Tag: ssenbonzakuraa

When did taika call loki a space orphan? Or did he call both thor and loki that?

Nope, just Loki. It was a Twitter status, here.

And then there was this interview, with this interesting little excerpt:

Thor: Ragnarok’s director Taika Waititi – New Zealander of the Year, blossoming fashion icon, and man of a thousand poses – is swift to launch into a description of Loki, the unbeloved son of Asgard, as, “someone who tries so hard to embody this idea of the tortured artist, this tortured, gothy orphan.”

“Swift to launch into” this description, huh? Kind of sounds like someone with an idée fixe, a preoccupation, a grudge… probably a secondhand grudge, on behalf of one Chris Hemsworth, but one he has made charmingly his own.

How can you come from a monotheistic family and have a deep understanding of polytheism?

For background, this is in reference to (my bitching about) the post claiming that Taika Waititi has a better understanding of the gods of Norse mythology than Bad White Christian Joss Whedon, first (presumably) because he’s Maori and therefore closer to paganism (never mind that a significant proportion of the Maori population has been Christian since the 19th century), and then, according to a later commenter, because he’s Jewish (on his mother’s side) and therefore has a more down-to-earth conception of God.

This is not completely crazy, because while Judaism only recognizes one god, it has not always been strictly monotheistic in the sense in which Christianity and Islam are. According to ancient Jewish religion, the gods of other tribes/nations do exist, but we only worship one god, and there’s only one god worth worshiping, because he’s cooler than all the other gods (he created the world, so there) and can kick their asses any day. (There’s actually a story about that in First Samuel, when the Ark gets stolen and put in a Philistine temple and God comes out at night and breaks the idol of their god.) That’s why the Hebrew Bible says all that stuff about God being “a jealous god”; that wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense if God just didn’t want us wasting our time praying to gods that don’t exist. God has a personality, and it’s not always perfect; he’s jealous, he’s vengeful, he gets angry easily.

Since then, Judaism has become more properly monotheistic under the influence of Christianity in Europe and Islam under the medieval Caliphate (Maimonides, one of the most important Jewish theologians, lived in Caliphate-ruled Spain and wrote in Arabic. Sometimes empires can be cool). The God of Judaism has gotten closer to the omnipotent, omniscient, unfailingly benevolent God of philosophical monotheism, which runs you into the problem of evil… and that has definitely been a problem in Jewish history, especially recently. The main respect in which Judaism differs from Christianity (I don’t know about Islam) is that it doesn’t emphasize how sinful and unworthy human beings are compared to God. Sure, there’s some of that “what are we that You should take notice of us?” stuff in the psalms… but the fact remains that God has not only taken notice of us, but made an agreement with us on more or less equal terms; that’s what the covenant is. Paul claimed that the whole point of the covenant was to demonstrate that human beings are incapable of living up to God’s standards of goodness on their own, which is why they needed God to step in and save them (from Himself, apparently). Jews don’t buy that. Yes, it’s hard to do what God demands of us. Try anyway. When you mess up, apologize to God and to the people you’ve wronged, then try again.

I’m honestly not sure what any of that has to do with Taika Waititi’s and Joss Whedon’s portrayal of Thor and Loki, except that maybe someone raised Jewish is used to the idea of a god being an asshole and going overboard on punishing people (*cough*electrocution*cough*), which God definitely does in the Books of Moses. But rabbinic Judaism is as likely to try to justify that as Christianity is. And also I just don’t think it’s true that Whedon was trying to portray Thor as a perfect Christ figure and Loki as a completely evil Satan. European Christian culture has evolved; we have Milton’s Satan, we have Goethe’s Mephistopheles, we have flawed and human versions of Jesus. Whedon is well-read and educated; he refers to existentialist philosophy and the canon of great Western literature – including pre-Christian classical literature – in his work. If all people are seeing is a simplistic black and white Jesus vs. Satan, that’s their problem, not his.

Why is shuri suddenly the most intelligent character in mcu? Definitely most intelligent human but why most intelligent character? Did I watch the same movies as rest of them? Because I have watched every mcu movie.

Why not? Maybe Vision should be more intelligent in some respects, because he’s some cross between the magical intelligence of the Mind Stone and the advanced artificial intelligence of JARVIS, but there are also paradoxes involved in understanding your own thinking apparatus… I don’t know. Even if, e.g., Loki is more intelligent in virtue of having had a lot longer to acquire and consolidate information, he definitely wouldn’t be on hand in this situation.

How do you perceive frostmaster now? What are your headcanons?

I sort of have two ways of thinking about it which both involve the same understanding of the facts of the relationship, but differ in the attitude I take toward it. I definitely don’t think of it as a healthy, enthusiastically consensual relationship. There’s a clear power imbalance: the Grandmaster has absolute power in Sakaar and we have seen that he does not hesitate to melt people who displease him. Loki is a newcomer, and but for the Grandmaster’s favor, he could end up like Thor, a slave with an obedience disk forced to participate in gladiatorial fights to the death, or, you know, melted. Loki has exactly two things the Grandmaster wants: his entertaining company (they don’t call him Silvertongue for nothing) and his body. The relationship is fundamentally transactional: Loki is paying for his continued survival and (relative) freedom with at least his companionship (he’s at least acting as an “escort”) and very probably also with sexual favors. Loki is a “sugar baby” and the Grandmaster his “sugar daddy,” but the sugar in question is not just fancy clothes and food and drinks and a ticket into high society – it’s also his physical safety.

I am somewhat susceptible to the sugar baby/daddy kink and when I’m in that mood, I like Frostmaster as a “crack ship” – or, as some people have been (delightfully) calling it, a “trash barge.” I think the idea of it is kind of hot because Loki is Loki and Jeff Goldblum is a silver fox, and because Jeff Goldblum isn’t completely loathsome, I can imagine that Loki wasn’t completely repulsed by whatever physical intimacy was demanded of him. Nonetheless, the relationship unavoidably involves dubious or (as it was called in a philosophy talk I heard recently) flawed consent because the cost of refusal is so high as to be effectively coercive. When I think about it in those terms, it becomes a source of angst (as it is in one of my post-Ragnarok Thorki fics).