#Odin is talking about how his kids are the worst | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cha-melodius · 1 year

Note

If there are still slots open for the Christmas prompts, may I ask for 6. “Is that present for me?” with Lokius? (or 3. “Your lips are cold.” as a backup number). Thank you and I hope you'll reach the 1 000 000 words (also, just saying, that's very impressive!!).

(Ok, so I might have cheated a liiiiiiittle by combining two prompts into one, which was inspired by the fact that @okilokiwithpurpose had prompt #3 as a backup. But hopefully the fact that this fic is 4x as long as most of the others in this challenge makes up for it! I had written a tiny bit of this AU, but never shared, and somehow as I was looking at it again these prompts just slotted into place. So here you go, an actor AU, which I can't believe no one had written for these two before, with some fake dating thrown in for fun. I hope you all enjoy! Also: @an-asgardian I wasn't sure if your AO3 name was different, but let me know and I can gift it to you there if you like!)

True Hollywood Romance

Read it on AO3 (M, 8.1k)

Toronto International Film Festival, early September

“You cannot tell me you’re intending to wear that,” Loki blurts, in lieu of a greeting, the moment he opens the door and sees Mobius standing on the other side of it.

Mobius glances down at his outfit: a grey suit that, yes, he has worn to more than a few previous events. Not that anyone would notice. No one ever asks who Mobius is wearing, he’s never appeared on any fashion lists (best or worst), and that’s the way he likes it. He knows he’ll be comfortable, and he doesn’t have to worry about hurridly-sewn seams failing or a jacket being mistakenly cut too tight across his shoulders. He hasn’t so much cultivated his look as actively not cared about it, and he’s gotten to a point in his career where people were inclined to let him do as he wished.

Until now, it seems. Loki is still staring at him in something akin to horror, which is a bit much. It elicits a knee-jerk reaction to get defensive and dig in his heels, but Mobius shoves it down and forces a tight smile onto his face. This is to be their first official public appearance, and it wouldn’t do to start things off on the wrong foot.

“You have a better idea?” he challenges, raising his eyebrows.

“Go back in time and get a suit that’s properly tailored,” Loki opines, before he sighs, gesturing Mobius into the hotel room. “You can’t wear that shirt.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

Loki gives him a withering look of disdain that is definitely pushing it. “It’s boring, Mobius. Take it off, I have one that will work.”

Mobius sighs out heavily through his nose, trying not to grind his teeth together, and reminds himself that he agreed to this. God knows why. Your career is stagnating. No one’s talking about you, Ravonna had said. You need to shake it up, and this is the perfect opportunity. Then his agent had delivered the final blow: If you want that movie green-lit, you’ll do it.

Fucking Hollywood. Odin Borson had one of the biggest production companies on the block and a troublesome, wild-child son who needed an image rehabilitation. Who better to play the moderating influence than someone who’s never been a front page headline in the tabloids in his life? The TV actor who’d been beloved in the same role he’d played for over a decade, but boring in every other respect? Even when he’d come out several years ago, the news had barely made a ripple. He’s been trying to get this movie made for years, though, so a few months of pretending to date the producer’s kid had seemed like a small price to pay.

He’s not so sure about that anymore, though.

He follows Loki through the palatial suite to an entire walk-in closet of clothes—how on Earth could he have so many, they’re only here for a few days—and waits as the other man roots around a collection of shirts. Loki pulls several out and frowns at them before tossing them away, heedless of where they land. Sequins, ruffles, lace, one that seems to be hot pink— Christ, Mobius needs a drink.

“I really doubt any of your stuff is going to fit me,” he tries in a last-ditch effort.

“It’ll be close enough,” Loki says, waving him off dismissively. “Keep your jacket buttoned on the red carpet and no one will notice.”

Mobius sighs, again. He has a distinct feeling that his life will be easier if he just lets Loki do what he wants. Within reason. “I’m gonna have a drink. You want anything?”

Loki’s mouth tightens almost imperceptibly. “Not allowed to drink before these things anymore,” he says stiffly, still focusing on the shirts in front of him.

“Oh. Noted.”

Possibly they should have actually talked more before this, but Mobius had counted on film festival red carpets being relatively low pressure when it comes to interviews. Loki has a small part in one of the movies from Odin’s production company, hence the appearance, but he’s not a lead, so no one expects the press to want to talk to them that much. They’ve been provided a few essentially scripted lines about their relationship to use when someone inevitably asks: they met on a ski slope in Vail, hit it off over coffee, etc, etc. Never mind that Mobius has never been to Vail. He doesn’t even ski, unless you count a jet ski.

Mobius briefly wonders if he should also abstain out of courtesy, but he figures Loki would say something if it was going to be a problem. Hopefully it won’t, because there’s no way Mobius is gonna get through tonight without at least one Scotch. He’s pouring a healthy portion into a crystal tumbler from the room’s wet bar when Loki appears at his side again.

“Here. This one,” he says, thrusting the garment into Mobius’s hands. It’s a rich, cerulean blue, and when Mobius holds it out he sees it seems to be a mock turtleneck and also…

“Is this… sparkly?”

“It’s a subtle shimmer,” Loki corrects superciliously. He hesitates for a second and looks away, avoiding Mobius’s gaze, and when he continues his voice is oddly tight. “It will bring out the blue of your eyes.”

Mobius swallows. Loki’s not actually dressed yet, still wearing a bathrobe, the fronts of which have by now slipped open down to where it’s belted at his waist, revealing a tantalizing swath of smooth, sculpted chest and abs that Mobius has to force himself not to stare at. Look, he’s not a monk, and Loki is a very attractive man. That fact may or may not have swayed his decision to go along with this circus. Still, this is all fake. Loki is way out of his league, and he’d do well to remember that.

Of course, he hadn’t banked on having to deal with Loki’s chest all night. It turns out he’s not wearing a shirt at all, only the trousers and jacket of a deep green tux with tails so long and elaborate they’re reminiscent of a skirt. He looks, to put it simply, stunning, and Mobius can’t help but feel a bit dull beside him. Even in a shimmery turtleneck, which, ok, did look better under his suit than what he was planning on wearing.

The appearance goes off without a hitch. They walk the red carpet, talk to a few reporters, smile like they’re enjoying themselves. Loki sleeps through the screening of his own movie, but Mobius is enthralled. He’d never really seen much of what Loki had been in before—mostly a number of prosaic runs as villains in genre flicks and their sequels—but in this he’s utterly arresting. He steals every scene he’s in, few though they might be. It makes Mobius wonder what happened, how he got so off track in his career, because clearly he deserves a lot more.

Halfway through the movie, Loki’s head tips onto his shoulder, and he doesn’t have the heart to move him. Loki jerks awake at the audience’s applause when the credits roll, going red as he realizes that he’d been using Mobius as a pillow. His eyeliner is slightly smudged and his hair is mussed, and the whole picture is far too soft and endearing. Even though they’re surrounded by a couple hundred other people it feels remarkably intimate, and something twists in Mobius’s gut.

This might be harder than he previously expected.

~~~~~

Hollywood, California, late September

“Is that a present for me?” Loki says, a teasing note in his voice and a grin on his face as he slips into the seat opposite Mobius.

They’re sitting outside at a cafe in Hollywood, in full view of the paparazzi that lurk unsubtly across the street. Odin’s people called them, of course. Another of their scheduled appearances, this time a casual lunch. Mobius tries to smile like he doesn’t care that his every move is being documented. He’s never elicited this kind of attention during his entire career, and he’s not at all disappointed about that.

“The very one provided by your manager,” Mobius answers dryly. It had been delivered to his apartment with a note explaining that he was supposed to give it to Loki at the arranged time. “I take it you purchased this for yourself?”

“Mm,” Loki hums as he eagerly tears the top off the box and pulls a luxurious green silk scarf out of it, winding it around his neck. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, darling. This a thoughtful gift from my dear beau.”

Mobius feels his face go hot at the fake pet names and blames the sun. “How can you wear that right now? It’s scorching out here today.”

“I’m always cold,” Loki tells him. “So. Honey. Dearest. Beloved,” he says, grinning over the menu at Mobius’s huff as he gets more flustered by the second. Turns out bearing the full brunt of Loki’s charm is a lot. “What looks good?”

Once they get settled in things get easier, though. They actually talk, really talk, for the first time since this whole thing started, and Mobius finds out that Loki’s not only insanely good looking but also sharp and engaging, talking excitedly about this or that project, going off on long tangents about random topics that interest him. It’s so unlike the haughty, stand-offish demeanor that he’s known for that Mobius is thrown off for a second, but he ends up enjoying himself too much to think about it too hard.

“The worst place I’ve ever had to film was definitely actual Siberia,” Loki is saying. They’re now undergoing the actor’s rite of passage in getting to know one another: sharing filming horror stories.

“Oh, that was The Void, right? The post-apocalyptic one,” Mobius says without thinking.

Loki blinks at him. “I thought you hadn’t seen any of my films.”

Mobius’s chewing slows to a halt as he realizes what he’s just admitted. “I mean. I’d seen a couple.” And if, since TIFF, he’d watched all of them, that was his business and nobody else’s.

“No one’s voluntarily seen The Void, Mobius,” Loki teases, a slow grin spreading on his face. “It’s not even on any streaming services.”

That is true. Mobius had had to buy the damned thing, and even finding a copy had been trying. Which was actually a shame, because yes, the movie had been terrible—abysmal writing, with a hackneyed love story forced in at the end—but Loki’s performance was exceptional. He’d played several different versions of the same character, each twisted a little differently, and it had been a bit of revelation.

“Musta caught it when it came out,” Mobius mumbles as he shrugs, avoiding Loki’s too-mirthful gaze. “Anyway, it’s gotta be more fun than always filming on a soundstage. Fifteen years of it gets real old, let me tell you.”

“All those places you traveled to? Pompeii? Those couldn’t have all been sets,” Loki says, which surprises Mobius enough to pull his eyes off his plate again.

“Now who’s been watching old TV series?” Mobius shoots back. “You can’t expect me to believe you saw Murders in the Multiverse when it aired.”

Loki sniffs, trying his best to look as if he hadn’t just been caught out. “Those are all on Paramount Plus,” he says dismissively. “I just put them on in the background for research. Barely paid attention.”

“Right. Research,” Mobius huffs, amused. “Well, they were all sets. Even Pompeii.”

“That’s disappointing.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It couldn’t have been that bad, though,” Loki says, tipping his head slightly. “You stayed for a lot of seasons. Even through that miserable amnesia arc.”

Mobius snorts. “Never overestimate the pull of a steady paycheck. I still get decent residuals from that show. But after a while they didn’t want to pay me what I deserved, and I got bored playing a time cop. Wanted to do something new and different. Get out of my comfort zone.”

“Which is why you’re here,” Loki says, a flat, difficult-to-read expression on his face. If Mobius didn’t know better he’d almost say Loki looked upset, which doesn’t make any sense.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Mobius allows. He picks at his food as they fall into an awkward silence, until finally he decides to just say it. “It’s been nice getting to know you, though.”

Loki looks up at that, slightly surprised, before a careful smile spreads across his face. “Yes. It has.”

~~~~~

New York Film Festival, October

“This is inhumane,” Loki whines the moment they step out of the limo and onto the red carpet.

“You’re the one who insisted on wearing a backless outfit,” Mobius reminds him. “I warned you.”

Not far away from where they stand, the fans lining the barricades are bundled up against the frigid wind of the unseasonable cold snap that had hit New York a day before the festival. Even Mobius is uncomfortably cold, and he’s wearing a wool suit. A new bespoke Italian wool suit that Loki had insisted upon for the festival. He almost wore a scarf, too, before Loki objected. Even though it was a nice scarf. Mobius had thought the outfit was pretty sharp, actually.

Clearly, Loki has somewhat warped views on what is appropriate for the weather, because he’s wearing some kind of shiny something that Mobius doesn’t even know how to describe—like a pair of trousers with a backless waistcoat attached on top, and nothing else. Christ, this man is dead set on ruining him. Especially because he huddles close for warmth, and Mobius has really no choice but to wrap his arms around him as hundreds of camera flashes go off from the press corps area nearby.

They’ve never been this close. Mobius has pressed a hand to his lower back, and Loki has draped himself off Mobius’s elbow, casual signs of affection that are easy, but this is quite beyond that. His hands splay over Loki’s bare skin as Loki tucks himself against his chest, and suddenly their faces are bare inches apart.

“You should kiss me,” Loki murmurs.

Mobius’s brain experiences a full shutdown, and it takes several moments to reboot. “What?” he manages, his voice strangled.

“We haven’t kissed for the cameras yet.”

Mobius does not remind him that they have not kissed at all, because they’re not actually dating. They don’t have to kiss. Lots of celebrity couples keep those things more private. Certainly plenty of them have never locked lips on the red carpet. Of course, Mobius knows as well as Loki that there have been rumors—blind items, chatter in the tabloids—that their relationship is just for PR. Which is true, but that’s not what they want people to think. A kiss would help sell it. That’s all this is.

No more than a few seconds can have passed, but it feels like an eternity before he manages to give a small nod. Loki is taller than him, so he has to stretch up on his toes a little as Loki dips his head to meet him. It doesn’t need to be more than a chaste press, but Loki’s lips, slightly tacky from the gloss he’s wearing, move softly against his and linger with the barest tug on Mobius’s lower lip as they part. It very effectively punches all the air from his lungs and leaves him reeling, which is kind of suboptimal because they’re still standing on the red carpet. Then there’s the fact that Loki just stares at him after they part, his eyes slightly wide like he hadn’t really meant to do that.

“Your lips are cold,” Mobius blurts, somewhat nonsensically, because he has no idea what else to say.

It turns out to be the right thing, though, because Loki laughs softly. “Can’t imagine why,” he drawls. He pulls away slightly, and Mobius tries not to feel disappointed about that. “Can we go inside now?”

“Just a few more minutes, sweetheart.” The endearment slips out, and he can feel Loki staring at him, but he doesn’t look over.

Instead, he does his job. Slide to the side so Loki’s outfit is visible. Lace their fingers together when Loki grabs his hand. Smile for the cameras.

Ignore the massive, hard knot settling into his gut.

~~~~~

Paris, France, November

“Yeah, I got it,” Mobius says over the phone as he wrestles his suitcase through the narrow hallway. “I’ll read it soon. It does look interesting.”

“The director specifically inquired about your schedule,” Ravonna tells him. “This is a very good sign, Mobius. You’re on people’s minds.”

“I know,” he sighs, because he’s tacitly admitting that she was right.

Even if this movie isn’t what he’s after, the fact that people are actually interested in him for the first time in… well, he can’t remember—it’s definitely good. And a little surprising. It’s not that he didn’t think the plan would work, but— ok, he didn’t really think this plan would work. Apparently he was wrong about that.

The numbers on the door to the hotel suite that’s been booked for them are ornately wrought in gold leaf, and he blinks at them for a moment before fumbling with the key. To say he doesn’t stay in places like this would be vastly understating things. The concierge had looked almost offended when he said he could handle is own bags. He’s a simple guy, not built for a life like this. Ravonna is rambling in his ear as he finally manages to get the door open, but when he steps into the suite he interrupts her without a thought.

“Ravonna, I’m gonna have to call you back.”

It’s huge, of course, and outfitted in Rococo fashion, with a large sitting area, what looks to be an office-slash-library, another sitting room, a bathroom larger than his first apartment, and a bedroom with a massive four-poster bed. One bed. He’s still staring at it when Loki pops up from where he’d been reclining on one of the couches and walks over to him.

“Where’s the bellboy?” he asks, peeking around Mobius’s back as if one might be hiding there. “I was going to send for champagne.”

“It’s ten in the morning,” Mobius protests, only half paying attention.

“Mimosas, Mobius. Catch up.”

“Sorry, is that the only bed in here?”

Loki pauses in his route to the room’s telephone and looks back at him, confused. “Of course. Didn’t they tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“One of those blind items about us was definitely leaked by a hotel staff member. The one about separate rooms? We can’t afford those kinds of rumors. Hence.” Loki waves his arm at the bed, then blithely continues on to the phone.

It makes sense of course, they would be sharing a room and a bed if they were really dating, but that doesn’t make it any easier for Mobius to deal with. “I guess there are a lot of couches,” he allows. None of them look like they’ll be great for his back, but it’s only a couple of days.

Loki frowns at him. “You can’t honestly be planning to sleep on a couch, Mobius,” he scoffs. “The bed is plenty big enough for the two of us. Plus, the cleaning staff might notice.”

“Yeah, of course,” Mobius says, biting down on an exasperated sigh. He’s jet lagged, and exhausted, and being reminded of how much of an act this whole thing is frays his last nerve. “It never ends,” he groans.

“I don’t understand why you’re so upset about this,” Loki counters. “It’s not that big of a big deal.”

“Heaven forbid we actually get some moments where we don’t have to be performing, even when we’re alone!”

Loki goes stiff, his mouth narrowing in to a hard line, and Mobius knows he’s made a mistake. “Well. I’m sorry that this is so difficult for you,” he says, his voice cold and calm in the very worst way.

“Now wait a second, it’s not about—” Mobius tries, but Loki cuts him off.

“Excuse me, I need to use the restroom,” he says, then turns swiftly on his heel and marches into it, slamming the door behind him.

Mobius winces. Christ, he mucked this one up good. They’d been getting along so well that it’d been easy to sell that they enjoyed each other’s company, but this certainly isn’t going to help things. This trip was supposed to be a ‘romantic Parisian getaway’ for the two of them. Now it seems like they’ll be testing the limits of their acting ability. Bitterly, he thinks that Loki’s clearly a good enough actor that he shouldn’t have any trouble.

The bathroom door stays firmly shut for a long time, so Mobius the only thing he really he can. He unpacks the clothes that will wrinkle and puts them out to be pressed, pokes around the library for any interesting books—which he discovers must be mostly treated for show, given that they clearly haven’t been opened in quite a long time, and anyway are all in French—he even orders a bottle of champagne sent up, along with some fresh squeezed orange juice for good measure. After a while, when Loki still hasn’t emerged, Mobius hesitantly approaches and knocks softly.

“Loki? You ok?”

At first it doesn’t seem like there will be an answer, but there’s a soft curse, then the door flings open and Loki stares at him blankly. He’s wearing a bathrobe, and his hair is wet.

“Were you showering?” Mobius asks without thinking. It’s not really any of his business.

“I was in the bath,” Loki answers, his voice even. His face his carefully arranged, neither upset nor relaxed, but still, Mobius can’t help but feel like they took three steps backwards. “Did you want the shower?”

“Actually, yeah, if it’s not too much trouble. Planes, you know,” Mobius tries, offering a tentative smile.

“Right, of course,” Loki says with excessive politeness. “It’s all yours.”

“I ordered that champagne you wanted, by the way,” Mobius offers. “Orange juice too. Dunno if there was any other fancy stuff you wanted.”

That seems to take Loki by surprise. “Oh. Thank you.”

“Look, I’m sorry about earlier,” Mobius says in a rush, wanting to get it out before Loki can interrupt him again. “I was just— well, tired from all the travel, and I reacted poorly. You’re right, the bed is huge. And for what it’s worth, this isn’t difficult for me. I mean, spending time with you. I enjoy it.”

Those words have the curious property of being simultaneously entirely too honest and a massive lie, because this has in truth become incredibly difficult for him. Difficult not to give himself away. Difficult to reconcile what they do in public with their actual relationship. Difficult to keep from falling further and further in love with Loki every moment they spend together.

Loki’s expression softens, stuck somewhere between disbelief and relief before one corner of his mouth finally tugs upward. “That’s— well, that’s nice of you to say.”

“It’s the truth, Loki. You’re a great person.”

“That’s not a common opinion, I’m afraid,” Loki says dryly, quirking an eyebrow at him.

“Well, they’re wrong,” Mobius insists. “They don’t really know you.”

“And you do?”

Mobius nods confidently. “I do now. And I know I’m lucky to be your… friend,” he finishes, just managing to avoid saying something absurd like boyfriend or partner. They’re friends now, that’s not a stretch to say.

For some reason Loki flinches at that, though, so subtly it’s almost invisible. Then he’s smiling quickly to cover it, falling into his usual teasing tone as he says, “You’re right, you are lucky, Mobius. Two days of basking in my glorious presence. How will you survive?” Barely, Mobius thinks, but he chuckles all the same. “Hey, you wanna go out after this? I’m famished, and we could see some sites?”

“Sure you want to?” Loki asks, his expression sobering a touch. “We could just order room service. I mean, if you want some time off from performing…”

Yup, Mobius is gonna regret saying that for a long time. He can’t explain that it’s easy for him to act like he’s Loki’s boyfriend. That he’s not actually pretending when he ends up giving him smitten looks from across a cafe table. (Mobius has seen the paparazzi photos in the tabloids. Photographic proof of how utterly gone he is, which is all fine because that’s what they want the world to see. People don’t realize that Mobius isn’t that good of an actor. Not this time, anyway.)

Instead, he says, too honest once again, “No, I want to. Do you come to Paris a lot?”

“Yes.”

“Then show me your favorite places, ok?”

“All right,” Loki says, slowly smiling again. A genuine smile this time, pleased, like no one’s ever asked him for something like that before. “It’s a date.”

It is a date, so much a date that Mobius has to remind himself frequently that it’s not real. They eat crêpes at a café, their legs tangling together under the table, then Loki drags him off to obscure museums and tiny yet stunning churches. They stroll through the Tuileries hand-in-hand as Loki eats gelato despite the cold, and Loki leans in to kiss the corner of his mouth as they sit by the Seine. (The thrill Mobius gets at that is severely tempered by the fact that he can see the paparazzi photographing them from across the river. It’s just a photo op. It’s always a photo op.)

It’s dark outside by the time Loki leads him to the catacombs, which Mobius is pretty sure are actually closed. Not that that makes much of a difference when you’re as famous and filthy rich as Loki. What it means, though, is that they have the place to themselves, which is actually pretty creepy considering they’re surrounded by row upon row of stacked human bones.

“Of course this would be one of your favorite places,” Mobius laughs.

Loki scoffs in obviously put-upon offense, pressing one elegant hand to his chest. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“How often do you come here?”

“Every time I’m in the city,” Loki admits, grinning at him.

He’d walked a bit ahead, but now he comes back to stand by Mobius’s side as he stares up at the vaulted ceiling near where they’d entered. Mobius is so distracted by their surroundings that he doesn’t notice Loki reaching out until a hand slips into his, linking their fingers together. His head snaps to the side in surprise, but Loki is looking resolutely away.

“There’s no one here, you know,” he ventures, because apparently he can’t let himself have nice things.

“I know,” Loki says. He flashes a quick smile Mobius’s way before turning back to their surroundings. His fingers loosen a bit, as if giving Mobius the chance to pull away, which is of course the last thing Mobius wants to do. He tightens his own grip, and thinks he sees Loki’s lips quirk into a smile before he starts tugging him down a corridor.

Loki talks animatedly as they walk, telling stories about the catacombs that may or may not be factual, but Mobius finds that he doesn’t really care. He spends more time looking at Loki, anyway, at the way that the warm light reflects off the walls and illuminates the cut of his cheekbones and the curve of his lips. Maybe parts of this aren’t real. Maybe Loki isn’t really his, not in the way he wants, but Mobius wasn’t lying when he said he was lucky to call him a friend, and he decides then that he’s going to enjoy the time he does get, no matter how much it hurts in the end.

~~~~~

Torino Film Festival, December

Mobius doesn’t walk the red carpet in Torino; his flight is due to get in late, and Loki is busy with a press event for his movie anyway. He’s due to meet Loki later for some exclusive party, but in the mean time he has work to do; his agent managed to score him a dinner meeting with a director he’s always admired but never dreamed he’d get to work with, and who’s got a new, hush-hush movie entering pre-production soon. He refuses to get his hopes up, but the meeting goes really well, even if it does take an unexpected turn near the end.

“I hear you’re involved with Loki Odinson now,” the director says conversationally.

“Yeah,” Mobius confirms, a little uncomfortably. He’s never sure what to say when people start asking about his personal life, and it’s even more awkward now. “Do you know him?”

“Oh, yes. He was supposed to be in one of my movies a couple of years ago.”

“What happened?”

The director gives him an inscrutable look. “The official reason was scheduling,” he says after a moment. “But we couldn’t insure him.”

Shit, Mobius should have known. A ‘couple of years ago’ was when Loki started sliding off the rails: partying endlessly, walking off sets, publicly picking fights with his golden-boy actor brother. Loki generally doesn’t talk about it, so he knows very little but what was in the press, which is probably half bullshit and anyway definitely not the whole story. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to say, how much he should know, but in the end he doesn’t really need to say anything.

“You seem good for him,” the director continues. “I always did think he just needed someone to really believe in him. I’m glad he found that.”

“Er, thanks,” Mobius manages, his throat abruptly tight. “I don’t think I have a lot to do with it, though.”

“Come now, Mobius. Don’t you know you’re in the film industry? Never sell yourself short,” he says, a smirk playing on his lips.

Mobius is still pondering his words while he’s waiting near the entrance to the party for Loki to arrive so they can go in together. He’s running late, of course, so Mobius ends up so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he doesn’t notice Loki’s approach until the other man is nearly in front of him. When he does, though, his mouth nearly drops open. Loki is wearing what amounts to little more than minuscule black hot pants with a sheer body suit over them, the gossamer fabric spotted with green crystals and black lace that resolves somewhat into snakes and foliage as he gets closer. Very few people could pull something like that off, but Loki is absolutely one of them.

Now Mobius understands the emerald green jacket and black silk shirt Loki had sent him to wear. They actually look like they belong together, complementary but not too matchy-matchy, though Loki still outshines him by several megawatts. Loki smirks at his no doubt stunned expression, reaching up to unbutton several the shirt almost halfway down his chest, then drags his hands down Mobius’s front and leans in close to his ear.

“It’s a party, Mobius,” he murmurs before Mobius can object. “Live a little.”

They’re extensively photographed standing in front of some kind of wall made of dense shrubbery before finally they can go inside. There, at least, there won’t be any press or paparazzi, though still plenty of eyes on them. It should be relatively low pressure, and it is at first; they chat with the other guests, and though Loki knows more people than him, he does run into someone he did a movie with years ago and who he has a nice time catching up with. But then, as the night gets later, Loki insists on dragging him onto the dance floor. Mobius doesn’t dance. It’s just not in his makeup, but there’s no saying no to Loki. That’s what he tells himself, instead of admitting that he’s a complete pushover where this man is concerned.

Mobius does his best to try to move to the beat, which makes Loki laugh at him and grab his hips in an attempt to get him to swing them, or something. It’s definitely not going to work. What’s worse, though, is when Loki gives up and just starts grinding against him. Christ, Mobius doesn’t know where to put his hands, and he knows this isn’t supposed to be a big deal but it’s a lot to have Loki pressed against him like this, and if he keeps it up things are going to get really uncomfortable really fast—

“Need some air,” Mobius gasps, wrenching himself away and stumbling off the dance floor.

He has no idea where he��s going, but he finds an exit into some kind of enclosed courtyard. There are a few people scattered around, mostly smoking, but they pay him no attention as he hurries past them and finds a relatively secluded alcove behind a bush to collapse into. It’s quiet outside and no one disturbs him, which is why he jumps a mile when a hand lands on his shoulder a short time later.

“Mobius?” Loki asks, staring at him in concern. “Are you ok?”

“Oh yeah, fine and dandy,” he lies with an admittedly weak smile. “Just got a little tight in there, is all.”

“We can leave, if you want.”

“Only if you’re ready. I don’t want to cut your night short.”

Loki sighs, and leans against the wall next to him. “These things are never quite as fun when you’re sober.” He shivers almost violently in the winter chill, crossing his arms over his front, which does precisely nothing when you’re wearing as little as he is.

Mobius doesn’t really think, just says, “c’mere,” and pulls him into his arms, wrapping him up against the cold, and Loki tucks himself against him. It’s like New York all over again, except there aren’t a hundred cameras and screaming fans around them. Just them. Just Loki’s face, so close to his. Without planning to, he reaches up and presses a thumb to the side of Loki’s lower lip, and it still feels warm against his finger but he wonders if it would be cold against his mouth.

“Mobius,” Loki whispers.

He doesn’t know which of them moves first, or maybe they both move at once, but those lips are on his again, and it’s nothing like the brief, press-approved pecks that they’ve shared before. Loki tips his head and slots their mouths firmly together, parting his lips, licking past his teeth almost tentatively at first and then with more confidence when their tongues tangle together. They kiss and they kiss until Mobius’s lungs are burning, but he doesn’t dare pull away, doesn’t dare to break the spell. Then Loki shifts in his arms, and the press of their bodies together draws a low groan from his throat that finally makes Loki withdraw. Mobius is prepared for regret, or excuses, or an attempt to laugh it off—anything but how dark his eyes are when they meet Mobius’s.

“We should go,” Loki says, and the low, rough tone of his voice reaches all the way into Mobius’s gut and tugs.

It’s a miracle that they make it back to the right limo, and no sooner has Mobius settled into the back than Loki is climbing directly into his lap. There’s a broad, mischievous grin on his face before he ducks down to kiss a path along the edge of Mobius’s jaw and onward to work a spot below his ear in a way that Mobius is almost certain is going to leave a mark. Christ, it doesn’t matter, though, because it’s so damned good. His hands slide up Loki’s thighs over the lace bodysuit until his thumbs hit the crease of his hips, and when he digs his fingers into the sides of his ass Loki moans and his hips grind forward against the rapidly tightening region of Mobius’s pants.

“You want me,” Loki murmurs near his ear, punctuating it with a little nip to the taut muscle of his neck before he sits back with a teasing smile.

“Of course I do, you absolute demon,” Mobius groans. “Look at you.” He plucks at the lace. “This isn’t clothes. I swear you’ve been trying to drive me insane.”

“Is it working?” Loki asks, bending down close to the side of his face again.

“What do you think?” Mobius growls, then captures his mouth in another bruising kiss.

Getting up to the hotel room is a fucking trial, mostly because Loki refuses to detach himself from Mobius. Thank god there’s a discreet, private entrance to the hotel and an elevator that takes them nearly directly up to their suite. Somehow Loki manages to shed the bodysuit almost instantly—Mobius doesn’t even understand how it was fastened—leaving him in just the skin-tight booty shorts, and Mobius short-circuits briefly at the sight of all that bare skin. Then there’s the way his half-hard cock is straining against the fabric, which sends a jolt of white-hot desire surging deep into Mobius’s gut. Loki turns and walks toward the bedroom, swinging his hips in a way that should be illegal, and by the time Mobius manages to scramble after him he finds Loki perched on the edge of the bed and leaning back on his hands.

“Come here,” he says, his voice nearly a purr, and Mobius’s feet obey before he even registers the request.

He stands between Loki’s spread legs as the other man looks up at him through long eyelashes thick with mascara, and feels like he’s standing on the edge of a precipice. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he murmurs, letting his fingers trail lightly across Loki’s cheek. It seems impossible, but there’s no mistaking the hungry look Loki is giving him.

“Why not?” Loki asks, one perfect eyebrow arcing upward. “You want me. I want you. It doesn’t have to be complicated.”

Right. It doesn’t have to mean anything, he might have well said. Which is true. It doesn’t have to. It can just be two people finding pleasure in each other’s company. Friends with benefits are a thing. Not a thing that Mobius has ever done, but a thing nonetheless. Loki is offering everything he wanted (not everything), everything he never thought he’d get (not even close).

Why not, indeed?

After all, it’s simple enough to lean down to kiss him in answer, to let Loki’s nimble fingers efficiently divest him of his shirt and trousers. It’s simple to lose himself in the eager slide of hands and the slick heat of Loki’s mouth; so very simple to push him backward into the bed and take him apart with mouth and fingers until he’s begging, to press inside him and surrender to the pleasure that floods through his body and overwhelms all of his senses.

What’s not simple is how he feels afterward, when Loki sprawls sleepily across his chest and tangles their legs together under the covers. When they spend all night like that, wrapped up in each other’s arms. When, the next morning, Loki acts like absolutely nothing has changed, like he hasn’t just completely upended Mobius’s life.

Mobius lays in the bed for a while, just watching as Loki blithely prattles on about their schedule for the day while he rifles through his wardrobe, and then he knows: it’s going to be fucking complicated.

~~~~~

Hollywood, California, New Year’s Eve

Mobius doesn’t know what he was expecting after Loki texts him and tells him to come over early before the party, that he should bring his suit and get ready at his place, but it wasn’t for Loki to drag him inside by the collar and press him against the wall by the door. Certainly he wasn’t expecting to be kissed breathless, or for Loki to lean in close and whisper, “Will you fuck me before we go tonight?”

They’ve slept with each other a few times since Italy. Usually after one of their scheduled appearances—which Loki now fills with suggestive innuendos and hidden, risqué touches because apparently his new goal in life is to make Mobius’s life as difficult as possible—but once Loki showed up at his house in L.A. in the middle of the night wearing nothing but a silk robe and a wicked grin. Sex with Loki is frequently playful and teasing, sometimes tender (Mobius tries not to think to hard about those moments), always mind-blowing, but it’s never been like this. Desperate. He doesn’t know what to do with that, but he also doesn’t know how to say no to Loki, so he nods and lets himself be dragged off toward the bedroom.

For someone who’s main goal seemed to be sex, Loki is surprisingly fully dressed in black slacks and a plain white button-down, as if his unexpected request was a last minute decision. He allows Mobius the handful of seconds it takes him to hang up his suit for tonight on an empty hook in the closet before he pounces, pulling him into another bruising kiss as his hands drop to Mobius’s belt. It’s overwhelming, frankly, but not so overwhelming that he doesn’t feel Loki’s hands tremble as they fumble with the buckle, and that yanks him firmly out of the hazy, lust-fueled fantasy.

“Hey, hold on a second,” Mobius says as he traps Loki’s hands with his own. “What’s going on with you?”

Loki actually whines in frustration, trying ineffectually to tug out of Mobius’s grip before fixing him with a scathing glare. “Nothing. I’m fine,” he growls. “Are you going to fuck me or not?”

“Actually, no. Not if you don’t tell me what’s gotten into you,” Mobius tells him flatly, punctuating it with an unimpressed look that makes him turn his face away. “This isn’t like you, Loki.”

“How would you know what’s like me?” Loki snaps, finally yanking his hands out of Mobius’s grasp and storming across the room. “A few months and you’re an expert now?”

“I think I know you pretty well, yeah,” Mobius counters, “and I know when you’re upset.”

“I’m not upset,” Loki hisses in a way that does nothing to sell that assertion. “I’m just tense about tonight and need something to take the edge off. If you’re not interested, I’m sure I can find someone else.”

Mobius can’t quite suppress a wince, but he summons what mettle he can and stares defiantly back at Loki. “Sorry, not buying it.”

The look Loki gives him is pure ice. “You think I can’t? That I couldn’t call up any number of people and have them here at a snap of my fingers?”

“Oh no, I believe that part,” Mobius says with a humorless chuckle and an utterly mirthless smile. He makes himself stroll casually over to where Loki stands, getting into his space again. “I’m sure you could get just about anyone. I don’t think you will, though, because you won’t violate the agreement.”

The agreement—worked out between Loki’s people and Mobius’s people, and which they had precisely no say over—specified that neither of them would sleep with other people for the duration, no matter how discreet they thought they could be, because the potential for a leak was just too great. For Mobius, it certainly wasn’t going to be a problem. He didn’t fool himself that it would be the same for Loki. After Torino he’d written the sex off as a fluke, a moment of madness on Loki’s part perhaps, but when it kept happening he figured that the only reason Loki was sleeping with him now was because he couldn’t have anyone else. It made more sense than the alternative, that Loki actually wants him, of all people.

Loki stares at him for a long moment, his eyes dipping to Mobius’s lips in a way that seems almost involuntarily before he drags them back up again. When he speaks again his voice is so low it’s nearly a murmur. “How do you know I haven’t already?”

“Because I know you, Loki,” Mobius answers, just as quietly. “Maybe you are tense about tonight, but that’s not all of it. So I’m gonna ask again: what’s going on?”

Another beat. Loki looks off across the room, biting his lower lip so fiercely Mobius thinks he’s going to draw blood, and when he finally turns back he looks… shattered. “Tonight’s your final obligation,” he says, his voice unsteady. “Must be a relief.”

“…What?”

He swallows and sniffs, tipping his chin up in a weak pantomime of indifference. “No more performing. You won’t have to pretend any longer.”

Mobius can’t help it: he laughs. He doesn’t mean to, especially since Loki’s clearly upset about this in some way that he can’t quite figure out, but the whole thing is just absurd.

Predictably, Loki looks taken aback at this response. “What’s so funny?”

“Loki, I haven’t been pretending for months,” Mobius sighs. At this point, it seems silly to hold anything back. He might as well know. “I’m in love with you. So if you think tonight is going to be a relief, well. You couldn’t be more wrong.”

In all the ways he might have pictured Loki reacting to such news, he never expected him to look utterly baffled. “But…” Loki trails off, searching Mobius’s face; for what, Mobius doesn’t know. “You can’t be.”

“Oh, I assure you, I can,” Mobius says, smiling a little miserably. Loki’s just staring with his mouth hanging open, so he forges on. “Look, I know you didn’t want things to be complicated, and this is the exact opposite. I never wanted to put you in this position—”

The rest of whatever he was going to say is cut off when Loki kisses him again, and there’s some desperation in it, sure, but not in the same way. Not even close. Loki’s hands are holding either side of his face, long fingers digging into his hair, his kisses slow, deep, and utterly all-encompassing. Mobius has never been kissed like this, with such focus and care, with such pure emotion poured into it and leaking out with every gasped breath. Even when Loki finally breaks the kiss he presses their foreheads together, like he can’t bear any further space between them.

“Please, complicate it,” he breathes into the narrow gap, shifting his head slightly so their noses brush together.

“Does that mean…?” Mobius trails off, because it kinda feels like a stupid question, but still. He’d like to be sure.

Loki pulls back so he can look him in the eye as he says, “I��m in love with you, Mobius. I just never thought…” He glances down and gives his head a little shake. “You’re one of the few genuinely good people in this business, you know that? I don’t deserve you.”

“Hey, no. None of that,” Mobius says, cupping a hand around Loki’s cheek and urging his face upward again. “I won’t have you talking badly about the person I love,” he teases gently.

“Mobius,” Loki groans as he rolls his eyes.

“You are good, Loki,” Mobius insists, his expression sobering. “You are.”

He honestly expects more arguing, but Loki just looks off across the room, the corners of his eyebrows thoughtfully quirking upward in the middle. “I wanted it to be real,” he says quietly. “But the further things went, the more I convinced myself it never could be. That you’d never… never really feel that way about me. Even now, I feel as if this is some kind of fever dream. I’m going to wake up tomorrow and you’ll be gone.”

“I won’t be,” Mobius promises, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind Loki’s ear. “Is that what this was all about? One last hurrah before the end?”

“Something like that,” Loki admits wryly. Perfect white teeth dig into his lower lip as he slowly drags it through them. “I wanted it to be hard and rough. I wanted to feel you for days afterward.”

“Jesus Loki,” Mobius huffs, gaping at him in disbelief. He swallows hard, unsure of how to respond to that. “And now? What do you want?”

Loki lifts a hand to Mobius’s face, dragging a finger lightly along his hairline and down to the crest of his cheekbone. “Just you,” he murmurs. “In whatever way you’ll have me.”

How about that? It turns out that it is simple, after all.

#lokius #loki x mobius #mobius x loki #loki laufeyson #mobius m. mobius #loki tv #loki series #loki fanfic #lokius fanfic #lokius fic #time husbands #wowki #my fic #1 million words challenge

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magnusmodig · 5 months

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╰┈➤ VI TALKS ABOUT THOR/MCU / @requiend / no longer accepting !

🔥 allow me to enable, with any topic of your choosing !

||. "Thor: The Dark World" (Thor 2) was a financial success, well-received by everyone who isn't part of the toxic Loki!Fandom and is absolute peak Thor content and I can prove it.

I've done extensive research on the critical and box office success of the Thor franchise and in this research I discovered the following:

Financial Success:

On average, each film of the THOR franchise grossed about 3.75x the production budget of each film, altogether.

Thor: Love and Thunder and Thor (2011) both made ~3.0x their production budget

Thor: The Dark World did 4.3x better

Thor: Ragnarok only did 4.7

This actually means that, adjusting this scale for inflation between 2011-2017, AND for Thor's popularity after his first debut, Thor actually makes consistent money. Thor: Ragnarok is actually on average with the rest of Thor's films, INCLUDING Thor (2011), so despite all of the YouTube critics lording it as the best thing ever because Tai.ka Wa.i.ti.ti wrote it, the fact of the matter is Gagnarok is just... 'a good Thor Movie' just the same as ALL the rest of them. (Which is actually, technically, bad, because it threw away everything about him and we saw how well that turned out in Endgame's cinematography/framing and L+T. Nobody appreciates it.)

Critically Well-Received:

If you chronologically search for reviews of Thor: The Dark World and actually read most reviews, while Dark World wasn't a box office smashing success, it was generally well received by the public (until the loki fans ruined it.), and any critiques that were given were valid ones, or directed towards the film editors since the THOR films usually have a lot of ground to cover, and not a lot of time.

you can read some reviews here:

SlashFilms / Oct 22nd, 2013

Never Been Better / Nov 8th, 2013

RoboHeartBeat / Nov 8th, 2013

Slice of SciFi / Nov 8th, 2013

AIPT Comics / Nov 8th, 2013

Ajaydsouza / Nov 12th, 2013

AustinChronicle / Nov 8th, 2013

The Providence Journal / Nov 7th, 2013

People saying that it's "the worst Thor Film of all time" or that it was 'boring' are generally people who, I kid you not, wanted Tom Hiddleston to write the next Thor Movie, only went to watch the film for Loki/because Loki was in it, and otherwise complained about him "not having a lot of screen time" despite being a secondary character on par with Jane Foster. (Which, I understand that Loki is popular, and I think he's lovely and that Tom is a wonderful actor and we're absolutely blessed to have him and Chris Hemsworth in their respective roles, especially together – but Loki isn't the main character and he isn't supposed to be.)

Peak Thor Content

In this singular movie alone we get:

Absolutely the best character design for Thor out of all his appearances even up til now.

A sleek armor design

Chris' REAL HAIR being used instead of a wig (it's so pretty!)

even a better, more flowing cape design that was a real cape!! Not CGI like in Thor: Gagnarok!

The Entire Poncho Look

EXTREMELY complex and interesting dynamics with his entire family (Jane is included as part of the family.)

With Odin, he's subservient to a worrying degree, but still willing to rebel against him, even if that could mean banishment or being public enemy no.1 whilst his father is deranged.

Frigga as always is generally complicated, but they get along well enough, and she accepts Jane into the family immediately, and Thor thinks highly of her, even if he doesn't know her so well.

Loki's primarily in the Asgardian dungeons, but despite this, because he is in the back of Thor's mind even when Loki is away, the audience is CONSTANTLY thinking about Loki too. His presence is felt everywhere, and when the two brothers finally reunite on screen, it's after a year of separation and festering betrayal of their bond. Loki's redemption moment is in this film. ("Trust my rage") and it's probably one of the BEST brodinson moments of the entire series by far. Loki also spends most of his time outside of prison just trying to get Thor to break out of his apathy, which is nice.

And Jane and Thor are positively sweet! Their chemistry together is off the charts and so utterly wholesome. He perks up almost instantly when she finds her way back into his life, and I love that she actually helps him defeat the main villain, Malekith, with her science inventions. (2011-2015 jane foster is peak jane foster). I also think it's worth noting that the tone for their relationship is pretty clearly set in this film. He's a protector, she follows his lead, but he relies on her to keep him in check and assist him whenever she is able. They're great rulers together!

He has a subtle, sassy humour that oozes out of him in every scene where it's applicable for him to be a bit funny. Some of my favorites include:

Sif: I had this under control!

Thor: (smiling) Is that why everything is on fire?

Thor: (GETS BOMB-RUSHED BY A BRUTE IMMEDIATELY)

Thor: Hello. Brute: (ROARS IN HIS FACE)

Thor: I accept your surrender. Maurader Crowd: (CHEERS AND JEERS) Thor: (laughs silently. DESTROYS THE BRUTE IN ONE SWING.)

Thor: Thor:

Thor: Anyone else?

Loki: At least furnish me with a weapon. My daggers. Something!

Thor: (begrudgingly looks at him.)

Loki: (smiles)

Thor: (acquiesces)

Loki: At last! Common sense—....

literally this entire face

Thor: And I thought you liked tricks. (wiggles his whole body happily as he walks away laughing)

and also the ENTIRE space ship scene between him and loki. Not gonna cap that one past this but:

L: No don't hit the buttons press them. Gently. T: I AM ""presSING THem gENtLy"" it's nOT WORKING >:T

L: I think you missed a column. T: Shut up.

L: Congratulations! You just decapitated your grandfather.

L: Maybe I should try flying. :T I'm clearly the better pilot. T: Really? Well, between the two of us, which one can actually fly?

I COULD GO ON but i'll leave it here...for now..

#( ooc . ) — stories that leap from the page .#( answered . ) — black feathers fall to a raven's call .#( meta . ) — son of cosmos . lightning flows through thy veins .#requiend #(thor 2 is the best thor film don't @ me i could talk abt this film all day i've watched it 5 times in the past 2 months)

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nostalgia-tblr · 1 year

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Okay I am actually going to Discourse now, about that bit in that Thor film. I went to IMDB for the exact quotes!

"You know, it all makes sense now, why you favored Thor all these years, because no matter how much you claim to love me, you could never have a Frost Giant sitting on the throne of Asgard!"

SO. According to fandom, all of this can be taken as The Facts. As is the one about Loki being "no more than another stolen relic, locked up here until you might have use of me." The one about being a monster we all recognise as being the worst-case worries of someone who's just had his origin story suddenly and unexpectedly replaced with a new one and he's scared and upset and feels betrayed by his loved ones and all-in-all he's just having a shitty day. It is also assumed that every attempt Odin makes to dispute these Facts is him trying to cover for his own crimes. And then Odin falls asleep because ???? and so that means he's DEFINITELY lying.

But.

BUT!

What makes these things true? Can't the rest of it be based on fear rather than actual facts? Wouldn't that, y'know, fit perfectly with the emotions of the scene? And in plot terms if Odin does manage to reassure his anxious son then there's no rest of the film, is there? What a useful coincidence then that Odin has just fainted and is unable to talk Loki out of assuming the worst about everything!

Odin (and Frigga!!) doesn't have to have ACTUALLY favoured Thor but if there was ever a moment where wee growing-up Loki thought he did (which is pretty much a given, surely?) then it's going to suddenly come back to him now and OH LOOK there's a reason for Thor to have been the favourite so that means it must be true! It makes sense that he would be, so he must be! Right?? And apparently Odin has told Loki that he loves him, maybe even often. It might have been a lie but he did say it, he showed that kid some form of affection but now the kid is grown up and in existential turmoil and at this exact moment of course he doesn't believe it.

What I mean here, obvs, is that it's a bit odd for everyone to have just gone along with this rant and taken the angst-ridden fears of someone in the middle of an emotional crisis as being Objectively True Facts. And so Odin must be lying now and then and forever. He's a bad person, his son said so while crying his eyes out and refusing to accept any comfort from him! PROOF!!!

tl;dr - If I have to say "it's a mistake to assume that Loki can and should always be taken at his word" one more time...

#he's not even lying in this scene he's just fucked in the head!#what like you've never indulged your worst fears about someone when you were worrying that they didn't care about you?#by the normal rules of drama there's at least a 32% (i counted obviously) chance that Loki is Wrong in this scene #and yet???#mcu tag i guess #a character tag for not-an-alligator loki? surely you JEST?#thor movies

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lesbianlovelanguage · 2 years

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Invest your love, Invest your life

Continuation of my Death!Steve au. Contains discussions of religion and different afterlifes. Also tagging the people who seemed to really like the first one, cause y’all are the ones who got me to continue thinking about this au. Let me know if you’d like me to remove it/not tag you in the next one. @neonponders @mayraven1798 @quantumlocked310 @metalheadcowboy

On a cool night in the middle of night, two figures laid side by side in a meadow full of wild flowers. To any outsiders, they looked like just two boys, probably getting high and avoiding their parents. They’d be half right, Billy was definitely high and avoiding Neil after the man came home in an absolutely foul mood.

But there would be no way they could guess that one of the figures was Death himself, especially because the other boy simply called him Steve of all names.

But Death he was. Luckily for them, there were no observers though. No one to witness Steve swing his arms wildly in front of him as he recounted his more ridiculous soul pick-ups. No one to witness Billy’s utterly besotted face as he watched Steve rant about a slumber party turned satanic ritual, and how he really hadn’t wanted to deal with Lucifer that day, the guy’s a total dick with the worst hair.

“Wait, Lucifer is real?” Billy asked, sitting up and staring at Steve intensely. “Does that mean if... you know, when I... Would I have gone to hell?” His usually harsh voice always softened around Steve, but now it got smaller and smaller until he practically whispered the last word. Steve sat up too, frowning at the serious turn their conversation had suddenly taken. They hadn’t talked about the night they met ever.

“I mean, I don’t think so,” Steve said calmly. “I can’t remember what your file said exactly, but you aren’t Christian are you?” Billy weakly shook his head. Sure he wore his mother’s St. Christopher necklace, but he hadn’t actually believed in God since she left. What kind of God left a kid to deal with Neil alone after all?

“No, I always liked Norse myths better.” He didn’t mention that he always dreamed of his mother being more like Freya, who rode into battle and took half of the most valiant warriors with her to a beautiful field after their death.

“That’s right!” Steve’s pinched expression disappeared as he remembered the brief snatch of Billy’s file, something he had desperately tried to scrub from his mind before then. “It was Folkvangr! Freyja and Odin got in such an awful spat about it.” Steve looked so proud of himself, eyes gleaming like the starlight above them. Billy wasn’t sure what to say.

“You’re lying,” is what ended coming out. “I’m not even a warrior. Plus, if Lucifer is real, how can Freyja and Odin be real?”

Steve shrugged and looked down at his lap, beginning to pluck at the blades of grass, weaving them together. “It’s not a one or the other, Billy. They all exist. It just depends on what the person believed in.” Billy sensed that the conversation was making the usually jubilant and hyper Steve uncomfortable, though he wasn’t sure why. So, he tucked away the on-coming existential crisis and nudged at Steve’s pale knee with his boot. Steve looked back up, though he wouldn’t make eye contact.

“So, what’s Jesus like, if Lucifer is such a dick?” Steve made a weak attempt at a smile, but started to explain how different Jesus was from the human expectations and was actually the one who introduced Steve to weed. Eventually, the exuberance came back, Steve’s hands resuming their wild flailing and eyes bright, and Billy relaxed into the soothing cadence of his voice.

He didn’t move his foot away though, instead moving closer and eventually laying down right next to Steve’s sitting form. He fell asleep on the grass, under the stars, with stories of different gods from various pantheons bickering over the tiniest things.

#I have no idea where this came from #okay that's kind of a lie #I saw another post about how billy and the cat proved billy is a psychopath #and I really hate how they ignore the context of why he did what he did #but that's a different rant #idk I also like the idea of Billy believing in norse mythology #it fits him so well #tw discussions of death #also I'm working on the story of how billy and steve met rn and #it's a doozy y'all #tay writes #death!steve #harringrove #steve harrington #billy hargrove

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dentos-wife · 1 year

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Strangely enough when I though about how weird it was to marry the 2nd gen, I suddelnly realized that it's Chrom we are talking about. CHROM. The man who recruited an amnesiac, a thief partaking in his sister'assasination as well as Tharja and his 2 worst ennemies... maybe some players were right when they said Chrom would prefer Lucina off with someone he trust rather than a complete stranger.

However I have no idea how the Fates character would take it, but it won't stop me from making Odin and Laslow grandfather

For me personally I like things to be equal, there's a bit of a power balance once time travel is involved not that I'm saying it's bad in any way I just don't personally like it. And well I'd hope Lucina doesn't marry a complete stranger and Chrom trusts too easily anyway. Him and Corrin would be buds. What people aren't realizing is the version of the child from this world still exists too, that's kind of why I prefer the future units disappearing it's not fair to the living kid to have this version around, unless they f off and never interact with their family but that's not right either. It's just...a relationship mess

#anon asks

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olivedoesmagic · 2 years

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Chapter 94: What’s the Use in Feeling Blue

youtube

“Well have fun and enjoy your kwami”

“Maelk if god of light and deception” that was my kwami upon the class.

“Do you like the ring”

“I here you wont abuse me like my past owner, I love to meet Adamith Froster 2”

“Right” I said. I was watching defence against the dark arts on youtube, its a series by diongoespew, that will be taken down one day via divination. And suddenly I was in her class! We were making kwamis for some reason…and she got a white peacock adn I got a snake demon thing, he says to say, MaleckyI, all kwamis are gods and his in my rainbow golden ring, now I just need a real one for him and a spell to keep him safe worst case scenario. It was a good class, she was sweet and gentle, and a wonderful teacher, I know its a “role play” for the actor on youtube, but she’s really in that world, and role plays in chinese and voodoo and omshi religions are sometimes how we teleport, dream, and show our worlds. I have dreams I’m a dreamer of the dream realm, its a long long long long story, and I’m also imortally 16 with splinters, taht I can recall via hunting with sam and dean from supernatural. This might just seem like therien, COPING LINKS, Otherkind, or otherkin, but its so much more that that. You want a real proof of hero? Go to the gods of channeling, make one up and talk to it, or call upon Budidi and sung woo kong.

I’ve also been learning about how disabilities were once gods in aztec mythology, who became characters and drugs and their illnesses, and that’s how heroes and villains exist in several worlds. I’ve been hanging out with kids too much. I can feel myself slipping away and my brain loosing its mascing, so I think I need a break from the young tykes, cus toning it down was my curse in a past life, and I just…need to take the norse approach if they or their parents can’t handle that, they can’t handle me So sorry. In norse culture when I was balder oh so long ago, I recall, us being taught dark things from a young age, to prepare us for war, and tirumph and disability, for that was common amongst, then I met odin and he took me in and gave me a norse name and cut my hair and braided it later, and we became the first ever vikings. I have a brain tumor its a long story, its making me mad and my teeth rott, but my mind has soared through such potential, and I have learned so much. I have all the symptoms kakoopah the god of disability, several doctors, and also some physhcians magickally have confirmed it to me, but my mother won’t get me checked out. I’m also blind and deaf but I have a different form of those disabilities for them that seems so common people would never believe me.

I can’t see objects, the white out contacts seem normal, I see everything blurred legally, get colors mixed and have snythensia. I was retarded as a child, but learned speech therpay, masking, and social lessons and now nobody would ever know, I am so well spoken that is so hard to conjure a belief that I could be disabled even if it is my superpower. I think in anyones voice in my head and like flyn rider they always get the nose wrong. I am the goddess choice, bestowed upon me by Acrians my teacher for he is the god Speaker and his job is to bestow honours and take them away. Her class was quite as I wrote this down, but I believe anyone can do anything, after all rock lee learned to kick.

The world is so much queer, and gay, and siabled, and dark and differently skinned then anyone could ever fathom because the victors always won the rep. I planted several olive trees among the bark of rootbeer, and I’ve been helping ghost write sesion grim, my splinter was sent to dc comics, and I wrote myself back in. My lantern score keeps going down every time i do a good deed, and so many heroes in comics were once gods of my trial “hero the god oosti” but now I sound crazy. I always have been, I guess my sickness is getting to me. It’s either a tumor or cancer, I really hope I can still see.

Olive Brimstone

10:39 PM

9/7/2022

Check with apollo if you hate me and tell him my diary sent you!

#sicklit #insanity #magick #miraculous ladybug #pop culture magick #disability

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worstloki · 4 years

Conversation

Odin: Loki is my weakest son.

Tony: "WEaKEst" son?? Who rates their children like that???

Odin: A brave, just, and noble father.

Tony: I would never say one of my kids was weak! Strength comes in many forms!

Odin, wiping away a tear: He lacks them all.

#the saddest part of this is that when i was wondering who should be talking with odin I only had the options of tony or scott #they're the only parents that are... healthy?? for their kids??#maybe i missed someone along the way but thanos and howard and odin were all trash #we don't hear of nat or steve or bucky or clint's - OH CLINT #well actually #he kills for 5 years so maybe not that healthy #he interacts with his kids fine though and that's better than anything odin has done on-screen #so far the worst dad rankings include Howard in 3rd place #I don't know whether Odin or Thanos should be 1st because while Thanos physically and emotionally abused his children it wasn't for long #we're not told how long that went on for but Odin was intentionally raising loki in a toxic environment and lied to him for 1000+ years #I really don't want to pit them against each other but if we're going of fathering ability I think Odin's impact would've been worse #only because at least thanos didn't hide what he was doing from his children? they knew what they were doing could be seen as bad #and because of the time period the abusive behaviour went on for #I don't think I can say one is worse than the other at this point though since we don't know much about Odin in the past #we know Thanos was replacing Nebula's body parts with machines and pitting children against each other #so at least odin never got around to physical torture (i hope??)#i don't think you can say one form of abuse is worse than another though so cant really rank those two #thanos and odin can share the pedestal #howard can get pushed up to second place now

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lokisprettygirl · 2 years

Text

Hit me Baby, One more Time (Wrestler Loki x Female Reader)

Read chapter 24 here

Summary : Loki bares his soul open for you. Well just a part of it and you both come to an agreement.

Trigger warning : Mentions of Statutory rape, Abortion, Child abuse, blackmail. Don't read if it's not your thing and then complain.

When you heard a knock on the door, you got up from the bed and took a deep breath. You looked up as you opened the door and there he was with his typical smirky smiley look on his face. His hands inside the pocket of his jeans

"Come in" you told him as you turned around to strut away "Side you?" He muttered under his breath and you glared at him as you gasped. Shameless little giant fucker.

You crossed your arms as he closed the door, then he walked towards you, and you took a few steps backwards "Talk" you looked him right into the eyes, he was still wearing the same thing as before, with a black jacket on top of it, his arms looked suffocated in the sleeves of his jacket, you were not ready for those arms again and that high ponytail and those fucking stray strands of hair on his perfectly angular face. Send him to hell somebody please?

He sighed as he looked at you, he did come here to talk, but now when he's in front of you, all of a sudden he has no idea where to start and what to say.

"Straight to business I see"

You rolled your eyes and he gave you a tight lipped smile. Then he walked closer to you, Norns he wanted to do more than just talk right now, you looked so good in your shorts and tank top and he just wanted to hold you and kiss you and do more of that good stuff but he can't. He grabbed both of your hands in his and your palms disappeared in them. So small "Tiny little human" he chuckled and you looked up at him, he stood so close, so so close, why does he have to smell so good all the time.

"Are you going to apologise?" You asked him and he shook his head in no. "Then why are you here?" You asked him again as you got furious and he looked at you "Can I make it upto you without apologising?" He asked you and you sighed

"How?"

"A wise woman told me to share how I feel" your heart skipped a beat as you heard his soft voice. You didn't have to solve an equation to figure out who that wise woman must be "Andd?" You tilted your head to the left as you looked at him.

"I have too many skeletons in my closet, too many things I can't tell you, things you won't understand, things you'd judge me for" he said to you and you looked down.

You have judged him in the past, there's no denying that "What skeletons? I already know about your father" you told him and he sighed "That's just the end of it, you don't know what led me there" he told you and your eyes met his,

"I have some idea, your mother she-" before you could finish he cut you off "I uhh..can we not talk about that?" He mumbled hurriedly and you nodded your head "I'm just..I don't do this, I have never done this, last time I felt something remotely innocent for a girl was when I was 15, had a huge crush on this girl Darcy, she was older than me, her mother used to work for mama"

You had no right to feel jealous about 15 year old Loki having romantic feelings for a girl but you did anyway. Besides you were just 8 at the time.

"What happened to her?" You asked him and he looked at you "Thor fucked her first, then she fucked me, I liked her so I wasn't really thinking straight, lost my virginity to her, I didn't know about her and thor when we did it, she got pregnant with my kid a few days later, and her mother had to leave with her, I later found out that it wasn't even my child, it was Thor's"

Okay you were not ready for that revelation, he dumped it all out in one go as if it was nothing "The worst part is Thor only did it to spite me, because Odin asked him to do that, to show me that I can't even get the girl I want, when she got pregnant Thor freaked out, then Odin told her that he'll pay her loads of money to sleep with me so they can shift the blame on me instead"

Okay you were Definitely not ready to hear that. How can a man stoop so low against his own son? Why did he adopt him if he didn't want another son?

"That's truly fucked up Loki" he smiled as he teared up and you squeezed his hands in a comforting manner, your thumbs rubbing against his knuckles "That's just the tip of the barrel" he told you and all you wanted to do was wrap your arms around him and comfort him. He was right about those skeletons, you couldn't help but wonder what else he had in there if this was just the tip of the barrel.

"How old was she? When she had sex with you?" You asked him and he looked to the side, with a smile on his face he answered you "Same as thor, she was 19" you gulped as you processed it, this was wrong on so many levels. The fact that his dad was involved in all this and Thor? You can't believe he did that.

"You know you were not at fault here right? What happened to you was illegal and- " He cut you off before you could say anything further

"She didn't force me, I did it because I wanted to, so it was my fault indeed" you nodded your head and you unhooked your fingers from his. His heart sank at the motion, you're going to judge him right? Throw him out? That's what he feared would happen, that's why he didn't want to unload his past on you but he was surprised when instead of telling him off you hugged him instead, you kept your face on his chest and he wrapped his arms around you once the shock subsided.

"What happened to the baby?" You asked him and he snickered "Probably got rid of it, we never saw her again after that" he told you and you sighed.

"Why are you telling me this, Loki?" You asked him and he pulled you away from his embrace

"So you'd know that I haven't felt anything emotional ever since then, i don't do emotions and feelings, and relationships, and you're the type of girl who lives for that white picket fence American dream, I can't give you what you would want from me and you'd want it from me, if not today then maybe a few years from now, I would never be able to give you anything more than sex"

You looked at him as he spoke, he was back to his stoic self, as if he didn't just share a grave traumatic incident from his past. Maybe he was right that night, maybe he didn't leave to hurt you but to protect you from himself "That's what you say and believe right?" You asked him and he scrunched his forehead in confusion "What?"

"You said you don't do feelings and emotions but.. you cared about me and I felt it, you cuddled me and didn't try even once to fuck me even when I asked you to do it, you didn't until I was completely sure, you took care of me when I needed it, you made me feel good about myself when I was insecure, you fed me with your own hands, you made that sweet gesture in front of the whole world, you call me birdy for emotional nostalgic reasons, what do you think you were doing when you did those things for me?"

You asked him and he was looking at you all perplexed, his eyebrows furrowed, as if he got hit with a thunderbolt. He looked adorable in the moment, like a child who just got to know that Santa clause is not real,

"I ..it wasn't.. I took care of you because that's what anyone would do? I admit that I have missed you alot but it's not that I'm in love with you, it doesn't exist, it's all physical and chemical, it's science" he muttered in one breath and you can't believe him right now..

"Really?? Are we back on that now?" You huffed as you walked away and sat down on the bed in frustration. So he walked towards you and crouched down to sit on the floor in front of you. Even on his knees, he almost reached your face level, not your fault that the height of the bed was lower than normal.

"I can't do this unless you're completely honest with me loki" You said to him in a meek voice and he cupped your cheeks, honest, he can be honest. "I do care about you little birdy, I have missed you, and I want you, I can't be more honest than that" he whispered as he kissed your forehead and you placed your forehead on his. The need to get engulfed in him got stronger every second but he was still confusing you with every sentence he spoke.

"Admit that it's not just physical" you huffed as you took a deep breath and he looked up as if cursing internally, probably scolding himself for coming here

"It's not just physical" you looked at him as he said that, trying to figure out if he meant it or he was just humoring you.

He pulled you down on his thighs and you gasped as you got squished between his rock hard physique "So what are we doing? I'm still confused" you asked him frankly and he kissed on your neck

"I don't want to hurt you birdy, I don't want to turn into my father someday, I don't want a sweet girl like you to cry everyday because of me, I want you to be happy and loved, even if love doesn't exist, I know you believe in it and I want to save that belief for you and I never want you to lose that light " he told you the honest truth, you asked for it and the truth made you tear up.

He's not a man of poetic words, he always did more than he ever said but right now as he said those words to you, you saw the Honesty in his eyes, he wasn't lying to you in the moment you knew that, but at the same time he wasn't making any promises for the future and it scared you. The more time you spend with him, the more you got to know him on a deeper level, the more you fell for him, and it's really hard for you to wrap your mind around the fact that he might just feel the same way about you, but he felt something and that you could tell with surity.

"Do you know how much it hurt when you left me like that, like I meant nothing to you, as if I was just another notch on your bedpost" his smile faltered and he pulled away from you as he heard you, he made you sit up on the bed again as the guilt sneaked in again, he didn't forget that night. How could he forget hurting you like that?

"I know" he looked down and for a second you thought he'd apologize to you but he didn't "Did it mean anything to you?" You asked him and he wiped the tears that fell down on your cheeks

"It meant everything pretty girl, it meant everything I promise" he mumbled as he placed a soft kiss on your right cheek "Was I good?" He looked at you and then he kissed on your left cheek. He wanted to give you a real kiss but he wanted you to kiss him this time.

"The best, I have only thought of you ever since that night, never ever doubt yourself sweetheart" Oh no you didn't believe him. You were nothing special. Not for a guy like him, he could have anyone he desires if he already didn't.

"Why am I not able to believe you?" you asked him and he smiled.

"Because you don't trust me" Who would after what he did?

"I don't" You couldn't after what he did.

"What can I do?" He asked you and you asked him things that bothered you the most.

"What is this? What's happening, are you still my rebound guy? Or you want me to be your sub? Or we are just going to fuck until we are bored of each other"

He didn't want to make fake promises to you, he felt vulnerable in the moment, you made him feel the most vulnerable he has ever felt in his life but he won't ruin you like Odin ruined his mother, his mama.

"Do you love me?" He asked you and you shook your head in no.

"No" you didn't even know yourself whether you did it or not but you knew that right now in this very moment you were addicted to him and you craved him more than just sex "I don't either" he told you and your heart sank even though you just said the same thing to him.

"Then what is this feeling?" You asked him and he sighed "I don't know, but I want to be with you, and I want you to be mine" he told you and you sniffed at the direct confession. You didn't expect that.

"Like, as a sub? As a sexual partner? Two fuck thingy, three fuck thingy?" You raised your voice a little bit but when he answered your question, his voice was silky smooth,sugary sweet, laced with honey and softness.

"Noo, I want you to be mine and mine only, Do I want to fuck you? yes, I want to ruin you all night but I don't want to leave afterwards, I want to stay and hold you, cuddle you and kiss you, I want to wake up with you and make breakfast for you, pancakes not crepes" he chuckled and then he continued again " I want to protect you from every harm, every hurt, everything that can make you sad or cry, I want to take care of you when you need me, I want you to kiss me before I leave you, I want to kiss you when you do the same, then I want to come to you no matter where you are in the world and kiss you after a long day, a gist of what I want from you birdy"

The butterflies that hopped around in your tummy as you heard his sweet words felt indescribable, you were not sure if they were butterflies anymore, felt more like dinosaurs "That's sweet I guess, I feel there's a 'But' at the end of the last sentence?" You couldn't say anything, your voice choked on your tears and you looked to the side to avoid his intense gaze.

"Yes there's a but. I can't promise you that I'll be any good at this, I don't even know what I am saying or doing right now but you make me feel as if it's alright for me to open up to you. That night when I left, I was terrified of everything I just told you, terrified of this and more"

He couldn't have been more honest than this even if he tried, he was already miles away from his comfort zone "Ummm okay I get your point" you told him and he placed his arms on the bed on either side of your thighs "What do you want from me sweetheart?" He needed to know too, he's promising you a present, not a future, he doesn't even know if you'd even want him once you find out the whole truth about his life, things he have suffered, when you find out about who he is

"More or less, the same thing, is this going to be a relationship?" You asked him and he caught his cheek between his teeth as he thought about it "Do we have to put a label on it?"

You shook your head as he asked, maybe just not yet. Maybe you'll be over the infatuation soon and wouldn't even want him anymore. A girl could wish right. But you knew you were only kidding yourself. You're obsessed with him.

"You can't fuck other girls" you told him strictly, you can't share him, even if it's not a relationship you won't share him as long as he's yours. He'll be Yours. Gosh. You can't believe you're falling into an agreement like that, a year ago you would have laughed if someone told you about all this.

"That goes without saying birdy, you have ruined me too anyways, I am 'how do I put it in decent words?'" he thought for few seconds and then he answered, and the answer left you all flustered "Pussy whipped"

You placed your fingers on his mouth as you chuckled and you felt his fingers rubbing the fresh bruise on your knees, the soft but sensuous touch instantly fired you up but you had to control yourself.

"How did you get this?" He asked you in a concerned tone, he hates it, especially on you, he hates the sight of it, the only kind of marks he'd ever want on your soft skin would be from his lips and his fingers maybe, but they'd be a reminder of the nights he'd spend pleasuring you and taking it from you. You shrugged as you heard him "Fell down while rehearsing"

You told him and he placed his hand behind your calf to lift your leg up and then leaned down to peck the bruise, Fuck him honestly. Million ways to sunday.

"It hurts?" He asked softly and you shook your head "I'm used to it, I'm very clumsy" you told him and he smiled. There are other types of marks he would like to give you if you're used to them.

"What about your boyfriend Mackie? Are you going to break poor sap's heart? I feel like a homewrecker" He smirked and you rolled your eyes

"He's gay, and I lied, end of discussion" you said hurriedly and he smirked again, Maybe he wouldn't be so smitten by you if you weren't this adorable. A guy could wish right? But he knew He was only fooling himself with the thought. He would still be obsessed with you.

"I know you threatened him" it was your turn to smirk and he opened his mouth to say something funny but then he stopped and looked at you intently.

"I'll threaten your own father if he ever dare to hurt you" You shouldn't have blushed like a school girl but you did. Maybe not your father but the thought of this tall gorgeous strong man beating other people up for you turned you on in a weird way.

"I'm still upset with you" you told him and he stood up suddenly. Should have stayed down because now all you wanted to do was, climb him up like a ladder.

"How can I make up for that?" He asked you and you gulped nervously "Ummm I don't know, do something?"

"Hmm get ready then I'll take you out and then I'm going to take you" he winked at you and you felt your face heating up "Nooo, not so soon, not before I clear the next round, I'm only staying here if I clear the next round" he smiled as he heard you, as if distance would stop him from getting to you. Only he could stop himself from doing so.

"Let me take you out at least?" He asked you and you nodded your head "Fine, I'll be ready in an hour, wait for me in the lobby" you told him and he smiled as you walked him towards the door "Wear something green?" He asked you and you shook your head as you pushed him out of the door "No"

He chuckled as he heard "What shade of green though?" Oh birdy. You sweet sweet thing.

"Doesn't matter, you'll make it look pretty I know" he winked at you, and you blushed at his words. Then you closed the door.

6 months, had sex already and you're on your first date. It wasn't ideal for the old you but the new you, the "Drunk on Loki You" felt excited about it.

He couldn't stop smiling as he took the elevator down to the lobby. He couldn't stop thinking about you, he's taking you on a date, like a normal man. A date with his birdy. He was going to call frigga but suddenly he bumped into someone and his cell phone dropped on the floor.

"Watch where you're going, would you?" he yelped in a frustrated tone as he bent down to pick up his phone but then he looked up and sighed, in shock and confusion. He never wanted to see her again.

"Loki? What a surprise" she chuckled and he glared at her

"Hey Sandra"

➖➖➖➖➖➖💚💚💚➖➖➖➖➖

(please check your settings if I'm not able to tag you)

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@christineblood

#loki #loki x female reader #wrestler loki x female reader #loki x reader fluff #loki x reader #loki x reader angst #loki x reader insert #loki x reader smut #loki x you #loki x reader fic #hit me baby one more time #thor #loki Friggason #dom! loki x sub! reader #loki series #slight au

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dyns33 · 3 years

Text

The Kid

I needed to do a Loki x Y/N, including Kid Loki and Croki, because I love them.

Being in this desolate place was bad enough, with all these unbearable variants being even worse, but Loki didn't think that Y/N would make the experience really unpleasant.

She wasn't doing anything wrong though. She was just being nice.

But as soon as they arrived, Loki noticed that she had quickly approached the kid with the alligator. She talked to him a lot, asked if he was tired, if he was cold, if he was hungry, she held his hand, tucked him in when he went to sleep...

And the kid seemed to love it ! He showed a huge smile as soon as she got close to him. If he had dared to look at Loki during one of these moments, and had seemed to be laughing at him, he would have killed this little worm, king or not.

Why did Y/N care so much about him ? He was just another Loki, a variant. And he already had lackeys to take care of him.

He too needed attention ! He too was sad, and lost, and isolated in this crazy world ! Besides, the kid didn't deserve all of this ! He was the worst of them, that was even why he was the king of this degenerate kingdom.

"You don't have to do all of that, you know ?" he couldn't help saying when they were finally alone.

"Do what ?"

"With the kid. Why are you like that ?"

"I have a thing for children."

"Yuck."

"Not like th… Idiot. He's just a kid. Can you imagine being alone here at his age ?"

"He is not alone."

"He's with Lokis. Don't take it the wrong way, but you're not always the best of company, so with a little one ? He should be with other kids, friends, family."

"Oh family." Loki sneered. "You forgot why he's here. He didn't really have a family already, but he destroyed it on his own, he can't complain about it."

Y/N made a strange face, clenching her fist, as if she wanted to hit him. No, Loki knew she wanted to, but she was holding back. Yet he was right. The kid had killed Thor. It was not hard to imagine what happened next. Odin and Freya's faces when they saw what he had done to their beloved son. The panic all over Asgard.

If the TVA had not come to pick him up, he would have suffered a much more terrible fate. And perfectly deserved.

"I spoke with him, you know."

"You've talked a lot together."

"Shut your mouth." Y/N ordered. "You think you know, but you don't know anything. I asked him what happened. Remember ? Your stupid games ? The day you turned into a snake for your brother to approach and that you stab him. It was for fun. Nothing bad. With you, he laughed. With him... There was a problem. It was not planned, Loki, it was an accident. He didn't want to kill him."

"That's what he says."

"Shut up. He's not lying, I saw it in his child's eyes. I see it in your eyes."

"What ?" Loki growled.

"Please. You've always been jealous of Thor, but you haven't always hated him. Remember. At his age, you would never have wanted such a thing. And... Even now."

Now ? Ridiculous. Of course Loki wanted to kill his brother now, after everything that had happened. Maybe the kid had been through something else, which had given him this desire earlier than him. He just succeeded sooner.

"It's you who are being ridiculous, because you know very well that you don't want Thor to die."

"Have you already forgotten about New York ? It wasn't that long ago though."

"I remember. I remember all the times you had the chance to kill him. But you never did. Not really. Oh, you hate him. You want him to suffer, like you suffered. That's why you attacked Earth, his favourite world. That you hurt those he loves. That you lie to him. But you don't want him to disappear, because you still love him. He's your brother."

"Stop."

"I also saw how you looked at the kid when he told you about his crime. There was no respect or fear in your eyes. No. You were mad. You hate the boy. You judged him. And you know what ? They all judge him here, and they pity him. Because they know he blames himself. That's why he's their king, because he's the saddest of them all."

"He doesn't seem to have a lot of remorse." spat Loki.

"It's been long age now, he's been living with it. Why do you think he carries the alligator like this ? It's his mission, to take care of this little being, to protect him, as if he were his brother. He has nothing else. Like you said so well, he doesn't have his family anymore. He would never have the life he could have had. Everyone thinks he's a monster, he... Oh."

The tension then subsided, Y/N relaxing, not pouting anymore and slowly approaching, as if Loki was a wounded animal. He let her do it, a little because he was curious to know what she was going to do, and a little because it had been a while since she had been so close to him.

"What ?"

"You are jealous." she declared.

"What ?! No !"

"You are."

"Ridiculous !"

"Loki..."

Still very slowly, as if she didn't want to scare him, she put her arms around his shoulders and hugged him tenderly. The last person to hug him was his mother. He no longer remembered her perfume. He would never see her again.

"I can be your alligator if you want."

"... This is the strangest thing I've ever been told."

"Does that mean no ?"

"I did not say that !"

They stayed that way until it was time to return to the Variants' hideout. Before that, Y/N asked him to be nicer to the kid. To put himself in his shoes. Imagine how he would have felt if it had happened to him when he was so young and had landed in this place with no one by his side, and knowing that everyone hated him.

Loki sighed. That didn't mean he deserved to be the king, or to have more attention, or that he was the best. In the end they had all done something wrong, and they had all suffered while being taken away by the TVA. Loki was the best, the right version, the superior one. But as he passed him, he patted the kid's head.

This made Y/N and the other variants smile. Not the kid, who attacked him with a knife, while the alligator tried to eat his leg. Little shit.

#loki #loki imagine #loki fanfiction #loki x reader #kid loki #croki

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ynscrazylife · 3 years

Note

Hey !! i love ur writing style <3 i wanted to ask you if you could write a loki x reader where the reader and loki have been best friends for a long time now and after he faked his death in tdw he knocks on their door and the reader and loki have an argument and then they kiss?? maybe like the scene in crimson peak “you lied to me” “i did” “you told me you loved me” “i do” smth similar? :)

The Greatest Deception | loki angst fluff fic

Summary: After Loki reveals himself to be alive, Y/N has some choice words to say. Loki has a question.

Authors Note: Thanks for requesting! Also, I want to say that I fully support and acknowledge that Loki is genderfluid. Seeing as this fic was requested with Loki having he/him pronouns, I will use those pronouns. (Also, I didn’t know which pronouns you wanted me to write since you mentioned they for the reader but typically I use she/her, so lemme know if you want that edited)

Request to be on a taglist (or multiple) here! (Taglists are at the end of the fic)

MCU Masterlist #1 | MCU Masterlist #2 | Main Masterlist

PSA: Do NOT copy, steal, translate, plagiarize, republish, etc any of my works on Tumblr or any other platform. Also, do NOT claim any of my works as your own. All of these works are either requests I’ve gotten that people have wanted me to write or original ideas I’ve had for works. If you happen to take inspiration from anything I’ve written and want to write something inspired by that, please a) ask me first and b) IF I say yes, credit me as inspo in your post by tagging me and link whatever work of mine that inspired you. Thanks.

header c @/someiconsx

“Lady Y/N?”

The voice was muffled through the door and the one in question rolled from her side and onto her stomach as she laid in her bed. A low groan emitted from the creature whose limbs were tangled in the blanket and sheets.

. . .

“Lady Y/N?”

A short knock-knock accompanied the repeating words, and Y/N had a feeling of that the lovely woman who she’d love to talk to at any other time wouldn’t stop until she replied.

She pulled herself into a sitting position, smoothed over her unruly hair, and finally pulled the covers up so her pajamas wouldn’t be seen and called out, “Come in!”

The woman opened the door and sent her a sheepish smile. “The All-Father has requested your present, ma’am,” she informed her.

Y/N furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. “Do you know the reason as to why?” She quizzed.

The woman spared a quick, darting glance at Y/N’s window. “Well, the All-Father has requested all of the palace’s royals and higher-ups to gather in the courtyard. He is gathering local citizens for a, ah, play, and more would like, in this words, his ‘most esteemed confidants to enjoy,’,” she answered, subtly bouncing her weight from one foot to the other.

Y/N thought for a moment. This was the first time she was hearing that the King was holding a play — not to mention, the fact that the last play (if you could even call it that, because by Heimdall’s recounting it was horrific) was held before any of the children of Odin were born.

Just thinking about that caused a twinge to hit her stomach and for it to twist up. Loki. Odin’s youngest child and the one that had most recently left her, as he sacrificed herself to save his vaillant brother, Prince Thor. It had been weeks, maybe even a month, since Y/N had heard the news and had been resorted to a lonely, saddened version of herself. Loki was her best friend, the person she trusted more than anything and—no, no, who was she kidding? He’s more than that, and he deserves to be remembered as more than that by her.

He’s also the one that she loves, and has loved for at least the past year when she realized it.

Nonetheless, she had taken many steps to get through the grief of Loki’s dead — as had his father — and she wasn’t going to let all her hard work crumble down on one, singular thought.

“Very well, then. Please inform the All-Father that I will be there shortly, thank you,” she said.

The woman nodded and bowed her head before exiting.

Once the door had been fully shut and she could hear footsteps no more, Y/N crossed over to her window and drew back the curtains, not having missed the look at said window.

The sunlight poured into her room but the stage was indeed sent. Rows of fine chairs sat with rows of fine people in them. In front, Odin stood with a red curtain drawn closed behind him. His arms were gesturing wildly and he had a big grin on his face as he gave his speech.

Despite the curiosity that itched into Y/N’s face, she pushed it aside. She had never seen the King conduct himself in such ways, but alas, everyone grieved differently. So, she closed the curtains and got dressed for the day ahead.

— — — — — — — — — — — — —

The moment Y/N stepped outside, she could’ve sworn that there was already long beads of sweat trailing down her skin. She let out a huff but journeyed on towards the courtyard, as this formal royal wear was necessary and she had no intention of pissing off Sir Snotty-Dickhead — as she called him (he had some fancy and long name she couldn’t remember, in her defense) — who was Odin’s right hand man.

By the time she got there, Odin was still rambling on with his speech, but his sudden notice of Y/N saved the guests from boredom.

“Aha, the guest of honor! Lady Y/N, herself,” Odin announced, bringing his hands together in a clap and gesturing for her to come toward him.

She betrayed herself and her cheeks involuntarily reddened as all eyes laid on her. She approached Odin and curtsied out of respect, but her mind was full of wonderings of why she, of all, would be singled out.

“I’m sure you all know who Lady Y/N is, yes?” He began, briefly pausing before continuing. “If you sadly do not, let me tell you. Lady Y/N had been a friend of the royal family, specifically my child, Loki’s—” the name caused her to suck in a sharp breath, “—and she was granted the title of Lady to uphold the image of the palace and to complete very important Asgardian duties.”

Once he stopped talking and the crowd clapped politely, Y/N took the opportunity she was presented before it’s door could close and quickly went and sat in her seat, the only seat not occupied yet, in the front row.

Odin then began speaking against whilst he walked to the side, “Speaking of my dear child Loki, this play that has been put together is one designed to honor him and his heroic sacrifice. Without further ado . . . ” He let his words trail off, and the red curtain pulled open.

Y/N’s face contorted into surprise at the words, not expecting this to take place. Again, she reminded herself, everyone grieved differently, so she decided to give it a chance. However, as the play went on, she was quick to realize that honoring Loki wasn’t the intention here. The horrid acting could be excused but Odin himself allowing this mockery of how Loki died? Of how he sacrificed himself? Well, with every second that passed, her face heated more and more — and not due to the sweat — and she grit her teeth, just barely refraining from yelling.

The worst part for her came though when the actor who played Loki did a dramatic reenactment of his sacrificed and the actor who played Thor did the worst fake crying ever. Y/N turned to the others, expecting them to be just as enraged as she was, but was floored to find that no—they were laughing. And not just that, but Odin was having himself a chuckle as well!

Her fingers tightly gripped the edges of her chair and she forced herself to look straight ahead, just about able to hold in her tears until the play was over and the actors bowed.

— — — — — — — — — — — — —

Afterwards, while everyone was standing and giving Odin rounds and rounds of praises, Y/N stayed rooted in her seat. She couldn’t just let this go by as if it were nothing, but she was struggling to compose herself to confront him.

After a couple minutes of going back-and-forth, she decided, screw composure. She didn’t have to be composed. She was allowed to be angry.

So, she stood up and marched straight for him.

“All-Father,” Y/N said through grit teeth, forcing herself to curtesy, “I request your company in private, if I may.”

It took Odin a moment to tear himself away from accepting his latest comment, but the way he quickly glanced over at Y/N, she knew that he had not noticed — or perhaps he did not care — the state she was in.

“My apologies, Lady Y/N, but should I depart now, I fear I shall upset my comrades!” Odin said, ending his comment in a boastful joy, which resulted in laughter and cheers.

He didn’t wait for her response before engaging in another conversation, and Y/N’s lips remained tightly shut until she decided to just go forth and let her stuffed-up emotions out.

“Fine. I will say it in front of everyone, then!” She said, firmly and loudly, gaining everyone’s attention. “That was a pathetic excuse to remember Loki . . . It was an insult! You mocked him, your own child! How could you even— I . . . I just don’t understand . . . He sacrificed himself for your son and for Asgard and this is how you repay him? God. I expected much, much more from you for him because I . . . Let’s just say that we both love Loki, in our own ways, and I-I . . . I am very disappointed.”

Wanting to flee from the tears that were now streaming down her face and from the silence that was pounding, she turned around and she walked away, the realization that she had just confessed her love in front of everyone hitting her.

“Lady Y/N!”

Odin’s words stopped her in her tracks, but she did not turn around. Just stood. Waited.

“He told Thor, before he passed, that he, uh . . . He loved you, too.”

Y/N stared straight ahead, her hand jutting out to grab the pillar next to her to steady herself.

Loki loved her?

She didn’t stop the tears from coming this time. She let them, and the sobs, overwhelm her.

— — — — — — — — — — — — —

“Lady Y/N?”

The voice and the knock were much more stiff than they were this morning.

“Come in.”

Her response was devoid of emotion, much more curt than it was this morning.

The same woman turned the door’s knob and opened it, sending Y/N, who was curled up on her bed, head nestled into her knees, a wary look. “The All-Father has requested your presence at his quarters,” she said.

Y/N let out a small huff, in no mood to talk to the King after what had happened. She forced her head up and gazed boredom at the woman. “Is it an emergency?” She deadpanned.

The woman looked around the room and by her lack of response, Y/N knew that either she didn’t know or didn’t want to say.

She sighed. “I will be there shortly,” she said.

The woman nodded and wordlessly left.

After she did, Y/N stood up and went in front of her mirror, taking in her appearance. Her once brushed hair was now frizzy and in knots and her eyes were puffy and red. Angrily, she practically tore the hairbrush through her hair and dabbed at her eyes with makeup until the red could be seen no more. She had no intention of letting him see her this way.

— — — — — — — — — — — — —

Screw formalities, Y/N thought, as she walked straight into Odin’s quarters which composed of a small living room, a bedroom down the hall, an office, and a bathroom. She didn’t bother to curtsy or announce her presence.

When he finally and gradually turned around from whatever he was doing, a slight look of shock crossed his features, before he replaced it with a warm smile. “Y/N!” He said, but quickly corrected himself, “Lady Y/N.”

Y/N frowned and crossed her arms. “I hope that you have called me here to apologize,” she said, an icy edge to her voice.

Odin nonetheless looked at her kindly. “In a way, yes,” he vaguely said, before a magical transformation underwent before her.

His wrinkles disappeared, his beard disappeared, his grey hair turned jet black, and his clothes transformed into his usual wear.

No longer was the All-Father standing in front of her, but her best friend. The one she loved.

Taken by utter shock, Y/N instinctively stumbled back, her jaw dropping and her eyes widening. “What the hell is this?” She gasped out, not wanting to believe it at first. It was a cruel trick — it must be! There was no way.

“It’s me,” the mischievous deity said, a rare softness to his voice and in his eyes. He took a step forward, but then stopped himself. “I never died, I only impersonated my father.”

Y/N stared at him, angry tears coming to her eyes once more. “How?” She forced out, thinking that maybe she was dreaming. “Why?”

Loki looked around, slightly dumbfounded, as if he hadn’t expected anyone to question him. “I wanted the throne,” he answered, as if it were obvious and a perfectly acceptable reason.

Y/N stared at him as if he had grown two heads. To her, he might as well have.

“Oh, really? So you take over your father, trick everyone - me, your brother - into believing that you’re dead, you banish Sif . . . All because you wanted the goddamn throne?” She cried.

The cluelessness left his eyes and replaced itself with guilt, regret pooling inside him. He looked down, shoulders falling with a sigh.

“I’ve felt guilty tricking you ever since it had all went down. I wanted to tell you but, honestly, a part of me didn’t think you’d be that upset over my death. But you were really, so upset and I . . . I was lost. I didn’t know what to do. All I wanted to do was hug you and tell you that it was fine, that I was here, but I thought I’d screw up your emotions and hurt you even more,” he admitted.

Y/N just looked at him, her frown growing deeper. “That’s an awful excuse,” she hissed out, words laced with venom.

Loki immediately snapped his head up to look at her and his gaze held desperateness. “It’s not an excuse,” he said quickly. “It shouldn’t be. I’m . . . I’m so sorry. The last thing I ever wanted to was to trick you, and . . . I did. But today was the final straw. I couldn’t continue like that.”

Y/N took a step forward, having an inner battle in herself on whether or not to forgive him. “You lied to me,” she reiterated bluntly.

Loki nodded guiltily. “I did,” he agreed in a small voice.

She took a pause, taking in a deep breath. “You told me you loved me,” she added.

There was a brief moment of silence before Loki said, in the same small way but a little more firm now, “I do.”

Y/N kept walking, not even fully sure or convinced of what she was doing, but knowing that she needed to do it, until she was standing just inches away from him. They looked at each other for a couple moments, neither saying anything, until Y/N wrapped her arms around Loki. He returned the embrace.

“Never do that to me again!” She yelled through the tears that were now coming. God, was she tired of crying. Especially today.

Loki hugged her tighter, his own tears falling. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, and repeated that over, and over, and over again. “I’m an idiot.”

Y/N leaned back and cupped his face with her hands. The love she had for him overwhelmed her pain, and more than anything she needed him now. Besides, she could see his guilt. She could see the truth shining in his eyes. He wouldn’t do anything like this again, because he loved her. And she loved him.

“At least you’re self-aware,” she whispered through a sniff, taking a page out of his book with her joking remark. Before he could quip back (and she was sure he’d have an excellent one), she leaned forward and captured his lips in his a kiss. Loki smiled against her lips and wrapped his arms around her waist.

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otaku4life16 · 2 years

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Slave Loki Prompt Request

Incase you live under a rock there are two very well known and very good slave Loki fics where Loki had a kid that calls him Modi and gets in a relationship with Tony. But for some reason there aren’t more like that. And even weirder is that it’s always Tony that finds and rescues Loki, it’s never the whole team or Thor. And Loki always only has one kid and while being on the skinnier side seems to be doing fine for a slave. So my brain decided to give me a heavily whump story where the Avengers find Loki(almost dead) and his two children.

...... Except I don’t exactly know how the ending goes. So I decided to put it up here. Most of the brainstorming is already done for you I just need details and a happy ending. So come on inside and write a story or just see how awesome my brain child is.

So Loki was brainwashed/coerced by the chitari and Thanos to invalid Midgard. Loki either never got the chance to tell his side of the story, no one believed him, or they degraded him and made him feel weak for giving in to torture. Odin decides that Loki will have his powers sealed and his rights stripped from him and makes him a slave to this mean noble. Loki’s position is basically lower than everyone (even the other slaves). His room is basically a dark closet, he wears the worst clothes, is starved, given a crappy haircut, and is picked on by everyone all while people tell him everything is his fault and he deserves this. So Loki starts to believe it. Loki also gets raped and expects to be raped. But Loki was raped as a child (around 13-15) and it ended up with him having a kid (Sleipnir) and never doing anything besides holding hands, cuddling, and kissing in a relationship.

So the first time Loki has sex again after being raped as a kid is to being raped again. Loki falls pregnant and gives birth alone to a daughter(and it was not an easy pregnancy because no one would do anything to help him). Loki then tries his best to raise his slave daughter (constantly feeling bad that she has a terrible life because he was so weak) and doing extra favors to get herbs to make sure he doesn’t end up pregnant again. Then Loki finally ends up pregnant again when his daughter is like 4 or 5 and it doesn’t go very well. Loki is severely starved and weak when he gives birth(in his closet of a room with only his daughter present) when Loki starts bleeding during the delivery. Loki manages to give birth to a healthy son before all hell breaks loose. Loki pleads to heimdal to help his kids by bringing them to Thor or someplace safe before he passes out(loki is either dead at this point or almost dead)(and maybe heimdal feels bad for Loki and transports the kids to the avengers in New York where they then find out what’s going on and vow to rescue Loki and take care of the kids).

For some reason Thor and the avengers need Loki’s magic expertise and they all go to the lord that has Loki. They are all under the impression that Loki is doing something like heavy mandatory community service and don’t know that Loki is a slave. When they show up and ask for Loki they are either brought to his closet room (where they then see a Loki covered in blood and looking dead)or told that he was just found dead. Thor then demands to see the body and is then shocked to see the state his brother is in. With all his bones sticking out and blood all over him Thor knew that whatever happened to his brother wasn’t good. He then finds Loki’s children in the corner of the room being quiet (like when Kenny finds Levi in Attack on Titan) and Thor is horrified about what has happened because he finally knows the gravity of the situation. (I’m thinking he goes full on rage with lots of yelling) ( if you’ve ever read He loves me, He loves me not by Phoenix Demitto then you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you don’t then it’s your loss and you should go read it) He then takes the kids home(and Loki if he is still hanging on) to take care of them.

Also add:

They later find out how self-deprecating Loki is and the fact that the attack on Midgard wasn’t Loki’s fault. And they all have to help Loki finally understand that this isn’t his fault and he deserves happiness.

Loki’s daughter called him Modi.

The shitty lord trying to keep Thor from taking Loki’s body because he still owns him even if he’s dead and people pay lots of money for the corpse of a strong magic user.

The cuffs or spell that Odin placed on Loki keeps him in that form which is why even though he he is dead he did not turn back into a jotun

And if Loki dies then the Norms decide to bring him back because A. Loki’s life sucked B. He didn’t deserve that C. They still need him D. Loki should be happy

It would be awesome if someone takes Loki as side and finally shows and gives him a healthy and normal sexual relationship

You don’t need to use all of this if you don’t want to you. And let me know if you are interested in picking up this story. That way I can be the first ones to read it.

-Incase anyone was wondering the two fics that mostly contributed to the inspiration of this story are Anything for Her and Butterfly all on AO3

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gloxiniaflower · 3 years

Text

Some parts were rushed and not detailed enough, but this something I wrote to waste some time on.

My "Love"

Poseidon x male reader

No one never guessed that poseidon would be married to a male God.

Poseidon sat down with his husband and other gods, m/n had a bright smile present on his face. He was excited to finally meet other gods, Poseidon on the other hand was not having a good time.

"Oh~ I didn't know you had a husband~" Loki smiled, poseidon didn't like the way Loki spoke.

"I'm m/n!" He happily exclaimed, he did a little bow. Poseidon did like that gesture his husband did to Loki, the gods were caught off guard by that action.

"A god bowing to another god, what is the meaning of this poseidon." Odin demanded, poseidon turned to Odin but m/n got to answer him before poseidon.

"Its a sign of respect," m/n answered, his smile annoyed someone of the gods. "M/n, sit down." Poseidon demanded, m/n nodded his head and saw down.

The meeting went on and on for hours, they were talking about how they're was gonna be a party. M/n was mostly focused on what he was gonna cook. Finally the meeting ended, Invitations were being handed out in the morning then the party will be in 3 days.

M/n flew beside poseidon, he was telling poseidon about the rare fruit at the sacred tree. Whispers and be heard around them, possibly was getting annoyed more and more.

"I didn't know poseidon had a husband."

"Thats so embarrassing, he can do much better."

"Married to fairy...how disgraceful."

"Such a low-life fairy."

"Thats a god...he is a mere god."

M/n can hear the whispering, their hearts, their minds. He was fully aware of what everyone was saying, poseidon was annoyed by everyone including his husband.

When they got back to the kingdom, poseidon didn't utter a single word.

"I'm sorry..." m/n muttered, poseidon turned to m/n and sighed. "Next time you're staying." He glared at the fairy, today was humiliating for him. It was a big mistake.

M/n stayed quiet and went to their room, he read his heart. It was full on anger, he hated the way it sounded. He's changed his clothes and put on his night clothes, he put his wings away and got into bed. He walked into the washroom and stared at himself.

He looked much more younger, he was 5'4, he was mistaken for a kid multiple times. He continued to stare at himself, his long hair reached above his knees.

"Starring at yourself won't make you feel any better." Poseidon said as he changed, m/n turned to poseidon. "Why did you marry me?" He asked, poseidon sighed.

"That is a very stupid question m/n, I married you cause I love you for who you are." Poseidon hugged m/n, but m/n said otherwise. Poseidon lied, his heart said it.

M/n flew over to the bed and layed there, he was hurt.

• M O R N I N G •

m/n woke up and walked to the kitchen and saw the invitation sitting on the table, he walked over and opened it.

Only poseidon's name was written down, not m/n. He smiled and put it back, he flew up to the room to wake up poseidon.

"Poseidon, its time to wake up!" M/n loudly announced and open the blinds, poseidon slowly got up and stared at the fairy. "M/n...it's 7 in morning, come back to bed." He groaned, m/n flew to his side.

"But, you promised that we go to the garden." M/n whined 'I have better things to do.' Poseidon thought. M/n smiled "i'll go by myself, go ahead and get some rest." M/n exclaimed and flew out of the room. M/n smiled as he saw the flowers blooming, he missed the fairy kings forest.

He sat down and enjoyed the peace, it was calming. He knew this was gonna come to an end soon, all of it. All he can do was make the best of it while he can. He knew that other people hated him, maybe it was for the best to ignore it.

In a blink of an eye, poseidon was getting getting ready for the party. M/n helped him with his hair, he made sure poseidon looked his best.

"M/n, can you not read peoples minds and heart." Poseidon monotone voice made m/n froze, m/n smiled. "I can't, no matter how much I try...I just can't." He admitted, poseidon rolled his eyes at his answer.

"I'll see you after poseidon, be safe love you." M/n gave him a quick kiss and flew away, he flew to their room and collapsed on the ground. He quickly stood up and grabbed his weapon.

Today was their anniversary and poseidon completely ignored it, m/n was gonna go to to the spot they met. He was bringing his weapon along just in case something happened.

Hours passed and poseidon was waiting in the room, waiting for m/n. He was starting to get irritated, 2 more hours passed and he decided to go to bed.

The next day, shiva was yelling poseidons name. Poseidon groaned and looked to his side and saw that m/n wasn't there. He got dressed and walked to the front door, he stared at shiva with a glare. "What do you wan-" he was cut off by shiva pulling him.

Poseidon noticed they were heading to the building where Apollo lived, shiva didn't say anything to poseidon. When they got inside they saw Apollo and loki struggling, poseidon ran up the stairs and saw m/n bleeding.

"M/n let us heal you, if you don't then you'll die!" Loki yelled, m/n ignored them and flew out the window. Loki immediately flew after him, Apollo turned to the side and saw poseidon, he ignored him and ran past him and shiva.

"Shiva, tell me what the hell is going on." Poseidon demanded, shiva clenched his jaw. He didnt want to tell poseidon, he just couldn't. "What happened to m/n!" He yelled, shiva punch the wall out of anger. "I don't have time for this." Shiva muttered and ran off.

Loki, thor, beelzebub, shiva, and Apollo were standing infront of a huge tree. Poseidon was quick to notice the tree, it was the sacred tree. The sacred tree is where m/n was born from, it brought back memories of when he first met him. Everyone had found a way up the tree and saw m/n leaning against something.

"M/n..please let me heal you." Apollo begged, m/n stayed quiet. Poseidon had enough of this, no one was gonna give him a proper answer. "Someone tell me what happened and why m/n is injured!" He demanded, Loki clicked his tongue.

"M/n ripped out his wings, he is gonna bleed out and die. And it all your fault" Loki hissed, poseidon was taken back by what loki said. Poseidon turned to m/n and walked towards him "m/n I know you're mad at me and I'm sorry for the things I did." Poseidon softly spoke

"Quit lying to me!!!" M/n yelled, he fell to his knees and cried. Eveything was hurting, he was in the worst state. "He was better than you, he never made me feel like this." He sobbed, poseidon walked forward "who was?" Poseidon asked.

"Gloxinia, gloxinia was the only person who made me feel like I was on top. If only I didn't met you, if only I never married you...maybe then...he would still be alive." M/n sobbed, Apollo took the opportunity and held m/n in his arms as he injected the needle into his back.

"But, he wouldn't have wanted this. He gave everyone here, that is present in this room the droplet of life." Loki took m/n out of Apollo's hold and held him, everyone walked over to where m/n was leaning. Shiva looked at the corpse then at m/n, "you kept his body here the whole time." He softly spoke, m/n slowly stood up with loki aiding him.

"Gloxinia belongs here, this is where we came from. I refuse to take him anywhere else." M/n cried, no matter how many years passed...he couldn't get over it. "I hear what everyone thinks and says about me, imagine being in my position."

M/n slid the knife he had in his sleeve and stabbed himself, the heart. Everyone froze and watched as m/n smiled, loki grabbed the knife and threw it somewhere else.

"M/n!" Poseidon panicked and ran towards his lover, m/n felt everything draining from his body. The pain was finally disappearing, everyone was doing their best to heal him but nothing was working.

"Loki...Thor...can you do me one last thing for me?" M/n asked, thor clenched clenched his fist, loki nodded his head. "I want you to watch over the next fairy king, make sure he is happy...I trust you to do that for me... That's all I ask of you." M/n smiled

Loki felt no energy coming from m/n, he held him close and cried. He was someone important in his life, he loved him but he belonged to the heartless God. Poseidon had enough and stormed out, he silently cried and he walked away from the sacred tree. Everything he did and say to m/n made him feel regret, maybe if he was a bit more nicer...maybe then he'd be still alive.

Everyone was quiet, then they heard a soft cry. Thor stood up and walked to where the crying was coming from, thor picked up the infant and held it close. Loki lifted m/n and placed him beside gloxinia, it what he wanted...to be close by someone who loved and cherished him.

The gods stayed quiet, they're anger was at poseidon. It made them flare up in anger but they just couldn't hurt him, m/n cherish poseidon so they couldn't hurt him.

Now, they will protect the next fairy with everything they had. Anything to protect him from that heartless God.

#record of ragnarok #snv loki #male reader #snv x reader #snv adam #snv shiva #snv thor #snv zerofuku #snv sasaki kojiro #snv buddha #snv aphrodite #anime / manga #fanfic #snv poseidon

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otterskin · 3 years

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Father's Day - Is Odin a Good or Bad Dad? - Odin in Fandom

Sequel to this Post here. To sum up - Odin is often misinterpreted in the Thor films, so I went through all his major scenes and broke down his actions and put them into context. I also talked about how Odin as a character struggles to be seen as a person outside the iconoclastic figure he is to just about everyone in the story, including the audience. Which leads directly into...

Odin in Fandom

One of the many things driving me to write this ridiculously long post was just the sheer amount of Odin hate I’ve come across. I used to laugh it off, maybe even contributed with little harmless jokes and comics of my own, but as of late I’ve noticed a truly shocking amount of venom in it. I see words like “abusive”, “toxic”, “worst father ever”, “evil”, “emotional assault”, “abuser”, “bigot”, and, my personal least favourite, “shit father”. These are not terms to throw around lightly. Even jokingly, the sheer amount adds up. Speaking as someone who likes to look for the occasional bit of Odin content on AO3 or in Fan Art, the skew towards the vitriolic is disheartening. If I were to know Odin only from how the fandom depicts him, I would think he was stoic to the point of constipated, except when screaming his head off, I would think he openly encouraged crazy amounts of competition between his kids and ran away from confrontation when they called him on his bad parenting, I would think he was vindictive and cruel and disowned Loki for the giggles. I might even think he was openly physically abusive or neglectful to the point of pretending Loki didn't exist and telling Thor real men don't cry. I wish this was exaggeration, but I got all of this on my dash in a SINGLE day.

Tags often go ‘BAMF Frigga, EVIL Odin’, or something like that, or have someone substituting who can do the ‘correct’ parenting and have solved all the problems in the series. No offence to Heimdall, I like the guy, but seeing him as a better father to Loki than Odin? They’ve barely had any screen time together and most of it was antagonistic. Heimdall is even responsible for setting Loki up for a bunch of bad stuff in THOR, though I'm sure he didn't mean it to go as bad it did. You don’t think that this tertiary character who's mostly antagonistic towards Loki can be better father than Odin unless you really, really despise Odin. And don’t get me started on Möbius being the ’therapist dad Loki always needed’. Because I’ve already written that post. (Spoilers, Mobius is also very complex, and he’s not invested in Loki for Loki’s own sake the way Odin is. He is another trickster in his own right, though.)

Why is Odin so despised? Why, in a fandom that spent a decade digging into Loki and Thor’s characterizations, trying to understand their motivations and contexts, all of which relate to Odin’s very closely, has the overwhelming analysis for Odin ended up being ’SHIT. DAD.’ - and little more?

The MCU is a franchise rife with flawed to flat-out abusive fathers, many of whom reflect and refract each other. From Howard Stark's emotional unavailability to Thanos' physical abuse and mental torture to Ego's narcissistic murdering, there's no denying that the influence of paternal figures is one of the main underlying themes of the MCU entire. But you know which father we've seen the most of?

Odin has appeared in three films in a major secondary role, and is referenced or invoked in three Avengers films and in the Loki TV series. No other father has gotten that much oxygen. (Although Hank Pym will probably outpace him with Ant-Man 3 - it should come as no surprise that I also find that 'flawed father' fascinating, too.)

Thanks to that, we’ve had a chance to see multiple sides to him. Odin has been vulnerable and afraid, angry and heartbroken, performing grand actions and at a loss for what to do or say. We've seen his relationship with his children change drastically from film to film, seen them come to understand Odin in new context, and redefine themselves against him. It's hard to boil that relationship down. Or it should be.

But no. Guys, he’s just a

SHIT. DAD.

So let’s lump him in with Thanos, with Ego, with Frollo and Mother Gothel, with real-life abusers. He's a narcissist who suffers from black-and-white thinking (despite enormous evidence to the contrary - the man is literally defined by his gray thinking). Let’s claim that he was disgusted by Loki, too hard on Thor, he’s an inhuman monster who actually adopted Loki to make Thor better. Yes, he deliberately set up Loki to fail, he always wanted him to screw up, he always wanted Thor to someday overcome him or maybe straight-up kill him to make him into a tougher 'man'. That was the plan, guys! He’s diabolical and Machiavellian and it is Loki who suffers most from his obvious favoritism and gaslighting!! ODIN IS TRYING TO KILL HIM! (Seriously, I can show receipts for every single one of these opinions. I’m not making this up.) Why is the fantasy of Odin being far worse than he is so much more popular than speculative stories about a better Odin? Why is he flattened into a caricature of an abusive tyrant while every other character is given every benefit of the doubt, has their every breath and eyebrow twitch analyzed for greater depth?

Why is Odin afforded no empathy?

Because he’s a secondary character? Because he’s a king, old, white and male and we see those characteristics as meaning someone is too powerful to be worth sympathy? Of those traits, it is mostly the 'old' that must be disqualifying though, seeing as Thor and Loki are princes played by male Caucasian actors. Is it because most fans online and in the target demo are closer to Thor and Loki's age and thus find it easier to empathize with them? Are the old more unworthy of sympathy? Is it that the old don't merit redemption because they're 'running out of time'? Or is it that people feel Odin should pay for his crimes at this end stage of his life? And what of those crimes? Yes, he is depicted as an imperialist, and a political con-man, if you will. But we've had similar in the MCU. Tony Stark embodies the Military Industrial Complex, and even though he had a heel-face-turn (like Odin did) and tried to do more peaceable work, he still held on to his power and ill-gotten wealth (like Odin did) while using propaganda to change people's opinion of him. And yet most people love Tony. Likewise, Loki himself is often shown as an imperialist attempting to carry out genocide and brutal takeovers, but we similarly still understand him as a character outside of that allegory. Same to Thor, who is also shown as late as Ragnarok as carrying out acts of imperialism (just ask Surtur and his eyebrow).

It's also worth noting that Odin is a link in a chain of imperialism that goes back at least as far as Bor and probably further to Buri (Bor could be said to be similar to Howard Stark, even). And yet Odin did manage to realize the system he was a part of and contributed to was flawed, and he did eventually challenge it and seek to alter it. He went so far as imprisoning a loved one as a part of that. No, he wasn't quite a revolutionary, he didn't dismantle the monarchy or anything like that. But he did pursue non-violent peace as a priority and created art praising peacecraft and harmony that contrasted with older statues that venerated chiefly warriors and individuals of power. He encouraged non-violence in his children, even if imperfectly, despite living in a society that glorified violence. He did adopt a child of his people's ancestral enemies in the hopes of fostering understanding - something that was unimaginable by Asgardian custom. Maybe he didn't go about it in the best way possible to our human and modern lenses, but he's far from a straight-up blackhearted villain - he is a morally gray character who underwent a redemption arc long before our story began, and exists as an imperfect man trying his best to be better and finding that a very hard thing to do. To make him only a metaphor for our real-world imperialism and allow him no character beyond that is stifling, and if the same were done to the other characters it would be rightfully called out as reductionist.

Has Odin become become the stand-in for something else, a deep rage for some other trauma? Is he the failures of previous generations that have caused environmental disaster, parents who failed their own children in some way? Is he History, and learning that your country’s hands aren’t as clean as you thought they were and you are the recipient of wealth gotten from imperialism? Is he the authority figure teenagers like to rage against as part of growing up, ’The Man’ as it were? Is he the Patriarchy? Is he a grown-up that you once revered and then discovered flaws in that you have trouble reconciling with your previous image of them?

Is he someone ’safe to hate’?

Is this ’SHIT. DAD.’ really even allowed to just be Thor and Loki’s father, let alone a character with human emotion and individual identity, when he must be the symbol for all that and nothing else?

And is that a healthy thing? To evacuate our rage on something that doesn’t truly represent what we want it to represent? To try and resolve some inner conflict through a representational avatar that we demonize into an easily loathed target?

...yeah. I think the THOR films themselves are against that notion.

Part of the reason I wrote such an ungodly long first post was to walk through nearly every second of screentime Odin had (rewatching the films with a specific attention on Odin alone as I did so) and truly separate this iteration of Odin from everything Fandom had tried to turn him into. Even I found myself realizing that some scenes had been long misconstrued and that I'd had the wrong idea about their context and possible interpretations. The Fandom even pushed ME, someone who hasn't really engaged with it much until recently, into having a far harsher opinion of Odin than I would have off just the text of the films alone.

That's not to say Odin is a beacon of goodness. He is...well, complicated. But that's what makes him fun and interesting in the same way Loki is. It's no accident that two characters mirror each other constantly throughout the story, as well as Odin and Thor. All three can be seen as former villains who are on long redemption arcs. It hurts my soul that while Loki is embraced as a misunderstood, lovable scamp and queer icon, Odin is dismissed as 'EVIL' or at the very least, incompetent and emotionally void. That's simply not the character who is depicted on screen and the one who is there gives so much more depth to the story AND to Thor and Loki. Making him into a bugbear abuser is such a disservice to the writing, to Anthony Hopkins' wonderful portrayal, to the directors and to the acting and writing of Thor and Loki, who based so much of their own characterization off of Hopkins' Odin, since he is so central to the story.

"But but but - he can be a complex, nuanced character and still a SHIT DAD, right?"

Alright. Let's do this. Once and for all, let's get a verdict. Is Odin a SHIT DAD? Judge Otterskin presiding. All rise...

Odin as a Parent - Judgement Day

(Okay but I did laugh at that meme)

First off, define “father”.

Fathers mean different things to different people, obviously. Expectations for what makes a good father have changed from culture to culture, century to century, even within our own lifetimes. Heck, back in the 50s, being a strong man who provided for the family and who ‘knew best’ was the ideal father. A man was king of his house and all that. He kept his daughters respectable and his sons on the straight and narrow, maybe telling them how to be men and not cry too much. Thank god that's going out of fashion, although sadly it still lingers in many parts of the world, some of them very close to home. In general, though, these day we tend to elevate more empathetic fathers who spend a lot of time with the kids and around the home, who express their emotions openly and communicate well with their partners. It is also no longer so heteronormative, with two-father households and other living arrangements achieving acceptance. Who knows what it will be twenty or thirty years from now - hopefully even better. Fingers crossed for Paternity Leave getting protection, and changes to law and lawmaking that often dismiss men and fathers as inherently less capable of childcare than mothers or women. It would be nice to see more men present in child-caring professions as well, such as early education, midwifery, nursing, and elementary school teachers, where they are currently still facing pressure to transfer to other careers.

Putting aside modern-day Midgard, what of our fictional Asgard, conglomerate of Norse, English, and Roman ideals in a space world of fantasy physics? How do we judge a father from another realm?

Do we hold him to our current standard? By Asgard's? By his own opinion? By the mother of his children? Or by his children’s?

Our current standards are ignorant of most of Asgardian culture and context. We’ve no definitive answer as to what the expectations of fatherhood were in Asgard in Odin’s time, no idea even of what his own relationship to his father was. (Although I'm having some fun exploring the concept). That doesn't mean we can't still talk about our thoughts on the matter, as he was written by our culture and in our time, although influenced also by past ones. But I would say it's unfair to ask that he meet our current modern-day ideal when his society lacks so much of what made that possible for us.

What we do know about Asgard is that it is patriarchal. Women can become warriors, but not as easily as men. The names of the people - Son of Bor, Son of Odin, Daughter of etc. - indicate a large emphasis on inheritance and legacy. Who your father is and who his father was is very important to your social standing and your identity. It is likely that if a father soils his reputation, he soils the reputation of his children. Being All-Father, Odin has the additional weight of upholding the reputation of all of Asgard.

It's likely that to be considered a good father, you also need to be considered an ideal man, given that Asgard is covered in iconography of heroes literally holding the city up. Being an ideal man is likely synonymous with being victorious warrior able to defend your home and hearth, probably maintain good social standing and marry a good woman. Presumably, having great children whose actions reflect well on you is probably an important qualifier for being considered a good father too. The metric for whether your children are ‘great’ is likely how well they conform to those ideals of manhood/womanhood.

Are those healthy concepts to determine fatherhood? Are they healthy concepts to determine manhood? Probably not, to be honest. We see how these huge expectations and sexist separations are damaging to several of our Asgardian characters. Sif, who struggles to be respected as a warrior and a lady. And most notably Thor, who has the additional pressures of kinghood thrust upon him and feels stifled by the enormity of what’s required of him - goodness, humility, wisdom, but also incredible strength, charisma, and warrior abilities. Eventually, it breaks him. Notably, it is Frigga who excuses him from these expectations and tells him to find his own path outside of Asgard’s expectations of both him and, in byline, the masculine ideals he has striven to embody. (I do appreciate how Rocket’s attempts to get Thor to ‘man up’ are so summarily dismissed by the film as ineffective, cruel, and harmful, while Frigga’s maternal warmth is upheld as heroic and necessary - Thor is not mocked by the film for ‘running crying to his mother’, but congratulated and rewarded with new purpose and self-assurance. Such a nice scene.)

But they are the expectations Odin is operating under, and likely the expectations that his father operated under as well. That’s not to say Odin’s opinions of what makes a good father align entirely with Asgard’s - he does subvert several of those ‘tenets’ by chiding Thor’s warlike behaviour rather than encouraging it, and by adopting a child not of his own blood or even species, subverting the singular emphasis placed on legacy as something handed down bloodlines with emphasis on who begot who.

As for Odin’s own opinion, he would probably say he failed to be a good father - although certainly he was trying to be a good one. He considers himself to have failed in THOR twice over - before he banished Thor, he seemed deeply upset that he had failed to teach Thor empathy and control over his anger. Later, after Loki's death, he struggles with Thor calling him a good father. In Thor 2, he's directly antagonistic to both his children, pushing them away (and towards Frigga), which would seem a reaction to him feeling like he's not good at parenting and angrily giving up on it. Frigga's death complicates this further. Finally, in Thor 3, he straight-up says that he feels he failed his sons, at least in relation to the coming of Hela. (A deleted scene does have him more explicitly say that he feels he failed as a father). As for Hela, I'd bet Odin considers his parenting lacking there too, and he certainly seems regretful of how their relationship turned out.

If you're looking for the biggest Odin-anti-stan, Odin himself is probably the club founder. Although I think he'd reject the harsher statements many members would make. For a start, I think Odin would say he was proud of Thor and Loki and how they turned out - especially since he was trying very, very hard to help them be different from himself in key areas. He got them on the path to redemption a lot earlier than he himself realized he needed to change. That's something I think he'd point to and rightly so.

As for his children's opinions...

Hela is obviously highly critical of the current 'namby-pamby-nice' Odin, but her obvious devotion and veneration of Odin's past image and her partnership with him (up to and including her wearing a helmet styled after his) indicate that at some point she thought highly of him as a father and as someone to emulate. Actually, she still does, she just prefers 'her Odin' to 'Thor and Loki's Odin'. Odin's death brings her no misery, as to her, Odin died a long time ago. She does immediately put his picture back up when she takes over Asgard though, and won't stop talking about how awesome he used to be.

Thor is on paper as expressing veneration for Odin's parenting in THOR, and although he is thrown for an absolute loop in Ragnarok, he takes Odin's death very hard and spends the whole film in mourning. Even after learning some dark truths about Odin, he embraces a resemblance to him with an eyepatch, quotes his wisdom, and honours his father's wishes to forgive Loki and make him a part of building New Asgard in Norway. It would seem from what we know of Love and Thunder that he participated in building a shrine to Odin at the spot of his death, making Odin an integral part of his New Asgard foundations. I think Thor would probably still say Odin was a good father, but he definitely would have liked to have a LITTLE MORE WARNING. Still, I think Thor holds his father's lessons in high esteem and is grateful that Odin banished him to Earth when he did. That is how he met Jane and had the major change in perspective he sorely needed. No-one else but Odin could have given him that, and it was integral to making Thor the man he is now.

As for Loki, there is no other child quite as devoted to Odin as he is. While Odin affects the motivations of his other children, Odin IS Loki's motivation through the entire Thor trilogy. Whether it's proving his love and devotion to Odin in THOR or usurping his father's image to literally become Odin in TDW or creating a whole gosh-darn play in Ragnarok so he can depict a mutual-saviour-relationship with him that makes Loki feel like a good son with an important role in his father's life, Loki exhibits near obsession with Odin and being like him. In the films, Loki's arc concludes with an emphasis on him taking back his father's name after previously rejecting him as a father. However, he never admits to hating Odin, and his actions show a continued fascination with Odin even when they were at the most estranged. Even in the Loki TV series, when he was at the height of anti-Odin sentiment, he's distraught to see Odin's death and considers his words meaningful. A short while later, he even naturally calls Odin his father again in conversation with Mobius. I can't imagine Loki, when all is said and done, truly dismissing Odin as a bad father. He reveres him too much. That play in Ragnarok is a direct window into Loki's mind, and in it, he gives Odin a position of reverence - literally the last the speak, the one to define Loki's life. A false-Odin talking to a false-Odin, Loki's written Odin performing for Loki disguised as Odin. The wish-fulfillment aspect of the play positions him and Odin as incredibly close and in mutual admiration of each other, and that is likely what Loki wanted most - a more open and honest relationship with Odin, not a severance. If Odin had lived longer, he might've had it, but even as things were Loki grieved Odin, honoured him in death, and felt assured that his father wanted him no matter what, even after he brought Thanos down on the Ark. He was that assured of Odin's love.

But these are the kids, and they're probably horribly biased. After all, they're inside this tornado, and a lot of what they love about Odin are traits we'd consider less than ideal. It's natural for kids to love their parents, no matter how flawed. Even Gamora mourned Thanos, and Thanos mourned Gamora, right?

So when all else fails in trying to define what makes a good father, let's use the Tom Hiddleston approach and look it up in the dictionary.

father | ˈfɑːðə | noun

1 a man in relation to his child or children: how like your father you are | the art collection was bequeathed to him by his adoptive father. • a male animal in relation to its offspring. • (fathers) literary ancestors. • an important male figure in the origin and early history of something: he's held to be the father of abstract art. • a man who provides care and protection: the prince is widely regarded as the father of the nation. • (the Father) (in Christian belief) the first person of the Trinity; God. • (Father) used as a title of respect for an old and venerable man or for something personified as such a man: Father Thames. ~ Okay, there’s no Webster definition for ‘good’ or ‘bad father’, obviously, so we’ll have to go with the basic one. Obviously Odin was the biological father of Hela and Thor and the adoptive one of Loki, hopefully no-one is contesting that. (Some people are absolutely contesting that, going by the utter exuberance I've seen from people celebrating the change from Loki Odinson to Loki Laufeyson in the TV series...but that's a whole other thing.) I think we can also say that, for good or ill, he certainly fits the bill as ‘an important male figure in the origin’ of his children - Thor, Loki and Hela all resemble him, in appearance and behaviour. It is no accident that Odin wears a helm that it is combination of Thor and Loki’s, and one identical to that Hela. In the previous ridiculously long piece, I hope the similarities between how Odin approaches life and how Thor and Loki do have been striking. Is it that they intentionally imitate him, or is it subconscious mirroring? Is it genetic or cultural? In any case - a lot of the traits we enjoy in Thor and Loki are present in Odin and likely had their origins there, good and ill. He is definitely all three children's father. This is probably what people would select from this as the definition of a good father, though - a man who provides care and protection.

Is Odin a good nurturer? A good teacher? A good protector?

Certainly he tries to be these things. He tried to teach Thor important lessons, tried to assure Loki. Tried to compliment them both and nurture them into better people.

But, by his own admission, he did fail to protect his children, usually because he wished to protect their innocence/maintain their ignorance. And that didn't really work out.

He couldn’t 'protect Loki from the truth', he unleashed Hela for them to deal with after only a minute's warning, and his attempt to teach them lessons often involved putting them in danger. As for Hela, he tried to teach her and change her ways but couldn't, and so he put the protection of others above his protection of her and caged her away.

A lot of people have said he’s an absolute failure at showing care next to Frigga. And yes, I’d agree Frigga was better at showing affection, but she operated under different pressures and expectations, in part because Odin shouldered nearly all of the disciplinary actions as well as ruling duties, and in part because the sexism of Asgard probably decreed that she should be the emotionally available and supportive parent while Odin upheld more masculine, stoic ideals. It's notable that the one emotion Odin seems comfortable with expressing is anger, something a lot of men here on Midgard can attest to is the 'acceptable emotion' for men to show.

And yet in our very short time with Odin in the MCU, we see a lot of emotional range from the guy beyond that, and the anger is often layered in other emotions, such as guilt and sorrow. He cries in THOR and TDW. He's depicted as vulnerable, tender, unsure and pensive, as well as righteous, disappointed, afraid. He puts on a cruel act to antagonize, he puts on an act of strength when he's falling-down weak, and sometimes he can’t hide his frailty at all. He's vengeful, forgiving, outraged, nonplussed, judgemental, proud, penitent, and most commonly of all, grieving.

He does show many of these emotions to his children, if not the larger court, even if it's not as obvious as the shouty bits. And he does show them care - physical and emotional. He holds their hands as children, he attempts to reach out to them as adults, he offers them praise and he forgives them when they harm him. I’d say that meets some minimum of care. There is also one other thing Odin does I think is worth mentioning.

He breaks out the big L word.

Uh...no, Scott.

Which many stuffy British fathers absolutely can’t manage even to this day, since all explicit emotion is outlawed for men over the age of 29 in the UK. It’s absolutely true, trust me, don’t look up. You feel it’s true, don’t you?

While to some this may seem like a last-ditch thing, something Odin didn’t say until he was dying, let’s not forget all this:

In which Odin references it as the ultimate reason for Thor’s banishment, indicating the weight Odin puts on family and the word ‘love’ itself (additionally, the shot after this frames Loki between Odin and Thor, indicating Loki as the specific ‘loved one betrayed’.)

That weight Odin puts on the expression of Love is challenged by Loki in the Vault -

- but this also confirms that Odin has ‘claimed to Love’ Loki and Loki does perceive it that way, even if he doubts its sincerity in this moment and struggles to reconcile the notion of a father that loves him with one that shares no blood with him. His actions throughout the movie are meant to solidify that bond he feels is threatened - both by proving his love to Odin, and ensuring Odin loves him when Loki ‘saves his life’ - a plan doomed to failure in more ways than one. (But there again is that desire Loki’s always had to be a saviour of Odin, to equalize their relationship).

At the end of the film, Loki perceives Odin’s distraught ‘No, Loki’ as a rejection of Loki’s love, and his actions thereafter can be seen as something of a test of Odin’s love for him (I would mention that this hearkens back to Edmund in King Lear, who felt the need to test his father’s trust and forgiveness. Gloucester failed his test, Odin does not fail his, though it takes several films and a much greater challenge to prove.) The moment Loki hears that Odin loves him even after all Loki did to Odin, he is reassured that Odin was telling the truth in ‘claiming to love him’ and accepts it, in two different realities. Test passed.

Despite what some people see as coldness or distance from Odin, the man has been direct in talking about Love, and in showing it, even if at times he had a very odd way of going about it.

By my own admission, Love is not enough to be a good parent, and it doesn’t excuse bad actions. But it’s certainly a major ingredient in being a good parent. You can have everything else, but without love, it is perfunctory. With love, I think, a lot of things can go wrong and a family can still hang together. Not always, but a lot of the time.

On the subject of Adoption

I feel it’s important to mention this. This is a very real-world issue, and complex enough that it probably deserves its own post. I’d add that I am not a member of the adoption community, just an outsider looking in who has done reading on the subject and read the testimonials of many adoptees, foster parents, and adoptive parents, as I’ve long harboured an interest in adoption and have tried to educate myself on it for a very long time. Everything I’m going to say is second-hand info and I do recommend reading the work of adoptees and adoptive parents for more information on real-world adoption and its myriad angles. Loki is what would be called an LDA - late-discovery adoptee. That used to be a lot more common than it is now. The conventional wisdom even just a couple decades ago was that keeping adoption a secret was the best way to integrate a child - that knowing they were adopted would cause them to always feel like outsiders and cause them to be bullied and treated differently. Some families could keep the secret, but what was more likely was that the truth did eventually come out - when dealing with a medical condition, or applying for a passport, or doing a project on genealogy, or someone just letting it slip. And then you’d have an LDA, reeling from having their entire identity shaken, from realizing that important truths in their life had been kept from them by those meant to have their best interests at heart. The possibility of what their lives might’ve been like, the loss of control over their narrative, the realization that their biological reality is not reflected around them tended to be utterly devastating. This, and research into adoption outcomes, helped push in the modern approach of mandating Open Adoption in all but a very few cases (and in those cases, Closed Adoptions, it’s more that the biological family isn’t allowed to contact the child for the child’s own safety, not that the child doesn’t know they’re adopted). Other evolutions in how adoption is handled are still happening - international adoption is now relatively rare, a larger emphasis is put on keeping families together and creating community support, and adoptions that were legally closed are now being challenged so adoptees have the right to their stories. No doubt as we continue to try and do better and learn how to deal with adoption trauma, we will look back on what’s happening even today with horror. There’s still a long way to go and in my opinion the rights of children are still often a lower priority than the rights of parents, both birth and adoptive, although there’s flaws in how birth families and adoptive families are treated as well. There are many mistakes adoptive parents make that are relevant to our discussion of Odin: Seeing themselves as saviours.

Many adoptees resent feeling like biological children are ‘owed’ their place in the family, while adoptive children are ‘lucky’ or ’saved’ and must be grateful. However, this is not the opinion of all adoptees - like any group, they aren’t a monolith, and some feel that they have a ‘mutual’ bond, and that it is OK to feel grateful for a good parent, since a biological child can’t be guaranteed a good parent either and many biological children are grateful for their parents. I’ve heard some express that they like to see it as a ‘mutual saving’, where both child and parent ‘save each other’.

The real problem tends to be the righteous, often religious types who save children not because they want them, but because they feel it increases their standing in heaven. They tend to not be attentive to their children and instead collect them from their own narcissistic ego and because they were ‘compelled by God’, something that leaves them free to abuse the children because they’re doing such ‘good’.

I’d say that some of this applies to Odin, who prides himself of being Loki’s saviour and even defines himself by it. He can be quite affronted when the righteousness of that action is challenged. However, he doesn’t do it because he feels compelled by a religion and he doesn’t treat Loki as a ticket to veneration by his peers. Further, he doesn’t abuse him and at multiple points empathizes with Loki and his situation, and feels regret at having put him in a difficult spot, so he is capable of recognizing that Loki’s struggles are legitimate.

Thanos seems like a better reflection of the second paragraph, as he collects children for a religious purpose. Odin does not do anything remotely like this.

Being unprepared for handling adoption trauma.

While not every adoption is considered traumatic, even a child adopted as a baby can and often does manifest a variety of symptoms, from attachment disorders (I will add this is lately being reconsidered and renamed, but this is still a commonly used phrase in the community at time of writing) to separation anxiety to other psychological ailments that can manifest in a host of ‘bad’ behaviour. Just loving a child isn’t enough - and even moving heaven and earth to try and get the best treatment and therapy for a child is no guarantee of a healthy outcomes, either.

Odin appears to have realized that Loki would be traumatized by the revelation of his adoption, and his solution was to conceal the adoption to avoid it (not a great plan). Whether he realized that even a secret adoption had its own traumas, I don’t know, but Frigga tells us that they were concerned that Loki would ‘feel different’, and his first instinct was to assure Loki that he was his son upon Loki’s revelation in the Vault.

He certainly didn’t have Loki going to a therapist, which is the now the arrangement most adoptive families have for their children, regardless of the circumstances of the adoption. That’s a relatively new phenomenon but it’s good to see adoption trauma taken seriously and attempts to give the child a neutral place to explore those feelings outside of the family are important.

Asgard has no therapists that I’m aware of, and it is notable that Loki seems to have no major social group or friends outside of his core family. Neither does Odin for that matter. There isn’t a neutral place or person for Loki to discuss his feelings. Nor does Odin seem to consult with anyone about his handling of the situation.

Failing to honour a child’s cultural roots.

This one is difficult to get right, as many children growing up in a different culture might reject learning their birth culture, and even doing the best you can to make sure there is a lot of education on that culture in the child’s life is no guarantee they won’t still feel alienated from it, or feel alienated having to learn it. Still, it is considered important to have that representation, and to be enthused about making it a part of the child’s life as much as possible. This should include making sure that the child isn’t the only member of their cultural group in their lives. Odin did not honour Loki’s cultural roots, even going so far as to turn him Asgardian. While it’s implied that other parents told their children scary stories about monstrous jotunns (meaning Odin himself didn’t tell them), the main representation for giants in Asgard and in Loki’s life comes from war stories where they are none-too-flatteringly depicted. Odin himself contributes to his, calling Jotunheim a place of ‘cold and darkness’. There’s few depictions of giants in Asgard aside from the Odin-commissioned painting of Laufey side-by-side with Odin holding the peace treaty.

Definitely some mixed signals there, maybe even a small attempt by Odin to create a more positive depiction of giants and of Laufey in particular. Hey, they say you should keep albums of the birth family around. I guess that...kinda counts? Right on the ceiling, too...

In other questions, did Laufey model for that? Or did Odin just sneak an artist with a photographic memory into a delegation and had him memorize the face so he could do his big painting? Or maybe Odin even sketched it himself, like Loki wrote his play...pretty good sketch for a guy with no depth perception, and a pretty flattering painting of the guy who’s the reason Odin has no depth perception...

Even if you take the best possible angle on that, it is paltry. Even if Odin wasn’t intentionally putting forward ugly representation of jotunns (and it is worth noting that there’s no statues of Laufey being defeated or twisted ugly drawings of them about Asgard - something Asgard did have previously, and something our human empires had a lot of), he wasn’t really going out of his way to put forward good representation. He appears mostly neutral on the whole thing, other than wanting peace with the giants and treating Laufey in particular with respect. That is sadly ahead of most of the Asgardians, but hardly provides what Loki needed.

In summation, these are no little things, and I would advise anyone considering adoption to spend a lot of time reading up on it. I’ve heard it said that adoption is ‘Parenting on Hard’. It is all the regular difficulties of parenthood multiplied by a thousand uncertainties and changing standards as to what’s considered ‘good adoptive parenting'. Anyone who breezily says they’ll ‘just adopt’ to have kids probably hasn’t looked into it much. It is very difficult to do for good reason, and as our knowledge of it grows, our approaches change. It has been a tremendous shift from the 1950s - now, and even the last decade has brought about huge changes to the system. Five years from now, I expect our understanding to be even more different.

Adoption In Asgard

We don’t know how adoption is considered in Asgard. Is it common? Is it frowned upon? Is it usually secretive?

Asgard is a fantastical society inspired by a mix of the Roman, Egyptian and British Empires, with a splash of its Viking roots. I suppose we could look at those histories, though I don’t think they were anything more than loose inspiration.

Adoption existed amongst Vikings - there was even a sort of fostering system where one family would send a child to another family to foster co-operation and trust between them - which might’ve been an inspiration for Odin and Loki, although it doesn’t quite line up with the story. There were also more secretive ‘closed adoptions’ when high-ranking members of a clan would take children from lower-ranking families and compensate them with gold, but the children were forbidden from seeing the birth families again until late adulthood.

Finally, Rome, Egypt and Britain all did something called ‘hostage taking’ or ‘warding’ - the practice of taking royal children from conquered states and educating them alongside the empire’s own children in order to assimilate them culturally.

The hostages sent to Egypt would be educated in Egyptian culture and society, or ‘Egyptianized’, so to speak. Once these ‘Egyptianized’ princes succeeded their fathers, and returned to their homelands, it was hoped that they would be loyal vassals of the Egyptian state, and increase the influence of Egypt in their lands. We do know that during the New Kingdom, the Egyptians had an institution called the kap or ‘Royal Nursery’. It was here that foreign princes were educated alongside sons of the Egyptian elite.

...

The concept of a ‘Royal Nursery’ for the education of foreign princes was also carried out by the Romans. For the Romans, taking hostages in return for promises of peace from the enemy was seen as an act of clementia, or ‘mercy’.

- Wu Mingren, The Strategic Use of Hostages in the Ancient World

It is also worth noting that these historic tactics have had positive and negative outcomes, as I’m sure you can guess. In some cases, the wards were able to build strong personal relationships with the eventual leaders of Rome/Egypt/Britain, and with that they could ensure better treatment and protection for their homelands, leaning on the affection gained from childhood friendship. Some even went on to become powerful emperors in their own right. (See Herod Agrippa).

At other times...well, some children were horribly abused, enslaved, treated as lesser in every way in an attempt to break their spirits, etc. (See Emperor Valerian, who after his capture by Shapur I, King of Persia, was treated as a human footstool before being gruesomely murdered and his corpse desecrated. Ah, humanity...)

This seems like it might’ve been an influence on the writing of THOR, although since Odin does it clandestinely, and with a purportedly unbeloved son of Laufey, much of the imperialist benefits these ancient kings and hostages had from the arrangement wouldn’t really work. Still, I think the friendship of two children growing up side by side and the understanding that might bring about did occur to him, and he seems to keep them together their entire lives. Loki even says in Ragnarok that it was ‘Odin who brought them together’.

It is, of course, still imperialism, even if Odin’s intentions were much more benevolent than Shapur I. But to his eyes, it is a much more peaceable and potentially egalitarian form of imperialism than Asgard had previously practiced under his older rule and under Bor’s (and possibly Buri’s, though we’ve never seen anything of him yet).

As for general adoption, it seems very rare in Asgard, and adopting a non-Asgardian is probably unheard of, let alone a conveniently-sized jötunn. It’s treated as a shocking revelation by the characters and the story and the word ‘adoption’ is never even used until we get to Avengers.

Knowing Odin and his preference for handling everything himself, he probably didn’t ask around much, instead just hoping everything would work out - perhaps the most common mistake for adoptive parents. He tried to reason and love the problems away, tried to be a good father but not necessarily a good adoptive father - and it’s likely he doesn’t even know about the difference, or want there to be one.

Having read a lot of accounts from adoptees, he reminds me most of someone adopting decades ago, when secrecy really was considered the right thing to do, the trauma of adoptees simply wasn’t recognized, and treating children normally and equally was thought to solve most everything. It doesn’t make his omissions less wrong, but I hope it puts him in context. And I will add, Odin did (eventually) reveal the truth when Loki asked for it. Many stories I’ve read have adoptive parents going to extraordinary lengths to protect their status as the ‘only parent’, often continuing to lie or destroying documentation, etc.

That Odin is unaware of concepts like adoption trauma is probably to be expected of a society like Asgard, although that doesn’t necessarily excuse his actions. Frigga does say she wanted to tell Loki, and Odin was against it - although apparently she agreed with Odin enough that she went along with his wishes to keep it secret.

There are a number of possible reasons Odin might’ve thought this was a good idea, on top of a cultural ignorance as to why it was a bad one. Reasons that don’t exist here on Midgard.

It would still be very traumatic for Loki to know, and to grow up knowing, that he was considered a default enemy to everyone. This is more than just adoption, this is asking a child to be a figurehead for enormous cultural change in a place that hates him. On top of that he’s a member of the Royal Family, a celebrity from birth, so he would be extra exposed and from literally day one of his life. How far would the honesty go? Would all of Asgard know? All the Nine Realms? Wouldn’t that put Loki at risk for assassination? Two different worlds would have reason to want him dead. The enormous psychological trauma of such exposure is nothing to sneeze at, especially to put on a child from birth. And I’m thinking Asgard probably doesn’t have that many therapists. I just don’t see that turning out well either. And even if it wasn’t public - that poses its own problems. Loki would have to be a part of the deception. What if Thor or he let something slip when they were children? What would he hear and take to heart when people discussed these things around him? The trauma is still complex.

But that just brings up the question - was taking Loki at all a good idea? If Odin were to truly want what was best for Loki, what should he have done? Of course, Odin is also king of Asgard - leaving an heir to Jotunheim lying around would be a risk to Asgard in the future. I’m sure most previous kings of Asgard wouldn’t have taken that risk and quietly taken care of it. Certainly what little we know of Bor indicates that he would never have done as Odin did.

Honestly, I don’t see an easy answer. Maybe he could have sent Loki very, very far away to a space orphanage? But that’s not exactly kind or risk-free to Asgard in itself (long-lost heirs do have a troublesome habit of returning at the worst possible times to lead the rebellion) and it’s still very traumatizing and isolating. Maybe he could have attempted to find the birth mother and reunite Loki with her and keep them as wards in Asgard? But if he truly thought Laufey wanted Loki dead, that paints on a target on the baby. And it requires Loki growing up on a planet that hates him still. And all this time later, we still don’t know who the birth mother was or if she was even a Frost Giant as well - possibly she couldn’t be found.

It seems to me that Odin didn’t really think the action of adopting Loki through at all, and acted impulsively. He saw a cute baby after a horrific war and being seriously maimed, and yeah, he saw that baby as a hope for a peaceful future not only for Jotunheim-Asgard relations, but for himself.

To reiterate from the previous post, Odin placed a hope that he could be a better and more peaceable person onto the action of adopting Loki. He saw adopting Loki as a positive action that defined him. Not exactly healthy, but, I think, something very human. It was a selfish act, though he thinks of it as altruism.

In short - intentions mostly good, but still enacted through an imperialist lens, and he probably shouldn’t have his picture hanging up in any adoption offices. But intentions do count for something, and it’s worth pointing out how complex the moral quandry the whole situation was, which rather suits a character of famously gray morality.

The answer to the question “Why did Odin do it” is probably “because he felt like it and he could” - in a moment of post-battle-fatigue, a moment of hopelessness, Odin did something that wasn’t very calculated, wasn’t thought through, and was entirely based on emotional logic. Logic-logic simply doesn’t hold water when you look at it for five minutes from either direction. But hey - compulsive acts against good sense for the sake of emotional catharsis aren’t uncommon for Thor and Loki. Is it much of a stretch to think Odin has his moments of emotional logic > actual logic?

The Verdict - Is Odin a SHIT DAD?

Phew...well, we’ve had a lot of evidence given here today, and in the previous post.

There’s one thing I can say for certain - Odin tried to be a good father. He was also much more aware of the issues his children had than most in the fandom will give him credit for, tried to address their issues, and when stripped of every other role in his life he kept that one. Some won’t agree with his tactics - certainly the ones in TDW are underhanded, although I hope I’ve convinced you of their complexity - but he never gave up on his kids. No, not even Hela, whom he never killed, and whom he carried with him everywhere.

And when compared to the fully qualified ‘Shit Dads’ in the MCU, it’s clear he doesn’t belong among their number. He doesn’t slaughter his children for not being Celestials like Ego. He doesn’t deliberately pit his children against each other and show clear favoritism towards one like Thanos, and he doesn’t torture them with machines and graft weapons and biotech into their very bodies like he did either. He also didn’t brutally and deliberately massacre Loki’s birth family in order to take him, either.

Even when put against the other dads he doesn’t score badly. He doesn’t wait to tell his children that he loves them until they find it on a moldering film like Howard Stark, but speaks of it often. He does share a lot of traits with Hank Pym, such as over-protectiveness leading to estrangement, difficulty in communicating, and a lot of previous mistakes catching up to him and affecting his children’s lives despite his efforts to keep them secret. Which is something Howard and Tony Stark have done as well.

And while he thought he was doing the right thing, or at least the best thing he could, he did set his kids up for a lot of shocking revelations and traumas in later life as his ability to ‘protect them from the truth’ faded. His tactics and reputation for concealment and subterfuge sabotaged him when he was being genuinely genuine. His inability to be direct often lead to confusion and doubt about his intentions or feelings and further weakened his relationships.

How do we declare his success or failure as a father? We might as well argue about whether or not Thor is a good brother to Loki, or Loki a good brother to Thor - many missteps were made, egos bruised, harsh words said, reconciliations tarnished by violent consequences for past mistakes - same as for Odin and Loki and Odin and Thor. Is Loki loving Thor enough to excuse his betrayal of him? Is Thor loving Loki enough to excuse his misunderstanding and callous derision of Loki? Is Odin loving Thor and Loki enough to excuse his flaws and failures and eccentricities?

What about comparable questions?

Is Thor a shit brother? Is Loki a shit son?

(Doesn’t such a phrase make you cringe? To boil down all their struggles to such a gauche, gross concept? Either total, despicable failure or...what? The question itself is biased.)

And yet you’ll find few in this community writing off Thor or Loki as abusive, terrible, bad people who should be replaced. You’ll find few angry that Loki and Thor still love each other and forgive each other, but you’ll find many who dislike that Loki and Thor care about Odin.

This has all been a very long-winded way of saying that I can't definitely declare Odin a good or bad father. Because being a father is complicated. Because being All-Father is infinitely more so. Because in many ways, we still don’t know the real Odin, and neither do his children. We have a mercurial mess of emotions with the face of Anthony Hopkins, often misrepresented by Fandom. I fear that one day, Marvel will just absorb the zeitgeist opinion of Odin as an evil, abusive man and see that as the canon, rather than the much more complex and ultimately good-intentioned figure from the films they made. It has happened before.

(How appropriate that the term is Flanderization).

But what I can definitely declare is that he is NOT a Shit Dad. Because shit dads don’t care, shit dads are absent, shit dads don’t try, and shit dads are shallow caricatures. He is not waste ejected out a rectum with no value, a smelly mass worth only revulsion and disposal. Odin has value, as an individual, as a father, as a character.

I hereby declare Odin Not-Guilty of the charge of being a shit dad!

To be clear, though, I was looking at the merits of Odin as a father, not Odin as a person. I don’t particularly like standing in judgement of fictional characters as good or evil and think it’s reductionist, but I do think it’s important to separate the two concepts. Flawed men can be good fathers, good fathers can be terrible people (I’d say Odin raising Hela probably fits that contradiction nicely, good dad, terrible man at the time, and when he became a better man he had to be a bad dad for the good of others).

Odin is not supposed to be a purely good person in any incarnation, but nor is he supposed to be irredeemably evil. In the MCU, he’s a manipulator and a liar trying to do the right thing. He’s a conqueror and peace-treaty-maker, the ideal Asgardian warrior who adopted the child of an enemy. Odin, the rule-maker and the rebel. Odin, seeker of solitude, but craving family. Odin, the honourable liar, the trickster king. Odin, loved and hated. Odin - maybe not so bad after all dad? If you’ve read all of this, wow, thanks. I’ve no idea if I’ve managed to change your mind, if you do disagree, but I would ask that maybe as a community we could lessen the torrent of degrading ways we talk about this character. Fiction is about empathy, and empathy for one character doesn’t have to come at the cost of empathy for another. Especially when this one illustrates conflicts many real people face. Please, as a community, let’s step back from extreme, dehumanizing phrases. It’s not good for us, as people, to look at constructs of people and condemn them as worthless, especially when fiction is meant to be a safe place to explore the messiness of humanity.

Odin and Me

Finally...I admit some bias in wanting to talk about Odin in more complexity.

Odin has long been very important to me, as important as Loki was when I first started reading Norse Myths at the tender of age of (sometime in my single digits). Loki was perhaps the first ‘queer’ character I remember meeting in fiction. But Odin was the other first, as they are a package deal. As a kid who struggled with gender binary being forced upon me and grappling with endless labels, it meant a lot to see Odin, an old man with a big white beard, chieftain of the manliest men to ever manly no less, just give everyone the big middle finger and do what he wanted to do regardless of what people thought was masculine or feminine - and find huge power in disregarding their arbitrary gatekeeping and judgement. Odin might appear hyper-masculine, but he truly wasn’t, even when he sometimes pretended to be. He delighted in subversion, challenged nature, attempted to subvert the destiny of Ragnarok, chose friends regardless of what others thought of them, and was always secure in who he was, even when people thought that was unmanly, womanly, or cowardly. He was powerful despite the mockery. Powerful because he deliberately sought knowledge others decided was beneath them. He wasn’t made of stone, exactly, as he was still a lonely guy with frustrations and flaws, but he was still unapologetically himself.

The God of the Vikings - somehow a ‘genderqueer*’ icon. (*of course I’m not a huge fan of putting modern labels on pagan concepts that exist in a different context and aren’t one-to-one, but...yeah. Yeah he’s a gender-ambivalent-shapeshifting-arsehole-trickster-king).

I’ve also recently gone through a lot with my dad. He suffered a serious brain injury immediately after the death of my mother. He even has to wear an eyepatch sometimes thanks to head injury making one eye’s vision all fuzzy, and he grew a big white beard while in hospital, so I’m not gonna deny that I see the resemblance and realize I put some of my own relationship with my dad into my understanding of Odin as a father. I’ve seen and appreciated my father’s struggles in his life more and more as I got older and realized what he’d been through.

My father is a loving man filled with all sorts of soft emotions, but the immense pressure of his job and its working conditions, and all the expectations put on him as a dad and a man, (in addition to a reaction to a Malaria pill) led to him developing depression when I was a kid. He was always so tired when he came home from work, but he still he tried, really tried, to be a great dad and spend time with us, to teach me and my brother his birth language of French (before it grew too exhausting for him), to encourage us, even if sometimes he said and did things that could be discouraging, out of a fear for our future. There were times when he was closer to me, and times when he was closer to my brother. Sometimes it was just about who happened to be closer in proximity or where we were in our lives, but he always loved us and supported us and never showed favourtism, though at times when we were younger we might think that was the case because he communicated better with one of us. I know I felt like it when my brother got more of his dedicated time and attention, and at the same time my brother felt I was given more favour because he was less hard on me! (Really, it was mostly about schoolwork, which I excelled at and my brother struggled with, so my dad and mom spent a ton of effort trying to help him. Which made him feel overwhelmed and me a little out in the cold. Such is life.)

There were also times when he just couldn’t be as there for us as we wanted and maybe needed, thanks to his own challenges.

It hurts that he can’t speak to me as easily as he used to anymore, due to aphasia and that brain injury, which has also affected his memory. But I do remember the frank conversations we did manage to have in my brief adulthood. His confessions of envy of my mother, for being available to us and able to spend time with us when he had to be devoted to work that was often soul-sucking and left him with little at the end of the day, especially as he grappled with depression that sucked away at his motivation to engage in hobbies. I started to understand a lot of the societal pressures put on my dad that prevented him from expressing his emotions as much as he’d like, until pushed to the brink, which explained some of his angry outbursts when it came to dealing with grief and loss (he could never talk about the loss of his parents without becoming angry that it was even mentioned). I got to understand a lot of myths fed to him as a kid about the proper way to be a man and how he’d tried to negotiate them, the sacrifices of his parents making him afraid of letting them down with anything less than great success, but also his little rebellions against the norms that surrounded him that made him a world traveler in a family of homebodies. He met my mother in a foreign land, a woman who came from a whole different country (and one with traditional tensions with my father’s culture no less). He was the only child to move away from home and live apart from his family, too, even though that meant living in a foreign language and only seeing his family and home on rare occasions.

I am capable of separating that from my interpretation of Odin, but it does grant me insight into what I think the actor and directors were going for with him and the other male characters of THOR.

I also note the similarities between he and the mythological Odin that help me write Finnesang. It also helps that I grew up with a brother and saw similar pressures and expectations put on him by society, even as my dad tried to lessen the burdens his own father had put on him. My father’s never been anything close to having ‘toxic masculinity’, which I’ve come to deeply appreciate. He has always been protective of my brother, tried to understand his problems, but still tried to push him to do his best and be the best version of himself that he could. That led to conflict on occasion as my brother struggled with his issues and fears of disappointing our dad, especially as he negotiated adolescence and his own depression. They’ve had their ups and downs, sometimes explosive ones, but at the end of the day they love each other very much and have come to rely on each other. Their understanding of one another has increased as my brother matured, on both sides. The passion they inspired in each other was a sign of how much they cared about one another, even if it also allowed fuel for the occasional shouting match. The ability to cause each other pain does not indicate a lack of love - often, love is what makes it possible.

Conflict is not abuse, and I think there’s a worrying trend of people equating the two. Just because two people - or two fictional characters - have miscommunications, make mistakes, or cause each other unintentional or sometimes even intentional pain, does not mean that they are abusive and need to be cut out of each other’s lives. Sometimes it is just a period of change or shifting dynamics. Disruption can lead to anger and disagreement and errors of judgement - but it doesn’t always lead to an end. It can lead to growth, like it did for my father and brother.

And now we’re back to ‘Asgard needs more therapists’.

Pictured: Offbrand Stanley Ipkiss doing a therapy in Son of the Mask, unappreciated classic film I got in a cereal box once.

Whatever Odin means to you, I’d ask that you remember that he means a lot to others. He certainly does to me.

Odin has been appropriated by some pretty scummy people (I’m sure you know of whom I speak), and believe me when I say they straight-up mutilate the character to fit their insanely hateful worldview. I have to say, it straight up sucks to come here to Tumblr and see people putting forward THAT version of Odin. The maimed one, made into a symbol of toxic masculinity, hatred, cruelty, and bigotry. Shouldn’t we be challenging that appropriation?

It wasn’t so long ago that I spoke out endlessly in defence of Loki. Pre-2011, I used to rant to my friends about how I hated Loki, Hades, Anubis, Morgana la Fey, Pan, etc. being portrayed as evil, flattened and maimed until they were unrecognizable, hateful versions of something that was beautiful in the source material. Sometimes I mentioned Odin as among that group, a character often depicted as evil or hyper-masculine without respect for the far more complex character of the pagan religion.

I can’t tell you what it means to see Loki slowly redeemed in pop culture, to see the world catch up with where I’ve been since I met him at that tender, singular age. To see him reclaimed by women, by the queer community, held up as a hero and recontextualized - that has been utterly amazing to witness.

And I can’t tell you how much it sucks to see people who praise Loki in one breath condemn Odin in the same one, to see Odin tarred with the slime we’ve just scraped off Loki. To see them uphold the hateful, spiteful take on Odin that denies him his queerness, his duality, his weirdness and complexity - to agree with those who have been trying to press-gang him into a service as an icon of hate for years.

God’s sakes. Can’t you see? You’ve become what you claim to despise!

Loki is not evil.

Odin is not evil.

Let characters be gray.

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