Thursday, January 21, 2016

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.

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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.

2 comments:

  1. I love hearing that you too thought the binding of Fenrir was bullshit! As a child with a lot of empathy with animals -- to the point that I got along better with them than with people at that time in my life -- I remember my shock at reading of the binding: "did no one think to just be *nice* to him?!"

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    1. Especially since he seemed to have nothing but goodwill toward them at the start.

      Besides which, a lot of stuff involves prophecy that can't be averted, so maybe they couldn't prevent Fenrir from growing up to have his particular role in Ragnarok regardless of how they acted, but they can control how they act in the now and they could have been moral.

      If they'd been nice to him then when the end came they could at least take solace in the fact that they'd acted well and been good people.

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