#i only really like norse mythology loki tbh not whatever in the world MCU loki is

[elindae-writes]

Disney MCU : not really my thing and I don’t really care Elindae writes MCU : this is mad this is bogus and I love it so much

Okay, so I only watched the first few MCU movies. I'm gonna be honest, I think the franchise peaked with only the first Iron Man movie. I read a lot of MCU fanfiction before I ever saw any MCU movies at all so I just had no clue what was going on.

There are actually a few MCU fanfics I like: In The Home , (A City Full of) Helping Hands, A Hospital Full, and Wilting Yellow Flowers, all by aloneintherain. I like the spider-man.

I still don't know what's going on. I'm only caught up to the atrocity that is the second Thor movie, the one with Padme in it and the teleporting trash? That entire movie was trash. I will try to construct the storyline of the MCU based off of what few details I know:

There is a raccoon?

The Avengers break up and the Hulk is just unfazed and immediately asks: "like the beetles?"

There is an evil purple man named Thanos with a small green child and the child grows up into a tall green woman?? who is his daughter? and they talk about resources and supply and demand.

Apparently some long-haired hot man with a metal limb shows up and Steve loses his shit trying to save this bud of his

who the hell is bucky

Harley Quinn is apparently not a MCU character and that genuinely shocked me

Thor is hot. wait is he still alive?

Aunt May is hot? like wtf? how?

There's apparently a scene where Spider-Man and his Aunt are eating Thai food and they're seeing replayed Spider-man battles on a TV and she's like. "peter. petey. pete boy. NEVER get involved in those fights! run away!"

And spider-man is just like

"t'was not me"

Spiderman then ends up homeless (and friends with karen??)

There's a fishbowl man who makes images with his hands but then Spider-Man defeats him while they're on a gondola

Steve wields mjolnir? i thought Steve turned into a villain

The new Spider-Man theme is a hot bop. Same goes for the Avengers film

Benedryl Cucumberspaz is there and he has a cloak with a stupid-looking collar

there was a cat-man movie with Bilbo in it

People cast spells via throwing orbs of light into the air

JARVIS DIES?? see, i don't like that. rip. i think? i think he's dead?

They have a big spat where there's some civil war. I remember the marketing for that movie. I was trying to buy bananas at Wal-Mart and all of the cashiers were wearing "ARE YOU TEAM IRON-MAN OR CAPTAIN AMERICA?" and this was apparently a spicy debate there. I was just like "i am team banana"

Iron Man was upset about his mom and pop for some reason whereas Steve was upset because he wanted to save his bud (the one from the 1940s) so they beat the shit out of each other in the snow.

wait i remember now. the 1940s bud mURDERED Tony's mom and pop. ohhhh. oh? oh. i don't think that got resolved.

everybody wants a magical glove and the stones for the magical glove but then they fail so they try again and win

Spider-man gets attacked by a guy with a mechanical bird suit and then also there is a ferry. Spider-man also harasses a man and his ice cream

There's a sitcom show with a boring evil witch lady with red magic (very boring) and a cool groovy purple witch lady with a very good theme song

Robert California voices a robot!! But I don't think he declares himself to be "The Lizard King." disappointing.

They're making a new movie where there is a guy with arm ring jewelry with super-powers

OH and they're making a new movie where there is a bollywood dance scene and i'm a sucker for 3 hour long Indian drama so who knows, that might be my style

There's a movie where some lady punches an old lady on a train

There was an atrocious movie about a boring shrinking ant guy. I only saw like five minutes of that movie when it was 10:30 pm at night and I just happened to be in the kitchen eating muffins when I saw the movie. Kate from Lost is in it??? the ant guy is a convict, i know that much. the fuck did he do? probably got sent to the clink for being weirdly into ants tbh. i switched it over to Antiques Roadshow and lemme tell you it was 10x more exciting okay some old lady came in with an autograph from Abraham Lincoln!! I mean my god he's dead you just can't get those anymore :(

Tony gets Peter some bling

some norse dude makes out with himself. nasty

Twilight Sparkle voices a clock that harasses people

The guy who played the cowboy in Night At The Museum is also in the show, the guy who says "wwwwoooowwww" in that way that makes me crack up

steve goes back in time??? and does not prevent any of the horrors he knows will happen? for some reason? also he turns into joe biden.

Pepper Pots marries Tony or something? wha

and he gives her a SUIT? whY? the goop lady??

tony dies (rip. i liked him. i appreciated how he was an ass to everybody. i bet he'll come back though because this is comic book logic)

DOES STEVE TURN EVIL I CAN'T TELL

Anddddd apparently the comic book industry is in the trash and is getting its ass handed to it by Japan

There you have it guys! Elindae's Hot Recollection of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Believe it or not I actually am the Resident Authority On The MCU in my house so whenever my family has MCU questions they consult me.

That's probably a mistake.

Wait, by MCU did you mean McPrime Universe or Marvel Cinematic Universe?

I am still stuck in the 2012 MCU fanfic mindset where the Avengers are all living together in the tower, Steve has a sketchpad, Hawkeye travels in the vents, and Thor likes pop-tarts. I like that era of the MCU.

#not transformers #marvel #i only really like norse mythology loki tbh not whatever in the world MCU loki is #i like batman #i also prefer real norse thor #actually i just like the mythology better than the mcu's version of it really #Iron Man was PEAK MCU everything after was just a mistake #well okay the third iron man was nice #okay well the whole avenger's live in the tower together thing is actually pretty cute so maybe that's when the mcu peaked #in my opinion the mcu movies are just the kinda thing u play on the side as u do something else #like perhaps i will turn on a movie as i type out more horrendous mcprime universe content

[bereft-of-frogs]

A Theology of the MCU: Myth, Marvel, and Mímir’s Well

(I love coming up with pretentious essay titles ya’ll this is one of my true academia skills)

aka, solving the in-universe discrepancies between the Marvel Asgard and Myth Asgard that no one asked for but I’m going to do anyways

So I was finally inspired to work out what I thought about the in-universe Norse Mythology and how it related to the actual Asgardian characters we know and love by this post. I’ll get to what I agreed with and what I didn’t a little later, but this kind of meta has been long coming because I def use and abuse mythology and should figure out what I think about how mythology and the relations between myth Thor & Loki and ‘real’ Thor & Loki before I screw anything up too badly.

The easy explanation is that the contents of the mythology in the alternative universe depicted in the MCU is just different. Our only real engagement with the myth in the movies is when Selvig pulls out the children’s book at the library and the images clearly look like Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston, rather than other depictions of the mythological Thor and Loki.

[Sidenote: eddas for dummies ’s illustrations of the Norse gods are great: https://edda-for-dummies.tumblr.com/]

So we could just say that things are different, they match onto ‘reality’ a little better than the Norse mythology we’re familiar with in our version of the universe, and done.

Or we could make things more complicated.

Which, in my opinion, is infinitely more fun. And I apparently have a lot of time on my hands (lol I don’t, I’m just procrastinating), so I’m writing up my explanation of how the ‘real Asgard’ and ‘myth Asgard’ were connected in the Viking Age and how the real Asgardians could have inspired their mythological counterparts.

And the answer is syncretism!

One of the main problems the original post points out is that the dates don’t line up. Loki is commonly accepted to be born in 965 CE, as stated in Thor. So he was born after the myth development and worship, and at the start of the Christianization of Scandinavia. Thor is accepted to not be that much older, given their similar appearance as children and other general character/relationship traits. How is this possible?

My headcanon explanation is: the Thor and Loki of the myths are actually amalgamations of several different Asgardian heroes, or even other deities from the proto-Indo-European mythology, that are eventually condensed into the figures of Thor and Loki (and Frigga and Heimdall, etc etc). (Very common in real world mythological and religious development.)

But since it turned out that these figures were real in the MCU and there was indeed a physical place called Asgard where Odin reigned, with Valkyries and gods, a Valhalla, etc…So that’s where I got the ‘amalgamation of several Asgardian heroes’ thing. Perhaps two thousand years ago the barrier between Asgard/Midgard was thinner, or it was more acceptable to travel on Midgard. Asgardian heroes, infinitely stronger and magical and seemingly immortal, travel on Midgard and have adventures and are seen as gods. The stories told, the sagas, poems, etc are all depicting something much more concrete, and material, than distant deities. Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology has its flaws, but the introduction does contain one of my favorite quotes: “…myths of a people who did not entirely trust or even like their gods, although they respected and feared them.” which I feel like would be a good description of this relationship. They write down stories of stuff they did with their wandering friends, and over time they take on spiritual significance.

“But,” you say, “that doesn’t 100% make sense either. There are references to Thor and Loki earlier than 965CE, and there are some stories that you pick out and attribute to the ‘real’ Thor and Loki when you’re using and abusing mythology for fanfiction inspiration. How do you explain that, hmmm?”

This is where the original post was like a lightbulb going off. Mímir’s Well could give a humans a glimpse of the wider Realms and/or future. (Or at least I think it was supposed to be Mímir’s Well…I think the movie may have said something about the Norns, but I also have Thoughts about the Norns,* so I’d prefer to have it just be Mímir’s Well.) But I thought the ‘drunk Viking fell in a well’ was a little reductionist.

Absolutely no disrespect to OP intended! I love that post. It’s brilliant and the meta on the ages are so well thought out I have officially adopted that explanation for the age discrepancies. I just have a lot of Feelings about the development of religious systems and tend to be sensitive about attributing religious development to things like ‘drunk people making up stories’ because I think spirituality/religion of any kind is a profound reflection of man’s attempt to make sense of the universe, and so complex and varied and beautiful and I’ve struggled a lot against people who don’t understand, or purposely misrepresent, the fundamental societal purpose of religion and the quest for meaning…but anyways…

So yeah, due to my weird neuroses about religion and myth, I want to give the early poets more credit than ‘drunk Viking that fell in a well.’ Instead of accident or foolish ignorance, there could have been a mortal, or several mortals, who gained particular favor among visiting Asgardians and were gifted with knowledge of the future and of Asgard and built their myth upon that. Because of increased traffic between Asgard/Midgard, early Scandinavian societies were interacting more with Asgard than modern humans. So they were getting stories of Asgardian heroes, interacting with travelers, etc. They prove themselves to Asgardian travelers in various ways, then the Asgardians show them the wells. Perhaps mortal sorcerers were held in higher regard as well. Anyways, they also enter Mímir’s well at the invitation of whatever Odinic wanderer that may or may not be Actual Odin, and see the future, but distorted by their own limited perception and experience.

You have to keep in mind that linear time is essentially a social construct. (I’m only half joking with that.) Especially in Norse mythology, where time is simultaneously linear and cyclical. So, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter that the timeline doesn’t add up. When the mortals enter the well they see things that happen no matter where they happen in the timeline. So they see Ragnarök, which has both not yet happened and already happened. For another example, they could see the essence of Loki’s betrayal/fall from grace, and it gets combined with another figure, who, let’s say, went to a feast and insulted all those assembled.

This makes it super easy to steal from the myths at will, and kind of sort myths into ‘yes this story involved the ‘real’ Thor & Loki’ and ‘nope this involved someone else and was later attributed to Thor and/or Loki.’ So I sit there and say like “Ah, I like this one, someone saw this in the well” and “nope, I don’t see this one as fitting their characters, that one was from another Asgardian hero.”

Examples of the divide:

People seem to generally like ‘lips sewn shut’ storyline (‘The Treasures of the Gods’ in Crossley-Holland), the birth of Sleipnir (‘The Building of Asgard’s Wall’), and I’ve seen the Lay of Geirrod (‘Thor and Geirrod’) done fantastically well. I tend to lift themes/motifs pretty frequently (and that’s how I stole the essence of Helreith Brynnhildr, which was written down in the 13th century, but actually happened to the Valkyrie in the 21st) and there are other stories I’ve seen less frequently adapted, like ‘Thor’s Journey to Utgard’ that I think make sense, but I don’t really see either Thor or Loki as having wives or children, so I can file that as someone else.

[Two more headcanon-y headcanons: there was another figure that was more like the myth-Loki - blood brother of Odin who at some point betrayed them, and was the more malevolent figure, that was syncretized with Loki at some point. And Hela got so much more distorted because of whatever Odin did to erase her from memory. He was successful on Asgard, where he had more control/power, but he couldn’t catch everything on Midgard, which was already starting to grow more distant from Asgard, if the Hela thing occurred between Thor and Loki’s births like the timeline seems to imply.]

So yeah. This is a thing I did. I did a lot of thinking about this while washing dishes the last couple of days. I just really like exploring the relationship between mortals and the gods, which would also be important if Asgard was going to sail their way to Earth and rebuild in Norway, like Odin wanted them to in Thor: Ragnarok. (That was a great line too: “Remember this place. Home.” Ahhhhhh, we can have such interesting interactions between modern Scandinavians and Asgardians and it would have been great. Thanos ruins everything. But also, we probably never would have because I don’t anyone working at Marvel cares to think this much about myth…)

*My Thoughts about the Norns: I weirdly like the idea that the Norns are essentially the True Deity. Mostly because I’m super, super into triple goddesses. And the way (though I’m pretty sure I picked this up from other fanfiction), the characters invoke the Norns like ‘God’. (tbh it’s also a good cheat for fixing dialogue where I’ve snuck in a ‘oh my god’ or ‘godforsaken’ etc.) You’ll also notice though, that I only ever have the like ‘highborn’ Asgardian characters invoking the Norns. The ones who have their names directly taken from mythology (Thor, Loki, Heimdall, Frigga, Odin, etc, plus I think people who were actually living in Asgard, so most of the survivors on the Ark), invoke the Norns, but other ‘lowborn’ characters from the Nine Realms will say ‘gods’ instead. That worked itself into the second chapter of ‘Misuse of Magic’.

God, I’m such a nerd. I’m going to go put myself in nerd timeout. Bye…

[PS - I used the Kevin Crossley-Holland anthology, The Penguin Book of Norse Myths, above because well…I own it. And it’s in my apartment and not my parents’ basement. But I do recommend, accessible but with an extensive notes section.]

Did I do it right? This is the first time I’ve ever posted this sort of thing hope it’s okay ahhhh

back to timeout

#mcu meta #maybe meta? idk it's probably more headcanon #whoops #i'm a huge theology nerd i'm in a nerd timeout now