#shame is NOT an issue when it comes to legitimate issue (ooh pun!)

[nostalgia-tblr]

#i often see sickly loki tied to him being in the wrong environment for a jotun but never because he was born too small#i think it's because 1. ignorance of the effects of being too small and invisible disabilities 2. The What If? cartoon didn't help#bc most interpret it as “Laufey actually loved Loki” instead of AU where Laufey wanted Loki bc he's not as small or bc Laufey is nice @lokiinmediasideblog's tags

THIS REMINDS ME, I tend to see people saying the abandoning was because having a small baby was embarrassing to Laufey, not because such a small baby was seen as being sick or disabled in some way. Just small and shaming. Which I have always found a bit unconvincing, because if Loki really is the heir to Jotunheim (so fandom tells me, idk what the source is) then he can't have older brothers and WHO THE FUCK tries to kill their only male heir because they are VAGUELY EMBARRASSED by his appearance? Whereas if he's been assumed to be severely ill - maybe to the point where nobody expects him to live - that becomes a bit more likely (but maybe not that much more - I think people around here wildly underestimate who and what monarchies are willing to put a crown on).

Actually come to think of it we don't know Odin *just* did a little glamour, or that nothing was done on Asgard to make the new prince less likely to drop suddenly dead. We all think of Loki as healthy because the guy we see does indeed seem to be, however much he may be feeble and willowy in some kinds of fic. And even that's just not being as muscular as Thor, like most people aren't.

Anyway, I think it's interesting/significant that so many of us immediately went with "oh, there must be some kind of shame attached to small babies" and not "his size must have been seen as a real and serious health problem then."

fandom goes into deep denial about the attempted infanticide of baby loki because the imperialism reading of it works against the text and requires that the baby be stolen not abandoned, and that this theft be for the most nefarious and imperialist purposes we can think of. whereas actually - and i was going to say this is 'the obvious parallel' but no it's not even a parallel it's what's clearly happening there - the baby's been left out to die for being disabled hasn't he?

the word 'runt' gets used but adult loki compared to other frost giants is not just slightly on the small side, he's probably equivalent to a human with dwarfism, which definitely brings this into Infanticiding The Disabled Child territory. which a) laufey cannot be allowed to do because that's a fucked up and horrible thing to do* b) we also can't allow that odin just kept that baby because by asgardian standards there was no obvious disability there. (the social model of disability, but with giants and less-giants**) "why would you be throwing out this baby, laufey? it looks normal-sized. it doesn't even have an unusual number of limbs. yeah, i am taking this baby as a friend for my similarly-sized bio-son. mine now. finders keepers." i point this out because the disabled baby is not saved by someone thinking disability-based infanticide is wrong - at least not necessarily so - but by being found by someone who doesn't recognise the supposed problem. to whom it simply does not exist.

and of course fandom loves sad little feeble loki being weak and pathetic in fic, but i have somehow never seen this tied to the fact that he is canonically undersized for his species and likely has some connected internal fuckery going on with his organs. we have no idea what made him that small or what it'd do and - here's the fun kicker for you angst fans! - probably nobody on asgard would either. when's the last time any of them had to look after even an entirely able-bodied jotun? how likely is it that they can just write off to jotunheim to say "hey what's up with that kid your king tried to murder? how would we fix him if he lived here? yeah, our king kept him. no, we didn't eat the baby! can we borrow a medical textbook? what do you mean you don't have paper there. well how do you write down how the orientalist belly-dancer outfits are to be worn? well then how... no, come back. did you just hang up on a letter???"

sorry, i digressed. what i was aiming for was that there is a very obvious reason why loki might be unusually weak for a lad who looks healthy to us and who doesn't seem any smaller or less able-bodied than the people around him, but i just don't see it being deployed in fic or in meta or whatever. is this because the 'laufey just left his baby out for some fresh air like norwegians do' reading kind of relies on that baby not being seen as a burden to be got rid of and we all kind of agree that... no. no, i shall not finish that thought. it is too depressing. it probably is that though isn't it?

anyway. this is me wondering what is up with that. other than maybe some kind of 'echo-chamber effect' where even the wildest ideas can become commonly-held fanon and where it'd be easy to just straight-up ignore a very obvious implication of baby-murdering because someone leaving you to just fucking die for being disabled is somehow not enough oppression for a blorbo in these enlightened times. or because it breaks a popular fandom interpretation of events. or something like that?

*in fairness i'd say humans from earth are probably within the group that's allowed to just not care about humans from earth getting invaded and killed.

**i say 'less-giants' because look:

look at this literal giant among men. tiny scrawny little thing, so smol and so freakishly tall to the humans. i call this 'the social model of smolness.'