seidrade:

philosopherking1887:

iamanartichoke:

lookforastar:

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: 

iamanartichoke:

Obligatory puppy dog Loki: 

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. 

Yeah, I’ve had that thought about Heimdall, too.

I’ve definitely had similar thoughts about Heimdall! After all, Loki doesn’t ever mean for him, Thor and the W4 to get to Jotunheim; he wants them to be stopped, either by the guard he notified or by Heimdall. He had two failsafes in place.

My headcanon is that Loki offers to speak to Heimdall because he already knows from years of prior experience that Heimdall doesn’t trust him— not knowing exactly why, of course— and he doesn’t try very hard to disguise their mission. He assumes Heimdall will just shut him down and not let them pass, because no way will Heimdall go against Odin’s orders and allow Thor to start a war. Odin will show up and Thor will get in trouble and look like an immature boy, which is all Loki really wants at this point.

But Heimdall shuts Loki down (obviously suspecting him of letting the frost giants into the vault, partly because he has to know who Loki really is) and his line to the group, “you’re not dressed warmly enough,” becomes hugely ironic if you assume he knows that Loki is Jotun and won’t be cold.

I imagine in letting them pass that Heimdall is hoping Loki will be outed as the original culprit, or discovered to be Jotun, which would amount to much the same thing. It’s a potential way of getting around Odin’s order not to share Loki’s heritage with anyone (an order which Heimdall does seem oddly inclined to obey) while revealing Loki as a traitor. I suppose to Heimdall, it’s a necessary risk to take.

Loki obviously figures this all out at some point— once he knows his heritage, it’s only a matter of time before he has that moment of clarity. He’s probably furious at the thought that Heimdall would risk an all-out war with Jotunheim—knowing Thor’s lack of diplomatic finesse— and potentially the deaths of their group (despite their skill, they’re vastly outnumbered in harsh enemy territory and are only saved by Odin at the last moment) just in order to confirm his suspicions about Loki, who only intended to demonstrate how unfit Thor currently was to rule, even if his methods were pretty desperate and over the top. (I can understand that Heimdall sees Loki as a liability/threat that needs to be revealed and probably has confidence in his abilities to get the group out of Jotunheim before any serious catastrophe befalls them, but obviously there are injuries sustained and many Jotnar die… there’s a reason Odin was sensible for once and didn’t want Thor to go charging in.)

I think this all adds very some necessary subtext to Loki’s later encounters with Heimdall once he’s king, especially when Loki freezes Heimdall with the Casket.

He could have possibly subdued Heimdall in other ways, but I think part of Loki wants some poetic justice. In Loki’s mind, Heimdall not only betrayed him by being privy to the secret of his origins, but also in allowing Loki to go to Jotunheim, knowing full well that Loki might be exposed— never mind that Loki manipulated Thor into going, he never meant for his bluff to be called because Heimdall had information he didn’t. (And from Laufey’s dialogue, we know that Loki had taken precautions to disguise his identity when he first arranged to show the frost giants into the Asgardian vault.)

As king, Loki wants Heimdall to know that he’s figured it all out, that he can evade his watch, that he won’t be stopped and won’t tolerate Heimdall’s resistance and treason. He wants Heimdall to know that he was defeated by a Frost Giant— one who sits upon the Asgardian throne despite Heimdall’s best efforts to prevent it. Loki doesn’t have any pride in his heritage at this point— I think he only uses the Casket to rub Heimdall’s impotence in his face. He sees Heimdall as one more huge roadblock on his quest to prove his worth. It must have been a strange sense of relief/near satisfaction for a moment before the crushing sense of what he’s doing sets in— Heimdall must be something of a father figure for him and Thor. It must hurt to see this evidence come to light that like Odin, Heimdall never trusted him, never gave him a chance. I don’t think this act of vengeance against Heimdall appeases Loki’s heartbreak or rage in the slightest. Underneath it all, he’s still scared shitless.

But he has a mission and it’s too late to turn back now. If he can show himself to be a hero worthy of his realm and his family’s love, worthy of the crown, while simultaneously showing Heimdall to be a traitor, so much the better. (Of course, we know how it actually goes. Loki often gets in way too deep, ensnared in his own traps because his chess pieces are individuals with their own motivations he doesn’t always foresee and information he isn’t always privy to… sigh.)

It’s no great surprise Loki later banishes Heimdall when acting as Fauxdin. Even if it leaves him vulnerable to say, Thor arriving without warning, or other more hostile visitors…

Anyway, a very long digression, but it ties back into the sentiment of the original posts, which are all absolutely excellent, so I figured I’d keep it in the thread…

Oh, damn. You make a lot of really good points here. Heimdall even says that the reason he’s letting them go to Jotunheim is that he wants to find out how the Frost Giants got in on his watch. Later, Heimdall accuses Loki of having let them in without any evidence beyond his ability to conceal his presence and move between realms using means other than the Bifrost. Is he justified in concluding that Loki is the *only* person with those abilities? Or did Heimdall suspect him beforehand – partly because he has a reputation for being a sneaky mischief-maker (which is probably related to his use of magic, especially as a male), and partly because Heimdall knows he’s a Jotun and Jotnar aren’t to be trusted? Did Heimdall know that Loki didn’t know his own origin? Or did he think that maybe Loki did know, which was why he might have been helping Jotunheim all along? (Boy, am I getting Dreyfus Affair feels right now.)

The more I think about it, the more of an asshole Heimdall starts to look like. And a *racist* asshole, too, which is ironic given the casting choice. I’ve seen people complain about the fact that the anti-Inhuman senator character on “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” is a South Asian woman (played by the magnificent Parminder Nagra) rather than a white person, considering that anti-Inhuman prejudice could be construed as an allegory about race. I can see where the complaint is coming from, but I think it’s misguided.

First of all, Inhumans, like mutants (for whom they are basically stand-ins in the Marvel TV Universe, because Marvel Studios/TV didn’t own the rights to the X-Men), could be an allegory about race… or about disability, or about sexual orientation or gender identity. So then the objection goes that making the bigoted character a person of color perpetuates the stereotype that non-White/European cultures are more intolerant about things like disability and sexual orientation. And yeah, I see where that’s coming from too. But there’s this overcorrecting tendency on the (Tumblr) Left to act as if it’s only White people who are “problematic” in other ways, only White men who feel entitled to women’s bodies, as if the experience of being oppressed on the basis of race automatically gives you full empathetic understanding of all other forms of oppression… when the fact is that it doesn’t, any more than being oppressed on the basis of gender or sexual orientation gives an empathetic understanding of racial oppression – something we’re reminded of every day by the news of White women calling the police on Black people (and by the barrage of Tumblr posts about White feminism, White gays, etc.). And then there’s the fact that there isn’t consistent solidarity among groups that are oppressed on the basis of race. I’ve been seeing a lot of attention called recently to the anti-Blackness within other communities of color (Asian, Middle Eastern, Latinx, etc.), which may be a case of following the same script as various European ethnic groups that were eventually, grudgingly, accepted into Whiteness (Irish, Polish, Ashkenazi Jews): distance yourself from Blackness, the permanent Other of the American racial landscape, and you have a better chance of being accepted. Even if they’re near the bottom of the ladder, everyone likes having someone lower than them that they can still look down on. And when there’s a new Other, people who had been divided by racial lines can find themselves allied; the foreignness of Russian and Chinese immigrants suddenly made the Irish look very American indeed. And that’s what the Inhumans are: a new, very strange and threatening Other that might just make the last wave of human immigrants seem to fit right in.

So what about Heimdall? Why have a Black Asgardian show racist suspicion toward a Jotun who, in Aesir form, otherwise looks White? I think that’s actually a pretty good way of demonstrating that skin color differences among the Aesir don’t matter any more than hair or eye color (within a certain range) among White people. And I’m not sure Heimdall’s attitudes are any more racist than those of Thor and his friends; he’s just in a position to display more subtle forms of racism, since (we have to assume) he knows Loki’s true origin. Why the race-blind casting for Heimdall as opposed to, say, Fandral or Sif? I dunno, they could have done both… but when you’ve got Idris Elba, give him a role with gravitas.