NorsePlay.

While rollin in the NorsePlay mobile , we were bumping Lorde's Glory and Gore track and couldn't help but notice how lyrically evocative the song seems to be of holmgang duels , battle readiness, craving for achievement through confrontation, and warrior ethos. Lorde, on the other hand, actually wrote this song as a "black satire to express disdain towards modern emphasis on violence, and compares celebrity culture to gladiatorial combat". Yet sometimes art can  miss its target,  transcend its creator's intent, and even be flipped into opposition of that. Perhaps the straight-on bloody fistfight imagery of Lorde's breakout single Royals  video carried over into how its audience reads Glory and Gore (and we suspect these aspects may actually have led to her curation of the 2014 Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 soundtrack, definitely a combat-centric franchise) , but it's obvious we're not the only ones to instead embrace it as a martial anthem, gi...

As cultural champions of the Norse Lore & the 1980s, we're surprised to have never noticed this clip from 1987's Adventures in Babysitting , where the director sets up a young Vincent D'Onofrio as an avatar of Marvel Thor ! The joke here is that mechanic Dawson apparently isn't Thor, but the strongly presented visual diegesis of the film, along with how he, at the end of the exchange, acknowledges that perhaps he is Thor . Within that there's a lesson in Heathen Worldview in looking at how future Harry Potter director Chris Columbus sets up the majesty of Dawson's entrance. Sarah, a true believer in Thor, sees Thor when no one else can, or they're at least too secularized by non-belief and adulthood to perceive Thor, who actually has three kids and takes on two more as servants during one of his journeys to Jotunheim , and his begrudging change due to Sarah's persistence suits his role as a father. Dawson's temper at an implied ef feminate ness...

  [ Voluspå fresco depiction from 1933 CE by Axel Revold & Per Krohg.] The NorsePlay inspired by this mural of the World Tree at the Nasjonalbiblioteket in Oslo, Norway, is within the angular elements of the roots & branches which create sharply divided spaces. This provokes the question that what if Yggdrasil isn't only the unifying structure that holds the Nine Worlds in place, but is also the mechanism which divides those worlds and keeps them apart in differing dimensional spaces? Odin, Vili, & Ve are definitely wise enough to come up with such a dual purpose cosmic tree. And is the formidability of this structural holder/divider such that after emplaced it keeps Odin & other Aesir from spatially seeing other locations that then requires them to travel & discover that additional knowledge?  Also, like those angled curling branches, if space is folded-in upon itself, is that division of worlds then partly a mutually shared space and inste...

  DC's Beowulf: Dragon Slayer was a short-lived series that only ran six issues from 1975 CE. In a rather strange expansion where Grendel answered to the Devil, Beowulf dives through a mere into Hell, Vlad the Impaler shows up, there's an ancient alien encounter, and a tussle with the Minotaur, it seems the Geatish hero's legend grew far taller in this telling. We only had access to issues 2,3,5, & 6, and my impression was that although DC was putting out fantasy adventure titles like Warlord (which we liked), Arion , and Stalker , they still couldn't replicate the success of Marvel's Conan . Beowulf specifically reads jarringly, and shifts gears between incohesive elements, and one gets the impression that it never knows what it wants to be exactly, nor did it get the chance to decide to become anything, much less finish. Still, if you had to pick a high point issue, #5 with Beowulf actually uttering Von Daniken's title phrase "chariots of the gods...