Voices in my head

Despite the real world being really pretty terrible in a variety of different ways (my country, my family, and my body have all taken serious damage recently), I realized that I've actually written a number of fanfic that I forgot to post about here.

So, to catch up:


A Lever and a Place to Stand
fandom: BBC's Sherlock
summary: John doesn’t use his magic… except this once: Sherlock will live!


Lone Wolf and Alpha
fandom: Mercy Thompson Series by Patricia Briggs
sequel to: Leah's Happy Ending
summary: Leah was far from the only female werewolf in a bad situation. They too get their chance at happiness.


What Happens in Budapest... Comes Home to Roost
fandom: Avengers, Marvel Cinematic Universe
summary: Found family and unexpected allies, monsters that needed killing and recovering from brainwashing, … yeah, the New York alien invasion really did remind Natasha of Budapest.


this is unexpected
fandom: Star Wars
summary: a self-indulgent response to the many, wonderful time-travel Star Wars stories that send a more experienced and more knowledgeable Obi-Wan Kenobi back in time to change the many tragedies to come


Everybody Lies
fandom: James Bond movies (Spectre specifically) and BBC's Sherlock
summary: "Spectre" made a lot more sense once I considered: what if all the characters are lying?
Denbigh and Oberhauser, Bond and Mallory, and most certainly Q. Everybody. Mycroft Holmes is not best pleased.


The Angel of Hell's Kitchen
fandom: Daredevil
summary: Foggy struggles to come to terms with discovering his friend Matt is the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, and in the meantime, life happens.
“It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog.” -- Joseph Conrad



plus two illustrations I did, inspired by two other fanfic that I've read and enjoyed a great deal:

Tyrant Queen of Mutant Ninja Were-Lemurs
fandom: Avatar, the Last Airbender, alternate universe
description: in Chapter 6 of Kryal's amazing fic, The Dragon-King's Temple, Sokka is worried about what could have happened to Toph, since even if she was attacked by mutant ninja were-lemurs, she would just kick their butts and be taken back to their lair to become their queen, and the world just wasn’t ready for Toph, Tyrant Queen of Mutant Ninja Were-Lemurs. And so this happened.
inspired by: The Dragon-King's Temple by Kryal
fandom of inspiration fic: Avatar the Last Airbender and Stargate SG1
summary of inspirational fic: Through the spite of the spirits or plain rotten chance, a door that would have been better left untouched has opened. On the other hand, with Fire and Earth as one's allies, sometimes escaping is the easy part.
Even the Dragon-King's temple floods.


Raincloud, the Rabbit of Caerbannog
description: The picture that Sephiroth took of Raincloud, the Rabbit of Caerbannog, in Chapter 22 of Off the Line by esama
inspired by: Off the Line by esama
fandom of inspirational fic: Final Fantasy VII
summary of inspirational fic: In which Cloud gets a Virtual Reality Dream Console – ShinRa's latest in virtual reality technology. Aaand everything pretty much goes downhill from there.

Let us consider Thor’s Hammer, a mystical-magical weapon named Mjolnir, inscribed with: “Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.”

Wowza.

I’ve read various fics in which other Avengers try to pick up Thor’s Hammer and occasionally they succeed. They have been found worthy! Cool!

But then, I was wandering around online and found this awesome analysis of a scene in the movie Thor, (by Alis Dee, the author of the (awesome, awesome, awesome!) series, Agent Loki: International Man of Mayhem.) In the analysis, she points out that Thor’s big redemptive scene? Isn’t so much him sacrificing himself to save others as it is him refraining from using others as his meat shields. Which, wow, sets the bar kind of low for what “worthy” means. Which makes it all the more depressing that no one else on Earth can lift the hammer.

However, then I had some thoughts:

Thought #1: Worthy or not-worthy, in this case, is being judged by a mystical-magical hammer. What’s the scale here? And what’s being measured? What exactly counts as being worthy here? Given that one aspect seems to be refraining from using friends and innocent bystanders as meat shields, I’m guessing that the hammer is judging worth on a whole different system than most modern Earth cultures judge, and only includes a nominal nod towards empathy.

Maybe it’s warrior ability and prince-like behavior, or having just the right amount of empathy (not too little and not too much), or something.

Following this train of thought, I kind of want a story in which none of the other Avengers can lift the hammer, but someone else completely inappropriate can. Is it one of their current enemies? Maybe a Lex Luthor type of enemy who wants to rule and, while vicious and deadly, is only as vicious and deadly as is required for taking over the world? Or is it Director Fury who already seems to be the great and powerful Oz to a certain extent? Oh, the possibilities.

However, that actually lead to…

Thought #2: Thor was perfectly capable of using Mjolnir when he went to Jotunheim, when he was fighting the Jotun, when he returned to Asgard, and when he was back-talking Odin. It wasn’t until he was cast down by Odin that he failed to lift the hammer.

So is part of being worthy being in Odin’s good graces? Because is sounds like that one sets the bar for worthiness pretty darned high. And makes the definition of being worthy completely dependent on the opinion of one being rather than based on behaviors or feelings.

Then, actually, pretty much in writing this description up, I had…

Thought #3: There are multiple ways of interpreting what it would mean to possess the power of Thor. Now, I know that in comic book canon various other people have picked up the hammer before and the interpretation is that they get a lot of extra “power.” Okay. But, ignoring that canonical interpretation, let’s consider alternatives. For instance, what happens to Thor, in the mean time? Is it that the wielder will have an equivalent amount of power, or is it that they’ll have Thor’s power, in which case Thor will not have Thor’s power?

Or, better yet, is it that they’ll be able to control Thor. Maybe it's a kind of a slave connection. If some suitably worthy person gets a hold of Mjolnir, they have Thor at their command?

Because this interpretation would actually solve some of the previous problems. The original issue that prevented Thor was using the hammer wasn’t that Thor didn’t have enough empathy or Odin’s approval necessarily, it was that he didn’t have control of his own life. He had acted based on Loki’s taunts and Odin’s commands and it wasn’t until he was cast out and learned to act based on his own thoughts and desires that the hammer considered him master of his own fate and thus worthy to captain his own soul and all that?

In which case, wouldn’t it be kind of funny if, having settled on Earth to be an Avenger for a while, Thor acquired a personal assistant to help keep his life organized and she (or he) was perfectly capable of lifting Mjolnir? Or even that was the test? Could the applicants for the position lift Mjolnir?

Anyway, I would love to see some fanfiction which delves into the issues of what counts as "worthy" according to a mystical-magical weapon.
 

So I've been reading a lot of fix-it fics for the Avengers. If you haven't watched the movie, don't know what so many of us want fixed, and don't want spoilers, then go out and watch the movie right now.

However, there's one fix-it story that I haven't been able to find, that I would really like to read, so if anyone has any recommendations, please let me know.

Anyway:

( Here be Spoilers...  )

This is mostly a re-imagining of The Avengers, with everything in the movie taking place, but a bunch of other stuff happening too that changes the perspective.

Loki is, in my opinion, the single most sympathetic of all super-villains. I mean, there’s the classic younger-brother issues with a heroic older-brother, but more to the point, he was raised on stories of how evil the frost giants are and how much everyone hates and fears them, and then, whoops, surprise, you’re a frost giant and no one told you. I would have thought that a good father, having adopted a frost giant, might have toned down the frost-giants-are-evil stories a bit, but Odin apparently didn't think of that. So my reading on Loki is really more along the lines of a teenager going through a personal melt-down rather than a true villain.

The thing that makes him a super-villain is just how over-powered he is. What he needs is someone to hold him down, tell him his family still loves him, and then send him to bed early to get some sleep. What he gets is a bunch of humans who are far beneath his weight-class and a brother who is more interested in the humans than in him, telling him that he’s being evil, which mostly just escalates the conflict.

In my head, in the movie Thor, Loki reads a lot like a 15-year-old who’s too strong for his own good and winds up on the street after having a public melt-down. In the movie The Avengers, he’s more like a 19-year-old who’s found himself a place in a gang, has done all sorts of violent and vicious things, but is still mostly feeling pain himself and lashing out.

All of this makes me want to redeem him.

He had a crappy revelation in his adolescence, but so too have a lot of other people, and they largely manage to refind their balance. I want Loki to refind his balance, to be a good guy, or at least, not a bad guy.

And then I consider:

Loki is a trickster god, right? Mischief and chaos and plans within plans. And lies. One can’t forget the lies.

And yet, his plan in The Avengers is fairly straight-forward. I mean, there is a small amount of subterfuge with him allowing himself to be taken captive, but it’s not all that much.

And then I consider his battle plan with the Chitauri. Open a single portal right over The Avenger’s base of operations? Then allow through a few advanced guard to test the waters and give the good guys a chance to take stock of the enemy? Wait until the first advanced guard is down and then call in the rest?

I think Loki was playing the two sides against each other.

Say Loki landed amongst the Chitauri when he fell. They are not necessarily a pleasant people and Loki isn’t the type to stay quietly in hiding for the rest of his life. So he needs to get out of there. But the only way out is to make a deal.

But having made a deal, the only way out of the deal is to make sure that the Chitauri are completely decimated. So he has to set up a full-scale conflict that the Avengers will win, knowing that they aren’t going to go into battle under his leadership, especially given the necessity of endangering civilians. Plus, the Chitauri would probably notice a betrayal that blatant. So he needs to escalate a conflict and create a battle plan, so that it looks like he’s leading the Chitauri to conquer the Earth, when he’s really using Earth to get rid of the Chitauri.

So in the end, he plays the role of a villain, a somewhat idiotic villain, and his feeling of superiority/contempt/anger/betrayal increase with the fact that everyone believes the act.

And in the end, he can’t even explain himself both because he’s gagged, and because he’s a god of lies which pretty much gives everyone permission to believe or disbelieve whatever they want about him.

Prompt #1: Any, Any, It's okay, you don't need to do anymore

Ficlet #1: (The Avengers, Bruce Banner) Letting Go


Prompt #2: Marvel Movie Verse, Thor, he ends up supporting gay rights in public because apparently it isn't an issue in Asgard

Ficelt #2: Contract Law