I really shouldn't bother to get worked up about this...

[oneiriad]

So, I stumbled across yet another of those articles about how some so-called fans are bitching about the casting of Idris Elba as Heimdal, and I'm just - seriously, people. This is movie with a blond Thor, not a goat in sight, and where Loki's mother has been mysteriously and inexplicably genderswitched into the king of the jotun (which has lead me to cheerfully assume that Marvel's jotun are all hermaphrodites and Loki is going to get a surprise one of these days, but nevermind). So, when people only bitch about how Mr. Elba doesn't fit the original mythology, it's kind of telling. Just saying.

That said, I rolled my eyes as much as any girl while watching the movie - but then, most modern fiction involving Norse myth involve revisions or sheer idiotic changes - I'm still scarred from Jul i Valhal with Loki calling Hel "auntie"... And then there's the things nobody ever remember, like if you're using Snorri, you should really be casting Greek or Turkish actors, as he claimed that the Aesir where the descendants of Trojan refugees. For instance. Consequently.

I've got a challenge for you. Point me to a modern canon involving Norse myth that remembers (or at least handwaves the absence of) Thor's stone and you can have a prompt. If you can't find a such, if you can (without googling or other forms of cheating) tell me what I mean with Thor's stone, you can also have a prompt, but it must have something to do with Norse myth - a crossover, perhaps.

Any takers?

Comments

[piratepurple.livejournal.com]

Let's not forget that these particular versions of the Norse pantheon are also SUPERHEROES, coexisting in a universe with aliens, people who regularly die and come back, get superpowers via radiation, spider bite, genetic manipulation etc, etc. That argument is invalid.

[oneiriad.livejournal.com]

That argument is invalid
Would that be the Edda argument or my argument? *tilts head, not quite sure*

[piratepurple.livejournal.com]

The argument that Heimdall should be white because he's Norse. Comic books are not the Edda. :D If Thor can fight alongside Superman, then Heimdall's skin color can be non Caucasian. There is nothing historically or culturally accurate about the Marvel comics universe.

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

I thought there was at least one version of the parentage of Hel, Fenris and Jormungandr where Loki carries and gives birth to them (fertilised by eating the heart of Angrbotha.) Plus he's the mother of Sleipnir, so I suspect hermaphroditism wouldn't phase him much.

I'm sure I read somewhere that the Vanir were Middle Eastern fertility gods imported into the pantheon to fill the gaps. So yes, the question is really why was there only one god of colour?

I fail the challenge, as the only Thor's stone I know of is the one on Thurston Common http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurstaston_Common

And to conclude, I need a Loki icon :)

[oneiriad.livejournal.com]

Well, there's a mention in one of the Edda poems of him eating a roasted heart and getting pregnant thereby, but I don't remember it specifically mentioning the terrible three, so maybe them, maybe another myth we won't ever hear. Which is the frustrating thing about Norse myth - we have a handful of stories written down centuries after people stopped actually believing them, or at least, by people who didn't want the authorities to have any reason to suspect them of heresy. There are so many stories - fragments and hints in the Edda - and we'll probably never know them - and it sucks :-(

But yeah, myth Loki probably wouldn't be phased - movie-Marvel Thor's Loki, on the other hand... ;-)

And no, not the one on Thurston Common (which I didn't know about - interesting). When I said Thor's stone, I was thinking of the stone fragment he has had permanently lodged in his forehead since his duel with the jotun Hrungnir. Somehow, modern stories never seem to remember that stone :-)

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

No, that's true. I probably put the two things together in my head as an explanation and then remembered it as if it was a well known fact.

Marvel Loki is an altogether inferior creature. I can't forgive them for putting him in that ghastly helmet, for a start :)