I Turn, Um... Uh... Sixteen? For The Tenth? Time???? [open post]

[summerdude]

It's Magnus's birthday and he is a man with a surplus of plans. And many, many plastic recorders.

He's still a little overstimulated from the birthday party Galahad got Claudius to throw for the two of them — he loves all his friends, but that was a lot of people in one space, most of whom were also feeling many, many things about their visitors — and so it's been a quiet few days. Sunny is still a little subdued, so they've been having muted hangouts in the mornings; Galahad, also overstimulated from their birthday party, has fortunately been on Magnus's wavelength about just sailing around aimlessly on the Big Banana with many snacks and very little conversation during their daily hangs for the past few days. He drags himself to sword practice with Lancelot once or twice, has his weekly dinner at Hanguang-jun's, spends a great solo afternoon cleaning out Little John's cave in case anyone else wants to use it at some point, and lets Alex tease him into wrestling and, um, other stuff after dinner basically every night.

But on this, the twenty-sixth anniversary of Magnus's actual birth, most of his energy has returned to him. He's made birthday dinner plans with just his immediate family (and also Alex and Hanguang-jun) at their house for the evening. He's had his liveliest morning of the week. And with his newly regained energy he's found critical supplies for his afternoon: a roll of duct tape, several trash bags, eight recorders, a handful of hollow pens, and a dream. He's sitting cross-legged in the middle of the Mansion's lawn, a look of grave concentration on his face, as he makes little holes in a bag, duct tapes two recorders and one pen here and there, and then seals it all up.

And then he takes a deep breath, fits his mouth to the hollow pen, and blows the bag up. When he places it under his arm and squeezes, he's gratified to find that his makeshift bagpipes work perfectly. And he still has supplies for a couple more!



I know everyone is still busy with visitor's day so feel free to take your time on this one... but I would love to ultimately have a ton of Chaos Thread Opportunities.

Comments

[onthewillowsthere]

"Who does Heimdall chat with?"

[summerdude]

Magnus shrugs. "Mostly when I'm around he's just taking long-distance Heimdall selfies... somehow his camera can reach anywhere in the world, just like his eyesight... but I think he talks to his nine moms a ton. They live at the bottom of the ocean so it's a trek to see them in person."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Why are they there?"

[summerdude]

"They're sea goddesses. The Nine Billows Maidens. Aegir and Ran's daughters."

[onthewillowsthere]

"The ones who have a price on your head."

[summerdude]

"Yeah!" Magnus is cheerful about it. "Those ones. Heimdall doesn't share the grudge, though."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Tell me about Heimdall."

[summerdude]

"Four out of ten," Magnus says immediately. "Not the worst god, but definitely not the best. He can see and hear basically anything he wants, as long as it's not under, like, a mile of solid rock, but he has to be focusing on it. Mostly he just takes a lot of selfies on his magic phablet -- that's like, a really big smartphone -- so he has pictures of himself interrupting a bunch of important stuff all over the world." He shrugs. "He's supposed to kill Loki during Ragnarok, so I guess there's that."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Who is your lowest-rated Ggod? Besides Loki."

[summerdude]

"That's such a good question," Magnus enthuses, immediately going through his mental rolodex. "Obviously the best ones are Sif and Sigyn. And Vidar is pretty cool too, actually -- he's the god of vengeance and he has this shoe made of every single discarded shoe scrap ever that he uses to stomp on people. Also he's Deaf, so he and Hearth get along pretty well." He scratches his head. "Frey's okay. So's Frigg. Freya and Odin and people like that I would classify as, like, powerful but annoying in certain ways. Thor and Tyr are, like... annoying and their deals make things harder on their kids." He frowns. "Ran wants me dead but, like, I get her deal more than the others. She's just, like, someone who's happier being a bag lady. I knew a couple people like that back in Boston -- a bag lady is a homeless woman who carries all her stuff in bags. Only sometimes they have homes and families and are just happier, you know, on the streets with their bags of stuff." He brightens. "Can I say Apollo? He's not Norse, but he is here. And I can do pretty much everything he can. And he was a total dick to my cousin."

[onthewillowsthere]

"What did he do to Annabelle?" asks Galahad, as he absorbs all this information.

[summerdude]

"Annabeth? He gave quests that distracted from saving her this one time when she was kidnapped, he gave quests that made her life more difficult when she already had stuff to do, he tried to express Opinions about her redesign of Olympus and did stuff that made her freaked out and worried for months around the time I was preparing to stop Loki. Also," Magnus meets Galahad's eyes. "She told me that he's, like, cursed his own kids for trying to help people who needed it when there was a prophecy that said they shouldn't."

Magnus sighs heavily. "But that's mostly hearsay. Probably I should keep my ranking to gods from my own pagan afterlife. Really I think my ranking probably comes down to whether a god treats their kids -- or anyone who's sworn to them in some way, or even just the mortals they encounter -- as tools to use when they don't feel like doing any effort themselves, or as tools to use when they can't directly become involved without causing more problems, or, best case scenario, as actual people with actual needs and feelings and hardships that could use guidance. Or a please and thank you. Or some help. Or whatever. So based on that... Thor would be at the bottom, and Sif would be at the top." He scratches his head. "Loki's at the bottom, too, but I think he'd say playthings instead of tools. I don't know where I'd rank gods who try to stay out of it because they don't want to make things harder, but who do make things harder anyway by not getting involved. Okay intention, terrible execution."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Like Frey," Galahad says.

[summerdude]

"Yeah," Magnus sighs. "Like Frey."

[onthewillowsthere]

"You would still like him to behave towards you as you think a father should."

[summerdude]

Magnus shrugs. "Honestly?" he says. "It's, like, whatever. I'm... our relationship is what it is. He's, like... I love him, and I know he cares about me, and that's, like, gotta be enough. I'm more worried about the people whose godly parents stay uninvolved but their deals make things really hard on their kids. Like Tyr; it's literally impossible for any of Tyr's kids to say no to any challenge they're given."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad doesn't like that! His frown might even be perceptible to someone who isn't Magnus.

[summerdude]

"Yeah. It's bad. It's how a lot of them end up in Valhalla." Magnus is also frowning! "Tyr is the god of duels, among other things. Which creates stupid problems for his kids. Hey, maybe someone should teach the gods about birth control."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Do you think they don't know, or don't care?"

[summerdude]

"I dunno. I don't think I want to know. Annabeth said that the most powerful Greek gods made a pact to not, like, sleep with mortals because their kids end up... either having or causing extra problems, I forget? And they all failed step one within, like, fifty years. Which is nothing to a god, I bet. It's probably like less than a week for us."

[onthewillowsthere]

For Galahad, who had been celibate well into his twenty-second year, this seems to display a pathetic lack of self-control. There were a thousand times he wanted to have sex with Claudius before he did, and although he would not choose to live that way again it doesn't require willpower so great that a god shouldn't be able to achieve it.

[summerdude]

"You're telling me," says Magnus, about the vibes Galahad is exuding. Then he shakes himself. "Wanna do something fun?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes," promptly.

[summerdude]

"Have you ever tried bubble tea?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"No." He doesn't ask what is it because he's fairly certain he's about to find out.