Tag Archives: glaive

Dat glaive: In summary

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So we’ve seen how the glaive works as…

On the Twitters Patrick Kovacich made some convincing arguments that the glaive wasn’t really involved in the teleconferencing as much as it was an astral projection by Loki himself, though that raises questions about why it glows so white-hot right as he’s entering the teleconference. So, for arguments’ sake let’s leave it in, but I acknowledge the evidence against is quite compelling if less instructive.

So, with these subtopics covered, let’s turn back to the total question of the glaive: How is it as an interface for these functions? Let’s return to the three values that I hold every show up to: believability, narrative, and as a model for real world interactions. Continue reading →

Dat glaive: Enthrallment

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Several times throughout the movie, Loki uses places the point of the glaive on a victim’s chest near their heart, and a blue fog passes from the stone to infect them: an electric blackness creeps upward along their skin from their chest until it reaches their eyes, which turn fully black for a moment before becoming the same ice blue of the glaive’s stone, and we see that the victim is now enthralled into Loki’s servitude.

Enthralling_Hawkeye

You have heart.

The glaive is very, very terribly designed for this purpose. Continue reading →

Dat glaive: Projectile gestures

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TRIGGER WARNING: IF YOU ARE PRONE TO SEIZURES, this is not the post for you. In fact, you can just read the text and be quit of it. The more neurologically daring of you can press “MORE,” but you have been forewarned.

If the first use of Loki’s glaive is as a melée weapon, the second use is of a projectile weapon. Loki primes it, it glows fiercely blue-white, and then he fires it with usually-deadly accuracy to the sorrow of his foes.

This blog is not interested in the details of the projectile, but what is interesting is the interface by which he primes and fires it. How does he do it? Let’s look. He fires the thing 8 times over the course of the movie. What do we see there? Continue reading →

Dat glaive

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When Loki materializes on the dais, he is holding one the key objects to The Avengers and indeed the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe multi-franchise Infinity Stones plot. What is it?

Avengers-Glaive-02

NIck Fury calls the thing a spear. Others call it a staff. The official Disney wiki calls it the Chitauri Sceptre, but this thing is very much a tool. Over this and the next several posts, I’ll talk about how it is used alternately as the following.

  • A melée weapon
  • A projectile weapon
  • A bad-mojo radiator
  • A teleconferencing device
  • An enthrallment knife

Notably, in no scene does he carry it on a ceremonial occasion as a symbol of sovereignty, so scepter really doesn’t fit our purposes. What does? Well, any RPG fan worth their Deck of Many Things knows that the blades-on-a-stick category of weapons are many and nuanced. Finding a perfect term is tough since historians and medievalists have categorized other pole arms according to their construction and function, and none of them are quite like this one.

Avengers-Glaive Continue reading →