The Meandering River

theebonhawke:

Bioware: Makes Malak not so much complex villain and never explores his character or his relationship with Rev.

Kotor fans:

@williamisnotwaifu

bioware didn’t deserve him

(via babedur)

findingasgard:

bigskydreaming:

Like the thing about Loki in Norse mythology is there’s like 8000 myths about Loki just being chaotically mischievous and the other gods are like lol oh that scamp, no matter how disastrous his schemes are, their reaction is still pretty much always ‘haha oh that’s just Loki.’

EXCEPT for basically….one myth. Where Loki’s instrumental in the death of Baldur and the gods are all WHOA TOO FUCKING FAR DUDE and send him to Hel to be tormented for all eternity, leading to his ultimate escape/release in Ragnarok to end all things and lead the army of the damned and his monstrous children to pretty much…eat all the gods, destroy Asgard, and burn the World Tree all to the ground so it can all start over.

Here’s the thing though. Norse mythology spanned centuries. The tales of Loki as the mischievous trickster god were told for centuries.

However, for most of that time, the myths were told as part of oral traditions passed down generation to generation, until they were finally compiled in manuscript form in the 13th century, roughly. This is when pretty much all the sagas, as Norse myth compilations were called, are considered to have been written down for the first time, and so they included thousands of stories that had been told over hundreds of years.

They were also regional, though there was a lot of overlap, given that the Vikings traveled widely and regularly across the various parts of Scandinavia. Still, different parts of Scandinavia had their own sagas. Norway had different sagas than Denmark who had different sagas than Iceland, etc. Even though all of them featured primarily the same figures, they each had their own unique stories featuring the gods. However, very rarely did they have radically different takes on those gods.

Now what’s significant about the fact that pretty much every saga we have, where these myths were all finally written down and preserved, is from the 13th century….

Is that pretty much all of Scandinavia had converted to Christianity by the early 12th century, with active worship of the Norse gods being scattered and mostly underground from that point on.

Why is this significant?

Because it means every Norse myth we have a written recording of was not written by people who still actively worshiped those gods. Nor were they intended to be read as such at the time. 

They were written down by Christian scholars who wrote them AS stories. They were intended as collections of their regions’ cultural histories, but not by or for people who still actively believed in these stories or the figures they featured. They weren’t like….TRYING to be super accurate, is the thing. The scholars who wrote these sagas were writing down the stories that had been passed down for generations, but through the lens of people who saw them as stories their ancestors once believed, not ones that pertained to their own current worldview.

And they were writing these sagas for an audience of people who similarly believed as they believed.

Which means that inevitably, some things got ‘adjusted’ to fit the current world view, the zeitgeist of the scholars writing down the stories and that of the people who would read or have the stories read to them from thereon. Because again, they weren’t aiming for being 100% faithful to the tales as they’d been told to them. They were just treating them as stories. And what do you do when the story you’re writing down has elements that don’t make that much sense to you because they were born of and aimed a worldview that doesn’t match yours?

Well, if you’re the Christian scholars writing the Norse sagas, you ‘tweak’ those elements until they make a story that fits your worldview.

So remember how I said the various sagas were regional and had a lot of overlap but some stories were distinct to some regions and didn’t show up elsewhere?

Yeah, Ragnarok is one of those.

Thousands of sagas encompassing centuries of Norse mythology and oral traditions were written down all over the various regions of Scandinavia in the 13th century.

Ragnarok only showed up in one.

The most famous, granted, but still. Everything we’re told in Norse myths about the death of Baldur and Loki’s role in it, leading to his punishment and torment in Hel and his ultimate release and bringing forth the armies of Hel to slay the gods and end the world?

Comes from the Prose Edda and the later Poetic Edda, from Iceland.

Which had primarily converted to Christianity as far back as 1000.

Now, the Vikings? Were actually surprisingly not a big doom and gloom people. Pretty much every assumption of them as such comes from how synonymous we regard Ragnarok with their culture.

It is after all, the ultimate Judgment Day myth, isn’t it? Right up there with Christianity’s Book of Revelations. An apocalyptic end of the world scenario, a war between heaven and hell, where everything is destroyed so that the world can basically start fresh with a clean slate. Nothing old ‘deserves’ to survive, pretty much the only way for a world free of sin and evil to arise is from the ashes of the old, after everything has been cleansed with fire.

Now contrast this ‘myth’ with pretty much every other Norse myth that’s survived. Larger than life tales of grand adventures, noble quests, gods walking among mortals in disguise and heroes fighting giants and stealing from dragons.

Where the closest thing the Norse pantheon has to a devil figure is Loki, the god of mischief….not even evil, but MISCHIEF, because a far more accurate representation of the Vikings’ world view is that sometimes shit happens, because Loki the god of chaos likes to make a mess of things. And what do you do when that happens? If you’re the Vikings, you basically just shrug, go “well, that’s Loki” for you, and drink some more mead.

Loki isn’t vilified in a single myth until Ragnarok, because the Vikings didn’t hate him. And they certainly didn’t fear him. They LAUGHED at him. In nine out of ten myths, Loki ends up the subject of ridicule himself, as he has the tables turned on him or outsmarts himself

Until Ragnarok.

Which, granted, could very well be another Norse myth that was passed down generation to generation in Iceland, land of frequent volcanic eruptions and likely inspiration for Musplheim, the land of the fire giants.

BUT. Which could equally likely, and far more plausibly given the overall context of Norse mythology, simply be a story the scholar who wrote the Prose Edda made up to ‘finish off’ his saga of the world according to the Vikings, from beginning to end.

An ending his Christian audience of the times would understand and identify with a lot better than they would understand the concept of a devil-figure that existed to be LAUGHED at, to show how little the Vikings feared some mythical figure with the power to lie and deceive them….the complete opposite of the way Christians feared Satan.

Basically put….Ragnarok, for all that we think of it as the ultimate Norse myth….DOES NOT MAKE SENSE in the context of almost EVERY single other Norse myth AND in the context of how Norse society viewed the world and their place in it, or their gods and their relationship with them.

Same with Loki’s depiction in Ragnarok.

What both Ragnarok and Loki’s role in Ragnarok DO make sense in the context of, however, is in a bastardization of Christianity’s own doomsday tales of a Judgment Day, stylized to fit the trappings of Norse mythology and feature their gods instead of Christian figures.

With Loki recast in the role of the Devil, as he was the closest fit they could find to that.

And with Baldur, god of light (a Norse god who is at best a footnote in Norse myths other than Ragnarok, and certainly was never the major pantheon figure he’s assumed to be), recast in the role of the Christ figure. Whose death starts the ball rolling for Judgment Day and who is destined to return for it, to triumph over Loki/Satan and preside over the new, purified world once it’s reborn from the ashes of the old one.

Anyway, tl;dr, don’t believe the hype, Ragnarok’s probably not even an actual Norse myth but the invention of Christian writers who were like lol this would make for a great Book of Revelations fanfic AU, and Loki was almost certainly never regarded by actual Vikings as some evil, malicious world-destroyer who would lead armies of the dead at Armageddon whoops I mean Ragnarok.

tl;dr of the tl;dr Loki’s not actually evil and more on how Christians bastardize things.

(via jackironsides)

So You Want To Write Fanfic

pornosophical:

here are 10 quick tips for making that good fic, or at least making your fic look good

1. Tag and Bag: if your fanfic needs tags make them good, make them accurate, and don’t talk in them. You want to make it as easy as possible to attract readers. Tags on fanfic are for sorting not communicating, you have an entire fic’s worth of author’s notes for that
2. Bait, Hook, and Reel: your summary and title is what sells a reader after they’ve finished tag sorting. The part of the spear that you sharpen is the tip, the rest just has to hold together long enough to follow through
3. Apologize for NOTHING: all creators are self-conscious, we all feel shades of anxiety and embarrassment about our work. But if you don’t think your work is good, why should anyone else read it? Everyone starts somewhere
4. Bad Epithet, No Biscuit: kill this idea. Whether calling a boy with dark hair “the raven” or a character’s blue eyes ‘cerulean orbs’ don’t. Just don’t. Use names and pronouns because they are easier for readers to follow
5. An Ounce of Prevention: DO SOME RESEARCH! Every time you get something wrong in your story you lose at least one reader who knows better. You don’t need to be an expert, you just need to know enough to bluff your way through
6. Grammar U: grammar is about communication, where you put your comma to splice your run-on sentence is not nearly as important as framing dialogue correctly. It’s a readability issue. Grammar serves you and the reader, not the other way around
7. Cliché This: know ‘em, avoid ‘em or spin ‘em around until they’re flipped and fresh. Check TVtropes for specifics on your fandom
8. A Chuckle Darkly: think about the phrases you write. Does it make sense or just sound cool? It’s not a zero-sum game, but making sense is always the more important thing
9. Floridly Prosaic Mosaics of Prose: writing prettily is not a substitute for story. It’s easy to write florid prose, you can tell by how everyone does it. But only a few do it well enough to merit the distraction from reading a story
10. Pay It Forward: you like good fic? You want more good fic? Then be a good e-citizen, leave kudos and comments, be constructive, contribute meaningfully and critically to your fandom, and above all have fun! Also you should probably reblog this
    

(via jackironsides)

I’m Chinese, so I wonder if non-Chinese understand

smallest-feeblest-boggart:

salvadorolliesout:

superjellycake:

mydollyaviana:

that in the Chinese version of Disney’s Mulan, the fake name she gives is “Ping”, but her family name “Fa” in English is “Hua” in Chinese, therefore her full name is “Hua Ping”, which is literally “Flower Vase”, and that’s why Shang is so bewildered because it’s a silly name.

but OP how could you not tell them the best part

“hua ping”/flower vase is chinese slang for “camp gay”

I—

i needed this exactly 2 decades ago

(via jackironsides)

timemachineyeah:

sailorfailures:

Oh man. We had so many weird spinoff games for Sailor Moon in the day, including several Street Fighter-seque fighting games and side scrollers, but we never got a racing game and that’s a DAMN shame

Originally posted by queen-hipstoria

theelvenkingshalls:

mistergandalf:

mistergandalf:

one of my favorite lotr facts is that gondorians speak sindarin as a first language and yet when faramir was talking to frodo and sam about cirith ungol he was like “we don’t know what’s in there.” like faramir. cirith ungol is sindarin for “pass of the spider.” do the math

some of my favorite tags on this post

Don’t forget that Frodo also speaks Sindarin, which makes this even worse.

Faramir: Hey, don’t go up the Spider Stairs.

Frodo: Why? What’s up the Spider Stairs?

Faramir: We don’t know, Frodo. We just don’t know.

(via timemachineyeah)

ruinerofcheese:

tetralea:

stuckyneverstony:

thekingandthelionheart:

steveandbucky:

can we talk about this look for a moment.

what about this is heterosexual, exactly? who looks at their totally-platonic-bff-slash-soulmate like that? all i’m seeing is a “i’m undressing you with my eyes” look at the very least, but it def feels more like The most “i’m gonna fuck u senseless the moment we’re alone” look

#the eye fuck of the century #that is a man with a PLAN #that is the look of a man who knows hes about to absolutely dismantle you later #he knew how to do it when he was half buck’s size #and hes looking forward to seeing what it does to bucky now that he can throw him around a little #that look is very ‘keep running that mouth boy’ #im gonna put it to good use later (via steebadore)

Always reblog.

It’s way too early for this but I love it.

@tetralea it’s never too early for this🤣😍

(via jackironsides)

adurot:

(via timemachineyeah)

injuries-in-dust:

hojabby:

hojabby:

My therapist asked me what I thought my abusive ex was up to nowadays, and apparently “the fuck do I know,and the fuck do I care?” Is the right answer

Why did this get so many notes

Because we’re proud of you.

(via fieldbears)