Tag: thor fandom

latent-thoughts:

foundlingmother:

*deep breath* 

The second most irritating thing a person can say in regards to Loki is that that he faked his sacrifice in TDW. Bonus points if they’re a fan of Ragnarok, which goes out of its way to point out how Loki’s illusions are not solid. THEY ARE NOT SOLID. They become distorted when touched. So how the fuck did Loki fake being stabbed? And when he nearly got sucked into a black hole grenade saving Jane, was that part of his master plan to take the throne of Asgard, too? What about offering said throne to Thor? Ugh! 

The most irritating thing a person can say in regards to Loki is that he faked his death/suicide in Thor. I have no words for these people. They render me speechless.

Also coming in at runner’s up position: Stating “I love Loki, I really do, buuuuuut….” before going into how they think that Loki deserved every bad thing that happened to him, and also, mentioning many other things about Loki’s character which are clearly not based in MCU canon. 

In short, justifying their asinine views w.r.t. Loki under the garb of being a Loki fan.

“I love Loki, I really do, but he’s a complete piece of garbage with no redeeming personal qualities whatsoever who deserves no sympathy for anything.”

Yeah, most people don’t call that “loving” a character.

(P.S. if you think Loki is a completely unsympathetic piece of garbage and Thor is an angel who’s never done anything wrong, please get off my ship. Go ship Thor/Bruce or something equally obnoxious.)

foundlingmother:

*deep breath* 

The second most irritating thing a person can say in regards to Loki is that that he faked his sacrifice in TDW. Bonus points if they’re a fan of Ragnarok, which goes out of its way to point out how Loki’s illusions are not solid. THEY ARE NOT SOLID. They become distorted when touched. So how the fuck did Loki fake being stabbed? And when he nearly got sucked into a black hole grenade saving Jane, was that part of his master plan to take the throne of Asgard, too? What about offering said throne to Thor? Ugh! 

The most irritating thing a person can say in regards to Loki is that he faked his death/suicide in Thor. I have no words for these people. They render me speechless.

#there are some opinions i cannot stand#because they make no sense#and create a divide between good and evil loki#when really there isn’t one#loki is always just loki#he can have sacrificed himself for thor and taken advantage when death didn’t stick#because that’s who loki is#simultaneously loving and devoted and cunning and opportunist#and again i have no words for those who think falling into the void was faking death#just no (original tags)

Logic? Consistency? Attention to the content of previous canon? What are those?

Moral complexity? A person who loves the hero but doesn’t always do exactly what he wants? What is that?

I’ve been told that there were people who claimed even before Ragnarok came out that Loki threw himself into the black hole at the end of Thor to escape being held accountable for his actions. If there are such people, I suspect that they started advocating this view as part of the backlash against the “Loki apologists,” so called, of “Loki’s Resistance,” who at the extreme end claim that Loki does not deserve blame for anything he has done, and instead lay all the blame on Odin’s terrible parenting, Thor’s bullying and alleged abuse, and Thanos’s brainwashing and/or full-on mind control. The reaction of Thor’s defenders has been to insist that Loki deserves unmitigated blame for everything and to undercut anything that appears to make Loki deserve our sympathy – including his suicide attempt. You might *think* Loki suffers from severe mental illness and profound self-loathing, but no: he was planning genocide even before he learned that he was Jotun (I have seen people claim this), and what looks like a suicide attempt was just slithering out of punishment.

Ragnarok has exacerbated and given canon legitimization to this tendency by trivializing the issues of Loki’s heritage and his attempted suicide. At a party on Sakaar, Loki tells a story that ends with him hanging over a rift in space, and “at that moment I let go.” Everyone laughs, including him. People have offered all kinds of explanations for why this isn’t as unbelievably insensitive as it seems: we all make light of our trauma to keep it from overwhelming us, of course Loki would do the same; or maybe he’s gone through a course of therapy through theater and has recovered from all his issues and moved on. But the other obvious explanation for why Loki might be laughing about letting himself fall is that it was never a suicide attempt; it was just him being his incorrigible trickster self, cleverly faking his death to get away with mass murder.

foundlingmother:

Thor loves Loki. A lot.

Thor has done things to hurt Loki. He’s put Loki in his place. He’s failed to condemn Odin. He’s refused to mourn over their mother. He didn’t visit Loki when he was imprisoned. He didn’t plead for Loki after the events of Avengers. The list goes on.

In every instance, he had a reason for how he behaved. He put Loki in his place because Thor was insecure, too. He was the child with all the expectations. He also learned that behavior from Odin, who we see put Loki and Thor in their places over the course of the movies. He didn’t mourn Frigga with Loki, or visit Loki, or plead on Loki’s behalf because he was justifiably upset about what Loki had done on Midgard. Because whatever Loki had become wasn’t really his brother, so he avoided the pain this… impostor would inflict. 

Understandable. Still wrong. Still hurtful. Still convinces Loki that Thor doesn’t care. That no one cares after Frigga passes.

Loki loves Thor. A lot.

Loki has done things to hurt Thor. Fuck, he killed Thor once! Enough said (and yet you could say so much more).

In every instance, he had a reason for how he behaved. Even when he killed Thor, it was part of a serious breakdown (and perhaps not even well thought out). And there’s motivations for everything else Loki does, too (that’s why he’s an excellent villain–they’ve made a character you feel sympathy for, even while you must condemn his actions).

Understandable. Still wrong. Still hurtful. Still convinces Thor that Loki’s just bad. That he’s lost his brother (sometimes literally in the deceased sort of way).

My point is that it’s both true that they love each other, and true that they’ve both got a lot to apologize for and work through. And if they’re going to do that, it’s going to have to be a process that begins with them both acknowledging that neither is without motivations or lack love for the other.

Honestly, I think a big part of their problem is thinking the other cares less, or not at all. Loki’s whole “I don’t have the Tesseract” bit where he’s certain Thor’s only there for that (when obviously he’s their for Loki). Thor’s statement to Frigga that Loki’s not the boy she knew, and therefore not the brother Thor knew, either. His confusion over Loki attacking him at the end of Thor and denying their brotherhood. Jeez, they just keep feeding this assumption in one another!!!

I wish there were more people in the fandom who were willing to point out BOTH characters’ flaws and misdeeds at the same time, in the same posts. Though come to think of it… even when people do add nuance to their analyses, the stans for one character or the other will read any criticism or acknowledgment of flaws as a heinous attack and come after the person trying to admit nuance, assuming that they must be a stan for Character X and therefore hate Character Y.

I know that when talking amongst ourselves, people who are Loki fans in the first instance (I don’t consider myself a “stan” for anyone) have absolutely no problem admitting Loki’s faults. @imaginetrilobites tells me the same is true of primarily-Thor fans when they talk among themselves (I don’t know, they mostly don’t talk to me). But somehow when conversation happens between the two communities, each feels the need to present their own favorite as immaculate and the other character as a horrible person, solely responsible for all of the problems in their relationship – and this happens even when some people on both sides are Thor/Loki shippers. Like, WTF? Why would you ship your favorite character with someone you think is a horrible person?

There are probably some outlying members of both fandoms who really, truly believe their fave is completely blameless in everything: Loki stans who insist that Thor’s bullying and Odin’s bad parenting excuse everything he does in Thor 1, and that Thanos literally brainwashed him instead of just manipulating and/or torturing him; Thor stans who think that Thor was already perfect even in the first Thor movie and Odin banished him not because he had done anything wrong or needed to learn humility, but only because Thor had disobeyed him personally. But I’ve had a few discussions across party lines that lead me to believe that we don’t disagree as much as the vitriolic “debates” make it look like.

Admitting that your favorite did something wrong is not admitting defeat. If we’re good consumers of media, we love characters because they’re complicated and imperfect; because their virtues and their flaws are interestingly entangled; because they do bad things for what might, from a certain perspective, look like good reasons. Do your fellow fans and yourselves the courtesy of acknowledging the ways in which that’s true.

foundlingmother:

iamanartichoke:

lokiloveforever:

shaylogic:

Hey can we start some discourse on how there’s 2 halves of the loki fandom:

1. straight girls that wanna fuck loki

2. queer/mentally ill people that relate to loki

and how the first group tends to like Avengers 2012 Loki the most and prize his predatoriness and exotify his jotun heritage and don’t want him to heal as a person but want to keep him as a fucked up serial killer because that’s “hot”

and the second group was really excited when Ragnarok finally brought out the queerness that’s been so classic to the myths and comics that we’ve all been waiting for, plus thor got the character boost he needed and the whole thing was fun and the bros finally reconciled and loki healed and grew as a slightly more emotionally stable person

and then the first group of fans got pissy about this and were saying how marvel fucked up loki’s character and he should be going around wacking people with his staff and being intimidating rather than vulnerable and emotionally reaching out, and how they think thor was too overbearing or even abusive and that he was taking loki’s spotlight even though he’s the main character, and were maybe also angry that there was queerness beyond what they could objectify for slash

like it’s just occurred to me today that all the sudden tension in the fandom is coming from the straight girls getting upset that the Bad Boy Facade Loki they stanned over turned out to show his canon of being an emotionally vulnerable and traditionally queer character just trying to survive and find emotional/psychological fulfillment under his egotistical front, and they can’t deal with the fact that’s been his character all along

I’m not wording this well right now but yeah go off please

I’m a straight woman and I love Loki, not “just” because I want to fuck him, even though, yes, I find him extremely attractive. I have two seeing, working eyeballs in my head, so you can’t hold that against me. You’re saying straight women cannot relate to Loki because we just want to fuck him? So I can’t relate to him at all, you’re saying I have no idea what it feels like to be abandoned, out of place, misunderstood, unloved and antagonized? You don’t know, that’s what drew me to Loki in the first place.
Loki was always vulnerable, if you’ll care to pay attention to the movies. It was Loki in the first Thor that drew me to him that vulnerability, that realization that his life was a lie, that intense desire to be loved to the point that he was willing to kill or be killed for it, for his family, that was something I felt I could relate to. He’s always been trying to reach out!
What attracted to me to Loki when he was “a fucked up serial killer” was that he really wasn’t “a fucked up serial killer” at all, and people tend to choose to ignore that. If you pay close attention to the movies, you’ll find the details of what was really going on with Loki (exhaustion, torture, manipulation, mind-warping, on top of the emotional and mental trauma that he had already suffered in the first Thor).
And what makes me so pissy about Ragnarok was the way all of that desire and pain, what Tom Hiddleston has reffered to as “his closely guarded suitcase of pain” was wrenched away from him and opened up and put on a very disrespectful display, literally. You think I don’t want to see him be healed? I just want him “to run around whacking people with his stick”? I want him to be healed more than anything but what happened in Ragnarok wasn’t healing. It was parody and mockery. They simplified him in the crudest way. Robbed him of his magic, his aura and his mystery, and left a shell. They tore down everything that Tom Hiddleston devoted 10 years of his life to create. And, surprise, look what happened next – they got rid of him!

I never saw Loki as “just a hot bad boy”. I see the most beautifully crafted character full of passion and heart, expressing a desire to love and be accepted, and I don’t know a single person, gay or straight, who can’t relate to that. And if you say you can’t you’re lying.

You could say Loki belongs to those who truly love him, and let others alone to love him too, instead of just trying to pit gay and straight against each other, to satisfy some idiotic assumption.

I don’t think this is true at all. I don’t know what most people’s sexualities are and it makes no difference to me but my dash is full of wonderful discourse, critical thinking, analysis, and appreciation of Loki for his whole character, not what he looks like. His looks don’t hurt, fair enough. But regardless, probably this is all coming from straight people, LGBT people, whoever – it shouldn’t matter. 

Secondly, I have always identified as straight, and I have also struggled with mental illness for the better portion of my adult life (and I’m getting up there). I don’t particularly want to fuck Loki, but that’s beside the point. I relate to Loki most in his earlier movies – his mental illness, his role in being the less favored brother, being ignored, slighted, constantly compared to a standard and expectation he couldn’t possibly ever meet just because of who he was. And then to find out that he was a member of the race he’d grown up hearing were monsters and things, to find out his place in Asgard was not what he thought it was, to have been lied to, his identity stripped away. These are all very real struggles that a LOT of people can relate to. These are the factors that drew in so many Loki fans and filled the room at 2013 Comic Con.

I appreciate Ragnarok Loki. I liked seeing another side to his character and the movie is enjoyable if you don’t think too deeply about it. But.

and then the first group of fans got pissy about this and were saying how marvel fucked up loki’s character and he should be going around wacking people with his staff and being intimidating rather than vulnerable and emotionally reaching out … 

If your perception of Thor 1, Avengers, and TDW Loki is that he was an intimidating villain who whacked people with his staff, I suggest a rewatch. I highly encourage, in particular, Loki’s confrontation with Odin in the Vault when he discovers the truth, and the way he cries when he’s fighting Thor in the end. In Avengers, may I direct you to the fact that he is crying when he stabs Thor on top of Stark Tower. There’s also quite the interesting conversation with the Other that very heavily implies Loki has very little of his own free will. In TDW, you may be interested in the way he falls apart when Frigga dies, the way he tries to smile and it immediately crumples just after he and Thor argue on their boat, the part where he literally shoves Jane out of the way of an exploding bomb even though he’s only just met her and upon meeting him, she slapped him in the face.

Just as a place to start.

I’m not saying the intimidating scepter-swinger isn’t accurate. But it’s a VERY small part of who he is. The great thing about Loki is that he’s so layered and complex. Ragnarok has given him some distance from the previous movies’ events and it seems that, in that distance, he’s sort of come to terms (how he got to that place on his own is anyone’s guess). The point is, we get to see him feeling a little more light, a little more funny, a little more God of Mischief-y. This is yet just another aspect of who he is. If you like that version of Loki better, that’s fine. No one’s stopping you. 

But you shouldn’t put people into boxes and simplify their criticisms. It’s really not fair.

I am queer. My gender is a question mark. I don’t wish to fuck anyone, let alone Loki, because I’m aromatic and asexual. I’m neurodivergent with both autism and numerous mental health problems.

I identify with Loki for his queerness and mental health issues, and I dislike Ragnarok because I feel the movie is ableist af (the post I’m linking to does a fantastic job “summarizing” what makes me uncomfortable), and that it drains Loki of his depth that was canon in the previous films, not absent from them. I don’t think his queer-coding in Ragnarok is very good. The subtextual relationship we’re shown is one full of consent issues. It’s a sugar daddy/sugar baby deal where the “sugar” is survival. That’s not exactly the sort of pseudo-representation (it’s pseudo since it’s not explicit) that I was hoping for, and it’s even more frustrating considering they cut the scene that would have made Val’s bisexuality explicit.

I know lots of people who are queer and/or don’t want to fuck Loki who dislike at least aspects of his portrayal in Ragnarok, if not the entire movie. @philosopherking1887, @lucianalight, and @imaginetrilobites to name three off the top of my head. Like @iamanartichoke said, don’t put people in boxes. The divide is far from neat and tidy, and your assessment of the straight Loki fans isn’t even uniformly accurate, either. It’s wonderful if you enjoy the movie. Go nuts! Love what you love! But please don’t do this sort of generalizing that’s sort of a subtle way of invalidating the opinions of people who don’t have a fondness for the movie… 

Also, Thor didn’t need a character boost. He’s much better and sweeter and funnier and Thor-like pre-Ragnarok. The only exception is the lightning. I’ll admit Ragnarok did some badass shit with his lightning powers. I enjoy it a lot. Yes I do.

I appreciate @iamanartichoke‘s summary of the instances of emotional vulnerability and complexity in the pre-Ragnarok films; I myself have spent some time (such as at the bottom of this ridiculous thread) trying to dispel the absurd notion that Loki was a one-dimensional “mustache-twirling villain” or (in OP’s words) “fucked-up serial killer” and only became an “interesting, conflicted trickster” in Ragnarok. But I disagree with the concession that “Ragnarok has given him some distance from the previous movies’ events and it seems that, in that distance, he’s sort of come to terms.” The following parenthetical – “how he got to that place on his own is anyone’s guess” – is extremely telling, and I think the answer is simply that Taika Waititi doesn’t want us to believe that Loki’s problems were ever real. On that point, read the excellent post that @foundlingmother linked to. I’ve written on that topic myself, but never with quite that much force and pathos.

Taika either doesn’t recognize that Loki is mentally ill, or he simply has no sympathy for it. He ignores all of Loki’s complicated motivations for his previous betrayals and effectively says he just does it because it’s “in his nature” as “the God of Mischief” – i.e., “for the lulz.” And he can’t be said to reach any kind of genuine reconciliation with Thor because Thor* (the version of Thor portrayed in Ragnarok) takes the same approach to Loki that Taika does: he never asks Loki for his reasons for doing anything he did, including faking his death and impersonating Odin; he just gives that pompous, hypocritical speech about how he could be “more than just the God of Mischief.” I have written about this so many times, as have various other people… I should just bookmark all of those posts because I end up having to link to them so often to avoid having to rehash all of the arguments again.

OP’s understanding of the fandom divide is so completely wrongheaded it’s mind-boggling. Many of the Loki fans who loved Loki pre-Ragnarok and think Ragnarok made hash of his character – myself included – are mentally ill. They are people who came to identify with Loki because they saw themselves in him: because he was an outsider who never seemed to fit in with Asgardian society, because he was bullied for being different (subtly, yes, and maybe he even deserved some of it, but still: see the end of this thread for an argument to that effect), because he attempted suicide onscreen – and if that’s not a clear indicator that a character is mentally ill, I don’t know what is. And it’s equally absurd to say that we, the mentally ill people who identify with Loki, don’t want to see him heal and be happy. Of course we do. But we want to see it happen realistically, the way mentally ill people actually can recover: by confronting their issues rather than burying them or running away from them; by talking frankly about the things that have been bothering them with people who matter to them. That never happens in Thor: Ragnarok. A full acknowledgment of the depth and reality of Loki’s problems would involve an earnest conversation with Thor about the ways in which Loki felt slighted, inferior, taken for granted throughout their youth; about the impact of the revelation that he was Jotun and that their parents had lied to him about it his whole life; about why he did the terrible things he did in Thor and The Avengers, why he pretended to be dead and banished Odin at the end of TDW. Wanting Loki’s very real problems to be addressed instead of swept under the rug IS “wanting him to heal as a person.” As a person, not the way Thor* treats him in Ragnarok: as a problem to be solved.

Also, what the hell do you mean by “exotify his jotun heritage”? Some of us just want to see it talked about. Or even humanized, which is the exact opposite of what you seem to be implying. Loki apparently outs himself as a Jotun adoptee in that play (the “blue baby icicle” bit), no one bats an eye, and that’s the last we hear of it. WTF? What happened to the part where Asgardians consider Jotnar such monsters that young Thor wanted to “hunt them down and slay them all,” and Odin felt like he needed to lie to his son about his race to “protect him from the truth”? Zack Stentz (one of the writers of Thor) has said outright that Loki’s story is about internalized racism. Can we learn a little more about Jotnar and start to see them as people? Can we actually see Loki come to terms with his heritage by learning about it instead of, again, just writing it off with a joke?

And while we’re talking about how ridiculous this account of the fandom divide is, let’s discuss the fact that Ragnarok is not exactly a triumph for queer representation. Loki is never explicitly identified as queer; it’s all through stereotype and innuendo. I’m quoting from @fuckyeahrichardiii because she brought it to my attention and I really can’t put it any better:

I also have no idea why the movie hasn’t been savaged by tumblr for its frankly awful queer-baiting. We’ve got a regressive case of textbook villainous queer-“coding” (though it’s barely even coded) with the GM, who despite everyone’s obsession with JG, is a really vile person (imperialist, slaver), and the FIRST almost open depiction of same-sex relations in the MCU (Loki/GM) is characterized by suggestions of frankly horrific power dynamics. Like, really Taika?

(2) And Valkyrie being bi was barely a whisper in the movie compared to the joke that was the GM’s sexuality. Even so, Taika had the tired trope of the dead lesbian in operation as part of Val’s backstory which honestly gets him 0 credit as far as I’m concerned.

Here, while we’re at it, is a long post about the queer-coding of villains and the Hollywood tradition of “the sissy.” I’m finding it extremely ironic that this is being held up as “queerness beyond what they could objectify for slash.” Seriously? This fucked-up sugar daddy/baby relationship that can hardly be considered consensual, under the circumstances? You think the critics’ problem with it is that it’s too queer to objectify?

I strongly suspect that this attempt to write off critics of Ragnarok, and specifically its portrayal of Loki, as just “stupid, homophobic, neurotypical straight girls who want to fuck their fetishized version of Loki” is an evasive maneuver to avoid thinking and talking seriously about the content of the films. Why engage with your opponents’ arguments and analyses when you can score some oppression/social justice points by lumping them all into a privileged group and calling them bigots?

foundlingmother:

While I find the notion that Loki’s an innocent and pure angel annoying and ridiculous, I find the notion that Thor’s innocent and pure equally so. He doesn’t have to have been a morally righteous, wonderful, unproblematic sunshine boy since birth to be a hero. He can have made serious mistakes, held gross, racist views, perpetuated Odin’s imperialism through both rhetoric and action, etc. and still be good because he’s grown as a person. Because he continues to grow and learn from his mistakes. Excusing his bad behavior, calling it justified (even the stuff he did/said to/about the Frost Giants at the beginning of Thor), only encourages the dumb idea that heroes can’t be flawed, that people are always one way. I’ll always maintain that Thor had good intentions, but, for fucks sake, Loki has good intentions in Thor (selfish good intentions, but he’s trying to be the hero to prove himself). Good intentions =/= morally right. Condemn the heroes for their wrong actions, just as we condemn the villains.

Gosh, I’ll never understand why people want Thor to be so boring, stagnant, and artificial! XP

We (people who are Loki fans in the first instance) don’t even have a problem saying that Loki has worse moral problems than Thor does. Guess what? You’re allowed to like characters who have done bad things! You’re even allowed to prefer a morally worse character over a morally better character on aesthetic grounds! I do it all the time.

There’s a consistent problem with people on this site, or maybe in fandom generally, denying the existence of moral complexity and ambiguity. They claim their favorite character is always good and pure all the time, and if that character comes into conflict with another, they feel the need to claim that the other character is totally evil and wrong. I really wish people would stop doing that. It makes the characters and the movies (or books or TV shows) more boring than they actually are.

I think it’s time for a chat, fandom.

I have made it no secret that I am greatly dissatisfied with many aspects of Thor: Ragnarok, most especially the characterizations of Thor and Loki and the discontinuity with their characterization in earlier movies. Among more extreme Loki fans, including those who (reportedly) used to call themselves “Loki’s Resistance” and are widely known as “Loki-apologists” (I prefer “unconditional Loki-justifiers,” for reasons of precision), people have no trouble saying that they disliked the movie because of the way it thinned out Loki’s character. Loki fans who are in networks with the Loki-justifiers but do not hate Thor (as so many of the justifiers do) also have no trouble pointing out that Ragnarok messed up Thor’s character, virtually disregarding the process of maturation he had gone through in previous MCU movies.

However, it seems that more moderate Loki fans (who do acknowledge his flaws and misdeeds), including but not limited to Thor/Loki shippers, have been feeling pressured into silence about their dissatisfaction with the movie. Four such people have communicated with me about it under their own names, two relatively openly in replies to my posts, two in private messages; a few more have expressed similar sentiments in anonymous asks. I’m kind of concerned that smart, thoughtful people feel like they can’t express their views for fear of being shunned or bombarded with hate. (About a movie, FFS; this isn’t a matter of life and death!)

Maybe this is just a function of the overall climate of Tumblr, which a friend of mine has characterized as just a bunch of young people all agreeing with each other (in my more bitter moments, I’ve used the terms “groupthink” and “circle-jerk”). It seems that around here group identities revolve around people all sharing the same views. Arguments (or firefights, really) can only be had on a hostile footing across group lines; there’s not much of a chance for productive or friendly disagreement within a community. As a philosopher (and a Jew), this strikes me as extremely bizarre and more than a little creepy. I disagree with other philosophers about a lot of things, and we argue, and raise objections to each other’s papers, but we’re still friends, still enjoy many of the same things, still share (largely) the same basic values. There are subcommunities, to be sure, of those who agree about certain issues, but we are still a community, engaged in a common enterprise, in spite of (indeed, driven by!) our disagreements.

What can we do to make the fandom such that people feel comfortable expressing their actual views even if they disagree with the majority of the community, or just (as it may be) with the loudest voices? If the fandom is already open to such disagreement, how can we reassure people that they won’t be ostracized for holding minority/unpopular views?

I hope that some people with more standing in the fandom than I have will take an active part in opening it up to productive disagreement. All these “I thought it was just me” and “everyone’s been telling me I’m crazy” and “I was so relieved to see your post” and “I feel like I should just stfu if my interpretation is different from the main one” messages are making me kind of alarmed and kind of sad.