Jumping on because I can’t resist over thinking this with you. I wholeheartedly agree with everything you wrote, and wanted to comment on the unspoken layer beneath all of this. Because as much as Loki’s trying to prove himself and make his father proud (as Frigga tells him to do), there’s the the constant undercurrent of Loki trying to grapple with what he is. Yes, he is trying to prove himself as the second son now that he’s out of that shadow, but he’s also trying that he is capable as King despite his Jotun nature.
Because no matter how much you claim to love me,
you could never have a Frost Giant, sitting on the Throne of Asgard!
Loki believes that Odin only saw him as a tool and never intended–never saw him capable–of sitting on the throne. No amount of Frigga’s words of support and love are able to negate this, so Loki needs to prove that Odin is wrong. That he can do this–can destroy Laufey and the Frost Giants and prove his worth as a son of Odin. I think up until the moment he Gungnir in his hand, Loki is floundering–unable to process what he’s learned and unsure of how he will cope–but when he is named king, he suddenly realize that he can do it. He can make Odin proud despite ‘what’ he is.
Father! We’ll finish them together.
Loki knows what Thor will do if he returns. Thor will wage war against Jotunheim. Thor will lead them into battle and get the credit for saving the realm. He will be the golden son that he always is. Why else would Loki have ended Thor’s banishment unless Loki needed Thor to rule because he couldn’t do himself? Why else would the Warriors Four be questioning his reign, if they too didn’t seem him as incapable? But, as you note, if Thor stays on Midgard, then Loki will be the victor–he will be the worthy one. No one will see him as the weak second son (or the monster he now knows he is). He will prove he can rule–that he can save Asgard–despite not being Thor (and despite what he his).
There will be no kingdom to protect if you’re afraid to act! The Jotuns must learn to fear me, just as they
once feared you.
And finally’s there’s this. Loki has heard Thor say such things since they were boys–I’m sure Loki, himself, said such things. As much as Frigga says he’s their son and that they love him, he fears Thor’s reaction. I don’t think this alone is enough to make him strike first, but he is guarding himself against it. Then the Warriors Four doubt and betray him purely because he is Loki. If they can turn on him so easily now, Loki doesn’t even need to question how they–let alone the rest of Asgard (or Thor)–would react if they knew what he was. They would string him up before he could even blink. But if he can just destroy Jotunheim (something that is better than Thor just making the Jotuns fear him), then there is no reason for any of them to doubt him. The only way to disprove what he is, is to be the hero. And the only way to be Asgard’s savior is to keep Thor on Midgard (by any means necessary).
Ugh this is all so, so true and an excellent point/addition. Especially this:
I don’t know that Loki immediately began plotting to make it a more permanent position out of corruption, though. I think that he began plotting to do as much as he could while he had the position to clean up Thor’s mess with Jotunheim and make himself the hero who killed Laufey, slaughtered the Frost Giants (which Thor wanted to do) and saved Asgard. In my opinion, Loki’s intentions were never evil or corrupt; he acted out of a desperate need to prove his worth – to prove himself equal to Thor, or maybe even better than Thor.
It really makes me wonder how things might have turned out had Sif and the W3 not intervened – because, really, all Loki was trying to do was keep Thor away from Asgard until he had time to carry out his plan and come out the other side, victorious. I think eventually, he probably would have let Thor come back. But once the W4 went against Loki’s orders to bring Thor back, that’s when Loki got desperate and things fell apart.
I don’t think Loki ever thought he’d have the kingship permanently. If nothing else, Odin was going to wake up eventually, at which point he’d be king again. Loki just saw an opportunity to prove himself, while taking Thor down a few pegs, and pounced. Idk, it’s all very interesting because there’s just so much complexity going on between the characters in this movie and a million different ways things could have all turned out.
If they can turn on him so easily now, Loki doesn’t even need to question how they–let alone the rest of Asgard (or Thor)–would react if they knew what he was. They would string him up before he could even blink.
God, poor Loki. The saddest part is that this is absolutely true, Loki doesn’t have to do anything untrustworthy to be considered untrustworthy, so if they knew what he really was, that dynamic increases tenfold. Additionally, it’s almost like it gives them validation in their mistrust of him. See? He’s a frost giant. We knew he was up to no good. We were right not to trust him. Incidentally, I kind of headcanon that Heimdall does feel this way toward Loki – that he inherently distrusts him because he’s Jotun and is just waiting for an excuse to be proven right. This is why Heimdall turns on him in the blink of an eye. Like, that escalated pretty quickly for someone supposedly so loyal to the throne. But I digress.
I JUST learned that this shirt cost them $10,000 to put into this movie… but they refused to compromise because they were like: he’s the hugest Golden Girls fan… this has to make the movie… so they paid $10,000 to use Bea Arthur’s likeness on this shirt… Ryan Reynolds, you’re doing Deadpool so right.
They traded all the guns in the final climactic showdown for Bea Arthur’s face. Worth it.
Honestly, I think “yes, you are allowed” is something a lot of fandom needs to hear right now. We had, what, a decade of “what not to do” writing advice, starting with anti-Mary-Sue campaigns and on through sporking and fanficrants and RaceFail, and now everything is this cracked parody of social justice and ~this is problematic~ is the ultimate “what not to do.” And just look at the messages we’ve taken to heart: don’t get too big for your britches, everything has to be accurate and realistic, no one the reader is supposed to sympathize with should be within shouting distance of “problematic.” We’re writing about these larger-than-life characters whose lives are full of over-the-top, implausible events, and it’s like we’re afraid that if we handwave or take narrative shortcuts or spin crazy yarns about their adventures or don’t treat Bad Shit Happening with the expected amount of solemnity, somebody’s going to call us out for not doing our due diligence.
In fact, the one “yes, you are allowed” message we’ve taken to heart is that we’re not beholden to the original canon, which is a phenomenon I… have mixed feelings about. But the point is, that message combined with the fear of fucking up, of writing “unrealistic” or “problematic” stories about monsters and aliens and superheroes, means that mundane AUs and domestic fic are the path of least resistance. And not only is fic being pushed towards the generic, the moral pressure that drives fandom SJ makes it feel almost… risky?… to stray from the fanon status quo. Breaking the mold, instead of being a sign of creativity, increasingly feels like a sign that you’re Doing It Wrong and may in fact be a bad person. I have seen people say that they want to write about post-CA:TWS Bucky but don’t, because they don’t want to slog through dealing with the “obligatory” recovery issues. Or that they’d feel guilty, like they were committing some sort of erasure, if they wrote pre-war fic without Queer Brooklyn and The Docks a bunch of romanticized-poverty porn.
For the love of God, fandom. You are allowed to come up with whatever fictional means you feel like to undo the Winter Soldier’s fictional (and almost totally unspecified) brainwashing. He’s an amnesiac cyborg assassin hopped up on a knockoff version of the super-serum that lets Steve Rogers get flung off a freeway overpass hard enough to overturn a bus and get up with barely a scratch. He starts getting memories back whenever they leave him out of cryo long enough. If you want the serum to heal his brain damage and leave him twitchy, angry, and guilt-ridden, but more-or-less compos mentis, so that he can go face down his demons without spending months on Steve’s couch eating soup and relearning how to be a human? YOU CAN. YOU ARE ALLOWED. THAT IS A STORY YOU ARE ALLOWED TO TELL. The “it was the super-healing” handwaving already puts you about fifteen realism steps ahead of the comics, where Steve used a magic monkey’s paw ex machina to bring back Bucky’s memories with the power of his love. And then a bunch of stuff happened and Bucky wrestled a bear in a Siberian gulag, okay, and this is the level of Srs Bsns we’re starting from.
You can do whatever the fuck you want. If you want to dwell lovingly on all the interpersonal issues and mental scarring that resulted from that time aliens made them do it because they got fake married in space, go for it. But do not pull out the DSM and start checking off PTSD symptoms out of a sense of duty if what you actually want to write is banter, UST, sarcasm about absurd situations, reckless displays of loyalty, and porn where they realize the depth and true nature of their feeeeeelings about each other. Both of those things are okay things to want.
tl;dr Internal story logic > realism. Write whatever ridiculous tropey or out-there shit you want, and use exactly as much judiciously-applied realism as you need to sell the story.
Please read the whole damn thing, because I feel like this is super important for everyone to hear.
Fandom is a meme, and it has its fads, mostly borne of emulation. Before the advent of SJ, there was a time where there was a “realistic sex” diktat, and there were posts going around with instructions like “use condoms, water-based lube and nothing else, cleaning up after sex with a damp towel is The Most Important” and other stuff about “realistic” sex practices that should be used in fanfiction as well. (And – it’s fine, you know, if people who don’t know anything about sex want information and want to give a realistic vibe to their fics, but if you want to bypass that entirely, Fuck That Shit, who cares)
So anyway around that time I wrote this threesome fic in the Sherlock fandom and I remember someone reblogging it and commenting “it’s a great fic and the sex is pretty realistic, except they don’t clean up with damp towels at the end” and I was like “what the fuck is wrong with you what is this damp towel business and how on earth is it a bad thing that I haven’t added it in my fic” and then I remembered all the fics that I had read at that time which had dutifully incorporated The Damp Towel™ and I realised that it was merely the fashion of the times. And after that Omegaverse became all the rage so no one gave a shit about damp towels anymore
Like, I guess it’s always a cycle, you get a certain type of fic everywhere, then someone tries something a bit different (like realistic sex at a moment where unrealistic sex abounds) and then all the cool kids want to do it as well, and then it becomes The Law, and then people get fed up and go 180° at the other end of the spectrum
Right now I’m kind of bored because recently a majority of the fics that I read are very prim and proper, with disclaimers that are kilometers-long if the fics ever venture into something even remotely shady morally speaking, and I have a marked preference for fics that explore stuff that’s not Healthy or Sane or even Consensual, because to me fandom and fanfics are this big laboratory that really should allow you to delve into the unconventional and the morally grey (oh, the Golden Age of the Sherlock fandom… the amazing fics I read back then…)(not necessarily all the time, though. I mean exploration and pushing the boundaries of what is ethically acceptable or not are definitely cool, and then sometimes you want all the fluff and the safe, sane and consensual. I’m just saying, a little bit of everything is good)
So I hope that the dam will crack soon, as it always does, and I’m interested to see what weirdo monster will come out of it
(1/7) Um, no, we never ever ever believed in the validity of multiple Gods as an aspect of our religion, though paganism was definitely a problem for us in biblical times. There are multiple stories of god breaking idols, etc, but that’s intended to demonstrate that they were just “ivory and wood, silver and marble”, “eyes that do not see, lips that do not speak, and ears that do not hear”. This whole thing is seriously misguided, I’m sorry. Taika seems to have followed
(2/7) A charachterization closer to that described in the eddas than in the comics, but that’s probably due to him just going ahead and reading the eddas. They aren’t all that hard to get a hold of.
(3/7) I know very little about Islam, but while in Judaism god is described as jealous, it’s never “of other Gods”, it’s more like possessive. According to Judaism, there are no other Gods, and large factions of Judaism don’t believe in any non-god supernatural forces whatsoever. Christianity is mostly only considered monothiest by Christians, and while some Jewish sages say that it is, plenty say that it’s polythiesm, especially Catholicism and any involving the Trinity or
(4/7) Saints. We aren’t even allowed to pray in a church- aren’t even really supposed to go in them, though many people are lax about that. Mosques, on the other hand, we’re allowed to pray in- though are not supposed to take part in Muslim services. We have hymns and descriptions and poetry and legal writings from before Jesus was even a glimmer in his parents’ eyes about the oneness, unity, and lone existence of god. That doesn’t mean that Jews back then followed the
(5/7) Mitzvot/rules any more than they/,we do now, but that’s entirely different than claiming that *as a matter if religion* we acknowledged foreign Gods.
(6/7) We say, three times a day, (plus it’s supposed to be the last thing we say before we die) “hear Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one”.
(7/7) God absolutely doesn’t want us wasting our time and efforts worshipping God’s that don’t exist, instead of following his commandments. That’s made pretty damn clear. Now, to be honest, *I believe in a “clockmaker” god, and am no longer orthodox*. But I couldn’t let this lie, as it’s very misinformed and misleading. I assume that OP simply didn’t have as much information, and was writing in good faith, but that doesn’t mean that the analysis is based in fact.
OK, first of all, @eliannaeldari – I am Jewish. Not religiously, anymore, but by heritage and upbringing. But I grew up Reform Jewish, in a family and a congregation that respected secular academic scholarship… and of course I’m in academia now, studying a period in history when secular Biblical scholarship and history was a relatively new thing that was (along with Darwin) contributing to Europe’s religious crisis.
My information – coming from the cantor at the synagogue where I grew up, as well as from interacting with scholars of Jewish history in religious studies departments – is that very early Judaism embraced monolatry, the worship of only one god, rather than monotheism, the belief in the existence of only one god. I was under the impression that that was the scholarly consensus. The Jewish Virtual Library concurs; the Wikipedia article on monolatry cites a number of scholars who defend this thesis; My Jewish Learning, a site for prospective converts, teaches the controversy (so to speak), but only cites two scholars who hold that Judaism was monotheistic from the beginning.
So no, I was not claiming that we ever “believed in the validity of multiple Gods as an aspect of our religion.” It is not clear whether by validity you meant “actual existence” or “worth and acceptable worship.” The concept of monolatry indicates that there is an important distinction. The idea is that while there are other gods, they are other people’s gods, not ours. It’s fine if those other people worship them; we are not allowed to.
Some poking around suggests that I was mistaken about the timing of the shift from monolatry to monotheism, so thanks for questioning me on that. The various sources I’ve come across all seem to put the date around the time of the Babylonian exile, so 6th century BCE (here’s another one that’s clearly written). Deuteronomy, in which the text of the Sh’ma is found, was mostly composed in the 7th century BCE, and partly during the exile. There’s some speculation that monotheism developed as a response by the educated elite to the cataclysm of exile, and some that Persian Zoroastrianism may have been a relevant influence.
It must have been a trend: Greek religion was also showing monotheistic drift by the time of Plato and Socrates (5th century BCE); many gods were still officially recognized, but Zeus was definitely expanding in importance and starting to take on those omni- characteristics that predominate in philosophical monotheism. I was aware that Greek philosophy influenced the early development of Christian theology, and I had thought that was where principled monotheism had come from; it looks like monotheism was an earlier development, and it was more philosophical theology – issues like the problem of evil, which may or may not have originated with Epicurus – that came from the Greeks. And that might have entered Judaism directly, without being mediated by Christianity.
I don’t want to get into the issue of whether Christianity is “really” monotheistic with the trinity and the saints and all that. Syncretism, appealing to local pagans, whatever. The moral landscape of Christianity is distinctively monotheistic: there is one source of goodness and power, and any conflicting forces are (a) evil and (b) ultimately subordinate. The pagan worldview recognizes multiple competing forces, and while different groups of people may have different divine allegiances, it’s not really a matter of “good” vs. “evil.” The Trojan War as related in the Iliad is a case in point: different gods took different sides, and the Trojans were still regarded as noble and heroic, even though the perspective was Greek. One thing Judaism has in common with various pagan religions (and some but not all forms of Zoroastrianism, apparently) but not with Christianity and Islam is the absence of proselytism. It is kind of unusual for a monotheistic religion to be tribal rather than universalistic… but I guess since Judaism doesn’t really have a concept of “salvation” it might not matter that much.
Addendum: I also don’t give a crap about whether Taika gave a more accurate representation of the Norse gods. That wasn’t, as I understood it, the goal of the MCU Thor movies. I doubt very much that he’s read the Eddas but the writers of “Thor 1” and “The Avengers” hadn’t. (Markus & McFeely are another story.) If that’s what he was aiming for, he did the wrong assignment. But I also doubt very much that he had any such aim in mind.
(1/7) Um, no, we never ever ever believed in the validity of multiple Gods as an aspect of our religion, though paganism was definitely a problem for us in biblical times. There are multiple stories of god breaking idols, etc, but that’s intended to demonstrate that they were just “ivory and wood, silver and marble”, “eyes that do not see, lips that do not speak, and ears that do not hear”. This whole thing is seriously misguided, I’m sorry. Taika seems to have followed
(2/7) A charachterization closer to that described in the eddas than in the comics, but that’s probably due to him just going ahead and reading the eddas. They aren’t all that hard to get a hold of.
(3/7) I know very little about Islam, but while in Judaism god is described as jealous, it’s never “of other Gods”, it’s more like possessive. According to Judaism, there are no other Gods, and large factions of Judaism don’t believe in any non-god supernatural forces whatsoever. Christianity is mostly only considered monothiest by Christians, and while some Jewish sages say that it is, plenty say that it’s polythiesm, especially Catholicism and any involving the Trinity or
(4/7) Saints. We aren’t even allowed to pray in a church- aren’t even really supposed to go in them, though many people are lax about that. Mosques, on the other hand, we’re allowed to pray in- though are not supposed to take part in Muslim services. We have hymns and descriptions and poetry and legal writings from before Jesus was even a glimmer in his parents’ eyes about the oneness, unity, and lone existence of god. That doesn’t mean that Jews back then followed the
(5/7) Mitzvot/rules any more than they/,we do now, but that’s entirely different than claiming that *as a matter if religion* we acknowledged foreign Gods.
(6/7) We say, three times a day, (plus it’s supposed to be the last thing we say before we die) “hear Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one”.
(7/7) God absolutely doesn’t want us wasting our time and efforts worshipping God’s that don’t exist, instead of following his commandments. That’s made pretty damn clear. Now, to be honest, *I believe in a “clockmaker” god, and am no longer orthodox*. But I couldn’t let this lie, as it’s very misinformed and misleading. I assume that OP simply didn’t have as much information, and was writing in good faith, but that doesn’t mean that the analysis is based in fact.
OK, first of all, @eliannaeldari – I am Jewish. Not religiously, anymore, but by heritage and upbringing. But I grew up Reform Jewish, in a family and a congregation that respected secular academic scholarship… and of course I’m in academia now, studying a period in history when secular Biblical scholarship and history was a relatively new thing that was (along with Darwin) contributing to Europe’s religious crisis.
My information – coming from the cantor at the synagogue where I grew up, as well as from interacting with scholars of Jewish history in religious studies departments – is that very early Judaism embraced monolatry, the worship of only one god, rather than monotheism, the belief in the existence of only one god. I was under the impression that that was the scholarly consensus. The Jewish Virtual Library concurs; the Wikipedia article on monolatry cites a number of scholars who defend this thesis; My Jewish Learning, a site for prospective converts, teaches the controversy (so to speak), but only cites two scholars who hold that Judaism was monotheistic from the beginning.
So no, I was not claiming that we ever “believed in the validity of multiple Gods as an aspect of our religion.” It is not clear whether by validity you meant “actual existence” or “worth and acceptable worship.” The concept of monolatry indicates that there is an important distinction. The idea is that while there are other gods, they are other people’s gods, not ours. It’s fine if those other people worship them; we are not allowed to.
Some poking around suggests that I was mistaken about the timing of the shift from monolatry to monotheism, so thanks for questioning me on that. The various sources I’ve come across all seem to put the date around the time of the Babylonian exile, so 6th century BCE (here’s another one that’s clearly written). Deuteronomy, in which the text of the Sh’ma is found, was mostly composed in the 7th century BCE, and partly during the exile. There’s some speculation that monotheism developed as a response by the educated elite to the cataclysm of exile, and some that Persian Zoroastrianism may have been a relevant influence.
It must have been a trend: Greek religion was also showing monotheistic drift by the time of Plato and Socrates (5th century BCE); many gods were still officially recognized, but Zeus was definitely expanding in importance and starting to take on those omni- characteristics that predominate in philosophical monotheism. I was aware that Greek philosophy influenced the early development of Christian theology, and I had thought that was where principled monotheism had come from; it looks like monotheism was an earlier development, and it was more philosophical theology – issues like the problem of evil, which may or may not have originated with Epicurus – that came from the Greeks. And that might have entered Judaism directly, without being mediated by Christianity.
I don’t want to get into the issue of whether Christianity is “really” monotheistic with the trinity and the saints and all that. Syncretism, appealing to local pagans, whatever. The moral landscape of Christianity is distinctively monotheistic: there is one source of goodness and power, and any conflicting forces are (a) evil and (b) ultimately subordinate. The pagan worldview recognizes multiple competing forces, and while different groups of people may have different divine allegiances, it’s not really a matter of “good” vs. “evil.” The Trojan War as related in the Iliad is a case in point: different gods took different sides, and the Trojans were still regarded as noble and heroic, even though the perspective was Greek. One thing Judaism has in common with various pagan religions (and some but not all forms of Zoroastrianism, apparently) but not with Christianity and Islam is the absence of proselytism. It is kind of unusual for a monotheistic religion to be tribal rather than universalistic… but I guess since Judaism doesn’t really have a concept of “salvation” it might not matter that much.
Loki is the Philosopher King 