KWBC: Ask the Author - Seized

[aliantha]

First, there's some dispute (Frostheart, correct me if I'm wrong ) over whether Loki qualifies as a god. He's of Frost Giantish stock on one side. Frost Giants aren't technically gods.

Second, keep in mind that Loki is a Trickster. Just because he provides a plausible explanation for his desire for the land during that scene, it doesn't mean that's the whole story. Which begins to stray into RAFO territory, so I'll leave it at that.

Third, the gods don't always act with the best interests of humanity at heart. A lot of times, their actions are based on self-interest. Zeus fathered more than a few Titans, after all, for no better reason than that he wanted to get it on with some human woman. So Loki's self-interested motivation seems right in character to me.

Does that help?

[Frostheart Grueburn]

First, there's some dispute (Frostheart, correct me if I'm wrong ) over whether Loki qualifies as a god. He's of Frost Giantish stock on one side. Frost Giants aren't technically gods.

They qualify. Hel, Loke's daughter is the goddess of death, ruler of the Underworld. Aegir is the god of the sea. Rán his wife is the mistress of the sea. Both jötnar. Skaði: goddess of skiing and hunting; a giantess. Kári: god of wind, another son of Fornjót, who was a Finnish giant king according to the myths (Hversu Noregr byggdist, etc.).

How come only on one side? I've always reckoned that Laufey's a giantess, even if she was thin. www.snerpa.is/net/forn/sorla.htm

Rökkatrú, a form of neopaganism, concentrates on the worship of jötnar.

[I'm Murrin]

And I guess that's a wrap, folks - our week is up. Thank you again to aliantha for going along with this. Hope to see you participating in the Redshirts discussion in less than two weeks time.

[aliantha]

One more post! (I told Murrin a week and we'll see how it's going. If y'all want to keep pestering me, that's fine -- it hasn't been overly burdensome so far, and has given me some food for thought in some cases. )

First, there's some dispute (Frostheart, correct me if I'm wrong ) over whether Loki qualifies as a god. He's of Frost Giantish stock on one side. Frost Giants aren't technically gods.

They qualify. Hel, Loke's daughter is the goddess of death, ruler of the Underworld. Aegir is the god of the sea. Rán his wife is the mistress of the sea. Both jötnar. Skaði: goddess of skiing and hunting; a giantess. Kári: god of wind, another son of Fornjót, who was a Finnish giant king according to the myths (Hversu Noregr byggdist, etc.).

How come only on one side? I've always reckoned that Laufey's a giantess, even if she was thin. www.snerpa.is/net/forn/sorla.htm

Rökkatrú, a form of neopaganism, concentrates on the worship of jötnar.

I stand corrected, thanks. I sort of figured you had to be either Aesir or Vanir to be a god. Loki kind of snuck in the back door, didn't he? (Someday I'll read the Eddas, I promise...)

Anyway, okay, Loki's a god. But he's still a Trickster, and he's still a pain in the @ss.

[Shaun das Schaf]

Quick question before the door closes. I enjoyed Seized a lot thank-you. I mentioned in the discussion thread that I really dug its sense of humor, particularly some of the dialogue from Naomi which, for me, straddled a nice line between bitterness and sarcasm. I was wondering whether this humour is part of your natural voice, or you found yourself deliberately employing it to counterbalance the seriousness of the themes in Seized?

[Frostheart Grueburn]

Frostheart the giant blathering about Frost Giants...this is turning into a terrible pun... *grumbles*

I sort of figured you had to be either Aesir or Vanir to be a god. Loki kind of snuck in the back door, didn't he? (Someday I'll read the Eddas, I promise...)

Anyway, okay, Loki's a god. But he's still a Trickster, and he's still a pain in the @ss.

I presume you aren't familiar with the nature of the Æsir? Quite a few of them are at least half-jötnar themselves (Óðinn, Þórr (That damn hypocrite of a speciesist!), Týr...), and some are married to giantesses (Freyr and Gerðr, Njörðr (a Vanr) and Skaði...). Considering that the Æsir wouldn't stay young and strapping without the apples of Iðunn and the jötnar themselves live hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of years to start with, and both parties practice powerful magic, they're on quite equal starting lines.

Yes Loki's an unpredictable element, but he's not inherently evil in the Norse myths. Not really more so than Óðinn himself, who can be quite the self-contradictory arse.

[aliantha]

It must have been the Icelanders whose saga turned Loki evil at the end, then. Otherwise what justifies disemboweling Loki's son and using the viscera to tie Loki to a rock for eternity?

Shaun, I'd sure like to think I'm as funny as Naomi... The voice just came with the character, although as easily as the writing flowed, I suspect it's pretty close to my own.

I didn't consciously employ Naomi's humor, per se, as a counterbalance against the more serious stuff in the book. But it seemed like a good way to show her skepticism. Plus it made the book more fun to write.

[Vraith]

Yes Loki's an unpredictable element, but he's not inherently evil in the Norse myths. Not really more so than Óðinn himself, who can be quite the self-contradictory arse.

Funny how that works...like Satan wasn't "The Devil" originally.
Other kinds of transforms seem to be parallel across many mythologies, even those completely unrelated.
As if those are the ways myth ages naturally.

And of course retelling/resetting/reinterpreting myth is as old as myth itself...

[aliantha]

Right, Vraith. And myths also get reinterpreted when a conquering culture is of a different religion (*cough*Christianity*cough*).

Come to think of it, I wonder whether that's what happened to Loki....

[Frostheart Grueburn]

Meant to say initially (although he's still not evil through-and-through). One could say Loke gradually grew bitter and resentful of the Aesir. No other reason for his binding is given save for his hand in Baldr's death, and even so, the Aesir themselves possessed no right whatsoever to butcher his son.

Well, many or perhaps most Nordic deities or vättir became more or less influenced by christianity...where would you think the whole "Father of Lies" byname comes from? Over here, aside from burning down sacred groves and always building churches on top of cult sites/burial grounds (archeology proves this), the church demonized most of the old gods. For instance Lempo, who was a fertility figure (lempo / lemmes / lemmäs > "lempi" means amatory love), became yet another name for the christian devil.

Influences were transferred to the other direction also... Hel(l) is a gelid place for the souls who could not reach Valhöll, ruled by the jötunn Hel. Not a scorching hot punishment pit inhabited by imps and whatnot.

[aliantha]

Yup.

[Fist and Faith]

Just read this. Had a good time! Looks like there will be many good adventures for the group. I'm a sucker for Native American stuff, and a bigger sucker for Norse mythology. And yeah, don't worry about Loki's heritage. Shadowthrone's a god, but Rake isn't, eh? The Norse myths are not typical of mythology, if there is such a thing. It's sometimes difficult to know who is whose parents, even. And one time, a few of the gods (I think Odin, Thor, and Loki, but not positive. Gotta look it up again.) were captured by some people, and tied up. What kinda gods are they?!? If "god" isn't simply defined as something that is worshiped, it surely is the definition for these gods.

Anyway, Seized was cool. I'll disagree about Good and Evil in general, and surely where the mythological Loki is concerned, but you get to make these decisions in your own book, eh? Heh. So that's how G&E work, and I like the idea. I haven't read beyond this yet, so don't know how anything works out, but it's an interesting setup. I'd expect trouble from Loki (and I imagine others now and then), even as they all sorta try to work toward the same goal.

There was a VERY cool, very strange comic book called Coyote many years ago. Only ran for sixteen issues. And there was Shaman's Tears, [Admin Edit: Google for the link...hosts asked us to remove it] which ran thirteen issues. Time Spirits, the weirdest of all, ran only eight issues.

[aliantha]

Glad you liked the book, Fist!

I'm not much of a comic book fan. But Coyote as superhero, huh? I guess it's all been done by now...

[Fist and Faith]

No, not a superhero. Lots of comic books aren't what would be called superhero stories.

[I'm Murrin]

Anyone who's not a comic book fan just hasn't been given the right comics yet.

[aliantha]

No, not a superhero. Lots of comic books aren't what would be called superhero stories.

So just a hero, then?

Murrin, which comic books would you recommend?

[Fist and Faith]

Yeah, I guess you could call him a hero. And he's superpowered. (It's not the god Coyote. Just sorta maybe like reincarnation. Or an avatar. But he doesn't think of himself as the god.) But he's not any sort of "Careful, ma'am. I'll take care of that for you." Not out to do good. Not out to do bad, mind you. He just has adventures.

As for which comic books, Sandman is as good as it gets, and is very far removed from the superhero worlds.

Watchmen is fantastic, too. And they are superheroes. But there's some dark shit going on there. And they're not characters you've heard of from anywhere else. All very grown-up stuff.

[I'm Murrin]

Depends what you're interested in. Quick run through of the best ones in my collection, from a range of genres:

The Unwritten - ongoing series, a big fantasy story with strong literary bent. One where the contents of books are real and powerful, and the main character, Tom Taylor, discovers this while facing off against a shadowy Cabal that tries to control the world by manipulating stories.

Blacksad - Great detective noir with gorgeous artwork. All the characters are animals.

Locke and Key - horror/fantasy and seriously one of the best stories in comics right now. A house with magical keys that each do different things - like change your size, or turn you into a beast, or allow you to control shadows - and a seriously twisted killer trying to get control of them.

I Kill Giants - excellent short graphic novel about a young girl apparently retreating into fantasy to avoid coping with bad things in real life. ore fun than I make it sound, and very touching at the end.

Asterios Polyp - great graphic novel about an architect and the relationship that led to his becoming a shut-in. Worth it for the clever use of artwork and the final punchline.

Watchmen - one of the best superhero comics ever is a complete deconstruction of superheroes.

Maus - true Holocaust survivor story told with anthropomorphic animals.

Blankets - Graphic novel about the author's first love, and struggles to reconcile his desires with his religious upbringing.

Fist already mentioned Sandman. Great storytelling by Neil Gaiman, that builds up over the course of a long series.

[aliantha]

Thanks for the list. I have shied away from comic books and graphic novels, mainly because I tend not to be a very visual person, and so pictures don't add much to the story for me. Also, I've paid $15 or $20 for a single issue of manga for my kids, and watched them rip through it in half an hour; it doesn't seem to have the same bang for the buck as a novel that takes days to read. But then again, I'm old...

[I'm Murrin]

Definately a big money sink if you get into reading trade paperback volumes of longer series, probably even worse if you go for single issues, which I never do. But a graphic novel or larger TPB collection, while it might not take long to read, has as much meat to it as a prose novel (and nice artwork too).

I get kinda annoyed sometimes when I order one and it's a slim single in the packaging of a collection (in my case, this means a couple of the more famous Batman stories, which were much smaller than I expected).

You want something meatier that'll take a while? Try Bone by Jeff Smith - a big fat epic fantasy, very good.