This is exactly what I was talking about last week, about how I’d done something goofy with this fic, quite unintentionally. Originally, when I had first posted this, it had been all over the place. Multiple series, with interludes and asides, and it didn’t make any sense. In the reposts, I’d decided to structure it as a single upload, so that nothing got missed, and then use chapter titles to separate all of the different sections. But the idea is that it’s structured like the comic books are, where there are different titles that all take place within the same lore, but are all kind of doing their own thing. So there’s the Ragnarök title, which is Laufey’s story (and is actually quite small overall). Tales of Yggdrasil is Old Asgard. Not Old Old Asgard, but the previous generation. Odin’s generation. All his stupid friends that he ran around causing trouble with. And this one seems like such a departure from what the summary promises that I feel like it put a lot of people off. But in a lot of ways, it’s just a giant prologue. A 22,000 word prologue.
This story is pulled straight from the Eddas, and only has a few minor changes. Although, what I was not prepared for was the day I posted this to AO3, Marvel published a comic in which Kvasir was revealed to be alive and well. That was both hilarious and surprisingly annoying. He’s such a nothing, nobody obscure character that I thought surely Marvel will never use this bitch. I can do whatever I like with him, including use him exactly in the context in which he originally appears in the Eddas, present him as a corpse, and move on with the story. So that’s what I did, and then Marvel exhumed his ass from the grave right out from under me.
But the whole point of starting with this one was to show Odin as a character in his youth. Odin is 17 years old in this story. We’re seeing this story through Jari’s eyes though, who has never seen an Asgardian until now. He has no idea what an Asgardian even is. The other Loki, by contrast, is in his 40s. The reason Odin is fucking around on Niðavellir, which may or may not become apparent later on, is because he’s taking a rite that all Asgardian boys take at 17. Although in his case, he’s likely taking it less as a matter of tradition, and more to get away from his tyrant king brother, Cul. If you read what was posted to AO3 already, you’ll remember our Loki doesn’t take his until much later than 17, and doesn’t even take it properly. So taking this rite for the wrong reasons, and not doing it correctly clearly runs in the family. But you won’t hear that from Odin.
I like Odin as a character, because he’s complicated and contradictory in a lot of ways. He wants everyone to see him as this stern, serious person, but he’s anything but these things. He’s just as stupid and bone-headed as the people he hangs around, and over the course of this story, that façade of his wears down until he’s making the same insane choices as everyone else. By the time he’s king, and dealing with ruling a realm and being a father to a gang of horrible children who don’t follow anyone’s rules including the ones he lays down, he’s at the point of giving up. If he weren’t king, he’d be the sort of dad who wakes up one Tuesday morning and announces at breakfast that he’s decided to wilfully go senile out of spite. But at the same time, he’s got no one to blame but himself, because he was the exact same way. Our very first introduction to him in this series is him running around with a half-giant and a dwarf, wrecking shit on Jötunheimr over a few jars of mead. Not because of any attachment to the man who was killed, either. Neither he nor Loki seem overly fond of Kvasir; in fact, they both seem to have hated the man when he was alive. Odin just doesn’t want anyone else to have the mead. He doesn’t even seem too fucked about the actual justice part of the mission. They find Jari’s brothers, and oh, well that’s sorted then. Odin deals with that with a heartless out line, and continues on his journey with single-minded determination that even Loki finds crass and distasteful.
How fucked up you gotta be for a Loki to call you out on your bullshit?
But I love characters who are complicated and terrible, who do contradictory and hypocritical things. Odin is the epitome of “do as I say, not as I do” parenting. Everything he gets on Loki’s ass for doing, he’s guilty of himself. Which is why I wanted to open with this part, before going into our Loki’s story. Yes, this is the wrong Loki. Yes, Odin is a great big bag of dicks. But everything in this part informs why he and Loki will spend the next 25 years butting heads with one another. Because Loki knows that Odin is absolutely full of shit, and isn’t allowed to call him out on it without being accused of treason.