Notes | God of Outcasts #30: Magic

[lokiofsassgaard]

Chapter notes for Magic

Okay so I want to start getting back into doing these every chapter.  And this chapter is part of the larger event that marks a turning point for Loki.  I think put quite simply, he's done being afraid.  And those of you who read the original version of this fic will see the irony in that.  But Loki has decided that nobody owns him, and that he doesn't owe anybody respect that he is not shown first.

He knows he's not respected much anyway, but this is the chapter where he learns the full extent of it.  Starting right from the very beginning, as guards talk shit about him right in front of Odin.  Odin should correct that behaviour.  He should demand respect, even in the given circumstances.  But he doesn't.  Way back in chapter 7, he's shown correcting Thor's behaviour on this though.  Odin does demand respect from Thor, but that seems to be about as far as Odin's efforts go in this matter.  He's wanted to know who's been responsible for Loki's cuts and bruises, but even then he never put much effort into finding out.  If the answer comes to him, great.  But there was no reason whatsoever for that secret to have been kept beyond wilful ignorance.  There are a dozen people he could have got answers from, but he didn't.  And now he lets his own guards talk shit about Loki right in front of both of them, and does nothing to stop it.  He does nothing to stem that behaviour.

I've said before that I've never liked the idea that Odin is outright abusive in his parenting, though he does put being a king miles ahead of being a father.  He will do what's right for Asgard before he does what's right for his children.

And Loki knows this.  He's known this for a long time.  This is the environment he's grown up in, so it's not some grand revelation that he is not his father's first priority.  But it still hurts.

Another little thing that's happening here comes from Bror and Geiri.  Loki is seen as one of two things: either a monster, or a child.  He's the same ages as Thor.  He's fifteen years old, but those who aren't afraid of him treat him like he's much younger.  He's always been so bitter about being seen as too small or too young, and even those who do know better seem to act like he's barely old enough to be on his own the way he is.  And now he's figured out that if he's going to be seen as either a monster or a child, and nothing in between, he may as well scare the hell out of anybody who doesn't show him respect.  He knows that he's got this role lined up for him once he fully comes of age, and Thor takes the throne, but he has never until this chapter given a moment's thought to what it truly means.  He already understands that if he takes this role while still holding a claim to the throne, it's going to cause problems.  But now he knows why it's going to cause problems.  Everyone expects him to abuse this position to rule from the shadows, and you know what?  Why not let people think that's exactly what he intends?  Maybe then they'll go out of their way to avoid offending him in the hopes he won't manufacture some reason to have them taken out of his way.

Bror, meanwhile, has been one of his guards since Loki was an infant.  He's one of the few palace guards who understands that his post isn't guarding some terrifying war trophy.  He's guarding a little boy with no self preservation instincts.

And it's self preservation that in the end allow Loki to get away with spinning his version of events.  In my last notes, I talked about how Fandral wasn't being completely honest about how he distracted the guard who found him.  As soon as that man saw Fandral in the room, he knew his life was over.  He didn't see anyone at the keep, because he was too busy doing something he should not have been doing with a fifteen year old boy.  Geiri and Bror were told, point blank, that Loki was planning a heist.  They know he did it, and had to outright lie about it because their heads were on the chopping block too.  Asgard seems to have a big problem with guards not taking Loki seriously enough when he divulges criminal information.  And now if it ever gets out that a band of teenagers pulled off such a dangerous scheme all because nobody took one of them seriously, they're all dead.  Loki's plan was terrible, and it was inevitable that they got caught, but he just kind of chaos god, bumblefucked his way through on blind luck.  Odin still knows he's responsible, even if he can't prove it, but the outcome could have been much worse.

But Loki's tired of not being taken seriously, and relying on that as his sole weapon.  He is going to be the most feared motherfucker in the land, and he doesn't care what it takes to make that happen.  This is the moment he goes from indulging his curiosity to spitefully determined.  He's got all these forbidden grimoires he's stolen, and he's going to read, catalogue, and memorise every one of them.  He's going to figure out the full extent of what he can and cannot do, and use that to command the respect he's due. 

I've always had a very rigid structure in mind for how the magic works, and want to bring more of that to the forefront.  I'm so glad that the series finally gave Loki more magic over two episodes than he'd shown through the culmination of the entire MCU previously, but he's still deeply underpowered.  And I loved how they acknowledged that.  Classic Loki did amazing things with his brief screen time, and then was still a Loki at the end of the day—just a lazy sack of shit living in the void because it was the path of least resistance.  Loki in the comics pretty much has free rein to do whatever the hell he wants under the guise of "magic," be it through his own innate abilities, or through the knowledge of how to use some other external force.  And I wanted to build that up a bit better.  He's able to see a pattern in everything he's copying down, because he's in a unique position.  He's some sort of half breed, though what sort is unclear.  But whatever combination of thing that he is has left him sensitive to energies that other races may not even be aware exist.  He's able to figure out that there is no Ljósálfar and Dökkálfar magic.  It's just Álfar magic, used in different ways.

I posted a map a little bit ago of Jötunheimr, and talked about how its portrayal in the MCU bugs me, because it ignores all the other Jötunn races.  But if Álfar magic is the same depending on the race of elf in particular, then Jötunn magic must surely be the same regardless of what sort of giant a person is.  I wanted to post that map before I posted this chapter, because it's relevant here.  And not just in Loki figuring out that he can cast fire without using seiðr.  These other Jötunns are a catalyst for Loki finally deciding he's done being afraid of Odin.

As I began rewriting this, I realised I had my timeline fucked up.  Unfortunately, that means one of the goofier bits from the original version will not be in the rewrite.  It's about 50 years too late, and even though nobody would ever notice, I'd notice.  So I've completely rewritten and reimagined the entire sequence, and added in a bunch of preamble to it in the form of Rötgart.  Loki goes back there without using the Dragon Lines, and learns that he can do this with enough determination and effort.  But that isn't the main point.  It comes back again later, but now the focus has changed to Asgard itself.  Another thing I've mentioned before is how much I dislike the notion that Asgard is some enlightened utopia.  Even in the movies, we see some pretty blatant fantasy racism.  Frost giants are monsters, humans are insignificant and expendable.  We have two races that are apparently completely wiped up by Asgard over the first two Thor movies, and neither are given any weight or consideration beyond being races of evil monsters that deserve to be wiped out.  Asgard is brutal, imperialistic, and abusive in its power over Yggdrasil.

And everyone knows it.

Loki was raised on Asgard, and he knows abstractly that bad things happen.  War brides get a lot of mention, and Loki never once even considers the full implication there.  Why would he?  That's a perfectly normal thing to happen during a war.  Loki is well aware that he was stolen himself.  "Adopted" is used to dull the entire situation, but at the end of the day he was still taken from his realm by a foreign king and raised to not be Jötunn, but Æsir.  And he doesn't see anything wrong with this.  He knows Jötunn spirits are forbidden on Asgard for being toxic, but he never once considers that the average Asgardian is smart enough to not just gulp down poison.  Without knowing it, he's been pumped full of propaganda, and has never once even had the opportunity to look at Asgard from an outsider's perspective.

Now, he's been on Rötgart twice, and both times has been recognised and called out as Jötunn.  And neither time was he spat at, scorned, or cursed for it.  Because the dwarves have no quarrel with the Jötnar.  Somehow these fuckers keep getting their hands on precious Jötunn steel, but even that doesn't seem like enough of a reason for the two races to be at odds with one another.

It's not until Loki mentions Asgard that the conversation gets weird.  Perception of him immediately shifts from being some shitlord causing problems, to having managed to escape and run away from his supposed masters.  And this is the first time that Loki truly has to confront the fact that he is not his father's son.  He spins a quick lie to conceal his identity, and then immediately realises it's true.  He's then forced to acknowledge his luck in having been found by Odin, rather than anybody else.  He knows he's well looked after, and what could have happened to him otherwise.

That, on top of finally getting a missing piece to the mystery that's been hounding him for years, Loki needs to address his father.  Not just about the old man, or his place on Asgard, but his position within the court.  Odin himself has shown Loki a considerable lack of respect, and it's time to lay everything out on the table.  Odin gets to be the first person to truly witness the scope of what Loki has so far mostly been keeping to himself.  Only Thor, Hogun, and Fandral have any idea what Loki is capable of.  And now he takes all of these little skills he's learned over the past 28 chapters and uses them to command respect.  And the first person he chooses to walk this road with is Odin himself.  Up until now, Odin has seen Loki as a disappointment almost.  He kept Loki for a purpose, and Loki has failed to live up to it.  He's skilled in magic, but he's unruly and directionless, and unable to even defend himself in most cases.  He uses his tricks to run around in the shadows and apparently make love potions for Thor.  How embarrassing.

Except now, Loki holds nothing back.  He knows how to manipulate a conversation to skew negotiations in his favour.  He's learned all about blackmail and bribery.  He knows that you don't have to fight to be feared, and that all he needs to do is to show that he can do something that his opponent can't.  He offers Odin information, and is careful in how he words his demands.  He'll tell Odin what he wants to know.  He won't return anything.  He won't even apologise or take accountability.  And he knows Odin doesn't take him seriously enough to properly weigh his options.  Loki wants to know some irrelevant secret, while Odin wants to know how in the hell Loki got past his security.  He doesn't consider that what Loki is actually asking for is transparency, because this one question lifts the fog off of a dozen other lies.  And all Odin learns is that Loki's been doing his homework.  Even if Odin was still very opaque about some details, Loki has enough to work with going forward.  Meanwhile, Odin's just watched his fifteen year old son perform magic that nobody on Asgard seems capable of replicating.  And even if they were, they could replicate the spell but not necessarily trace its full path.

And in the end, the agreement they come to is to basically maintain the status quo.  Loki weighs the options presented to him and decides he's ultimately not losing anything, and may come out a bit ahead.  Odin, meanwhile, gets to consider how to move forward, since it's now very clear his plan, whatever it was, has got away from him.  It seems only dumb luck on his part that Loki still wants to move forward with it, even if he's still not been made privy to all the details.  And then Loki ends the discussion by proving that he will not be intimidated any further.  He knows Odin will never find the record, and Odin knows it too.  Just like they'll never find any of Eldred's things.

But this entire arc has all tied into something else that happens in the background, which is that Loki is constantly forced to grow up too quickly.  And a lot of people have picked up on this, how he's held to the same standards as Thor.  He and Thor both know that Loki is chronologically older, but physically and emotionally, he's always seemed younger.  Even Odin and Frigga seem to forget that Loki is older.  And this arc has been Loki being forced to grow up early in a very different way.  If he keeps fucking around like a little kid, he's always going to be seen as a little kid.  People take Thor seriously, so why not Loki?  Thor's talking about forming a party once he's old enough, and looking ahead to the future.  So Loki needs to catch up, even if he's not ready or doesn't want to.  And I want to use this to kind of marry the comic version of the character with the MCU version.  In the comics, especially since his rebirth post-Siege, Loki has been an uncontrollable force of nature, just off on some wild ADHD adventure without any concern for what's going on around him.  In the MCU, he puts on this attitude of being stuffy and closed off, as though fun is beneath him.  And I want him to be both of these things, like a code-switching chameleon.  He can be wild and directionless when nobody important is looking, but also act like he is completely above everyone else when he needs to.  And this is where it starts.