#elfgrove reads magnus chase

[elfgrove]

As the son of the son of the sea god, Njord, Magnus meeting another Norse sea god will be either sink or swim.

[elfgrove]

Audiobook Liveblog: Sword of Summer Part 3

Reminder: I haven't read this before. DON'T SPOIL ME.

SQUINTS

SQUINTS ANGRILY

ANGRY SQUINTING INTENSIFIES

YOU ARE FULL OF OVERBAKED DOG SHIT RR.

Listen, I’m fucking sick to death of folk that watched Klingons on Star Trek and read Thor in Marvel and think they understand Norse faith. People who simplify an entire culture down to war is the only valuable things are battle and dying in glory. You don’t get to make little asides about how “the movie isn’t accurate” and then espouse blatantly inaccurate trash views, portraying cruelty, bigotry (historians are uncovering more and more evidence that they had extensive trading and brought folk of other ethnicities and faiths into thier families), callousness towards family ties, and an obsession with killing and being killed as the norm. It’s a type of uninformed religious bigotry (in this day and age, willful ignorance), and it pisses me off.

This interpretation of Valhalla makes it clear RR has barely read Norse myth, never studied the Poetic Edda, and perhaps most importantly, never discussed the faith with actual worshippers.

He dismisses Thor and Loki’s relationship as purely antagonistic and that all the Norse hate him. Loki was a clever trickster god who had worshipers and aided the Vanir and Aesir as often as he moved in his own interests. He was portrayed as benevolent many times and often aided the other gods. He had worshippers of his own among the Norse. it wasn’t a simple good and evil dichotomy. It doesn’t work like Christianity.

RR has the Norse dismiss Freyr as an invaluable, disrespected, wimp of a god. FREYR. Twin of Freya. God of  sacral kingship, virility and prosperity, sunshine and fair weather, and pictured as a phallic fertility god (that means mean who wanted a big dick, lots of sex, and lots of kids would pray to Freyr). Freyr who controlled Álfheimr, the realm of the Elves,who rides the shining dwarf-made boar Gullinbursti and possesses the ship Skíðblaðnir which always has a favorable breeze and can be folded together and carried in a pouch when it is not being used. Freyr who defeated the jötunn Beli with an antler when he didn't have his sword. The Norse worshipped him and raiding Vikings prayed to him for fair winds for sailing. RR has the Norse scoff at Frer, who the Poetic Edda describes as "the most renowned of the Aesir". 

The amount of bigoted, uneducated bullshit you have to be pedalling wto write your Norse gods this way... FUCK YOU.

EDIT: And don’t tell me that asshat doesn’t think this way. He does. On his own blog he talked about how he found the idea that anyone still worshipped the Norse gods as how they must be terrifying and violent. I got receipts.

[elfgrove]

I have no plans to read the Apollo story because I am not down with how the Nico and Will thing was executed and I do not need one more minute of Percy’s POV in my life. 

[elfgrove]

Audiobook Liveblog: Sword of Summer Part 7

Reminder (because people are jerks): I have not read this book before. DO NOT SPOIL ME.

Aegir is a hipster craft beer dude. Living in the craft beer mecca that is San Diego, I can so incredibly see this and nothing could be more fucking appropriate than him being modernized this way save for the Celtic god Goibhniu, and I now want to imagine them brewery hopping together.

I’m... Not super impressed with the depiction of Ran. Don’t actively hate it, but the entire Bag Lady stuff, while creative, combined with how she was depicted as unhinged kinda rubbed me the wrong way. Hard to say exactly what or why, but it just... It fits in with my ongoing skeeved out feeling regarding how RR is generally presenting Norse gods and culture and how he depicts homelessness.

Something about it just reads off and sanctimonious kinds of judgemental and dismissive.

He finally had Magnus ask about the headscarf and Sam taking it on and off constantly as if it were no more significant than a hat. She officially does call it a hijab and then hand waves it as she just does and doesn’t wear it somethines. Listen. I’m not Muslim. I do know not all practicing Muslim women wear hijab. I am pretty certain those that do don’t take it on and off in public 20 times in a single day. If a practicing Muslim can correct me, that’s fine, but otherwise it looks to me like RR added in something from a culture to show diversity without properly researching how to depict it in a conscientious manner and instead ignores it whenever it might make him have to think too hard about how he writes something (yet again, glances meaningfully at Frank and Piper).

I will give credit for including an arranged marriage where the girl involved actually wants and is happy with it and having Magnus keep his mouth shut about his unwanted opinion on it.

So... We’re including Utgarda-Loki? That’s... an interesting choice. No. Let me rephrase that. It’s a bad choice. If there’s a myth you should ignore in basing stuff around the Norse deities, it’s the Utgarda-Loki myth. Seeing as how the fellow is from a highly debated myth that seems to confuse the famous Loki (Odin’s blood brother) and Utgarda-Loki who ultimately receives the tied down with his own child’s entrails under dripping poison punishment meted out to the more famous Loki. Other aspects of that particular myth contain too many elements more in line with Christian fairy tales and is widely regarded as a confused mess and an inaccurate conglomeration of fairy tale with some things pulled from Norse myth (like famous Loki’s punishment) and was more likely a cobbled together piece of nonsense intended to help convert Norse to Christianity than a genuine Nordic myth. Why the hell would you include this guy out of the dozens or Norse gods and giants with better standing?

Your comprehension of Norse Myth is bad and you should feel bad, RR.

[elfgrove]

Audiobook Liveblog: Sword of Summer Part 5

So here’s the thing about me spitting bile of RR’s inaccurate portrayals of Norse myth. 

I don’t expect fantasy novels to be perfectly accurate. I expect some liberties to be taken.What I also expect, especially when portraying real peoples’ faiths, is to approach it with a certain level of respect for the original subject matter. When he did the Greek and Roman gods, it wasn’t perfect, but there was a general slightly higher level of respect for the spirit off the source myths worked into the text of the story (RR’s comments outside the books are another story which I already went off on in an earlier entry). Every bit of this book so far has been dripping with tacit disapproval of the Norse myth as a basis for a faith or culture. It’s disdainful of the warrior culture, it sneers and portrays callousness and bloodthirstiness as the core concept of the entire culture, it portrays bigotry and disdain for anything remotely peaceful or intellectual as an accepted Norse norm. You can feel RR’s superiority and disdain for the entire thing in the way he writes about it. He’s monetizing a faith and a culture he clearly has no respect for. When your portrayal is like that AND inaccurate, your portrayal is bad and deserves calling out.

That said, I do deeply appreciate that for the first time in the books I’ve read by RR his supernatural leading hero is a healer. A male healer who likes reading and studying. He normally shunts healers off as side characters who only appear when needed for plot convenience and the main character folk who enjoy reading and studying or have been the information holders (talking heads) have been consistently portrayed as the purview of women -- thinking, doing the boring research needed, that’s women’s work in RR’s books. Hopefully I’m about to see Magnus change that. We’ll see based on whether or not his supposed love of reading and studying is just lip service or if he actually attempts to take time out to learn what he’s been thrown in the middle of.

Of course we still see RR taking this shortcut of magically buffing up a character who doesn’t have an ideal body. Instead of dealing with Magnus’s asthma or malnutrition from being homeless as an ongoing inconvenience he needs to account for or work with, it’s magically fixed by Valhalla. Just like instead of dealing with the hard work of having Frank evolve as a character to be more comfortable with himself and his body, he got a magical godly upgrade into being buff and athletic.It’s not a good message to send his young readers.

I’m not going to complain about the autopilot sword though, because that actually IS a feature of that sword in the mythology.

FFS. Watch. I bet Thor’s gonna be a freaking blonde.

THOR. “fierce eyed, red haired and red bearded.” THOR. “The North-Frisian curse diis ruadhiiret donner regiir! ("let red-haired thunder see to that!")”

[elfgrove]

Audiobook Liveblog: Sword of Summer Part 4

So I see we’re just gonna keep doubling down on this Freyr ain’t respected and shit nonsense. We’re also gonna claim he’s not considered a member of the Aesir despite teh Poetic Edda specifically saying he is “the most renowned of the Aesir.”

Yes, the stuff with Freyr is a bit complex because he was born Vanir, but he and Njord formally joining the Aesir and being considered part of that clan/host was in fact a big chunk of the peace negotiation. 

That’d be like me writing this book based on Christian myth and saying well you know, Jesus wasn’t really the “son of god”, despite what the christian myth says, he’s just a good person and actually just the son of Mary, and while a good person, nobody ever thought very highly of him because they’re focused on how to survive The Rapture and sacrificing sheep and so they figured this guy brought nothing of value to the table.

Your comprehension of Norse myth is shitty and you should feel bad RR.

So Magnus’s two guardians turned out to be a Svartalfar (Dokkalfar) and Alfr (Ljosalfr), protecting him on orders from “The Boss”. On the one hand, since Alfheim is under Freyr’s jurisdiction, it would be perfectly reasonable for Freyr to be said boss. On the other hand, Loki isn’t unreasonable either as at least the Sons of Ivaldi (Svartalfar) have a history of working for him. Which males Blitz’s disdain for the idea fucking weird.

Again with applying your good/evil simplified dichotomies to pantheistic faiths. It just doesn’t fucking work. STOP IT. There is nothing so simple as the devil here. Stop trying to make one.

Anyways, just for the sake of playing off the audience’s expectations, I like the fashion-obsessed Dwarf. It’s cute. I mean, it’s also a modern AU type interpretation of what most fantasy novel Dwarfs are like because someone sat down for more than 5 minutes to realize short and bearded doesn’t automatically mean dirty, uncouth and unkempt and these people are fucking richer than kings, but hey. At least RR is doing one thing right.

I’m not sure where RR got this Dwarves turning to stone in the sun nonsense, but go on, I guess.

We still have zero explanation of why Mr. I-don’t-like-being-touched-and-trust-no-one-but-only-when-plot-convenient Chase trusted Bltzen and Hearthstone in the first place, but this sort of inconsistent characterization and blatant plot holes I’ve come to expect from RR.

Anyway. Let’s go. we’re back on Earth, headed to see if the McGuffin (I mean  Sword of Summer) has conveniently popped up in Magnus’s coffin, because reasons.

[elfgrove]

Audiobook Liveblog: Magnus Chase and the Sword of Summer Part 1

DON’T SPOIL ME. I haven’t read this before. DON’T SPOIL ME.

This narrator is terrible.

TERRIBLE.

OMG. Why.

How do you have this job? You are legitimately bad at this.

I... Admittedly,  I have never been a homeless teen myself, but I fell like maybe, probably, based on what little I do know, it is VERY FUCKING LIKELY, Rick R has a terrible grasp of what the situation actually is like, far less so what it is like for fucking teenagers and maybe he should do a lot more research before he ever EVER writes shit with homeless teens again. Particularly homeless teens living in New England states in WINTER and how they interact with care workers, adults, and other homeless people?

I only steal from objectively bad rich people, and even then I only take the pittance that will get me my next meal. My dude, I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the kid who’s been homeless for 2 years is not gonna care to differentiate between which rich folk they pickpocket, ensuring that they were talking on a cell phone instead of looking at a store clerk or if they parked in a handicap space. If he takes the big risk to break into a freaking BMW, he’s probably gonna take everything that can possibly easily be exchanged for money, not just the coins from the center dash. He pickpockets some rich lady buying designer swag, he’s gonna keep more than the money needed to buy a pizza. That entire aside reads so much like a baby boomer guy who's never been poor in his life justifying why his protagonist is the sort of “worthy poor”  homeless thief that deserves aid according to pearl-clutching Republicans unlike all those godless unworthy sinner types. It’s just such a what the fuck line of narrative, that I’m side eyeing my car speakers just for you.

And the 15~going~on~16 year old boy that has only been homeless for 2 years (and so spent 13 years of his life in homes getting taught about stranger danger) all cozied up with and trusting two other homeless adult men enough that they know where he sleeps? Hon, I’m pretty sure the kid would be loathe to let anyone know where he is while unconscious, much less two probably-mentally-unstable adults he has met within the past two years. Chances are good he’d be worried they’d hurt him. Chances are also good they wouldn’t (and narrative device that they’re secretly gods or protectors is obvious), but I hope there’s good backstories as to why he trusts these people without more context for him. I mean, the boy is nervous about getting into a car with an adult he does know. This seems sketchy.

Annabeth looking for her apparent first cousin who seems to be around the same age as her (both were 6 in flashbacks?) seems like a weird crossover to the timeline of the PJO/HOO books. I mean, 16~year-old Annabeth knows she’s a demigod. If I have my timelines right, 16 puts Annabeth after The Last Olympian, but probably before The Lost Hero. So she’s only just reconciled with her Father after being a runaway herself pretty recently. Seems like she should be better equipped to explain whatever Magnus’s situation is to him and to actually search out a homeless teen, probably WITHOUT an adult present, and she should know that. It’ll be interesting to see what she has to say when they meet and what her logic for dragging her dad around while searching Boston for Magnus was.

DON’T SPOIL ME. 

[elfgrove]

I’ll admit, there is a small part of me tempted to get the Magnus Chase book and do screeching furious live blogs of it. To continue the set, you know.

On the other hand, I need to collect candy from Pumpkin Hearts on Tsum Tsum.