Devoured by Flame

I figured I would kick off this blog that I’m starting that focuses on my work with Loki by doing some writing to get my mind into gear.

July is a special month for me and it marks the anniversary of my time spent with Himself. I’ll probably have a bit of a story time to follow up here but I just wanted to get the ball rolling with some writing prompts you can find Here.

1 July: “I first discovered Loki when…”

I am pretty not original when it comes to my discovery of Loki. I first came into knowledge of Himself when my friend bullied me into going to go see Avengers in 2012. I wasn’t particularly a superhero fan but she lured me with my favorite trope: tall, dark and British. 16-year-old me couldn’t resist such a thing and so she went into the theater thinking she wouldn’t care much for it and left a changed woman (well… teenager).

I first watched all of the MCU movies in order and then… I watched Thor. And I just… fell instantly in love with MCU Loki. I didn’t realize how tragic of a backstory he had when I watched Avengers initially. I wept, I was moved, and I then saw Avengers in theaters about 5-6 more times before counting down the days until it was on DVD.

That kickstarted the obsession I’ve carried with me until today (at the ripe age of 28). I still love Tom Hiddleston’s portrayal of Loki and will inhale any and all Marvel Loki content given the chance. Not only does Tom do a lovely job of playing an empathetic character but he is a lovely actor and an inspiring person to look up to and favor. He’s delightfully polite and extremely talented and I have loved everything he has ever been in.

I personally don’t believe that there was much of a coincidence that Loki would come into the public eye in such a huge way with such a gorgeous and charming actor who plays him. Stories of the gods are what keeps them alive in our consciousness whether they’re “historically” accurate or not. But thats not why I am writing.

I went down the rabbit hole of research upon running out of comics, movies, and cartoons from Marvel on top of any other media that had Loki in it like American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Supernatural, and a multitude of books that were about or featured him.

I read the Eddas when I was 18 and then geeked when years later Neil Gaiman wrote Norse Mythology. I had pretty much known everything I could know about the character of Loki and what he is like but I hadn’t came into knowing Him as a deity. I was an atheist (and a bitter one at that) and was completely turned off by any notion of religion given my traumatic experiences with Christianity and the abuses of power and rejection I faced. I was always the “weird” kid and no matter how hard I tried I would never actually fit in. I was the black sheep of my conservative evangelical Christian family, and even the black sheep in my less conservative extended family. I was depressed, anxious, and the world had ran me thin.

It was around June of 2018 when I was depressed regarding the events of Infinity War that I stumbled upon some tumblr post about Loki being comforting to his followers who grieved his character loss. I don’t know what it was that sparked my immediate interest – perhaps I was always wanting this to be real, to find people who legitimately worshipped and honored Loki as I had always admired paganism from before but never dared to broach it.

I had just finished my second to last year of college having rearranged my major so I would graduate and get out. I was working multiple jobs and going to school full time and I was in a relationship that seemed to plateau. I didn’t know it… but I felt trapped. Stifled, even.

So when the time came that I jumped down the rabbit hole to investigate this, I inhaled everything I possibly could in weeks. I teetered back and forth between “am I really doing this?” To “I must be very lonely and very desperate” to “I really fucking want this to be real.” It was one night while my boyfriend was away on vacation without me, I grabbed a bottle of wine and drank about half of it before sitting on my bed, cross legged, closing my eyes, and for the first time in a really really long time, decided to pray. I felt the urge to extend my hands outward, reaching for… something. And I called out to Loki. And to my absolute delight and horror, he responded. And since then, we have been inseparable.

2 July: “My favourite story of Loki is that time that…”

My favorite story would have to be Lokatattúr which is a lesser known folk tale that was written perhaps almost a millennia after the Eddas were written. I realize a lot of heathens would turn their nose up at qualifying this as a story considering how modern it is but I find it unfathomably stupid to disqualify any story that takes place within His own cultural framework.

The story goes that Loki was wandering around with Odin and Hœnir (as is tradition), and they came upon a farmers family that was struggling with saving their child from a giant.

Odin and Hœnir both fail in their attempts to trick the giant into giving back the child and it is Loki who outdoes them all by turning the child into a grain in the middle of a fish’ roe (eggs in an fish’s ovary) and he manages to catch the fish and get the boy to hide behind him in a boat while he and the giant are out fishing together.

Once the giant figures it out, it’s too late. The boy jumps out of the boat and makes a run for it back to his father’s while Loki manages to chop off the giant’s legs and head and return to the parents having done what they asked.

I love this story because it is one of the few instances where we see Loki’s benevolence most aptly illustrated. We continue to see stories in folklore that regard Loki as a protector of children, an entity of the home, and even one of the creators of humanity.