Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking. “It’s Loki, run for your lives,” etcetera etcetera. Well, fortunately for you humans, invading Midgard isn’t worth my time these days. Under usual circumstances, writing online magazine articles wouldn’t be worth the time of the god of mischief either.
And then, just the other day, I encountered a journalist who claimed to have located a group of filmmakers in California who can seemingly control time itself.
I was intrigued, since his story echoed old Asgardian legends of cartoonists who secretly dictate the future of the multiverse. Evidently he noticed my excitement, because he staunchly refused to divulge further details until I wrote him an instructional magazine article.
He could be a total con (though if he’s really another Loki variant as he claims to be, I’m not impressed), but on the off-chance he’s right, a short tutorial is undeniably worth access to the kind of power awaiting me.
So, without further ado, I bring you April Fools Day Preparations with Loki.
Being the legendary trickster that I am, it should come as no surprise that I consider April Fools to be the greatest holiday of the year—I invented it, after all—and that I’ve been scheming all sorts of practical jokes for months now. As we’re only a couple weeks out, you don’t have time to prepare anything really huge, but if you start now, you could still concoct some pretty terrific stuff.
The prank I’ll be assembling today is a particularly delightful “late birthday present” I’m building for my adopted brother Thor.
I call it the Thorbell: it’s a doorbell button designed to shock potential guests with electricity.
Thor can be such a nuisance, always zapping people nearby with lightning, then claiming it was an accident. And what better time than April Fools, I thought, to get back at him for his completely unreasonable retaliation to the Snake Incident all those years ago?
I had intended to make it more elaborate, but in order for you to replicate it with your primitive human tools, I’ll keep the materials simple.
You’ll need:
- A Hot glue gun
- A Glue stick
- Aluminum foil
- Heavy-weight paper
- A paperclip
- A block of wood
- Wood carving tools
- A power drill
- The little quartz spark component from a lighter.
The last item on the list can be found in most button-operated lighters. The ones with a little wheel on one side won’t work, however, because they use friction, not electricity, to make a spark.
Here is the kind I used, and where the spark-maker is inside it:
I actually found several of these lighters in the Void, belonging to a king named Arthur who’d been caught for making silly toy laser-swords out of them. To make a long story short, the lighters are mine now, and when I took one apart, I found just what I needed for my doorbell prank.
The initial construction is fairly straightforward. Cut the wood into a more-or-less doorbell-shaped block. The block should come up to where the button starts on the lighter component. I glued several pieces together to get mine the right height.
Next, Drill a hole through the center big enough to fit the spark-maker into.
To make the doorbell more convincing, you might want to carve angled edges. I’m fashioning my own after Thor’s hammer, just for the irony of it.
Make sure the spark-maker can sit comfortably inside the hole you drilled, and that the wire is flush with the wood’s surface, then hot glue it in place (but don’t glue the button!)
And that’s the practical side of things done with.
The rest of the build focuses on the doorbell’s appearance, which is just as crucial for the prank to be convincing. You could paint it from here, but I am going for a smoother finish, so I’m covering the rough wooden surface with paper.
First, trace each side of the wooden block onto paper, and then cut it out so that it lies squarely on each corresponding surface. Next, use the glue stick to cover the paper with aluminum foil. Be careful that the foil is perfectly flat, or else the surface won’t look as metallic as you want it to.
Just for fun, I used a dulled pencil to etch patterns on the edges similar to the ones on Thor’s real hammer.
Finally, it is time to create the all-important button.
First, I made a ring of hot glue in a circle around the button, piling the glue fairly high to create a structure to affix the foil to. I tried to keep the foil neatly creased around the edges, mimicking the top of the real hammer.
Since it must be pressed down such a long way, I found the most practical button cover to be a wire coil made from a paper clip. If you don’t mind getting shocked a bit yourself, you may want to make sure the button presses all the way while you are doing these last steps, otherwise the prank won’t work.
Make sure to leave enough space around the wire on the lighter component for the electricity not to get diverted through the foil, if that’s what you’re using. Ideally, the wire should be touching only the coil and/or the operator’s finger when it’s fully pressed down.
And your doorbell is finished! Now I simply need to wait a few days and plan where I should put the doorbell on the big day. Maybe I’ll also include a pleasant late birthday greeting to go along with it, to make it a bit less suspicious.
Keep in mind that the best April Fools pranks, and the least expected ones, are the ones planned far in advance, so make sure to start building as soon as you can (if you haven’t already)!
There. That ought to satisfy the journalist! Funny, he had no idea how easy it would be for me to write this, since I had the doorbell all planned in advance. Better yet, he specifically requested that I not write anything April Fools-related, since it would be published in mid-March. Well, I thought, he should have known better than to ask THAT, seeing as I’m the greatest prankster in the Nine Realms. In doing so, he essentially eliminated any chance of me NOT writing about April Fools. Now I can play a terrific joke on him and also give each of you more time to fabricate pranks for all your friends. Only he’d better not be bluffing me for a free article.
I’d best be off now to finish some more elaborate pranks for all my new friends at the TVA. Happy April Fools!
Photo Credits: Timothy Baker
Cover Photo: https://images.indianexpress.com/2021/06/loki-1200-5.jpg
