#jotun meta

[gloriousburden]

Wait I don’t know if anyone’s talked about this before, but in Jotun Loki fics, people always have the reader touch him while he’s in that form which sort of… never made sense to me.

Considering the fact that he’d be reverted to his Jotun form, wouldn’t anyone who touched him began to freeze? Hence why (perhaps one of the reasons) Loki in Thor 1 was so apprehensive about grabbing Odin’s hand, with the hand the Jotun grabbed him by and reverted him with in Jotunheim?

I… don’t think you’d be able to touch him. And he wouldn’t just be cold to the touch. Loki is ALREADY quite cold to the touch canonically (right bottom corner shown in the picture above), so in his Jotun form… he’d be freezing.

Anyone please correct me if I’m wrong, though. Was just wondering because I always had the sort of idea that if you touched Loki while he was reverted to his Jotun form, that it would be dangerous. Just like touching any other Jotun.

Which is one of the reasons he was probably afraid to grab Odin’s hand. Not only at the thought of himself being a “monster” and untouchable in that sense, but also literally being untouchable because it wasn’t necessarily safe and he was hyper conscious of it, even if he had already been reverted back.

I get people excuse things for the sake of Fanfic, but I actually don’t think I’ve seen people talk about this before. So I don’t know if it’s just them excusing it, or a fandom-wide misconception.

May reword this later. Probably sounds a bit stupid and might be straight up incorrect in some areas because I just woke up.

[silenceinternalmonologue]

can't stop thinking about the way all of loki's brushes with death came from a choice. first the attempted suicide. then the attempted self-sacrifice. and finally a successful self-sacrifice, in which he not only threw himself in death's way but threw himself into the hands of his torturer, a being he had been hiding from for years.

people make jokes about loki always pretending to die but the truth is he is always trying to. he is convinced that his death will be a solution to other people's (mostly thor's) problems.

he is constantly choosing to die. his first instinct in any crisis situation is to solve it at the cost of his life. he doesn't seem to have any self worth or a sense that maybe it's better for him to live, and it's fucking tragic.

[musclesandhammering]

True true true, all of this is *chefs kiss*

But do we actually think Odin’s telling the whole truth when he says the jotuns were trying to plunge the world into eternal cold and darkness? I mean nothing about that opening scene where they kill humans is ok, but there’s a lot of other explanations for it besides “they wanted to take over the world and murder people for funsies”.

-We know Odin taking the casket sealed the fate of Jotunheim and condemned it to die a slow death, but what if they were already having some sort of environmental problems or something before that? Maybe they went to earth in an attempt to find more resources?

-Even prior to the war with Jotunheim, we know odin had already conquered most of the Nine Realms and was ruling them all as a supreme authoritarian, so maybe Laufey attempting to take earth (the most important territory because it’s at the center of the Nine) was his attempt to rebel against and challenge Odin’s occupation? Maybe it was the jotuns’ gambit for freedom from a megalomaniacal dictator?

-Maybe there was some kind of issue that happened between the the frost giants and that town in Norway specifically? They could’ve been seeking revenge or information or justice or something with that group of humans in specific instead of trying to take over the whole planet.

-Maybe there was something on earth that they wanted (an infinity stone, anyone?) so they could use it to challenge odin’s rule or help strengthen their home planet or whatever.

-They were clearly capable of their own inter-realm travel (I mean how else would they have gotten to earth in that intro) so maybe they’d been to earth before and had formed loyalties with certain groups of people. Then maybe those groups got into some kind of human war and asked the jotuns for assistance taking out their enemies (the Norwegians), so the frost giants showed up to help their allies.

-Hell, maybe the jotuns were desperately trying to form an alliance with some other realm or planet or something and said realm or planet was the one that had beef with earth and they made the pending alliance conditional on attacking it.

My point is, there’s like a hundred different possibilities for what exactly Laufey was doing on earth in that scene and what his motivations were for it, and I think “frost giants are evil and like to kill stuff bc Odin said so” is one of the least likely ones.

I saw meta where someone said that Jotuns are monsters and Odin did good thing saving Loki

Does people not realise that Loki is Jotun so your calling Loki a monster

Odin force baby Loki into false skin aka asgard skin without his consent

We don't know shit about jotuns culture or how Jotuns behave

It like saying that cats and birds are the same

It also racist as hell towards Jotuns, guess who else is racist Odin and all of Asgard, Loki literally hate his own race

Odin didn't save Loki because he care, he took him as political pawn and war prize, Loki literally said it in the first Thor movie.

Asgard is racist toward Jotuns and Jotunheim so obviously asgard would paint jotuns as monsters, at this point I'm just tired with Odin apologists and them justifying Odin actions

Remember people history is written by winners and not the losers

Odin literally locked away his daughter and hid that fact, he whitewashed asgard history with anything mentioning Hela, people died because of Odin actions

Odin hid the fact that Loki was Jotun

Odin also told Loki that his birth right was to die

Mcu fans have so many metas pointing out Odin actions but Odin apologists is never going to listen to valid criticism nor change their mind

[lucianalight]

Probably everyone noticed this but I still want to talk about it. I really liked the loom and thread symbolism for managing time and timelines in the Loki series. It's a nod to Norse mythology and the three Norns who weave the fate and destinies of everyone at the foot of Yggdrasil, the tree of the world.

The spaghettification, inaccurate as it was shown, adds to this symbolism. The threads that hold the universe come apart as it gets destroyed. And that scene of Loki trying to grab them and hold them and not being able to vs the end when he is carrying all the threads and nourish them with his magic as they come alive and make the world tree. Just like how Norns use a well to nourish Yggdrasil.

Some threads are even made of the fabric of his cape and unweaving it.

Which is also a nice contradiction between weaving stories, unchangeable and fixed as they were with loom in place, and letting the stories unravel and develop as changeable and ever growing as branches of a tree.

[musclesandhammering]

Once again thinking about how every single one of Loki’s emotional problems stems from his abandonment and rejection issues, which originated from him being rejected and abandoned as an infant.

[tyrannuspitch]

thinking about odin losing his eye.

the thing is, it's heavily implied that he lost it in the fight with laufey. it's an open wound in that scene, and it's surrounded by gouges that look forceful, not like a willing sacrifice on odin's part... but it's still not an entirely typical battle wound. it's easy to see how an eye might be damaged in the course of battle; it's harder to see how an eye socket might end up fully empty while its owner still stands.

it could be that laufey was trying to get to kill odin by getting to his brain through his eye, but he didn't manage it, and the eye was just scooped out when he pulled whatever pointed weapon he used back.

but it could also be that, at some point, laufey had odin pinned down, and he chose to do something painful and punitive rather than finishing him off straight away. (and even that he comes close to recreating this in the climax of t1.)

which, to me, seems to imply that odin and laufey's hatred is a very bitter and personal one... and also that there might be an old bond buried underneath it. laufey had the chance to kill odin, and he didn't make sure to take it... and later, odin has laufey pinned, and he doesn't choose to kill him either.

this moment also has multiple echoes among odin's children: loki (allegedly) gouges out a man's eye on an altar in the avengers, in a moment where he is notably imitating both laufey and odin, and representing their similarities. hela gouges out thor's eye in ragnarok, and hela is representative of many of odin's forgotten crimes, which could suggest that this was an asgardian move first (and would certainly make sense with their association with ravens!)

so perhaps:

laufey chose to take odin's eye specifically because odin had done that to others himself; it's a symbol of vengeance, hypocrisy, and symmetry.

at least a little of the love in loki and thor's love-hate relationship is also an echo of their fathers.

we could even take this further, and say that the sacrifice in the loss of the eye could even be the death of odin's relationship with laufey... and perhaps taking in laufey's unwanted child was partly a reaction to that loss.

hmmmmm

[woodelf68]

Don't get me started on the part of fanon sayie laufey was laying near baby loki injured xD lol

I've never seen that, because we saw Laufey in the battle taking Odin's eye out. But I have read fics where Farbauti (as Loki's birth mother) was the one who had sought sanctuary in the temple, either because she had gone into labour (while fighting? which seems a really dumb thing to do while pregnant, and it can't have been too premature, since Loki was fully formed, just small -- not to mention the fact that he didn't look like a just newly born baby) or she had fled from some Jotnar sent by Laufey to take her baby away from her? And maybe she was already wounded from fighting them off, and she died nearby? I actually wouldn't mind that version of things, because it would mean that Loki was wanted and cared for by at least his birth mother for however long she had him before she died. Like obviously her body wouldn't have been right there, or Odin would probably have noticed her, but a Farbauti who had fled from the palace because her son wasn't safe there is a plausible suggestion. (Maybe she'd heard her pursuers outside, and had gone back out in the hopes that they'd follow her and not realise she'd left Loki behind? And then she was either caught and killed or she managed to evade capture and crept back to the temple later wanting to reclaim Loki but he was gone, and she assumed he'd been found and killed. Both work for me as possibilities more believable than Laufey leaving Loki in the temple to let him bond with the Casket and absorb its strength or some shit like that.)

[musclesandhammering]

Jotun Loki Headcanon Time!

*I’ve seen this touched on in several fics, but never fully written out.

I think the reason jotuns are able to survive in freezing climates is that they’ve evolved to leech heat from the atmosphere around them. So, they’re essentially like big cold sponges just sucking up warmth wherever they go and using it to warm their core organs.

This is why they’re so sensitive to hot temperatures and are very susceptible to overheating. It is a very efficient biological system, though, because most jotuns almost never leave their ice planet, and when they do, it’s only very briefly. Loki, on the other hand, is a special case. He was raised in a very warm realm, and when he was young I think this probably caused him a TON of problems. Like constant heat strokes, his parents having to cast temporary spells to keep him cool, etc etc.

But gradually, as he started to grow from a toddler to a child, those problems stopped. This is because, as he began to be able to control his magic, his body subconsciously started to adapt to the climate it was in by beginning to convert that thermal energy into magical energy. This just served to make his powers stronger.

Now, Loki obviously softened on his frost giant heritage somewhere between the end of Thor 1 and Ragnarok. After he knew he was jotun and had time to sit and think about it, he would’ve realised about this whole heat/magic conversion situation. And I think that is what broke him out of his cycle of internalised racism.

Figuring out that his jotun-ness- this thing he’d hated and demonised and was ashamed of- was actually a big reason why his magic- the thing he loved most about himself- was so strong in the first place, was the catalyst for him coming to accept his heritage and realise that maybe the Asgardian prejudice against frost giants was incorrect.

[tyrannuspitch]

i've been thinking about jotun thor designs today, particularly his hair. so far i've only seen people leave it blond, which is fair enough, but i feel like there's a lot of fun potential in trying to make a jotun *equivalent* to blond that would fit more naturally into the jotun landscape...

some possibilities for light jotun hair:

snow white (pigment operating on a simple on/off binary)

white with subtle yellow undertones, like a polar bear

white with subtle blue undertones, like ice

pale blue

silvery grey

charcoal grey, like an arctic fox's summer coat

white flecked with/layered over black (or another colour)

a mixture of muted yellows, browns and greys, like a snow leopard

pale pink - low levels of the same red pigment as in their eyes (presumably a display feature rather than camouflage - which might explain why warriors normally shave their heads)

slapdash moodboard with some of the more realistic sources of inspiration:

and the more fantastical:

[vidavalor]

A handful of GO/food-related thoughts (66% of which came to me in insomniac semi-sapience at 3am):

1) Would the Ineffable Husbands eat burritos, and what might 'burrito' refer to in their coded language?

2) The rice in sushi is functionally analogous to the bread in a sandwich and now I am flailing about potential implications in relation to your Bread meta

3) You remember the bit in the book about one of the Other Four Bikers disliking anchovies and/or olives on pizza? There's an actual French dish a bit like that! It's called 'pissaladière' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pissaladi%C3%A8re), it's from the south of France (Nice/Provence sort of area) and it's actually rather yummy! (I made it for supper tonight ^_^) Granted, anchovies can be a bit of an acquired taste

Hi @jotun-philosopher The most sapient thoughts sometimes come in the insomniac semi-sapience at 3am, I find. What cool questions! Some fun with food, sexual euphemisms, and etymology for you. 💕

Burritos: What's extra Good Omens-y about this question, imo, is that "burrito" comes from the Spanish "burro", which means "donkey", so, a burrito is actually a "little donkey" and, by that measure alone, I will say odds are solid that the Ineffable Husbands have eaten burritos lol. That and they've been around forever and have probably eaten most things and burritos are so, so good... You might reasonably ask 'why the fuck is this delicious food named after donkeys?' and the answer is that it's thought to be because a burrito can and does hold so many different kinds of ingredients that it's kind of a "workhorse" of food. It handles so much at once by bringing in so many different nutrients and tastes that it's akin to the "workhorse" of animals, which is a donkey. The show also already aligns Aziraphale with donkeys and actually did so again pretty recently with Shax referring to Aziraphale as an ass and then that the elevator is in the doorway to the pub The Dirty Donkey (which I think we can all agree Crowley named? 😉).

[@procrastiel I saw your tags in my other, more depressing post about Aziraphale & The Dirty Donkey-- I was going for the above, not the more horrifying option. I'm sure you'll be relieved. 🤣]

As for food symbolism in burritos, there's just so many different ingredients, idk... I think they'd make innuendo out of what's ordered to be in the burrito on any given day. I can't imagine one of them not making a hot sauce reference, since sauce and its variety of meanings is a very Ineffable Husbands word and they've used it before in different ways ("gravlax in dill sauce"; "you dip it in soy sauce").

Sushi and Bread: You're right about the rice in sushi being functionally analogous to bread in that it's the starch but I think it's actually the nori or leaves used to wrap the sushi that is technically "the bread" of sushi. (So, on top of there being fish in the sushi, the "bread" is actually seaweed in 1.01... mmm🐟. 😉) But your point that sushi can be seen as a sandwich of sorts? Yes, totally. A sandwich being food between two or more slices of bread (or a stand in for bread that serves the purpose of containing the filling). A person then euphemistically tied to bread is then a person who is a participant in partnered sex. Mrs. Sandwich is "Mrs. Sandwich" because she "makes sandwiches" for other people-- she allocates slices of bread to one another.

The bread itself that has been mentioned so far is also interesting from an euphemistic standpoint. Besides the brioche looked at in Crepes, there's sourdough (mentioned in Lockdown as the only bread that Aziraphale has baked and, um, "has baked" in the last few days) and there's also the first mention of bread in the series... which is from God 😂 when she codes Crowley as black bread in 1.01. The joke there likely being that both sourdough and black bread are examples of the kinds of bread that are made through a process of fermentation-- the same way that alcohol is made-- reiterating alcohol and bread as euphemistic for sex.

Pissaladiere: Thank you for reminding me of it-- it's been ages since I had it and it's very spring. Might need to make one soon. Glad yours was delicious! Just a warning, though: I think Crowley would make you disappear if you ever tried to serve Aziraphale a pissaladiere, though. A French fish-topped tart? There's nary a more Ineffable Husbands dish in existence lol. Pissaladiere rooted from the Latin piscis, meaning "fish" and it reminds me of some wordplay in the show in Aziraphale's entry in 'The Demon's Guide...' that Furfur had in 1941.

The obvious joke with the entries in the guide is that they're supposed to be about angels from the demonic perspective and have to use language that is negative to describe these angels but... this just means it's an excuse for Crowley and Aziraphale to get their 'wily'/'smitten', etc. on and use words that have different, contradictory definitions. Everything in Aziraphale's entry-- that we all agree was written by Crowley (and in what we are shown of the Baraqiel one, that feels very 'written by Aziraphale')-- is actually complimentary or referencing their relationship in the fuller meanings of the words used under the negative connotation on the surface.

One of the descriptive details listed for Aziraphale is "suspishous ears", with an intentional misspelling of "suspicious" to look demonic, right? One of the parts of the wordplay there is that the misspelling is done so as to now include the word "pish"-- a bit of a Crowley & Aziraphale wily/smitten-type of word on a few different levels.

To say something is "pish" is to say that it's something you disagree with and/or that it is disgusting and it took on that meaning largely from being Scottish slang for urine (as it's a near-homophone for "piss"... see also, the British phrase "to take the piss (out of [x])" being to roast someone or something.) This is the negative connotation on the surface but where this is relevant to Crowley and Aziraphale is in the etymology of "pish"...

The word actually formed in the English language as onomatopoeia (words that are formed out of sounds like, among some of Crowley's other mentioned favorites in the show, "frou frou" and "whoop.") Out of what sounds, you ask? The "psshshsh" noises ornithologists and others make to attract small birds.

It's also thought to originate about equally with the bird-attracting sounds from "la peche"... which you'll be unsurprised to learn is the French word for fish.

In Mohegan-Pequot, spoken by the indigenous people of my neck of the woods in New England, and in a couple of other languages, use of "pish" is actually rooted from the English peas.

To have "suspicious ears"-- with "suspicious" spelled correctly-- is to be cautious about who you trust. "Suspishus ears", built to include "pish", then references fish, peas, and nightingales at once and would then be calling Aziraphale a good partner who listens.

A communication breakdown, though-- not listening-- also being a theme in S2 and its "I don't think your exactlys are my exactlys"/"aim for my mouth but shoot past my ear"/"no nightingales" misery...

[chocolateteepot]

#mmm#like yes good#ive also loved the idea that the camera panned on Loki BECAUSE he was the loved one that Thor betrayed#or like the only loved one that Thor would care he betrayed#thor#thor 1 (via @galaxythreads)

I love this shot because both are true. We know about Loki's machinations, but his manipulation of Thor was just him putting the idea out there that Thor could still do his murder campaign without his dad's permission. Thor wasn't tricked into doing a massacre, that was what he wanted to do all along, Loki just makes him realise he could still do it!

The Shakespearean tragedy of it all for Thor is that this manipulation only works if Thor is exactly as dangerously arrogant and reckless a warmonger as Loki is convinced he is. Which is why Loki does it in the first place. I also feel like his immediate facepalm after Thor takes the bait makes it look like it was a test? Thor taking the bait proves Loki right. I don't think anyone's even looking at him when he does this:

Is he just that committed to the bit? Or was he hoping Thor would prove him wrong? Thor also then dismisses Loki trying to talk him out of it.

At this point, as far as Thor knows; Loki tried to talk him out of going in the first place, then tries to get them out without bloodshed, then Thor blows the genuine GIFT of retreat Laufey just handed them becuase someone calls him a princess and goes full murder rampage.

Loki is one of the loved ones Thor just betrayed. He almost got his brother and friends killed, and he didn't even notice when one of them was gravely injured. He ignored them desperately calling for him to stop and retreat. He put his own selfish desire to 'teach the Jotuns a lesson' (and seeming just pure enjoyment of enacting it) above the safety of his friends and his little brother.

(His little brother who, ironically, would also have been injured if he hadn't secretly been Jotun all along.)

And I think that dynamic is particularly relevant here too - the whole 'older sibling feels real or imagined duty to protect their younger sibling' - for Thor and Odin. It's a specific kind of betrayal to find out you cannot trust your oldest child with the most basic safety of your youngest.

For Odin as a parent (if we can call him that), this must read as your arrogant, violent oldest son dragging his pacifying-voice-of-reason little brother into a war you expressly forbade him from starting.

Obviously, out of the group that Thor took with him, Loki is the most important - to Odin (for cynical reasons at least) and to Thor. And yeah, Thor betrayed Odin by going against his ruling (technically treason??? how many times has treason been committed in these films.) - and basically all of Asgard by starting a war - but the camera focuses on Loki. Because their wildly co-dependent relationship is Thor's most important one, because Loki is his younger sibling, and because Thor would feel guiltiest for betraying Loki specifically.

But also, tragically, Loki is the impetus. He lit the match, got the ball rolling to prove Thor would betray them all (including him) in this way, in order to prove him unfit to be king. Loki is the instrument of his own hurts, he had to prove Thor would hurt him in order to prove Thor would hurt him.

You’re unworthy!

[super-hero-confessions]

Okay. I don't understand how it's gotten to this point with fans pulling made up shit about Loki from their asses but no.

NO.

Loki is not POC coded. He's not Jewish coded. He's not neurodivergent coded or whatever the fuck else.

HE IS 100% NORSE.

BASED OFF A NORSE TRICKSTER GOD WHO IS A KNOWN LIAR AND POT STIRRER THAT FUCKS WITH PEOPLE FOR FUNSIES.

CREATED BY NORSE FUCKING WHITE ASS WHITE PEOPLE WHO KNEW ICE AND SNOW AND FROST TO BE FUCKING DEADLY.

HE IS NOT "OTHER".

HE'S AN ASSHOLE WHO ENJOYS BEING AN ASSHOLE AND HAS ALSO SUFFERED SOME HARDSHIP BECAUSE HE IS SURROUNDED BY ASSHOLES AND PLAYS RIGHT INTO THAT HAND.

Big. Fucking. Whoop.

ALL GODS IN ALL CULTURES ARE NEEDLESSLY CRUEL AND NEEDLESSLY SUFFER BECAUSE THEY WERE SYMBOLIC AND MADE TO EXPLAIN WHAT PEOPLE COULDN'T FULLY UNDERSTAND.

LOKI IS NOT SPECIAL BECAUSE HE RAPES A HORSE.

But you know what that really means? Loki plays into the cycle of abuse just like a normal person and then goes on and makes it worse by dishing it out on unrelated people who never did anything to him. Like, I dunno, all the goddamn humans he kills?

He's that psycho kid with a psycho dad who tortures ants because he can't find healthy ways to cope and it doesn't get much deeper than that.

Stop making shit up that.

EVEN IF IT WERE TRUE IN ANYWAY WOULD NEVER EXCUSE HIM BEING A GENOCIDAL MANIAC WHO CARES NOTHING FOR HUMAN OR JOTUN LIFE YOU FASCIST ILLITERATE FUCKS.

AND GUESS WHAT. LOKI OF MYTH NEEDLESSLY STARTS ALL THE SHIT THAT HAPPENS WITH THE OTHER GODS BY GETTING BALDR KILLED.

If you have to write paragraphs upon paragraphs of made up bullshit you call meta and headcanons or whatever the fuck to defend the idea of liking this guy beyond the shallow fact that you would never dare go this hard for someone ugly or god forbid actual myth Loki?

You do not actually give a shit about the character. At all. Because you don't actually see the character. At all.

Personally, I love Loki for what he is. A dark grey chaos loving trickster diva and selfish asshole god that fucks with people for fun and gets the story rolling. All of that is what makes him fun as a character while paying appropriate homage to the stories he came from in a way that still feels respectful of what ancient cultures were trying to convey.

But I also love the actual good Loki that people write in fanfic sometimes.

I don't love the posturing people use him for to inadvertently spread misogyny or even white supremacy that slips under the radar because fandom can't accept that their shit does stink and there ARE bad actors.

It is okay to like or love Loki. It is okay to want things to be better for him or to be written better for him. It is okay to write fanfic where he is all of the things you want him to be.

It is not okay to culturally appropriate and deny what he is canonically with made up bullshit pulled from your ass to pretend that Loki was justified when he was ATTEMPTING GENOCIDE. And it is especially not okay to then have the audacity to deny the fact that Loki has pretty privilege.

Fuck you people doing this shit. At this point I prefer those that actually admit they like him because he's hot. Because at least they don't go rabid and are fucking HONEST with themselves about this shit and about his character.

And above all?

LOKI IS FICTIONAL.

PEOPLE DON'T OWE YOU AN EXPLANATION FOR DISLIKING OR HATING HIM. DOING SO IS NOT AN ATTACK ON YOU. THEIR EXISTENCE DOES NOT CHALLENGE YOURS AND THEIR PERSPECTIVES ARE JUST AS VALID.

JUST LIKE YOU DON'T OWE THEM AN EXPLANATION FOR LIKING HIM. YOU DON'T EVEN NEED ONE. BECAUSE HE'S FICTIONAL.

Have civil discourse and discussion if you want to, try and get more people to like Loki and see the lighter grey in him even. But you do that by being NICE.

Not by being a dismissive, denying, bullying asshole that then pretends you have the moral high road over ultimately meaningless. Fictional. Bullshit.

I guarantee a majority of people who hate Loki now? It's not because Loki is imperfect or the "other". It's because his stans do everything they can to be toxic, hostile, and in turn make him look bad.

Even Loki's never attempted to justify his attempts at genocide. Escape accountability, sure. But not justify it.

[musclesandhammering]

I’m too tired to make this a meta, but people saying that Laufey was a shit dad too because he abandoned Loki, so that makes Odin taking him the right thing to do is very White Saviour Complex.

Like it doesn’t really matter if Laufey wanted him dead or not, they were on a whole ass planet full of other jotuns that could’ve adopted Loki. And it makes it even worse when people say that Jotunheim would fall apart without the casket so leaving Loki there was inhumane.

You’re saying it’s a good thing for a white coloniser to take a child to raise as his own, just because that child’s native planet has been decimated due to the invasion that guy just did and cause we’re assuming every single other member of this minority race is a savage who wouldn’t treat a child well, and cause of course he’s doing the child a favour because any kid would be better off with this rich white family in a rich white kingdom than in their native homeland with their native people.

[tyrannuspitch]

thinking about jotun culture again

as it currently stands my headcanon on why the jotuns we see (all adult men + warriors) are wearing very little is that it's basically posturing, which is expected of warriors specifically, and even then probably not 24/7.

it's not clear exactly how impervious jotuns are to the cold. a lot of people assume that abandoned jotun babies would die of the cold, but it's not actually stated - they might be left to starve. and even if they are, we're still talking about babies, often ones already judged as "weak", so... your average jotun adult might have basically no lower limit on the cold they can endure.

and if that were the case, there wouldn't be much reason for them to wear clothing at all. after all, there are plenty of real life cultures where the traditional clothing is as little or less than we see on mcu jotuns, or nothing at all, because the climate is such that it just isn't necessary.

but if jotun's practical need for clothing is zero, and their everyday clothing is minimal but not zero... then why wear it? modesty taboos, sure - but where do those taboos start? i'm not an expert on these things at all, but i kind of feel like they have to be outside influence...? and if jotunheim and asgard do have a long and closely intertwined relationship, as they do in my headcanon, then that's a possibility...

but we should also consider the armour. mcu jotuns don't just wear little clothing - they wear little armour. they have a sort of short, fitted, armoured skirt/kilt, and then high status warriors like laufey have tiny, decoratively arranged metal pieces over the arms, torso and head that are probably better described as jewellery than as armour.

deliberately making yourself vulnerable can be an effective intimidation technique. it's not very tactical, though, and if it were a new idea it would probably cause panic/loss of trust... which suggests it's deeply engrained in jotun culture. it's not, for example, the jotuns getting desperate after the war and their subsequent isolation left them with a total dearth of resources to make armour with.

and then. there's the fact that the jotun warriors we see aren't only minimally clothed or armoured - they're also all completely hairless.

we know jotuns grow hair. loki in his jotun form keeps all his hair, including eyebrows. but the jotuns raised on jotunheim have neither. all jotuns, including loki, are also beardless, in contrast to the norm for asgardian men.

i've seen it suggested that loki doesn't have a beard because he can't grow one, possibly because jotuns in general can't grow them. but then why the hair, and why the eyebrows? i think it's actually the opposite - both loki and other jotuns choose to shave their beards.

(and incidentally - surely the presence of any hair, from an evolutionary perspective, suggests that they aren't actually 100% impervious to the cold...)

i think, for most jotuns, it's part of their male gender role, and a point of pride, to have as little protecting them from the cold / the elements / harm in general as possible. no armour, no warm clothing, not even their own hair. they actively choose to remove even what naturally occurs - perhaps symbolically linked to actively choosing to face the dangers of battle for their people?

it might sound odd on the surface to say that removing a "male" characteristic like a beard is a male gender role, but there's plenty of real-world precedent. iirc, ancient rome was pretty strictly (socially) anti-beard and thought shaving was a sign of Civilisation. and modern europe has emulated this at various points, although we're not currently strict about it.

which gives jotun men an interesting possible perspective on asgardian men. having hair on their heads could be seen as weak and feminine. but having hair on their faces could, potentially, be seen as barbaric, animalistic, and hypermasculine in a threatening way...

and on the flipside - i think asgardians probably find clean-shaven men intimidating, because they look like enemies such as jotuns and dark elves. but then they're simultaneously being cast as powerful, probably hypermasculine "beasts", and as womanly, and therefore weak...

and in fact, beyond connotations, thor actually canonically views jotuns simultaneously as super powerful monsters who could overrun asgard any day now, and as cowards.

and of course, if we remember half of what's going on with loki... often "weakness" and "cowardice" and "effeminacy" are pretty clearly seen as threatening in and of themselves, even while people claim the opposite...

so. demonisation for contradictory things at the exact same time. the enemy is both weak and strong. this is a very common part of bigotry, but it's always kind of psychologically fascinating to me.

[musclesandhammering]

I’m curious who/what race you think his mother was?

The problems with all the Loki curly hair theories are a) if it's considered unruly for royalty why does Frigga let hers stay curly and b) if it's uncommon among Asgardians or not the social beauty standards, this Loki is bullied for it, why doesn't Volstag or any other Asgardian with curly hair striaghten it because we've seen quite a few with curly hair.

Here's my new theory. From a young age Loki has been told that his hair looks better straightened, mostly by his mother, and it's easier to maintain if he doesn't bother taking care of the curls and just straightening them out. The real reason is his curly hair makes him look exactly like his mother.

I have a huge personal hc about Loki's mother so that's for a whole other post or a full fic but basically Loki had to get his curly hair from someone and it sure isn't his dad so I think it's from his mother and both Odin and Frigga new her and Loki looks exactly like her, especially with curly hair.

[artifactsbeyondtime]

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