for years i have lived this lie telling everyone i am allergic to peanuts because i hate the smell of peanut butter and don’t really like peanut butter that much but whenever i used to tell people i don’t like peanut butter they’d get all defensive like “peanut butter is amazing how do you not like it?!” and then i’d have to go into this whole thing to defend my taste buds.
but then i got tired of it and started telling people that i’m just allergic to peanuts because that way it’s not my fault that i hate the smell of peanut butter – it’s now like i’m a sad little baby who will never get to taste peanut butter ever in her life and everyone feels sad for me.
but the problem is that i really love peanut m&ms and so now i can only eat peanut m&ms when i’m at home in secret. the only person who knows my lie is my husband. and so at work this evening we had a small celebration for someone and they had peanut m&ms and i really wanted some but obviously couldn’t eat them in public because then people would know my peanut secret.
and so when we got home after work my husband tipped his jacket over and emptied his pockets and at least thirty or so peanut m&ms fell out of his pockets and he whispered, “i was sneakily accumulating them all night for you because i could see the pain in your eyes.”
“Because I am unclean. Because my skin is cursed. Because Odin lied, and I am cursed … only not in the way I feared. My touch is bad. My fortune is to hurt, and to maim, and to spoil, and to fail, and to lose, and to contaminate.”
Because my birthmother did not want me. Because my birthfather did not want me. Because Odin did not want me. And then there was you.
You gathered me warm against your breast, the first warmth I knew, scented of milk and honey and leavened bread, and fresh-cut flowers, and other things that an infant could scarcely understand. You loved me, you loved me through childhood and you grew me up on your healing water into adolescence, on days filled with delicate paint brushes and wet goldleaf pressed so carefully to vellum, and dried flowers and herbs crushed by mortar and pestle into the finest softest powders, and then there were the days when I was cold and could not be warmed, and did not yet understand why, so you gathered me near in shawls and blankets and furs, and first taught me to conjure a sliver of green–green, the color of life and envy in equal measure–into the center of my palm, and there in your hands was a nest of chirping magpies, and you bade me craft the mimicry of an empty magpie shell, and it WORKED. And there sat I, a foundling who did not yet realize he had been disinherited from birth, with an uncanny instinct of his own unbelonging, suddenly presented with the sublime possibility of a thing to call his very own. A self. A reflection. A voice.
I was a young man, a young woman, and you loved us both. And then I loved men and women, and you nurtured these blossoming affections. I bore children so young, and you taught me to be a mother fierce and forgiving all in one. I strained until all my muscles were sore to tilt into the line of Odin’s myopic sight, discarded again and again, with a dismissive and casual blandness that was cruel. You taught me to love my brother, so effortlessly like him, even when he was brusque and self-absorbed and oblivious and impossible to love.
And even you, I sent a MONSTER, too VORACIOUS to MURDER the two men you loved most to see clearly that it might kill YOU instead. Even you, who did not once slight or wrong me. You lit me a candle that I doused at the bottommost measure of its wick. I, parasite, mongrel–
–he said my birthright was to die, and he was RIGHT–
Despair falls thick around me.It is molasses in my gullet. It is lead shackles around my ankles and my wrists. The sores are deserved. My solitude is deserved. I would wear a leper’s bells if it would save anyone further whom I love from ruination. But my disease is deeper-running than that of the body. So I rage, and in my rage, craft myself the illusion thatI have the right to exist.
“You see, mama … when I survived infancy, the universe tipped a bit off-kilter. The hurt I have caused solely to defend my existence is a symptom. The woes that I have endured are the cosmos correcting the error. And my damned capacity to endure it all? My penance.”
Loki was bullied in childhood, but there is no evidence in the comics or the films to suggest that the bullying was of a physical nature. In fact I’d argue Loki was more neglected than bullied, and starved for validation, not ridiculed (though certain lines on Volstagg’s behalf in the films suggest there may have been moments of the latter form of abuse).
It’s more a phenomenon in which Loki was “Othered” by his culture. He was, both filially and institutionally (because Odin, the head of his family, is also the head of State and cultural arbiter), pitted against a certain desired socio-cultural standard of forthrightness, aggression, and hypermasculinity, as the undesired alternative, in every day small interactions and in the society in which he was raised. At the very least he suffers from internalized racism for this very reason, living in an imperialist society that literally sees people of other realms as economically dependent subhuman colonialized species (particularly the Jotnar).
Frigga, another Other (because she was a woman and witch), recognized this and it’s because of Frigga that this misconception is as egregious as it is. Because Frigga clearly taught Loki not only how to use magic as an intellectually driven deceit in battle, she also taught him a very particular dance-like fighting style that involves rapid attacks, spins, and repeat attacks, such that the enemy can never get a good hold on you at close range, and it’s probably because of Frigga that Loki is so adept with a short blade:
Probably the most vivid demonstration of Frigga’s signature fighting style, which maximizes SPEED and AGILITY at the expense of upper body strength (in other words, ideally suited to Loki’s athletic but non-muscular body type) is when Loki disarms like four or more Dark Elves in Svartalfheim single-handedly without gaining a single scratch, in the span of seconds, just in time to rush to and rescue Thor from Kurse.
So while physical STRENGTH is not Loki’s forte, he has a great deal of physical AGILITY and ENDURANCE, and his ass was kicked in a more verbal and cultural way than a physical way.
Listen, this was hard to pick, but these are the ones that are like“god Graham…” *rolling eyes*kind of tweets, that you eitherlove themorroast himor just go“oh lord what a child”
You can get here fromthe dramatic neglect sentiment about his socks being dislikedto his five year old self discussing about a birds riddle
LOKI AND FRIGGA HAVE THE SAME NERVOUS GESTURE OF PICKING AT THEIR LEFT PALMS.
Hiddleston and Russo must have consciously discussed using body language to signify their emotional and psychological bond and the way that he imitates his mother.
Let. Me. Die.
//lol, good to see this still circulating.
I just. Kinda wanna make it known that I pointed this out first?
Like I’m glad other people are noticing it, don’t get me wrong, but. Please. Credit where it’s due? Thanks.
Modern Life is Rubbish 