This morning I was struck by how Loki must have spent the first part of his reign as Odin grieving for Frigga, alone.
It’s only been a few days, weeks at most, since Frigga died and Thor is gone, and he has to start dealing with his grief at her death. He never got a chance to talk with Thor about it which might have helped him, so he has to just deal with it on his own while maintaining what must be a time consuming and isolating illusion. Sure the people in the palace will expect Odin to grieve, but it would still be an act, and wouldn’t allow Loki to ever express how he felt about it, which I am sure was complicated! He couldn’t share the warm memories of Frigga from his childhood with anyone, unless he was doing so through a layer of pretence. It’s a surprise in some ways that he didn’t take his new power as the king of Asgard and lash out, declare war on some poor place.
It really speaks volumes about Loki that he chose not to lash out after taking over. We all saw the aftereffects of his magical tantrum in his cell, and how maniacally he fought against the dark elves. If Loki truly were evil or a real villain he would have continued a reign of tyranny as soon as he took the throne. What did he do?
He took Odin, who was obviously weakened by old age (he was ready to pass the throne to Thor in the first film even though Thor wasn’t ready) and grief, put him under a spell, and took him to Earth, where he could have easily abandoned him but he put him in a comfortable nursing home.
He ensured the Reality Stone was taken to the other end of the universe so it was separated from the Tesseract and protected.
He pulled Asgard’s armies out of other realms and brought them back home (probably to protect him).
He ensured that Asgard would still prosper, everyone seemed to be happy and comfortable and legitimately enjoying the (albeit ridiculous) play. Loki obviously paid attention and learned how to run a realm while he was growing up. He also kept pretty low-key (pardon the pun) as to not attract attention.
He allowed Thor to go off and do whatever he wanted since he didn’t want the throne, when he could have easily forced him to stay or locked him up in the dungeons for treason to keep him within arm’s length.
All while grieving for the only person who ever loved him unconditionally, and not being able to express any of that grief as his own (since he was pretending to be Odin and had to fake spousal sentiment).
I once applied and interviewed at a bookstore cafe for a barista position. It was way closer to my home, and I had almost a decade of experience working in a coffee shop at that point.
Got to the interview, and it turned out they didn’t want a barista, they wanted someone to spearhead their new cafe, as the cafe that had been in the store before didn’t want to resign their lease with the bookshop. They wanted to put their own cafe in its place, all new menus etc. They needed someone experienced to train their new staff, to handle window displays, to communicate with the bookstore owners about changes and needs of the cafe, to be able to handle inventory and ordering.
Okay, I had basically done most of that stuff at my previous job. I asked if cafe positions would also be required/trained to work the bookstore.
They would. They would be required to run the book sale counter, stock and reshelf books, and help bookshop customers find things. They would also–despite having an outside cleaning company–have to help maintain bathroom cleanliness. They’d have to take out trash, and clean spills, and vacuum.
Wow, that’s a lot, I said. Is this a manager’s position, then?
No, I was told, it wasn’t, but there was a chance that after a training period it might become one. And that made me pause, because I’d been working as the front-of-house manager at my cafe, and I knew how much work that entailed, and what kind of money I was making, and it was only the commute that had me looking for a new job.
So I asked what the job paid.
$8. E I G H T D O L L A R S. Per hour. Barely above minimum. For all of that work. For someone they expected to get an entirely new cafe up and running, and then also do the work of the bookstore and the cleaning company as well.
I thanked the woman for the interview, said I’d have to talk to my significant other about the impact a four dollar pay cut would have on our finances, and that I wasn’t sure it was the job for me. She asked me to sleep on it, and she’d call me the next day.
This is a job I was way more than qualified for. I had years of experience doing exactly the things they wanted. It was a convenient location, close to my home–I could walk there if I absolutely had to. I did not go home and talk about that four dollar pay cut and what it would do to our finances. I knew as soon as she told me that not only was it not feasible for us, it was downright insulting. That little money? For a frankly ridiculous list of responsibilities and expectations?
She called back the next day. I thanked her again, and told her in no uncertain terms that my time was worth way more than what they were offering.
And whenever people bitch about Millennials being lazy, not spending money, not buying houses…whatever the complaint of the month is…I think about the very nice lady who conducted this interview, and how confused she was that I didn’t want the job.
“This is huge news. 1/5 of the world’s LGBTQ+ population are now legally allowed to love who they want. It’s the biggest decriminalisation of homosexuality in human history”
As someone who changed his name just for fun when I thought I was still cis, i promise most people are ok with accepting a new name, even if you lie and say it’s a nickname. I promise. It’s really easy to just casually go “hey I wanna go by Bob now, it’s an old nickname I wanna bring back” like. Just start introducing yourself to new ppl, no one knows better. and if someone accidentally deadnames you just go haha no I go by my nickname now.
It sucks that ppl treat nicknames as more sacred than trans ppls choice names but still.
If ur cis u can totally rb this to help ur fellow trans friends out thanks
Variously Backup 