Ninth Twilight

Loki. Though he usually lacks fangs.

tl;dr Ninth Twilight is my (hopefully epic in the long and glorious sense) series of original fiction works retelling Norse mythology from the point of view of the trickster god Loki. 

Long emotional version where I pour out the entire origin story of this series and then tell you a bit about the actual story
Ninth Twilight is my baby. The father is Mr. Peeved-At-Marvel and I have lovingly raised it for...about nine months. (I actually got the first inklings of it after the first time I watched Marvel's Thor right after the movie came out, but serious development of it didn't happen until March 2012.) It's a story of chaos and order, mages and warriors, brothers and enemies, promises and betrayal. Well, several stories, to be precise; I don't know exactly how many books it will span yet, but more than one.

Nine months sounds pathetic compared to my friend Aster, who's had her Aster Quartet for some large number of years I forget, and Zippity, who's had her Black Blades for four years or so. But, to be fair, nine months is the longest I've ever spent planning a story, so I'm pretty sure this one's a keeper.

I've known about Loki for...five years as of December 2012. I got my first book of Norse mythology at eight, and fell in love with the world. But I didn't go much farther, because I was eight and eight-year-olds fail at research. But I had a fair understanding of the Nine Worlds firmly in my brain at that point.

My first time watching Thor spawned a dream of a brown-haired prince fighting for a place in his world with the help of a magical key, annoyed by his siblings Iduna, Sif, Baldur, and Thor, which I pulled from my vague rememberings of Norse mythology without researching anything. That prince was a version of Loki. I wrote most of it down, then abandoned it as it had little character development or plot. That was my first inkling of ever having a Loki character.

Then on the OYAN forums, a user calling himself Theoden started a topic for a collective story called Extant Myths: a story where the old gods would return and battle for the universe. And I, recalling my love of Norse mythology, asked if I could develop the Loki character.

Oh gods, how it took off. <3 My Loki started as a shapeshifter with vague, undefined magic skills and not a care in the world for anyone save himself. I started him off in an RP with my friend Ninja to try and develop him some, and he revealed he had a somewhat analytical personality. Ten days after first acquiring him, an acquaintance, Sam, asked for help developing her own character, Sloan, with a romance. I offered a pair of guys, Bracken and Loki, and Sam wanted Loki.

Determined to make him as myth-accurate as possible, I threw myself into researching the mythology as thoroughly as possible...and found far too many errors with Marvel's interpretation for my taste. I really do despise things that don't follow source material right, and I decided that I was going to use this Loki I was developing for my own telling of the mythology.

I wanted an epic. I wanted a novel that made all of the Nine Worlds real, a series that focused on Loki's character arc from harmless trickster to beginner of the end of the Nine Worlds.

I called it Ninth Twilight, after Ragnarökkr, which literally translated means Twilight of the Gods. It's the name for the Norse end of the worlds, which there are Nine of, so, Ninth Twilight. It focuses on Loki and his relationships with the rest of the gods, but mostly his brotherhood with Oðinn. Loki embodies chaos, and Oðinn embodies order, and the conflict between the two basically sparks Ragnarökkr.

I post art of the characters, character sketches, and worldbuilding snippets from it on this blog. Loki kind of took the place over (he does that) so I thought I would write a page up on where he came from and who the heck this strange guy with orange hair who doesn't look at all like the whiny-failure-with-daddy issues-from-Marvel is.

Yep. That is all I have to say for now. Toodles, folks.