Finally back home after a trip to the pizzeria. Now, let me address the elephant in the room.
One thing I'm glad with is that you have finally decided to get rid of the snark in your tone and the accusations against my honesty.
That said, your post still suffers from a major case of you misinterpreting the information I laid out, or at least not understanding what I meant while explaining each scan, as well as not connecting each scan to the overall bigger picture I was trying to portray in my post.
You, as well as pretty much everyone else arguing against the upgrade right now, are taking and approaching my arguments and the overall issue too unilaterally; too bound to the scans about the "The Outside" or "Ginnungagap", and that's why you failed to actually understand what I was trying to do in my post.
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This is the already familiar scan of Odin meeting the Shadow Sitting Gods "outside the realms, outside all realities". This is nothing knew, and in fact I have already accepted this to be the case: Namely, that they come from a realm outside the Marvel Multiverse. This is plainly stated a few times. My objection comes with this suddenly being evidence of the Shadow Sitting Gods being Outerversal... Which, quite honestly, isn't. Saying that they come from such a realm doesn't make them 1-A, even if the realm in itself was.
This is the premier example of what I am talking about. You're so attached to this counterargument that you completely missed what I was getting at - the point completely flew over your head and you failed to realize that I was not trying to use this scan to argue about the Outside and the TWSAIS being 1-A for inhabiting it, but merely setting the context for the rest of my argument concerning Ragnarok and the end of reality.
What was my actual point? Well, I detailed it pretty well in the original post, already. The TWSAIS summon Odin to the outside of the multiverse in his dreams, and Odin, confused, yells out that they can't possibly have returned, since they hold no power over creation without Ragnarok. The Shadows acknowledge this, but that's exactly why they have come back; because everything is about to end, and they'll assert themselves as the final victors after the destruction of all reality.
Why this is relevant? I've already detailed why that is, but let's keep reading to find out, since I apparently need to restate my point.
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This scan doesn't say much of anything, honestly. It's just Odin and other people talking about the end of all things and the coming of the Last Day
That's precisely the point of the sca, to
set the context for the story. Odin angrily tells the Congress of the Worlds about his dream and the coming of the end, the congress tells him that they believe the events talked about in his dream are just the signs of an upcoming "Multiversal Cosmic Process". One of the first among many scans to indicate that the Story of the Last Day and the Ragnarok that the TWSAIS rule over were codenames for the events of multiversal scale throughout
all stories, not just the Norse aspect of them.
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This... I'm not even sure why this scan is here? It's just Loki telling Verity that all stories have endings, in relation to the events of the storyline and the eventual collapse of the Marvel Multiverse. It tells us nothing relevant.
That's
precisely what I'm getting at, Matthew. This scan is one infinitesimal part of the entire picture I was trying to drawn, namely to establish the idea that the stories have a beginning, middle, and end. See, this is why you should try to tackle the scans collectively and understand the bigger picture while you do so, as opposed to dissecting each of the scans that form the entire picture individually, and colossally missing the point as a result.
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The followup double-page scan is just reiterating that same idea. This is the Last Incursion of the Beyonders. The Last Day. The end of the Marvel Multiverse. The end of the story.
Indeed, you are correct at the core, for, as I said, the day of Last Battle is the day, the
story where everything, everyone goes to battle, just before the omniverse and all its stories collapse. And as a story, it is not limited to the Norse Gods. It is connected to all entities throughout the multiverse. Everything is connected, as we will further see later.
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This page with Loki and Verity's spirit in the Outside isn't very helpful either, actually? He's talking about how, even with the destruction of the Marvel Multiverse, the story has yet to end.
Matthew, I never tried to use this scan to apply to the events of Ragnarok. I was just explaining to outsiders of the debate what the characters meant with the terms. Once again, this is why you should not tackle everything with an one-track mind. You'll end up missing the entire point.
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Once again, Loki is reiterating what happened and what he meant before. The Multiverse was completely wiped out by the Beyonders and the events of Secret Wars, but you can't wipe out stories. They survive, persist, change and evolve. This is all very plainly Meta, in how the stories of Marvel never truly end no matter the in-universe cataclysms that happen in them.
Half-right, half-wrong. It is both a wink to the audience, as I plainly explained in the post for everyone to see,
and an actual mechanism of Al Ewing's cosmology. The stories are tales come to life, the universe believing lies and changing itself to accommodate. Loki himself explains the nature of the stories when challenging the TWSAIS: the gods, the heroes, all lives are stories told by the campfire, metaphorical or otherwise. In this case, the story of the Last Battle was a multiversal story, told through the angle of many lives, and we're seeing one such angle now.
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I'm... Not sure what this thread is accomplishing, either? Hela is saying that the warriors who die as the universe ends will either be sent to Valhalla, or to her own realm, but only briefly as all realms will be destroyed. Which Old Loki reiterates. But this is not particularly meaningful. People go to Valhalla, Helheim and other afterlives in Marvel all the time. I'm confused as to why that's here.
Which is exactly why you should have attempted to better understand what I was trying to get at with the collective scans, instead of reading this with the one-track mind of "Outside", "Ginnungagap", "Norse Gods" and reacting accordingly.
Regardless, I plainly explained what I was trying to get at, and highlighted it: Hela states that the story was about to die, taking everything with it, and this story includes the entire multiverse. This was yet another of the scans I was using to explain the nature of Al Ewing's "stories".
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Another scan that has appeared before already. Yes, the Issue Recap that states that the Marvel Multiverse is ending. We've been through this already. It's not a feat for anything other than those responsible for its destruction. And let me cut some times, because this other Issue Recap that states that the multiverse was destroyed and now Loki will try to prevent the Stories of the Gods from being consumed by the Shadow Sitting Gods isn't much of anything, either.
As I have explained multiple times, the Stories of Last Battle encompassed the end of the entire omniverse, and those stories were what the TWSAIS were naturally going to consume, only for the multiverse to be reborn and so on. They didn't destroy the multiverse, but that doesn't matter, because they were going to do something just as good, if not
eve better.
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I have yet to understand why eating "a story" is significant, overall, when it's evident from the scans presented that Stories are treated as metaphorical, intangible ideas, and not literal power sources that can be quantified into Tiers.
This is, of course, blatantly false.
Loki literally holds a story in his hand after the multiverse collapses. They are metaphors that give birth to very much physical, solid facts of reality. This is explained in such clear words in the comic that I find myself surprised you can still say something of the sort.
And they are very real power-sources, as the TWSAIS themselves explain:
So yes, stories are very much physical sources of power. They're just created by metaphors.
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Likewise, these scans about the Norse Gods fighting the Last Battle isn't much strong evidence of anything, either. Whatsoever. I suppose you're attempting to say that the events of Time Runs Out / Secret Wars were literally Ragnarok to them, but that's clearly not what's happening. The gods here are battling for completely different reasons than they did in Ragnarok proper
The reason why they're battling is completely irrelevant to the scale of the storyline and to the "Ragnarok" story. It's still Ragnarok. It's still the end and the last day of the cosmos, as explicitly noted in the storyline and as I have pointed out through numerous scans explicitly using the idea of "Ragnarok" to refer to the concept of multiversal destruction. The TWSAIS themselves, alongside multiple other sources, said so.
So yes, the collapse of the omniverse that happened after that battle was encapsulated under the label of "Ragnarok"
and the Story of the Last Days and Battle.
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and they do admit that the scale of the Last Day is far beyond anything they can do.
1. In what sense? As I have already detailed, the story of Ragnarok and the last battle were multiversal in scale. So much so that Hela's actions were delaying the destruction of all existence, all the omniverse:
2. I mentioned that word-for-word,, and it, if anything, just supports my point of view even further, considering the fact that Loki's theory is that the TWSAIS are shaped from the fears and stories of the God, specifically concerning the "death of everything". If the Gods' fears revolve around their inability to stop the destruction of the omniverse, which they do, and their stories about the New Ragnarok revolved around the end of the entire multiverse, which it did...then it's just natural that the TWSAIS end up being multiversal in scale, and that's what the story itself reflects, as I have proven with my scans.
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It would certainly be very weird if the literal Ragnarok, an event centered around the Earth-616 versions of the Norse Gods, had repercussions throughout all levels and realms of the Marvel Multiverse, right?
But
it does have repercussions throughout the entire Marvel Multiverse, my young Padawan. Hell, forget the Gods and Ragnarok: in Al Ewing's cosmology, even the story of a normal human lady had repercussions on the fate of the Marvel Multiverse!
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Speaking of Metaphors... What a funny coincidence, the story itself shows that when Stories die, they are sent to a "Metaphorical Space". The Void which stories go to when they die isn't a literal physical dimensionless void, but a metaphorical one. Note the usage of the term "Ego Death" in the scan there, which refers to a concept of Jungian Psychology meaning the "complete loss of subjective self-identity". Basically, your story is who you are on a subjective, perceptive level. It is your sense of self and conscience. Not anything that can be quantified.
This is completely wrong.
When one suffers from ego-death in Al Ewing's cosmology, they still exist, their story is still not over. When their story is truly over, it ceases to exist. Simple as that. I've posted the scans for this.
And I have proven stories are pretty quantifiable.
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And this finally brings up to Loki's meeting with the Shadow Sitting Gods. Namely, that they confirm that all of existence is destroyed, and that now nothing remains but the stories. The stories which they'll feed on, which are namely the stories of the Norse Gods. They are not seeking to feed on the story of everything that ever happened in the War of Last Day / the events of Secret Wars, but merely the Norse Gods' part in that event.
They were seeking to consume the story of Ragnarok; the story of the end of the entire multiverse in this run, as I have proven with my scans. When Loki saved a tiny slice of it, they went after him to claim it for themselves.
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They are not consuming the literal, physical multiverse, nor even the story of the whole multiverse's ending. But the story of the gods. That's it.
They are indeed not consuming the literal multiverse. They're consuming the very story that leads to the multiverse's destruction to begin with, which is at least an equal feat and, in my view, even more impressive, considering the conceptual shenanigans that I have elaborated upon.
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Amusingly, when Loki narrates the stories of the Gods to dispute Those Who Sit In Shadows, his narrative is not only uncertain ("Maybe that's just nonsense), but also quite limited.
I have already talked about Loki's narrative not being factual, but possibility. In fact, as I explained, no matter which side of the story you decide to take as fact, be it Loki's or the TWSAIS', both of them lead to the TWSAIS being multiversal deities.
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He references the Ten Realms birthing from Ginnungagap, with these Ten Realms being the Ten Spheres held by the World Tree Yggdrasil. It's amazing that in this very story Yggdrasil is being treated as limited to the 10 realms alone.
I could dispute this, but it doesn't really matter for this specific post, so okay, sure.
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Also, the Gods being born out of the stories mortal spin from them is all fine and dandy, except for when it is an idea that's blatantly contradicted by other writers and their own interpretations. Certainly, it is what Al Ewing is going for, but not everyone accepts it.
It doesn't matter if other writers have other interpretations. We're discussing characters who have made a very limited amount of appearances in the history of Marvel Comics, and their two major appearances (The Thor 1998 story and Al Ewing's Loki story)
both abide by this cosmology, so what other writers who have no bearing on the TWSAIS think is irrelevant.
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And this scene also perfectly illustrates the metaphorical power of stories. Much like mortals spin the tales of the Gods, the Gods themselves spin the tales of the Gods of Gods. And since Loki is now the God of Stories, and the only storyteller remaining, he holds power over Those Who Sit In Shadow through the act of telling their stories.
1. Indeed, the Gods of the Gods
might have spun the tale of the Shadow Gods. But if you choose to believe Loki, then you're saying that he is indeed correct when he states that the TWSAIS are shaped from the Gods' interpretations of "everything dying", and their fears and inability to control the situation, which would be a concession that they're multiversal, since, as I detailed above, Ragnarok/the Norse Gods' "Death of Everything" in this story was intertwined with the end of the Omniverse as an event.
2. And lastly, no, he doesn't have any power over them.
Literally the next page. He was just bluffing and confidently telling a load of hogwash that may or may have not been true. He held no real power over them, he was just so good of a storyteller that they believed his bluff and fled in fear of the possibility that they were created by the very beings they transcended!
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Loki's triumph over them isn't evidence that he has 1-A Power. It's a testament to his cleverness and wit, and the symbolical power stories hold over us.
No one ever talked about 1-A Loki, so...okay.
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As an addendum, the notion that it was the Norse Gods themselves who created Those Who Sit In Shadow is ironic in itself, because it perfectly undermines their own statement of being the creators of the whole Cycle. Look to the two scans above.
No, it doesn't undermine anything, because Loki's theory is that the Norse Gods created the TWSAIS
in order to fit the role of cosmic gods who transcended them and created their cycle, to begin with. Which means it's a contradiction that feeds itself, as Kep has explained.
In the original 1998 Thor storyline, you can clearly see that the TWSAIS
did create the Grand Cycle, since they were the ones to give the Norns the power to maintain it:
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This here establishes that Loki and Verity were "Outside" all existence when he met the Gods of Gods. Which I've never disputed. They are indeed Outside the Marvel Multiverse. But that is utterly meaningless for tiering anyone, in fact.
Which still makes your original claim that Ginnungagap was not a 1-A void incorrect, as I have detailed countless times.
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This scan which tells the Norse Creation Myth is itself extremely limited, because it only talks about the emergence of the Ten Realms from the yawning void of Ginnungagap. Nothing more than Ten Realms held by one World Tree (Not a multiversal world tree, eh?).
It does not matter how many realms emerged from Ginnungagap. You claimed it wasn't the void before all creation, and you were shown to be wrong. Regardless, as I have shown, it's the Norse interpretation of the primordial void, so
of course the narration is going to focus on the Norse realms. That still doesn't do anything to undermine the scans that prove it is the same void as the Outside.
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This scan is exactly the same thing, with the sole difference being that it references Nine Worlds instead of Ten. To make a long story short, the very scans that were brought up to defend the position that Ginnungagap is a "OuTerVeRSaL vOiD" contradict said claim. Wew
As I have shown, they don't.
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A long and impressively-looking post is often seldom reliable when analyzed with the slightest scrutiny
I perfectly agree with your sentiment here.
