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The Entangler
Notes
- Their eyes are golden with dark blue pupils, but can and do change colours!
- Loki wears all types of clothing!
- Their hair length varies sometimes!
- They have scarred lips from having their mouth sewn shut by the sons of Ivaldi.
- They have slightly sharpened ears!
"Beautiful, but evil in disposition", that is how he is often described.
The Aesirs mostly see him as a nuisance they have to put up with, but value his help, his usefulness. He is all too aware why he is being kept around, even after all the abuse that came to him and his kin from their side. With Angrboda dead, his children nearly all imprisoned or cast away, only his beloved wife, Sigyn, truly sticks by his side. The two of them are different, but together they work, they make eachother whole. Loki struggles to show her all the love she deserves, and is terrified of losing her, as well. This is only amplified when the two of them eventually have two children of their own...
What keeps him going? What still keeps that grin on his face, which he carried since his childhood? The once good-natured trickster has certainly lost some of his levity, but nobody is quite sure of the extent to which this is true. The all-knowing Odin appears on edge, and it seems that Loki's final mistake may not be far away anymore.
Abilities
ShapeshiftingLoki has the ability to shapeshift. Most commonly, they switch between the male and female variant of their humanoid form, which look quite similar (although sometimes they will, inspired by whim, take on more masculine/feminine variants). This is not any sort of trick on their side and moreso second nature, though it can lead to confusion which they do find amusing.
However, they can also shapeshift into any other creature: The only things that remain consistent between forms are the golden strands of their hair and the scars on their lips. They frequently use their shapeshifting for everything from shenanigans to narrowly escaping certain death.
Magic and FireLoki is far from a formidable wizard, but decades spent in Odin's company have surely taught them some of his tricks. No magic is off-limits for Loki, and they have dabbled in many and thereby become quite powerful, but they lack Odin's resolve to pursue any discipline with particular rigor.
The Fire, however, the ability to spontaneously create it, seems to be innate to Loki. Loki's Fire does not immediately burn unless they want it to, and instead warms gently, like the glow of a hearth that heats a small home. They rarely use it, claiming it makes them feel "odd". In Sigyn's presence, it finds more and more use.
Loki Laufeyson (or Laufeysdottir, it depends) is a child of strange circumstance. They were born as the child of Laufey, an Aesir woman, and Farbauti, a male Jötunn, a parentage they share with none. Stranger yet, despite having a Jötunn for a father, they were quite beautiful, with the features of an Aesir: The only things that told of their Jötunn provenance were their ever so slightly sharpened ears and their shapeshifting abilities, which they could easily use to hide the first peculiarity if they so wished. Odin saw something in this young person, though he himself could not tell you what, and took them as his protegé, one to treat as though they were his own younger sibling. By Loki's request, they became blood brothers: he swore an oath by Yggdrasil that never would Loki go hungry or thirsty as long as Odin ate and drank.
Loki, it turns out, though talented at most tasks they tried their hands at, was always rebellious and mischievous at heart, playing pranks and bothering the Aesir wherever they could. Admittedly, ever since making their entry to the halls of Asgard, its other residents had regarded them with scorn, treated them as less than, so Loki never felt that they truly belonged there. Even when they tried to be as useful as they could, even when they did put in the effort to be helpful, it was not enough. That did not mean that they made no friends, though. Other than Odin and his brother Hoenir, they were most commonly seen with Thor, Odin's son. This came about after Odin sent Loki with Thor on some journeys the hot-headed youth wanted to embark on, and they discovered that Loki's wit harmonised well with Thor's brute strength, and that they quite enjoyed eachother's company. At any rate, Thor seemed to lack the awareness to treat Loki with the same distant disdain that Frigga, for instance, bore him, and Loki always appreciated that.
Nonetheless, to escape the pervasive feeling of not belonging, Loki often made trips on their own, to Midgard, to Nidvellir, to Jötunheim, where they mingled with humans, elves and giants. Though they made the discovery that they didn't belong to any of those places either, they also met someone in Jötunheim: Angrboda. Their first meeting was less than fortunate: Loki made the mistake to set off one of her hunting traps and was, unsurprisingly... trapped. Angrboda, of course, ridiculed them for a good bit before eventually setting them free. During the time they subsequently spent together, Loki developed feelings for the Jötunn. Loki could make her laugh, and they loved hearing it, they loved spending their time with her, they were sure they loved Angrboda. After returning to Asgard, they would periodically go to visit Angrboda in secret. Eventually, the two of them had three children: Hel, the oldest, a beautiful little girl with a unique power, Jormungandr, the second, who had the sophisticated features of a snake, and Fenrir, the youngest, an adorable puppy with his mother's horns. And Loki loved the three of them more than anything.
But their happiness was never meant to last. No matter how well they hid their family, eventually, they were discovered. In a devastating blow, Odin's judgment and the Aesirs recklessness took every single one of them away from them. Angrboda dead, Hel imprisoned in Niflheim, Jormungandr cast into the ocean and Fenrir... Fenrir they kept in Asgard, at first, but eventually he was imprisoned too. And all of it went so fast that Loki could not have done anything about it. All they had built, painstakingly, gone in an instant, all they had loved, destroyed, all they had brought into the world, discarded. Loki fled to Midgard and stayed there for eight years. She called herself Astrid, a young nurse, tried to forget everything.
When they were brought back to Asgard, they were smiling again. Maybe distracting themself had worked, and they had managed to hide their pain even from themself. Tricks and pranks and reckless schemes resumed, and they seemed no more or less malicious than they had before, even if they were more numerous, and Loki sought company more often. Yet when they were on their own, Loki still wept.
Yet there was someone else who could bring light into their life once more. And she came from the most unexpected of places: From the ranks of the Aesirs. Why Sigyn was interested in them at first, they never knew, but she persisted, and eventually reignited the warmth inside Loki with her patient and gentle love. Someone that laughed and sang with them, but also treated their wounds, actively protected them with words and actions, lent her ear and her shoulder and allowed Loki to do just the same. Even if Loki worried sometimes that she might someday cease loving them, that she would understand them for the wretched creature they were, Sigyn always found a way to prove their worries groundless. Loki had no choice but to accept the overwhelming truth of her love, and eventually, her proposal. With her by their side, they felt near invincible. The two children they have together, Nari and Vali, they swear to protect at all costs. They would not lose their family again. They could not.
- Loki is possibly some sort of hearth spirit, very likely related to fire in general: This is why I chose to give them fire powers. The reason they barely use their warming fire is because Asgard doesn't feel like a home to them. But there will be a use for them come Ragnarok.
- Loki's name does not appear to be cognate with "Logi", who is the spirit of wildfire, though a connection is almost undeniable. It is possible that it instead has to do with the act of entangling, which I liked so much that I made it into their title: The Entangler.
- The above point also makes sense when we take into account that they invented a, possibly THE, fishing net.
- The kenning "The Burden of Sigyn's Arms" is absolutely adorable to me and I had to make it carry over into my version of this character. It references her eternal ordeal of protecting them from the snake venom that drips onto them.
- In no part did my inspiration for this character come from the Marvel version. I am actively avoiding the Marvel Loki show. Aside from a general interest in mythology, my strongest inspirations for making my own version of Loki and making them like this probably come from "The Bifrost Incident" by The Mechanisms and a 1986 danish animated film by the name of Valhalla.
- I gave all Aesirs streaks of coloured hair and pupils in colours different from the colour of the irises. There is no deep reason for this.
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