Tag: foundlingmother

foundlingmother replied to your post “Some Nietzsche quotes that express my thoughts on The Tumblr Consensus”

My favorite is when they offer no arguments for what they believe, just respond to yours with, “If you believe that, you’re wrong.” I’ve seen this a lot when I call the obedience disk a torture device. I say it’s used on slaves. I say that it’s clearly shown to be painful for Thor and Loki. I say it makes it impossible for Loki to move (and even if he wasn’t in pain, your muscles spasming for an indeterminate amount of time would be fucking horrible).

I point to the intention in the script in extreme cases. Yet still I am wrong. I am delusional. And I’m one of those people who don’t care if people want to think of it as not that bad, because I get the appeal of faith, but I get very irritated when my reasoning is dismissed outright.

Flat, un-argued-for denial – effectively, the playground whine of “nuh-uh” – is always fun, but even better is when they blow past both counterargument and contradiction and go straight for accusations and insults. These tend to come in two flavors:

1. “You’re just a stupid straight girl who’s wet for Whedon’s psychopathic bad boy Tom Hiddleston in leather and wants him to dominate you like 50 Shades of Grey.” Often comes with a side of “You’re too homophobic for a queer character you can’t fetishize through slash,” ignoring the facts that a) Ragnarok never explicitly confirms that Loki is queer; b) the gay relationship that it strongly implies is a fucked-up exploitative sugar daddy arrangement with a sadistic, casually murderous slavemaster; and c) at the same time that it plays up Loki’s gay coding, it also presents him as shallow, narcissistic, stupid, and ineffectual. Real great queer representation, that. Not to mention that the “fetishizing through slash” has, if anything, ramped up post-Ragnarok (both Thorki and Frostmaster).

2. “You must just be a racist who hates that people of color are succeeding if you don’t worship Taika Waititi and everything he says, does, and makes.” There’s really no good way to rebut this one, because once you’ve been accused of racism on Tumblr there’s always a presumption of guilt. You say you loved Black Panther? Well, you must be racist against Maori/Polynesian/indigenous people. You really liked Moana? That’s like saying “Some of my best friends are [fill in the racial group].” You liked What We Do in the Shadows but thought that irreverent tone and the disrespect for the main characters was inappropriate for a Thor movie? You’re just mad because a POC wasn’t showing proper respect for white male characters and you can’t stand that characters of color (Valkyrie and Heimdall) were more awesome than the white characters. You liked Valkyrie and Heimdall in Ragnarok but that’s not enough to outweigh the outrageous retcon of Thor and Loki, the main characters you’ve been invested in for 3-4 movies? Why do you think white characters are so much more important than characters of color?

foundlingmother replied to your post “@foundlingmother replied to your post “Ugh, I really don’t like it…”

Now I’ve got this vague idea of Loki and Thor making a plan to double-cross Thanos. Loki approaching Thanos alone, apparently defeated and without the Space Stone, but offering the location of the Reality Stone. Thanos doesn’t buy it, and has some means to threaten Thor’s life. Thor thinks that Loki’s fully planning to double-cross. Loki can’t follow through on their plan because Thanos has a means to kill Thor.

That would also be a cool way to showcase Loki’s on-the-fly planning abilities and test the trust between him and Thor.

@foundlingmother replied to your post “@foundlingmother replied to your post “Ugh, I really don’t like it…”

I can see that angle working, absolutely, and it’s a shame you’re not planning to fic it. However, I can’t imagine the higher ups at Marvel would have ever allowed one of the Avengers to be benched to give Loki more screentime. Maybe if Thanos used some other means to threaten Thor’s life? I don’t know.

One of the Avengers mainstream audience gush over for their fighting, that is. Obviously they didn’t mind benching Hawkeye, but the consensus among the fanbase they’re clearly pandering to is that he’s boring.

It’s not that I wouldn’t want to fic it if I could; I just don’t really know how to write plot-heavy stuff like that. Intense dialogue and introspection are what I know how to do. And yeah, maybe I should work on getting out of my comfort zone… but fanfiction really is just a hobby for me; I don’t see myself branching out into commercial screenwriting.

Oh, fair point about benching Thor. That’s the kind of thing that would work way better for an arc in a TV show (or comics?) than the giant film culmination of a series of other giant films. I was thinking too much about character and not enough about visuals. I mean, the point wouldn’t have been to give Loki more screentime; it would have been to give a satisfying payoff to the connection with Thanos that was set up in the first Avengers and the arc of his character and relationship with Thor. That is the kind of thing I think Whedon would have cared about… but he also thinks about cool fight scene tableaux. Um… I guess the ruse would have to end and/or Thor would have to lead a prison break before the final battle of the movie so that he could be involved. It’s probably OK if he sits out some of the intermediate fights. Whedon already did that in AOU: Thor wasn’t involved in the Tony vs. Hulk fight in Johannesburg or the trip to South Korea to rescue Helen Cho and retrieve the vibranium body.

@foundlingmother replied to your post

“Ugh, I really don’t like it when people reblog stuff about Loki’s…”

Yeah, Thor 100% has the capacity to understand Loki’s grievances, he just didn’t get a chance to because he wasn’t even in Ragnarok, Thor* was. Heimdall might not be a saint, but I think it’s wrong to assume he saw Loki with Thanos. It seems unlikely he would have mentioned none of that. As for Loki pulling a double-cross… while I get the appeal of this, it seems like such an unrealistic culmination of Loki’s arc even ignoring Ragnarok.

I’m not sure I think it would have been Whedon’s angle.

I mean, I know that Thanos behaves kind of stupid in GotG, but I feel like having him accept Loki as his ally with all that happens… would have undermined him as a villain.

Right… I wasn’t completely on board with all of @juliabohemian‘s analysis on my other post. She and I seem to fundamentally disagree about Thor’s moral character and disposition toward Loki as shown in previous films: I think the character called “Thor” in Ragnarok is a radical departure from Thor as we’ve seen him in previous movies, which is why I refer to him as Thor*; she, and many other non-Thorki-shipping Loki fans, think that Ragnarok amplifies Thor’s previous tendencies toward self-absorption and insensitivity, but is not completely discontinuous with the character. I don’t see us coming to full agreement on that issue anytime soon, and that’s fine.

As to the issue of the double-cross being “an unrealistic culmination of Loki’s arc”… I actually disagree with you there. If you just mean it would have been unrealistic for Thanos to accept Loki as his ally, I do see where you’re coming from there, but there are ways around it. The idea of having Thanos take Thor as a hostage is one way. That way Thanos wouldn’t have to trust Loki; he would just have to trust Loki’s unwillingness to allow harm to come to Thor, which given what Thanos knows about him he absolutely would and should. I think that would appeal to Thanos for a couple of reasons:

(1) Good old-fashioned sadism. Whedon’s Thanos clearly wasn’t into any of that pseudo-benevolent Malthusian bullshit; the reference to “courting death” in the Avengers tag scene indicated that Whedon was picturing a Thanos obsessed with Lady Death like he is in the comics. No attempt would have been made to make that Thanos sympathetic. That Thanos is a creepy fucker who would have gotten a kick out of torturing Thor physically (just a little) and torturing Loki psychologically with the knowledge that a step out of line would mean pain and/or permanent damage to Thor. Ooh, maybe he would have cut off a finger or a toe when Loki made a decision to undermine Thanos that he was just barely able to pass off as an incompetent fuck-up. And Loki would have known that… and wouldn’t have hesitated to trade his own pain, but when it’s Thor’s it’s so much worse. (Should I be worried about myself, coming up with this shit?)

(2) It would mean that Loki wasn’t a completely wasted investment. If Thanos were a good economist (which clearly he isn’t…), he wouldn’t buy into the sunk costs fallacy, and he’d be perfectly happy cutting his losses and cutting Loki loose… but I think he’s into narrative neatness (OK, this is just “Abyss” Thanos now, never mind what Whedon would have done) and he would like the idea of making Loki useful after all. Plus, there must have been a reason he thought it was a good idea to trust Loki with the Tesseract retrieval mission – and the Mind Stone! – in the first place; he must think he’s good at some stuff.

If by “unrealistic culmination of Loki’s arc,” you mean it wouldn’t be a realistic place for Loki’s character progression to go, then I definitely disagree. Part of what was so objectionable about Thor*’s treatment of Loki in Ragnarok was that he was effectively demanding that Loki become a different person as a condition of maintaining a relationship with Thor* (classic sign of an abusive relationship, btw). Of course, that demand was also based on the faulty premise, assumed by Ragnarok but by none of the previous films, that Loki’s basic nature or “essence” was the “god of mischief” who betrays people out of hedonistic self-interest or just because he thinks it’s fun. I mean, it’s not unreasonable for Thor to demand that Loki stop betraying him, but when you’re working on the assumption that that’s what Loki has been doing their whole lives, instead of just for the past 6 really shitty years out of 1000+, and that it’s just in his nature to do that, then you’ve really gotta wonder why Thor put up with it for as long as he did… and also you don’t give an abusive “change fundamentally or I’m leaving” ultimatum; you just fucking leave.

One of the best parts of TDW, which totally got me the first time I watched it, was when Loki makes a show of betraying Thor to trick Malekith into drawing the Aether from Jane. That was absolutely brilliant because it was Thor and Loki, together, taking advantage of some of Loki’s most distinctive features – illusion magic, acting ability, and a reputation for treachery – to achieve a good aim they shared. Having Loki pull a long con on Thanos would be that gambit writ large. And ideally, this time – in order for it to represent a progression from the incident in TDW rather than just a replay – Thor would not be on on the plan… but he would indicate, perhaps while conversing in a dungeon with one of Thanos’s other unfortunate prisoners, that he believes Loki is still on his side and is planning to double-cross Thanos in the end. He doesn’t know; he harbors some doubts; but he believes. That would represent character growth for both Thor and Loki: Thor is forced to trust Loki for a long period of uncertainty; and Loki is, on some level, trusting Thor to trust him. That, too, would be a source of anguish for Loki – wondering whether Thor thinks that Loki has betrayed him again, more grievously than ever – but he hopes, and maybe even believes (William James will-to-believe style, because it helps), that Thor believes Loki is doing the right thing, in his indirect, strategic way.

@fuckyeahrichardiii, @illwynd, @incredifishface, @seidrade, I’m bringing y’all in on my harebrained IW do-over ideas because I’m curious to know what you think. (I’m never writing this as a fic, because I’m not that good at plot details, but just the outline.)

foundlingmother replied to your post “foundlingmother: philosopherking1887: iamanartichoke: Friendly…”

@philosopherking1887​ Well, I do say “participated in”, and that’s supposed to point to Thor’s actions on Jotunheim. That’s a much bigger part for me than the fact that Thor’s enriched by all the stolen gold. It’s those actions I want acknowledged more than anything. I don’t think it’s good to wallow in the crimes of the past, but I think it’s good to acknowledge them, which people aggressively avoid doing, insisting they possess no privilege.

In fact, I’m kind of confused why you got what you did from my post… do you mind telling me? I think I’m pretty clear about being critical of the cover up of past crimes, and never say anything about redistribution or the personal responsibility of those who benefit beyond the fact that we should be critical of those who think uncritically and deny that history did bias the results in a certain direction.

That doesn’t assume that we must forever lash ourselves to these crimes we are unwittingly the benefactors of, or set things right by giving away the shirts on our backs, only that the first step towards any sort of compensation, forward-thinking or otherwise, must be acknowledgement of the crimes of our ancestors.

I suppose my actual opinion, summarized, is that white people alive today need to accept responsibility, not admit guilt, for the crimes of our ancestors and work towards a better future not by undoing the crime (as you say, this is impossible), but through that forward-thinking compensation. So I’m not sure we disagree in principle, though our particular ideas of what forward-thinking compensation looks like might differ.

I thought I should get this discussion off poor @iamanartichoke‘s post because it was getting pretty long (sorry for spamming!). And it’s about to get longer.

@foundlingmother there were a couple things in your original comment that made me think you were ascribing guilt to the descendants of conquerors simply in virtue of their descent and inheritance, not in virtue of their refusal to acknowledge it or attempt to make amends. First: “I don’t think Thor’s at Hela or Odin’s level whatsoever, but he’s the crown prince of an imperial power. He did benefit from and participate (unknowingly) in this imperialism.” When you said “participate (unknowingly),” it wasn’t clear that you meant Thor’s invasion of Jotunheim. That could certainly be construed as unknowing participation if he didn’t think of ‘keeping the Jotuns down’ (to paraphrase Randy Newman) as a perpetuation of oppression, but just a strategic necessity, given their (presumed) warlike nature. The “unknowingly” made me think you were talking about just the wealth and power he inherited, rather than something he did knowingly and voluntarily… but given your clarification, I can see that it could mean something he did without knowing that it fell under a certain description. (Sorry if that came out jargony; I may have lost the ability to think in non-philosophers’ terms.)

The other thing that pointed me toward that reading was this: “Black Panther avoids insulting white viewers to the extent it would be appropriate to do so. … The wrongdoings of white people exist on the periphery, but they are not the focus. If Ragnarok’s critique weren’t so muddled, it would have been a critique of white imperialists. It would have been a condemnation of erasing history and the uncritical thinking that allows people who benefit to rationalize their relative good fortune.” It seemed that you were collapsing the categories of “imperialist” and “descendant who benefits.” Of course, the distinction isn’t all that clean when imperialism survives in the form of globalized capitalism… but there are white people in the global north whose primary fault is ignorance of the conditions that allow them to enjoy their cheap consumer goods, and who may or may not be in a position to do anything about it directly, so it doesn’t quite seem accurate to call them “imperialists.” As to Black Panther, I think it was pretty clear about the wrongdoings of white people: they are the necessary background condition of the dilemma that T’Challa and Wakanda find themselves in. The issue of what white people should do to correct the harms of past imperialism and continuing neo-imperialism is incredibly complicated, and it wasn’t the what-if question that Black Panther was interested in exploring as a piece of speculative fiction.

Perhaps I was being uncharitable in my reading of your comment… I do come into the issue with some annoyance at a certain strain of rhetoric on the Left that dwells ad nauseam on white guilt. They often make it sound as if they think white people are inherently morally worse than people of color – which is a particular instance of the general principle that members of oppressed groups are inherently morally better than members of privileged groups, but one that appears to trump all other instances of the principle. There often seems to be a mythic narrative at play in the background according to which oppression was invented by white people (i.e., Europeans) in the 15th century, and before that everything was hunky dory. There also seems to be the implicit assumption that the reason non-white people didn’t end up conquering the rest of the world was out of some sort of morally virtuous restraint… which ignores the amount of brutal conquering that did go on in every part of the world long before the modern era. So I can see why some white people end up feeling like the Left is blaming them for being alive, and why they end up feeling defensive. That isn’t enough to put me off my commitment to realizing racial equality, and it doesn’t justify the defensive white people in ceasing to be allies, but I can also see where it’s coming from. But of course that’s just my “white fragility,” isn’t it…? Oy.

Oh, and then there were the white people on Facebook saying they thought Killmonger was right. And I’m like… so you’re saying you’re in favor of arming all the non-white people with incredibly advanced weapons and just letting them have at it? Don’t get me wrong, I think they have some very real grievances against white people in general. But I also don’t believe in the inherent goodness of the oppressed, and I don’t believe that arming them indiscriminately would result in the overthrow of all unjust systems, the institution of just ones, and the punishment of those responsible for oppression in proportion to their level of responsibility. Also, most of the time I don’t want to die violently, and I suspect my white friends on Facebook don’t either, so I’m pretty sure all the “Killmonger was right” stuff was just social justice posturing/point-scoring. And no, my saying that doesn’t mean that I think brown people are evil and violent; it means I think they’re people (which goes to your point, @musclesandhammering). Arming oppressed white people doesn’t usually end well, either; look at the French Revolution. Achieving justice needs to involve cooperation between the (erstwhile) oppressors and oppressed, with the latter presenting their grievances and the former voluntarily divesting themselves of their undue advantages, not just turning over all power to the injured party and letting them wreak revenge.

… and now I’m gonna get a bunch of hate and “No wonder you didn’t like Ragnarok, you’re a racist colonizer.” Oh well.

foundlingmother
replied to your post “Still unfollowing people who post/reblog ill-informed kneejerk Whedon…”

In response to my comment: “on later thought, it occurs to me that Waititi’s mental ableism is more likely meant to be hurtful than Whedon’s sexism.”

I suppose if we believe he thinks mentally ill people are whiny and need a serving of tough love. But I kind of think he just doesn’t see Loki as mentally ill. There are plenty of people on this site who believe Loki’s suicide attempt was just him escaping punishment, that everything he’s ever said that’s given him depth (just wanting to be Thor’s equal) was a lie, etc. That he’s just a selfish trickster. I might be being to generous, but I kind of thought TW was (½)

(2/2) too mentally healthy to recognize Loki’s mental health problems, and too focused on the class privilege of both Thor and Loki to recognize they can have legit struggles that others identify with. I know a lot of people in real life who really honestly believe that wealthy people don’t have the right to be upset about anything in their life.

I’m going to guess the main reason some people don’t believe Loki’s suicide attempt was real is because of the bit in Ragnarok where Loki is telling the story at the Sakaarian cocktail party and says “at that moment I let go” and everyone laughs. Because that only makes sense if it’s a “Look how clever I am, I escaped Thor and Odin’s efforts to hold me to account.” If those people had actually watched Thor 1, and seen the empty look on Loki’s tearful face – or heard Kenneth Branagh’s commentary, saying “This is the moment when the thin steel rod holding his mind together just snaps” – they would not be saying that.

People who take Ragnarok’s claims to supersede previous canon are fake fans. That’s right, I said it. I’m not saying people who came in late, or even people who saw Ragnarok first, are fake fans; I didn’t get into the MCU until after AOU came out in 2015 (although I *did* watch everything in the correct order; I wasn’t raised by wolves). But if you think what comes later is somehow more valid – or that one later movie that goes against 3 (for Loki) or 4 (for Thor) movies’ worth of previous narrative and character-building can erase all of them – that just makes no damn sense.(*) People who are fans of Thor and Loki as they appear in TR – or as I prefer to call them, Thor* and Loki* (I use that philosophical convention to indicate false identity because Shmor and Shmoki just sound silly) – are not fans of the same characters as those of us who love them because of their appearances in previous movies, and it is beyond absurd for these latecomers to say that the rest of us are mistaken about who Thor and Loki really are, or that the “correct” characterization was only reached in the 4th or 5th movie in which they appeared. People who think that they are the same characters are just confused (somewhat understandably, but still).

As for TW: the inability to recognize mental illness as mental illness when it should be really fucking obvious comes very close to malicious ableism. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were skeptical of the existence of mental illness, and he thinks the whole thing is just an excuse for rich white people to be weak and lazy. Of course, mental illness is at least as prevalent among poor people and/or people of color… but it can be more easily attributed to adverse circumstances. TW is probably one of those people (like the people you know) who thinks that treating “mental illness” in poor people is a bourgeois effort to privatize social problems and keep the proletariat sedated in order to stave off revolution. (Not that I think TW is really a Marxist… but you get the idea.)

I’ve said this before, but it is a really bizarre and very recent attitude that only poor, underprivileged people have real and interesting problems. This claim isn’t even borne out in people’s consumption behavior: everyone is still fascinated by the lives of the rich and famous. Poor people’s struggles to make ends meet are entirely too common, and the people who actually experience that seem to find it boring to watch… though the bleeding-hearted rich might be interested in it as a kind of pity porn. From Homer to Sophocles to Shakespeare to superhero comics to tabloids, people want to hear about the high political struggles, epic battles, and screwed-up love lives of gods, heroes, and kings. They want the larger than life, but they also want to perceive the common humanity that the great and mighty share with everyone else – and yes, that includes the Greek and Norse gods, who were deliberately, profoundly human. Novels and TV have brought the travails of the middle class and sometimes the poor into the orbit of popular literature, but it’s still more often people’s love lives than their struggles against oppression… and shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Empire indicate that it’s still the present-day warrior classes, royalty, and aristocracy that fascinate. Social justice evangelists can insist that people shouldn’t care about these things, but they can’t truly claim that no one does care.

(*) A caveat: I do accept the recent X-Men movies’ cutting The Last Stand (2006) out of the canon because the general consensus is that it’s not up to the quality standard of its predecessors, and the writer, Simon Kinberg, has continued to write and produce the more recent movies. I’ll take a writer’s rejection of his own past work much more seriously than a new writer/director’s rejection of a bunch of other people’s work.

“The Abyss Gazes Also” or “First Things” or “To Understand All”

Thanks! The first two I get, but “To Understand All” surprises me, since it’s so short and was kind of dashed off. The main thing it has going for it is recency… maybe my writing has been getting better since I took up ficcing again?

(This was in response to a “tell me your favorite fic of mine” ask meme, in case anyone else wants to play.)

foundlingmother replied to your post “Still unfollowing people who post/reblog ill-informed kneejerk Whedon…”

It reminds me how desensitized people are to ableism in films and every day life. Ragnarok has a lot of ableism. I don’t think it’s meant to be hurtful, but then neither is any sexism in the Avengers movies. It’s just two different filmmakers with two different failings in social justice/morality. But Whedon gets rampant hate, while TW gets called a literal god. Tumblr culture is fucking scary…

Let’s not forget the homophobia in Thor: Ragnarok that has somehow been converted, by some strange Tumblrian alchemy, to groundbreakingly wonderful LGBT representation.

For the OTP Questions: Thorki (obviously) 1, 6, and 9, please?

1) Who rocks the Ferris Wheel seat and who flips out and begs them to stop?


You know, I could go both ways on this one. If you go with a more myth-based characterization of Loki, he’d be the one to rock the seat to fuck with Thor, but I sort of got the sense from that flying/bickering scene in TDW that MCU Loki is a backseat driver and a bit of a fussbudget, while Thor is the daredevil.

6) Who takes photos of the other while they sleep?

Unfortunately, I read your answer first and it probably influenced mine… so yeah, I agree with you that Loki is the one who would take pictures of Thor drooling or having drawn a dick on his face. I think I’ve seen more AUs where Loki is a photographer… I guess people tend to think that’s more his style? If Thor is an artist it’s usually sculpture, since that involves hammers. So yeah, probably Loki. But I could also see Thor wanting to save the image of Loki looking peaceful, for once. He would never share it, though.

9) Who wakes the other up in the middle of the night to tell them a cool dream they had? Who has the most nightmares, and who sings them back to sleep after?
Well, we’ve seen Thor having prophetic dreams in the MCU – a talent he probably inherited from his mother. So I imagine that when he has an especially weird or symbolic-seeming dream, he wakes Loki up to ask what it might mean. Usually, Loki is grumpy as fuck at being woken up and tells Thor it just means he ate too much cheese.

Of course Loki is the one who has the most nightmares after the various things that happen to him in the movies (abruptly finding out his parentage, falling into the Void, Thanos, being in solitary confinement for a year, getting run through and very nearly dying… I’m just gonna ignore Infinity War for now). But I imagine that he also had more nightmares beforehand because he was never mentally healthy, and the experience of having been abandoned as a child might have left all kinds of psychological scarring even though he was too young to remember it. But I don’t really see Thor *singing* him back to sleep, because I don’t think Thor has a good singing voice (as far as I know, Chris Hemsworth can’t sing). Maybe Thor tried singing Loki back to sleep a few times and eventually Loki just told him his voice might produce more nightmares. So maybe Thor soothes him back to sleep with boring war stories. Or sex, that probably tires him out properly.

Here’s the list of Important OTP Questions if anyone else wants to play…