The nine realms (structure of the universe)

[I still think about the question of what the nine realms are.  A lot.]

In the wonders of Judeo-Christian theology we know that there are ten commandments, but there are closer to twenty commands.  Debate, therefore, is over how to group them together to reduce the number to ten.

The nine realms of Norse cosmology have the opposite problem.  We know for really fucking sure that there are nine of them, a complete list exists nowhere.  Moreover, the closest we get to an indirect list only mentions six things.

The indirect list comes from someone asking what the word for wind is in each realm and the answer taking the form of the word for wind from each species.  The realms are described as homeworlds.

We get what Humans, Aesir, Vanir, Jotuns, Elves, and those in Hel call it.

Jotuns and Elves each live in two different places, so we can expand this to eight and produce:
Midgard - Humans
Asgard - Asir (the gods)
Vanaheim - Those other gods.
Jotunheim - Regular (frost) Jotuns
[where the fire Jotun live] - Guess
Lojosalfheim - Light Elves
Svartálfaheimr -  Dark Elves/Dwaves
Hel(heim) - Dead people of all races

[where the fire Jotuns live] is usually left out of this list, and Dark Elves/Dwarfs are only included because people were all, "What the fuck?  Where are the Dwarfs!?"

This still doesn't get us to nine so people throw in the two primordial realms based on the belief that mist and muspel (no one knows what the fuck that means, by the way) don't have words and the fact that they're well attested as realms.

This gets us to ten, which is too many.

I mentioned that [where the fire Jotun live] tends to be omitted, so that leaves 9 and is responsible for the most common reconstruction.

It's even what I used for my Norse origin story in my Four Realms setting.

There's a problem, though.

If we can collapse [where the fire Jotun live] into Muspelheim then we should also collapse Hel(heim) into Niflheim.  Which puts us back to eight.

I really, emphatically, do not buy that Hel(heim) is a separate one of the nine than Niflheim.  I can believe that it's a separate realm in general.  Lonespark convinced me that when Hel was sent to Niflheim and set up her domain she totally could have spawned off a new realm instead of having Helheim forever remain a location within Niflheim.

There's just . . . problems with it being one of the nine.  When Hel was sent to Niflheim to become queen of the dead, she was given authority of all nine of the realms so that she would take the dead from all of them.  The nine existed when Hel was in Niflheim, meaning the nine existed before she would have had a chance to split off Helheim into a new realm.

Someone traveled the nine realms before going to Helheim, which works perfectly fine if Helheim is a merely a location within the realm of Niflheim (or a realm unto itself that's too minor to be listed with the nine) but doesn't work if Helheim is one of the nine that they traveled because they can't have visited something before they've ever gone there.

I'm not going to look this up right now, but if memory serves a comparison of locations in Helheim to ones in Niflheim will reveal that some of those locations are very definitely in both, which only works if the two places overlap.  Having Helheim be within Niflheim makes the overlap complete and thus makes the whole thing make sense.

And, we have the fact that Hel is never given the story of creating a realm, but she is definitely sent to Niflheim to set up her kingdom there.

That mini-rant over, let me mention something important.

⁂

You'll notice that most realms are [something]-heim.  Heim just means "home".  It does not denote a realm/world/thing.  There are many, many heims.  A thing being a [something]-heim doesn't make it a realm.  If it did then every home, including the one I'm in right now, would be a realm.

⁂

Those who don't separate Helheim from Niflheim usually get to nine by treating the Dwarfs and Dark/Black Elves as separate groups.  This is unsatisfying because they're demonstrably the same group.  They have the same members, they do the same things, they're just different names.

And from there, there's not a lot to go on.

That list of races: Humans, Aesir, Vanir, Jotuns, Elves, dead people, is presented as an exhaustive list of the the speaking populations of the various realms.  That's got to be the strongest thing we have to go on.

What we add to reach nine has to either not be home to speaking things, or be an additional home to one of those things.

No matter how much I think about it, the absolute best I can come up with is what I said before: the fire Jotuns have a realm of their own that is not Muspelheim.

Literally no one believes this.  Well . . . that I know of.  But the point is, if no Norse Pagans are known to believe it, and it's the only answer I have, I'm probably flunking mythology.

Doesn't change the fact that it's the best I can come up.

Here's the problem with this view:

The fire giants are the children of Muspel and Surt, who very much seems to be their apparent leader, is stationed at the frontier of Muspelheim to protect its interior.

That's not a lot (there isn't a lot about fire giants) but's it's sure as fuck enough to make it seem like the fire giants live in Muspelheim.

Granted it doesn't actually make sense because there's no reason to protect the interior of Muspelheim.  Only those who live in Muspelheim can survive inside of it; it's invasion and infiltration proof.  It therefore follows that any threats it needs to be protected from would come from within, not from the frontier.  (Unless they're afraid of an army of expats coming back and attacking them.)  But even if it doesn't make sense, it's there.  It's one of the few concrete things that's said about the fire giants beyond their eventual role in Ragnarok.

Surt lives at the frontier of Muspelheim so he can protect the interior.

⁂

Now I can rationalize this and the "Sons of Muspel" language into a form that doesn't mean the fire giants live in Muspelheim.  But that's me arguing against the most obvious interpretation of the myth on the grounds that I have aesthetic objections to it.

Children of Muspel don't have to live there.  The stars are actually from Muspelheim but they sure as fuck aren't there now.  Most of what was created by Muspelheim ended up outside of Muspelheim.  The entire universe save Muspelheim and Niflheim was created by those two realms and none of the things so created ended up in those realms.  Later creations of the younger realms did.  Notably Hel and the dead people she rules, but this makes me even more adamant that Muspelheim shouldn't have a native population.

Niflheim, Muspelheims counterpart, is entirely populated by dead things.*  Life doesn't live there.  Muspelheim is every bit as extreme as Niflheim, so life shouldn't exactly be abundant there either.  And it can't have dead people because Niflheim has got that covered.  The dead from all nine realms go to Hel's domain which resides there (unless snatched away to an Asgardian mead hall (or, possibly, captured by Ran's net.))

As for Surt, maybe the reason he's on the frontier is because his people don't live in Muspelheim and he doesn't want to be too far from them. And maybe the reason he's guarding it with a flaming sword isn't because of threats to beings that live there, but because of threats to the heat and light that originates there.  Muspelheim is the original source of all heat and all light and it's possible that something very bad would happen to the universe if it cooled down.

Maybe he's there to whack any cold things trying to enter (snowballs, comets, whatever) with a flaming sword that'll melt the everloving fuck out of them.

Like I said, I can totally rationalize why the evidence doesn't necessarily mean the fire giants live in Muspelheim.  Like I also said, it's arguing against the most obvious interpretation.

Still, this is in the service of the best explanation for the nine realms that I, personally, can come up with.  The fire giants have their own realm which is not Muspelheim.

Eldjotanhheim is a thing even though I totally made the name up.

⁂

That gives us our nine realms home-worlds that only need six races between them:

Following the order from the list of races we get:

1 Homeworld of the Humans (and possibly certain dead people if Ran lives in the oceans there)
2 Homeworld of the Aesir (and certain dead people)
3 Homeworld of the Vanir
4 Homeworld of Jotuns of the frosty kind (and possibly certain dead people if Ran is there)
5 Homeworld of Jotuns of the fiery kind
6 Homeworld of Elves of the light kind
7 Homeworld of Elves of the dark kind
8 Homeworld of Mist (and the dead people not taken by previous parentheticals)
9 Homewolrd of Muspel (whatever that is)

Muspel, whatever it is, doesn't speak, thus doesn't have a word for "wind" thus isn't listed with the races.  The Homeworld of Mist (which doesn't speak) is mentioned by way of telling what the dead people who reside in Hel(heim), which is a location within said homeworld, call wind.

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* Part of me wants to say that as Niflheim is where a being ends, Muspelheim is where one begins, with hugir originating in Muspelheim, eventually traveling to the seven realms of the living to be embodied, and ending up in Niflheim after the body dies.

I don't even know if hugr (thought/mind) is supposed to be warm or bright or otherwise spark-like, and there is absolutely NOTHING to support this view beyond a desire for some kind of parallel between the two primordial realms.

The non-vengful will inherit the universe - My thoughts on Helheim and surviving Ragnarok

Greek myth is hard enough.  It isn't well preserved and we need to do a lot of filling in the blanks and attempts at reconstruction and reading things as if the smallest connotation of every word is intensely meaningful because there's little else we can do if we want to have the story, the whole story.

Reconstruction is hard.

Compared to just about everything else, Greek and Roman mythology is the gold standard of preserved that all others strive for but fall short of.  Even Christian Myth has a kind crap preservation status (because of attempts to stamp out heresy) and that's the dominant culture's myth.

So with Norse Myth we're left with a lot of questions and a lot of trying to infer things from limited material.

And Ragnarok is very much an example of this.  It comes to us almost entirely through the two big Eddas which are later compilations of earlier traditions, one of which (the prose one) shows clear signs of a Christian author trying to get shit past Christian censors via painful editing.

So the thing is, Ragnarok is the reckoning, the end of the old order, the end of the nine realms, the end of Yggdrasil itself.  But not the end of all things.

A new earth and a new . . . --well it isn't called Asgard anymore what with it being swept mostly clean of most everything-- arise from the waters and a new sun has been born to the sky.  Things start again,

On earth two people survive, in former-Asgard four gods survive, and these people don't interest me much.  What interests me is that Baldr and Höðr show up to join the surviving gods.

Baldr and Höðr survived, if you want to put it that way, by being dead at the time.  They were in Hel and, like Hel herself (apparently) declined to go off and fight the last battle.  This could be a simple conflict of interest, as Hel's subjects they'd be part of Loki's army fighting against he Aesir, as Aesir they'd be . . . well, guess.

Or it could be something else.

They were dead at the time.  They are absolute proof that not everyone in Helheim followed Loki into battle.  They are the only evidence we have of what happened to the people who stayed in Helhiem for Ragnarok.  And what happened?  They got to leave the afterlife and live in the new world.

It's not clear if this is a one time thing that lasts through Ragnarok into the aftermath, or if Hel's gates are now permanently open, but either way it seems like you can get out now leaving the new world to the forgotten, abandoned, mythless dead.

Everyone who didn't go off to fight in Ragnarok.  Remember, almost everyone who lives goes to Helhiem when they die.  If you're not taken to Fólkvangr or Valhalla after a noble death in battle, you go to Helheim.  (Don't worry, there is a prison there, Nifelhelheim, so evil people won't be fucking up your afterlife.)  Many of them go off to fight in Ragnarok, but clearly not all.

So what happens to the non-militant dead?  Well our only example, the thing from which we must extrapolate and draw conclusions, is Baldr and Höðr.  They live.  They go free.  The inherit the new universe which, hopefully, will be less fucked up than the old universe.

Don't get me wrong, it'll be fucked up, but hopefully less so.  It'll be fucked up because god or mortal we're all flawed.  We fuck things up.  It's what we do.  But we also strive to make things less fucked up than when we found them.  So we'd try to make the new world better than the old.

And so the old order is completely upended.  The abandoned forgotten discounted dead rise to inherit what remains.  And that's probably a good thing.  Baldr and Hel between them could craft a better universe.

Odin and Loki were wise and cunning, but also assholes.  Baldr is basically distilled goodness, Hel is someone who has spent her while life being a host to all comers (she set up luxury accommodations for Baldr.)  Thus the new world appears to be set up to run on new rules.  Rules that won't be made by cheaters and tricksters but by people who might not be the wise, but make up for it in compassion.

The ones who live through Ragnarok are a hodgepodge.  The ones who live after it, though, are in my reading the ones who were dead in Helheim and decided not to fight under Loki in Ragnarok.  The non-vengeful dead.

What Ragnarok means

So . . . I've written a lot about this in the past 24 hours and hopefully some of that will eventually be fit for public consumption, especially the bit where I was basically doing a play by play of Ragnarok in Snarky Twilight form.

But the core of all of this disorganized tangent-following writing has been about what Ragnarok actually is.  It is not the old Norse term for "the end of the world/universe", it isn't another religion's version of "apocalypse", it's not quite "Judgment Day", and it only meets one of the definitions of eschatology.

To understand how different Ragnarok is from, say, the Christian end times popularized by Hollywood, hucksters, and (occasionally) theologians, consider that it starts thus:

Freedom Rings Throughout The Lands

Then the gods say, "Oh shit!"

You see, the gods have been around a very long time.  In fact, if they stay away from deadly things and have an apple a day they're effectively immortal.  Some of them predate the creation of the universe having instead showed up in the pre-universe state and then made it into a universe through the cunning use of dead guy parts.

Since they're flawed beings, they've been around long enough for those flaws to accumulate.  A lot.  Also, one wonders a bit if them being way more powerful than humans and having way longer lifespans than humans might be part of a package deal where the flaws are also larger than human.

Then again, maybe it's a question of leadership.  Some gods are, after all, good exemplars.  We might ponder if perhaps strange women lying in ponds distributing swords hanging from a tree for nine days is no basis for a system of government.

Doesn't matter.  Ragnarok is about the rulers of the universe.  The powers that be.  The people in charge.  As in, the word that's the "Ragna" part of Ragnarok is a word that can also mean ruler instead of the other options for saying "god" (there were at least two others that could have been used.)

And here's why this all matters:

There's basically no check on Odin et alia.  There was no check on Loki until the gods broke even more of their oaths, Odin's in particular, to . . . let's just say bind and torture Loki for centuries and skip over the brutal murder and violation of bodily autonomy and free will of two innocents that was used to do it.

When we get to that point Loki and his brood have been punished, even the ones who were blameless, the matters between the Aesir and the Vanir have been long since settled, and the only group of wrongdoers who have eternally escaped the consequences of their actions are the Aesir themselves.

Now it's very important we're clear here.  Ragnarok is not justice.  It's consequences.

There is no blameless completely just individual or group with the power to hold the gods to account and mete out justice.  There are only consequences.

The rulers of the Aesir have escaped consequences for the entire history of the universe and Ragnarok is when that stops.

"Rok" isn't twilight, that's "rokr" which results in some confusion and some poeticism.  Rok is destiny and/or fate.  Rok is when all of the things that they'e done come back at them, often with a vengeance, and they finally have to reap the strange harvest they've sown.

A lot of these people are pissed off, some of them have been tortured.  They're generally after vengeance, not justice, and the resulting clash is apocalyptic in nature and it does end the world and the gods do experience their twilight, dusk, darkest night, and a select few even make it to the dawning of a new age.

But all of that is collateral damage.  What Ragnarok is is when it comes to pass that EVERYONE even the most powerful, even the Ragna, have to face the consequences of their actions.

You ordered the loyal puppy (who apparently bore no grudge about the fact you'd kidnapped him) tied up in magic rope and left to die?  Congratulations: you're going to get eaten by a giant wolf.  And guess what, the "left to die" thing didn't work (not that you were expecting it to) because of the kindness of strangers protecting him from starvation and dehydration and natural hardiness protecting him from death by exposure, meaning that the wolf that eats you?  Totally the puppy you mistreated.

What's that you say?  You're the All Father?  Don't give a shit.  Into the wolf's maw with you.  Maybe you should have pet the dog instead of kicked it.  Oh well, too late now, time for you to die great All Father.

And so forth.

Wanna know why Baldr lives?

He totally could have been in the grudge match battle because the dead (of which he was one) were freed in the pre-battle "Olly olly oxen free" and some of them even followed Loki into the battle, so he wasn't protected because he was dead at the time.  No, he lives because he doesn't have anyone he wants vengeance on and no one wants vengeance on him.  That's the destiny he's set up for himself.

Ragnarok is when all of the stuff (notably the bad shit) the gods did wraps back around on them and they finally have to deal with the consequences of what they've done.  Even they can't escape destiny because actions have consequences.  For everyone.  No matter how powerful.

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And this is of interest beyond just the Norse case because we can look at other religions (real and fictitious) and be like, "Someone needs to pull a Ragnarok."  Consider God as portrayed in the best selling yet completely horrible novels Left Behind; someone needs to Ragnarok his ass.

Not apocalypse --he's doing that himself.  Not end of the world.  Not any of a thousand other end times things.  Ragnarok.  Because Ragnarok is the fate/destiny/thing of the rulers of the universe and the rulers of that universe have set up a truly damning fate for themselves and yet they never have to face it.

That's not fair and it's no fun.  You know what would be fun?  If Hell's Pride Battalion stormed Heaven looking fabulous and being fierce while unicorns farted rainbows at Turbo-Jesus.  A lot of people are unjustly damned in Left Behind so let freedom ring, grab some popcorn, make sure it's filmed in color, and have a Ragnarok.

Don't vote Odin, vote ...

Odin is running on  a platform of "I said I'd drive out the Ice Giants.  See any around here?  I keep my promises, vote for me.  (Look it up, it's a real thing.)  No word on the running mate.

About thirty seconds of brainstorming and we got this:

Opposition party is running Fenris and Hel.

Fenris: Do you feel like you've been bound by magic rope laws designed to oppress the oppressed on the whims of the oppressors?  Do you feel like you have to depend on the kindness of strangers to survive and without it you'd starve to death or worse?  I totally feel you pain.

Hel: The one percent goes to Valhalla to engage drinking, debauchery, and pastimes that are completely divorced from the struggles of real people.  I've always supported the other 99% and have done my best to make sure they get the best accommodations possible.  If you elect Fenris and me, I'll have even more power to fight for the 99%.

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Maybe throw in an "Occupy Yggdrasil" movement or some such.

[Added:] Occupy Asgard is obviously an important part of Occupy Yggdrasil, but there are problems all over.

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In a story that I haven't even begun to write a human in (voluntary) debt to Hel meets Loki and Sigyn.  This is after Loki was bound and put under the dripping venom.

The human actually came to talk to Sigyn, but before he leaves Loki helps the human with advice even though the effort necessary makes things (temporarily) much worse for him.

The human responds by saying a prayer (of his own invention) as his parting words to Loki, "May every bond be broken, and every sorrow soothed."

Lonespark has suggested that be the Campaign slogan of Fenris/Hel.

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Random other note: Hel has an awesome "I was poor and had to work my way up," story.  She had to make a ship out of fingernails and toenails because no one would give her lumber.

[/added]

The Role of Ratatoskr in that story that I might someday get around to writing.

[Originally posted at Slacktivist.]

If I ever get around to my "Midgardians avert Ragnarok because we live in one of the nine realms and would thus be adversely affected by the realms all ending" story, Ratatoskr is going to play a prominent role.

In order to recruit Freyja the humans involved decide to find Óðr for him and they figure that since Ratatoskr traverses Yggdrasil regularly he's probably seen a lot and might have some clues. Ratatoskr is surprised that for the first time in history someone actually wanted to talk to him about something, rather than to use him as a go between to trade insults with someone else*, and when the human shows an interest in him beyond the information being sought but in him as a person, decides to help the humans find Óðr personally.

Mind you this means switching humans because the first human has to go and free Fenrir (but only after securing an oath from Fenrir to not, you know, end the world) since the binding of Fenrir was pretty bullshit and the humans involved care about justice as well as self preservation.

But the human Ratatoskr ends up working with is vouched for by the first human (it's her sister) and Ratatoskr and she end up becoming fast friends.

---

One of many things I have to get around to writing someday.

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*Which might have made sense way back when, but at this point the dragon and the eagle really need to get cell phones and flyte directly. It's not that he minds carrying the messages, it's his purpose and all, it's just that it would be nice if every once in a while people would talk to him instead of through him. You know, "Hi. How are you? You're a stain on existence," the usual stuff.

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[Original Work Index]

Hypothetical Star Trek, because Lonespark insists I have something less distressing as the latest post

On the up side it was about half an hour after that last post that I saw my therapist, on the downside while my mood might be more positive most everything said about non-mood related stuff is still true.

But to get that off your mind off you should give me a billion dollars  I'm going to fill in all the gaps in Edith and Ben right here right now  we're going to have more in depth discussion of Squirrel Simulator  I'm going to collect things I said in the comments of Fred Clark's post about what should be in the new Star Trek series.

* * *

Chris Pine as Captian Kirk was a horrible Kirk and a horrible Enterprise captain. Chris Pine as Jack Frost (Rise of the Guardians) would have been great. Whoever is directing needs to know the difference and be able to pick the right one. (If you can't sell "Second star to the right, and straight on till morning" do not apply.)

There needs to be gender representation, and I don't just mean male and female. Given the shit they can do with Star Trek medical technology we should have characters who, as a result of choice rather than their species' unique handwavium, can be male in the morning and female in the afternoon. There should be characters who are completely androgynous and that's never commented on because it's ok. And that's just the humans.

On the subject of medical technology, I don't remember whether Geordi being given sight (not ordinary human sight, but sight via the visor) was a choice that he made or one that was made for him at a young age. The thing is, even with the amazing med tech some people would decide to remain as they are. (For a diverse variety of reasons.)

I'm now imagining a character in a manually propelled wheelchair and this happening:

"Why don't you use a hoverchair?"

"Why don't you use one? You don't have to walk you know."

Aliens need to be more than just token characters.

Star Trek was built on the idea that we as a people could get to a better utopian place but that place would still be full of people. Problems weren't systemic but instead stemmed from individuals.  Individuals with enough power or at the precisely the wrong intersection of influence could cause horrible, horrible things, but together we could be better than any of us flawed human beings are individually and thus society could move passed the moral afflictions inherent in ourselves.

And such.  And stuff.  And warp drive and humanoid aliens and planets that have united into a single culture.

But back to the idea that even though people remain people it's possible for those people to live in a much better world with a much better society than we now have.

Section 31 was introduced basically to undermine that, say the system was rotten to the core, has been since the beginning, and argues that without that rot the apparent good on surface would be impossible, so, basically, "Torture the kid!  Have you seen how cool Omales is?"

Section 31 went against everything that made Star Trek Star Trek*, that shit needs to be taken down hard. I don't care if they have to introduce dimension hopping Julian Bashir to do it, it needs to be taken down. Actually, Alexander Siddig is awesome, so maybe they should introduce dimension hopping Julian Bashir.

When Data met Spock there was an interesting exchange.  Spock, trying to embrace pure logic even though his half human nature made it more difficult for him than most Vulcan, was trying to be what Data started out as while abandoning what Data strove for.  Data, naturally, was trying to abandon what Spock strove for, while striving to be what Spock abandoned.  Having completely different goals, views, and philosophies did not lead to judgement, condemnation, or animosity.  There needs to be more of that. "We completely disagree, that's nice, let's keep working together.

When they timetravel, which they will (they always do), there needs to be an understanding that the people in the new timeline have every bit as much of a right to exist as the people in the original timeline and thus "fixing the timeline" is only half of what they'd be doing with the other half being "in a way that doesn't erase the new timeline" and they'd have to face that every time.

Maybe sometimes it would be as simple as duplicating a planet, maybe sometimes it would mean creating an entirely new universe, but the one consistent thing about Star Trek time travel --seriously the only thing that's consistent across the various versions-- is that changing the past doesn't branch off a new timeline, it overwrites the existing one.

There was a good recognition of this, finally, in Stargate: Continuum when people in the new timeline looked on the characters from the original timeline with horror for even floating the idea of resetting things and thus destroying the entire world these people knew.  (The moral conundrum was solved when the entire planet was wiped out in the new timeline, though one imagines that people on other planets might have had objections to being erased when the timeline was reset.)

Given how much Star Trek dabbles in time travel it's well passed time that they start dealing with the fact that, "I want my world back," does not excuse "So I'm going to erase this entire world and all the people in it from existence."

Accountability and continuity.  When the captain does something that's morally reprehensible, the captain is demoted and, hopefully, thrown in the brig.  (So maybe don't have the captain be the one to do morally reprehensible things, just a thought)

Continuity in that the reset button isn't pushed every episode.

Because you know what would have been an awesome Star Trek show?  Voyager with no reset button (except for that one time when there was a time weapon that was a damned temporal reset button and the entire coalition against it made sure that they'd be able to be reset in hopes that maybe, just maybe, they'd create a better world through their sacrifice when they ... reset the reset button itself.)

Consider the episode "Deadlock". Spacial anomaly of the week creates two versions of Voyager and her crew but because antimatter is technobable each ship is operating at half power since they're drawing on the same, original, supply. Attempts are made to merge the ships, they fail. Eventually one ship blows up but not before sending the only two unique people (their copies died) to the other ship. Thus everything is exactly as it was.

Now imagine that they'd evacuated some or all of the blown up ship.

For simplicity say they saved everyone.  Only one adult doesn't have to deal with suddenly having someone who has an equal claim to their life, their friends, their memories, their identity, and their stuff.  The other unique was a new born baby, there are two people with claim to be her mother.

It should be simpler than Battlestar Galactica which had to fill up entire ships worth of people with just seven actors worth of characters, but it would still be a difficult, or at least annoying, thing, but think about what it means going forward.

Are unique people more important than ones with spares?  Voyager wasn't designed to hold a double crew.  At least the Maquis ship was relatively small.  The next several episodes would probably be about getting resources so that they don't all starve or something.

As time went on people would end up attending funerals for people who were, not long ago, the same person as they were (Voyager was never a safe place to live.)

That's just a single episode where there could have been continuity, the Voyager was in the special place of never being able to stop by a starbase to unload their accumulated weird.

A time traveler who's the computer's love interest and has been since version 2.3 of the AI came out centuries ago. ... um, maybe not. It's just a thought.

Bajoran religion got explored to a degree, but human religion not so much. Given that the Enterprise crew's actions led Apollo to commit suicide, I'd like to know how the Hellenists (human or otherwise) felt about that.

I'd like to see human religion grappling with people like Q. Loki is far less divinely overpowered, so in a universe with Q there should be no problem in believing in gods like Loki, but it's not like "If Q then Loki" is sound logic. So the question becomes, "Why do you believe in these particular gods (or that particular god) and why do you consider them (or it) to be gods (or a god)?

Loki was picked not-at-random.  Fred specifically said he wanted Loki.  (Fred also voted for Gina Torres for captain, which I can totally support.)

So, Loki talk:

Starfleet Captain has been assigned to the task of mediation to prevent Ragnarök .

Starfleet Captain knows a little about Norse Myth and initially assumes that Odin is obviously the good guy and then learns that of Loki's six divine children Odin uses one of them as his horse, cast another into the afterlife forever more (sounds a lot like murder), threw another one to earth where he was all alone and lives a life of solitude, raised another one and, in spite of him being perfectly obedient at every turn, betrayed him, tied him up, and left him there to starve (a nearby native took pity on him thus Fenris lives, but still tied up where Odin left him after all these centuries) and as for the last two... turned one into an animal and forced him to disembowel the other so that the entrails of the disemboweled one could be used bind Loki in a spot where he'd be tortured by venom till just before Ragnarök.

So Starfleet Captain now sides with Loki, except then he's reminded that in vengeance Loki killed one of Odin's kids, has committed casual murder, and finally sick of this shit and no longer willing to save the world, fully intends to get a djinn* army and destroy the world because him being sick of this shit means this shit has to go. No, the fact that a lot of people live in this shit will not stop him.

And then . . . what?

I suppose if it's a good ending Hel and Baldr get married and both are allowed to come and go from Helheim as they please, Fenris is freed and given top notch therapy and for the rest I have no idea. The whole situation is a mess.

* No one knows where the boat full of beings of fire came from, likely because the preservation status of Norse myth sucks. As such my going theory is that that Loki negotiated with God, who tends to prefer a monotheistic universe, and offered to take out a competing pantheon that's done morally reprehensible things. (That seems to describe most pantheons, including God's.)

That spurred some conversation, Betwixt-and-Between added this:

I would contribute to this kickstarter.

I like your good ending, but it still seems weird to have a "good ending" for the coming of Ragnarok. I mean, I guess a more realistic (heh) ending would simply be to have Ragnarok delayed, yet again.

Ooohh...oohh! Or! Common enemy!

How about this: Just when things come to a head, and Loki's about to call up Naglfar (which is a SPACESHIP made of the nails of the dead, obviously), and Odin's about to launch Photonic Gungnir....THE BORG SHOW UP.

I don't know who or what the Borg have assimilated to make them an even match with the Norse gods, but the are, and now Starfleet Captain is stuck with THREE terrible sides to pick from. 

Star Trek has had various things with infiltrators, be they bodysnatchers or changelings or whatever.  I want to see some of them going native.

"No, I'm not going to help you overthrow the Romulan Empire.  I like the Romulan Empire.  Now if you'll excuse me I have to go [preform Romulan cultural ritual], don't contact me again."

There was probably other stuff too.

Oh, this is kind of important: Boobs.  There need to be more aliens where the females, if there are things analogous to male and female in that species, don't have them.  A lot more.  There can also be aliens where everyone has them so you're not turning away talented people on the grounds of, "No, sorry, you have boobs."

Star Trek is part of a long tradition where Female==Has boobs and that tradition needs to stop.  I'm not saying that they need to change any of the existing species, but the whole thing is "New life and new civilizations," so they'll be making new ones up.

Generally Star Trek is is based on a a Federation starship or base and I'd assume that would continue, but it's not the only avenue to explore.  Consider a merchant vessel, consider the fact that xenoarchaeology in Star Trek involves sometimes digging up civilizations on the level of the most ancient human stuff we find on earth, sometimes digging up civilizations on the level of the Iconians (technology so advanced it seemed like magic to people with Star Trek level advanced technology of their own) and lots of times investigating sites in between.  Following legitimate archeologists, looters, or both could be interesting.

There were some good episodes that came from Picard being an amateur archaeologist.  At least I think there were.  It's been a while.

Click-bait religion

[Originally this was going to be religious listicles and all I had worked out was Ten things... and Almost a hundred things...]

This one weird trick will let you be a decent human being
(the golden rule)

The six most important days in history
(Creation of the world, story one, from Judaism and derivatives)

Ten things God does NOT want you to do
(The Ten Commandments)

An boy and an angel go on a road trip, you won't believe what happened next
(The Book of Tobit)

Almost a hundred things wrong with the Catholic Church
(The 95 Theses)

Twelve people who get thrones on Olympus; You won't believe who has to sit on the floor
(Gods are people too, so I stand by the use of "people" above.  The 12+1 Olympian gods of Greek mythology)

Eight simple steps to escape suffering
(The eight-fold path)

Five tricks to living a righteously awesome life
(The pillars of Islam)

Eight worlds you didn't know existed (and one that you live on)
(The nine realms of Norse mythology)

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I wanted to have more from a larger variety of faiths, but as you can see above, my creativity was already wearing pretty thin.  Share your own in the comments.

Odin and LBJ

So, I was walking home one day and thinking about stuff.  It tends to happen when the walk is two hours and you don't have anything much to do.  I should probably get one of those walkity-man thingies so I could listen to music.  Of course then I'd need to have music.

So much work.  Ugh.

Anyway.  Walking.  Thinking.

In a conversation that happened before this point Lonespark and I had spoken about Marvel-Odin.  Lonespark is a Norse Pagan and so depictions of Odin matter to her in much the same way depictions of Jesus Christ Vampire Slayer matter to Christians.

I reached the conclusion that the problem was that Marvel-Odin is an asshole, where Mythological Odin is an asshole who makes up for it by being awesome.

He's probably not someone you want to have around for personal contact, but you totally want him on your side in general.  You can even admire him, provided it's done from a safe distance.  Think (Marvel Cinematic) Tony Stark, or Nick Fury before he thought evil incarnate was a good idea so long as Hydra didn't have their finger on the trigger.

Tony Stark is a good example of an asshole who scores points for awesome.  Nick Fury in The Avengers practically is Mythological-Odin incarnate.  Seriously, if it turns out that his helicarrier is the son of his blood-brother who comes from the land of our oft-times enemies then I think we can mark Avengers-Fury as totally Odin.  Because it seems like that's all he's missing.  (Well... rainbow bridge, golden apples, details.)

And this thinking led to the question of what are some non-fictional semi-contemporary, possibly American, analogues for Odin?

Now I don't really know that much about ass kicking male American warriors who occasionally take a few years off to be wandering female seers, so my attention turned to administrators.  Odin is a king, after all.

And thus... LBJ.

By all accounts Lyndon Baines Johnson was a complete and utter asshole in almost every possible respect.  And that "almost" is just me hedging.

The reason he took the job as Vice President in the first place was that he was playing the odds and noting that the number of vice presidents who didn't have to be elected was pretty high given the number of vice presidents there had been in total.  It wasn't a majority, by any means.  It was a little less than 20%.

He took the job of Vice President because he saw a 20% chance that JFK would be killed or otherwise die in office.  It happened.  He became President.

That is not a nice person.

After the assassination he made Bobby Kennedy, the dead President's brother, talk him through the procedure for taking over the country even though:

a) He already knew it
b) There was no fucking reason to ask Kennedy because literally anyone in that department could have done the job.

He was just rubbing salt in the wound.  And, again, the wound was that Kennedy's brother had just died.

This guy was a grade A, first class asshole.

He was also instrumental in getting civil rights legislation passed.

Which is to say, this asshole worked for good.

His feud with the Kennedys was personal and mutual, but his asshole powers could be used for more professional things and it was, in part, through the use of his massive unmitigated asshole powers that the Civil Rights Act was passed.

Which is sort of the best example I can think of of a case where someone is an asshole, but makes up for it by being awesome.

Civil Rights legislation wasn't going to pass.  The votes weren't there.  The support wasn't there.  Enter LBJ, asshole extraordinaire.  Everyone told him not to even try.  He'd lose.  It couldn't be done.  There was no point in trying something that was doomed to failure.  He did it anyway.

I cannot imagine an America without LBJ.  I've tried.  It just doesn't compute.

The Civil Rights movement was a combination of the powerless demanding they be treated better than shit and a specific subset of the powerful pushing the same onto a racist country that, by and large, didn't want to better itself.

Neither of those groups could have prevailed without the other.  Even with all of his asshole powers, arm twisting, and understanding of the legislative process there is no way in fucking Hell that he could have gotten Civil Rights legislation passed if not for the movement.

But at the same time, the movement wouldn't have gotten legislation if not for LBJ.  What would have happened then?  Richard "Southern Strategy" Nixon wouldn't have done it.  Ford?  Carter?  Certainly not Reagan.  Clinton?  The opposition shut down the government multiple times while he was in office.

Look at the Civil Rights movement and imagine if all of that effort, if all of that passion, had come to nothing.  What the fuck happens then?  How long can you keep a nonviolent movement going if nonviolence never yields results?

Would it have turned violent?  Would people have maintained their principles but had their hope crushed?  Would we still be fighting the fights of the sixties today with no discernible legislative progress?

I seriously have no clue where America would be today.  As I said, I can't imagine it.

Even beyond the civil rights the Civil Rights movement was concerned with, if all of that very visible work on the part of the people yielded no fruit, would we even still believe in the democratic process itself?

I was born 21 years after the Civil Rights Act passed.  An America without it defies my ability to imagine.  Not only do I have no idea who we would be, I have no idea who I would be.

And so the point comes to this:

LBJ = Raging Asshole + Incredibly important person who did immeasurable good for my country.

And that's sort of like Odin.

What does death mean? Left Behind, Narnia, Norse Myth

Quite some time ago I thought of writing this post, if for no other reason than the fact that one does not expect deep questions in Norse religion to hinge on a seemingly pointless distinction made in bad Christian fiction by a bad writer who practices bad theology.  The PMD theology the Left Behind books is based on is all about avoiding death by... something that seems very much like dying.

Now in Ana's Narnia deconstruction we see a similar thing.  Reepicheep heads off to Aslan's country (Heaven) never to return.  Sounds an awful lot like dying.  He even leaves a traditional grave marker behind.  But this action that seems to be suicide because he's, you know, leaving this life for the afterlife never to return and doing it of his own volition, apparently isn't.  Hence him going to Heaven rather than elsewhere.

Again we see some sort of fine distinction between death and not-death that is functionally indistinguishable from death.

In the Rapture of Left Behind we are assured, repeatedly in fact, that those taken are not dead.  They've just left this earth to dwell in Heaven until all of the dead are revived on Judgement Day* AND THAT'S TOTALLY DIFFERENT FROM DEATH.

And the question of whether or not being banished from the land of the living to dwell eternally in the land of the dead is a very important one if we ever want to understand the falling out between Odin and Loki.

Loki had various children, you see.  Marvel's telling has probably done a lot to muddy waters, but the basic story is this:

Odin saw that Loki, a frost giant, was awesome.  Odin came down.  Loki saw that Odin, an Aesir god, was awesome.  The two became blood brothers, and it was good.  They even took oaths to never have a meal unless the other was welcome at it too.

Loki was unpredictable and occasionally annoying as hell, but he always made up for it in the end.

Loki joined the gods in Asgard, but being a frost giant (Jötunn), never left Jotunheim behind entirely.  He was a member of both worlds, and had a wife in each.  This was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of and to be honest people were way more concerned about that time he spent as a human woman and gave birth to children than anything involving polygamy.

The fact that one of Loki's wives was a Jötunn was no big deal, that's where most gods got their wives anyway.  Thor's biological mom was a Jötunn and so too was one of Thor's wives.

Anyway, Loki saved the gods, did a lot of hanging out with his nephew Thor, and generally things were good.

Then... something happened.

With his Jötunn wife, he has three kids.  His two sons are a wolf and a serpent.  His daughter is a hag.  Not many people are born old, but Loki's daughter, Hel, was.

All three children were taken from their parents.

The wolf was exiled to an island.  For some reason that wasn't enough and so the gods tied him up.  They treated it like a game, "Can you break these bonds?" and at first he was ready to play along and eager to please, but eventually he wondered why they kept tying him up and looking disappointed when he got free.  When they finally got magical fetters that could restrain him he wasn't as willing to play, but he came up with what he thought was a good solution.

He said that he'd allow himself to be tied up and test the strength of the bonds (which is why the lying gods who lie of Asgard said they wanted to tie him up), but, so he could be sure they'd untie him if he couldn't break the bonds, he wanted one of them to place a hand in his mouth.  He wouldn't release the hand until he was released.  He reasoned none of them would lose a hand to bind him.  He reasoned wrong.  Tyr is the one handed god for a reason.

The serpent was cast down to earth.  It is the midgard serpent, who lives in the sea and circles the earth.

And Hel was... this is where the question of what death means becomes important.

Did Odin murder Hel?

He sent her to the afterlife never to return.  Usually we call that killing.  It's certainly called killing when Loki arranges for the same thing to be done to Odin's son Baldur.

Odin Raptured her, just not to paradise.  He sent her to Aslan's country, if Aslan's country were dismal and bleak and a place you'd really rather not go.

Is that killing?

That's a really big question.

Some think that Odin didn't kidnap the three children so much as take them hostage.  The difference is important.  Freyja is a hostage, and it hardly inconveniences her.  The trading of hostages was a common act in peacemaking.  The reasoning is that you're not going to attack a place with people you care about inside of it.

If they were taken hostage than it was done all wrong.  Hostages of that sort are not mistreated and the children all are, but that detail pales in comparison to the possibility that Odin straight up murdered Hel.

At least one of Loki's children will be murdered.  After things have soured, after Loki arranges for the death of Baldur and then keeps him dead (if everything and everyone could be made to cry for Baldur then Baldur would be the sole exception to the rule that the dead stay dead.  Loki didn't cry), after Loki became more concerned with pissing off the gods than his usual trickster fare, when the gods of the Aesir finally have had enough of Loki and violate every oath to get revenge, they do it by removing his blood ties with them: his two sons by an Aesir wife, Sigyn.

To remove the two sons they turn one into a wolf and make him kill the other.  Then use the entrails of the dead one to tie Loki up.  The Aesir are definitely not above murder.  There's no reason to think that they wouldn't kill Hel.  Sure, Hel never did anything to earn their ire, but neither did the son who they had disemboweled.

It should be noted that the attempt to cut ties with Loki failed.  Sigyn is Aesir.  Sigyn never left Loki.  She could.  It's actually kind of a big deal culturally speaking that she could.  But the point isn't how important it was that there was a choice given between which family to side with in that culture.  The point is that she had a choice and she chose Loki.

But Odin, leader of the Aesir, a group that we know is totally up for lies and murder, took Loki's daughter.  Did he kill her?

This is what he did do: he ended her life in all of the nine realms but one: the land of the dead, there she remains trapped until the end of all worlds just like every other being that dies and is not sent to Valhalla or Fólkvangr (which is where the ones who die in battle go.)

If a human were to do that to someone we'd call it murder.  But does using divine means --rather than, say, a knife-- mean that it's somehow not killing?

Did Odin murder Hel?

Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins say, "No."  That's a Rapture, not a death.

C. S. Lewis seems to agree, going to the afterlife never to return is not synonymous with dying.

But, um, what's the difference?

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* Well, one of the judgement days.  In Left Behind there are multiple judgement days for various reasons.  One of which is that it's easy to deal with disparities in descriptions of Judgement Day and still maintain that you're reading things completely literally if you can say that the different descriptions of Judgement Day are describing different judgement days.