Chapter Notes: Those Who Hunt Monsters #5: Midgard

This chapter is more or less what newsletter readers saw, except for some minor edits in the dialogue and a few name changes.  The first time around, I'd used very different names for the Celts.  I wanted to go ahead and change them to match their names in the comics.  They're the same characters, but honestly the names are a little more clear this way. 

As for Jupiter, I went for the Roman name specifically because I want to use elements from the Venus comic, and wanted to keep that recognition with the names.  These days, the gods use their Greek names in the comics, which does make a little more sense on a timeline scale.  But when they switched over to using Greek names, they also got weirdly retconned in ways I do not like.  Ra stayed Ra, even though he's never gone by that name in the comics.  He's got a bunch of others he's gone by, but I feel like Ra is the most recognisable of all of them.  You say Ra, and people know what you mean.

As for the chapter itself, little else has changed from the very first, original version.  I think the only other significant change is making the other girl at the end one of Volstagg's kids, instead of someone a bit more random.  I want Volstagg having a dozen kids to become more prevalent throughout this story, because it gives his reasons for taking a shine to Loki later on a bit more weight.  Volstagg having all these kids should give him every reason to not want a frost giant just hanging out in the realm, but Volstagg such a goddamn dad that nothing will stop him from trying to adopt a sad little kid.

There's a lot of exposition in this chapter.  Not a whole lot of forward motion happens, but it sets up a lot of things that will come back in time.  I always thought the Non-Interference pact was such a fun idea that never got properly utilised in the comics.  But I guess it was tricky to retcon the fact that Thor had been violating it for decades before it showed up.  That's why I introduced it so early in this, and didn't wait until it became a problem.  I wanted this pact to take up a big chunk of early exposition so later on, Loki has a reason to hide who he is.  Not just because humans kill their gods, but because his being on Midgard could absolutely start a war nobody wants.