I was awake for close to 48 hours, but it was a special case. Maybe my mind goes to sleep and I write whatever my subconscious fancies? It would certainly explain some of my more bizarre grammar choices. Apparently I don’t like the definite article when I’m sleepy. Go figure.

Anyway, I am seriously getting hungry for those cheeps now, so I’ll leave y’all to your own devices.

Peace out-

I have an evil plan!

Or at least it would seem so, wouldn’t it? Just look at this beautiful, colourful, paper-y chaos!

Every evil genius needs their planning tools.

A looooooot of tools!

Heh, I remember, back in high school, one of my teachers telling me off for -apparently- paying more attention in making my notes pretty and colourful than the lesson. She was kind of right, honestly. I only took Economics because I needed the credit, bu she was also wrong. I like colour-coding things. It makes them easier to remember. In elementary school (when books still have pretty pictures to go with the texts) I could remember better text surrounded by colour. That and the highlighter bug I think I caught from my mother. She was the one to teach me the difference between turning the page a different colour and actually highlighting the most important point.

So here I am, more than a decade later, almost compulsively taking multi-coloured and badly illustrated notes on all important modules. The beautiful chaos on these pictures is me trying to cobble together my thoughts and ideas for my thesis into something that makes sense to someone that does not have a psychic link with me. My supervisor advised me to make the outline in the form of a map in order to see how the different points I’m trying to make connect to one another. The end result is something like this:

A map alright. A map of the multiverse if you will.

I’m going to attempt and turn this to the standard bullet-point format but I am not sure I’ll manage. The thing is, as confusing (and frustrating at times) it was to make my little diagram (little, ha! That’s an A3 paper, baby!), when I look at it, it makes sense. Starting from the centre and moving outwards and clockwise, coming back to certain points again and again, I suppose it’s as close to an illustration of my thought process as I can get while remaining confined in two dimensions. Yeah, remember those awesome hologram things Tony Stark has in the MCU (that I will not even try to pretend I understand the “science” of)? Boy, would they have can in handy when I was working on this. Or the dangle-y paper thingies Megamind used. Really, the third (and fourth) dimensions are not used nearly enough. Also, once more, all together: What is it with me and crazy/evil geniuses?

Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll figure it out. Until then let us all be thankful I stuck with literature instead of the sciences. In the immortal words of the Big Bang Theory:

I may not have Sheldon’s IQ but… -cue the ominous music-

Τα πέντε αδέρφια και η Βασιλεία

Γνωστό και ως: να τι συμβαίνει όταν διαβάζω ένα αρχαίο Ιρλανδικό κείμενο σε Αγγλική μετάφραση και πίνω καφέ….

Τα πέντε αδέρφια και η Βασιλεία 

Του βασιλιά οι πέντε γιοι

Είχανε πάει κυνήγι

Τρεις μέρες μέσα στο δάσος,

Και τρεις πέρα στον κάμπο,

Και άλλες τρεις γυρνάγανε,

Στον λόγγο σαν χαμένοι.

Δίχως νερό, δίχως κρασί

Η δύναμη τους λείπει.

Μα στα κοντά ακούγανε

Μια πηγή να ρέει.

 

Πρώτος ο Φέργκους προσπαθεί

Την δίψα του να σβήσει,

Μα φύλακας μπρος στην πηγή

Μια γριά εκεί στέκει.

Μαύρη σαν δαίμονας,

Κυρτή σαν δρυ,

Με μάτια σαν αστέρια,

Στον πρίγκηπα δίνει τιμή

Για το νερό ένα φιλί.

Την δίψα ο Φέργκους προτιμά,

Στ’αδέρφια του γυρνάει.

Ο Όλιολ, ο Μπράιαν,

Κι ο Φιάχρα προσπαθούν,

Την ίδια μοίρα βρίσκουν,

Πριν ο Νιαλ, ο μικρότερος,

Για την πηγή κινήσει.

 

‘Γεια σου Μητέρα, λίγο νερό.’

‘Για ένα φιλί σου δίνω.

Την αγκαλιάζει, την φιλά,

Μια βροντή ηχά μακριά

Και μπρος του ξάφνου στέκει

Μια κόρη ομορφότερη

Από τα ρόδα του αγρού,

Όλα τ’αστέρια τα’ουρανού,

Της θάλασσας το κύμα.

 

‘Η Βασιλεία είμαι εγώ,

Η χώρα αυτή σου ανήκει.

Πες στον πατέρα σου, στους αδερφούς,

Πως άξιο σε κηρύττω.’

Μ’αυτά τα λόγια χάθηκε

Και με νερό ο Νιαλ γυρνάει.

Στους αδερφούς του την ιστορία λέει,

Στην Τάρα τον πηγαίνουνε

Και βασιλιά τον στέφουν.

Brimwylf

Author’s note: I’ve been reading Beowulf. That should prepare you, right?

Brimwylf
I sit in my borrow and breathe in the salty air.
My child, my only child, he goes a-hunting again.
That May so long ago, I should have brought
The hawthorn to the hall.
Better luck it would have been
Than the shadow with which I danced.
My sweet wolf-cub, you have your father’s tastes,
The moss was red, on the ground where we lay.
He gave me his sword, heirloom for our child,
A dagger to keep as mine, both tainted
With his kind’s touch. How thankful can my heart be;
I bore no daughter to, like me, foolish me,
Chase shadow in the warm night’s air.
He up and left us like grey smoke,
My monstrous babe and I, having to hide from the world.
I was a fair-haired maid once, my eyes shone too bright.
Now under a lake we hide, my child and I.
My babe, you call for me, who wounded you in the arm?
Your blood has painted the path to our home,
Oh, what shall I do?

The Mirror

A.N: Again Norse-related, again the result of me reading the Prose Edda half-asleep (same session as the previous one as a matter of fact). You could argue this is also the cliff-notes version of the Volva’s prophesy (albeit a lot more biased – I have my favourites, what you’re gonna do about it?). Honestly, I feel like I should be assigning background reading side by side with uploading this, not sure how much of it is obscure if you haven’t read the Eddas….It’s more of a reaction poem, a way of me getting out my frustration with the parts of the mythology that I don’t like. And for the record, when I say All-Father, I don’t mean Odin. Yes, it’s one of his kennings but technically speaking he is like Zeus, a third(+) generation divine being, so in my opinion the title should go to the first, male(-ish?), Creation-initiating figure. Any other points that are unclear, please let me know. 🙂

The mirror
A beautiful mirror hangs over land
Shining reflection of what is below
For ages long it hung un-cracked
Adorned with red gold and ice silver
Bor’s sons did kill the All-Father
A crack was formed on the edge.
With treachery and blood was Asgard’s mortar mixed
The silver then blackened
Trice did the golden maiden burn
Thus did the seer decry
Red gold peeled away, bone marrow was ‘neath
The head’s whisper gave cause
For three children the underworld to claim
The frame groaned under the dwarf thread keeping it together
Wars ravaged the lands, worthy men fell,
Rose and fell again denied respite
See how the glass is dimming?
Gifts unacknowledged do enmity inspire
They are not the bearer’s to give away
Hear you the murmurs in citadels old
None has the power to halt the wheel.
The smoke that hides the beauteous mirror
Reveals what the gazer fears to see
There aren’t oaths enough in the world
To halt the dread maid’s demand for bounty.
See you the cracks as they spread each winter
The dragons awaken one by one
Blood made the world blood will unmake it
But what will the final splinter cause none knows
Three winters have passed the wolf is howling
The volva laughs as underworld opens their gates.

Ymir’s Last Dream

A.N: Will the mytholgy-inspired poetry ever end? If you’ve been around here for any length of time you’ll know not to hope… A slightly more obscure one this week, mostly because I was reading Snorri while still sipping my first coffee of the day. He’s pretty interesting if you think about it, being both a primordial creature and…uh…the universe’s building block (and people complain about Enuma Elis being violent!) All matters of in-family murder and Snorri’s nasty attitude towards giants aside, I see Ymir as a tragic figure in the same way Chronos is one (Saturn for those more familiar with the Latin names, although they are not exactly the same….): aware of his upcoming demise, yet unable to stop it due to his nature. But yeah, my version of Ymir is a bit of a prophet (and ever notice how similar Ymir and Mimir sound?) so he knows that the young upstarts planning to dismember him are not going to have the best of endings either…

Ymir’s last dream
The Old Father Time slept through the ages
Awake then he sang of the worlds t’were to come
Frozen in fire and burnt from the ice
The great gaping gap his grandchildren ploughed
The river dream swelled a sapling uncovered
The great ash tree grew from Aurgelmir’s corpse
Tears he shed not for the crime not yet committed
Punishment reaches murderers all

 

P.S. Mum, if you’re reading this, I SWEAR not all my course reading is quite that -um- graphic!

Sons of a New Age

A.N: Now this poem is the twin of last week’s nugget. I originally wrote it first, but when I was planning the schedule for this month’s uploads I was hit by a strong sense of “Ladies first”. What can you do? Similar influences on this one, although Völuspá is obviously more influential. I don’t know, it always bugged me how -apparently- the only female figure to survive Ragnarok is a human woman. I mean, more power to us mortal ladies, but wouldn’t it make sense to have a goddess survive as well? I suppose Hel and the Norns do (hard to imagine the universe functioning without them….) but it is not explicitly stated. Hence last week’s pick-up-the-slack-in-the-background poem, while now we have the front-and-centre-stage point of view. Hardly an optimistic outlook but in my defence, bitter poetry is how I remain semi-functional in the real world.

Sons of a New Age

Under the golden roofs of old

The children of tomorrow fumble

With their fathers’ chess pieces

Strewn anew in freshly-grown grass.

From the fiery ice and blood

The saplings sprout again

The sons do walk their forebears’ footsteps.

And below them all the dragon sleeps

In old-age glory nestled

Till the roaring sound of arms

Wakes them once more.