Tag: wafflediaries

wafflediaries replied to your post “wafflediaries replied to your post “wafflediaries replied to your…”

Wow, thank you, you are proving my point entirely. None of the traits you mentioned in your paragraphs had anything to do with canon MCU Loki and you even acknowledged that. Remember the OOC fan fiction Loki I mentioned earlier? Yeah. I haven’t read any of your writing but I guess I don’t need to. Also, I didn’t know if you were intentionally racist but I guess I don’t have to ask that either LMAO. Have a nice day.

Next time, please keep your racism and fan fiction head canons to yourself when you’re trying to criticize a film maker. Otherwise you just look ridiculous.

Hey, @foundlingmother, @fuckyeahrichardiii, @illwynd, @kaori04, @princess-ikol, @rynfinity, and anyone else who’s been following this saga – @raven-brings-light, you might find this entertaining – I’ve been called a racist by someone who doesn’t understand sarcasm or intertextuality! (Or Hegel jokes either, probably, but that wasn’t terribly important.) Thanks for the laughs,

@wafflediaries, and now I can check off some more squares on my Tumblr veteran bingo card. How many points is this one worth?

wafflediaries

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“wafflediaries replied to your post “wafflediaries replied to your…”

Yeah, sorry, I didn’t know you were a fic writer. If I had, I wouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean to personally attack your writing or anything. However, I will address the points raised in this post. I literally have no idea where you are getting your Trump vibes from. Loki in Ragnarok is a perfectly reasonable development from Loki in Thor.

Loki wants love and admiration, which is unrelated to him being a Jotunn. He found love when he became Odin, however it was unsatisfying because the people loved him for Odin, not for Loki. He is also motivated by the love for his family (opposite of love is indifference) and was taken aback by Thor’s apparent indifference. Both of these drove him to save Asgard in a grandiose fashion, to earn Asgard’s love and prove Thor wrong. I don’t see anything Trumpish about these

Also, people in Asgard don’t like him because he’s a dick. Like, Thor was a dick (in a thoughtless/oafish way) while Loki was an even bigger dick (in a ‘I’ll trick you into doing something and punish you for it’ way). Remember how he thought it was hilarious to let Jotunn into the treasury to ruin his brother’s coronation? And when has Loki ever been a good diplomat? Ragnarok was the height of his diplomatic skills, because his situation with the Grandmaster was way better than his situation with Laufy [sic] or Thanos

It has been explained many times that his portrayal of Thor is due his culture. In Maori (and Australian) culture, the worst thing someone can do is take themselves too seriously. Allowing a character to fall on their face and learn from their mistakes is a form of respect. So yeah, I consider it racist when people ignore Taika’s culture and straight up call him disrespectful or unprofessional. Seriously, even if he disliked Loki, why would he show that in his work?

The classism thing was a response to other comments in the post, which I already noted. Like Jesus, how can one ‘rich boy’ joke be offensive, especially considering MCU Loki and Thor are the epitome of rich boys who haven’t done anything to deserve their wealth. It was stolen from other realms by their father. Also, in response to your other points, Taika is a comedian and gives funny answers. His funny answers are the more well-known ones because people like sharing funny things. However, from his non-comedic interviews, it is clear that he is familiar with the source material (Thor films, MCU, comic books) and he was passionate in creating Thor Ragnarok.

Where am I getting the Trump vibes, @wafflediaries? How about from the giant fucking Jesus statue? (Seriously, it looks like the Cristo Redentor statue in Brazil.) Or that ridiculous self-glorifying play? Or just the fact that Loki is being portrayed as a textbook narcissist, as his detractors are happy to point out, and in the present political environment it’s hard not to think of the other textbook narcissist elephant in the room. The effect of this portrayal is to make into a punchline, mere fodder for ridicule, the very traits that literally drove Loki to suicide in the first movie. Hooray, mental illness is funny…! 

“Seriously, even if he disliked Loki, why would he show that in his work?” I don’t know, why don’t you ask him? Taika, why did you make Loki’s entire character into a punchline? And no, I’m NOT talking about the slapstick/physical humor; I’m talking about the fact that his character traits, his psychological and emotional problems, all the things that made him complicated and sympathetic and (in the first film) tragic (as detailed in this insightful post), are reduced to a punchline.

Um… where are you getting the “I’ll trick you into doing something and punish you for it” bit? Not the Jotnar who came to steal the Casket, surely; yes, Loki knew the Destroyer would kill them, showing a reprehensible indifference to their lives, but punishing them definitely wasn’t the point. You mean Thor? It didn’t take a lot of “tricking” to get Thor to charge into Jotunheim with guns blazing; all Loki said was “There’s nothing you can do without defying Father.” It’s really on Thor for being so predictably belligerent, which is exactly why Loki pulled the stunt in the first place: he was making a point to Odin about Thor’s unfitness for kingship; and if he was “punishing” Thor for anything, it was for the general pattern of arrogance and aggression, not for the specific action Loki prodded him into. Or do you mean Laufey? If you were paying attention, you would realize that what Loki is “punishing” him for is not the attempt on Odin’s life that he explicitly invited, but abandoning him to die as a baby. Yeah, Loki is a manipulative asshole, but at least get right the more sophisticated respect in which he is a manipulative asshole.

But I’m not the only one who got the impression from the first movie that Loki is more than just “a dick,” that we’re not supposed to think all his problems are self-made, and that when we meet him he isn’t already a villain. Thor tells the parallel stories – or should I say the perpendicular stories? – of Thor’s rise and Loki’s fall: not only his self-destruction, but his fall into villainy, precipitated (ironically) by his desperate desire to prove his worth. Yes, of course, he needed to already have some of the traits (the manipulative tendency, the willingness to sacrifice others to his ends) that would lead him into the drastically wrong actions he ended up taking. But I probably can’t say anything to convince you that we’re supposed to read other people’s mistrust and dismissiveness as not entirely earned. Maybe it’s just that I was reading so much commentary from fans familiar with Norse myth and culture about how seidr (witchcraft, effectively) was traditionally regarded as the province of women, and men who practiced it were considered effeminate, incurring a stigma called ergi, translated as “unmanliness” (associated with the assumption that they bottomed during sex with men). Or maybe it’s that I recognized the dynamic between Thor and his friends and Loki the tag-along little brother: they’re jocks, and he’s a nerd. Thor was a dick, too, but he was the right kind of dick: the brash, physical, always ready for a fistfight kind of dick. In a patriarchal warrior culture like Asgard, many of us can absolutely see how being a thoughtless, aggressive asshole is much more acceptable than being a scheming, too smart for your own good asshole.

As for Loki being a good diplomat: unfortunately, they don’t show a lot of that in Thor, but I think we’re supposed to assume it from the fact that he volunteers to sweet-talk Heimdall and Volstagg makes that “silver tongue” remark, invoking the “Silvertongue” epithet of the Loki of Norse myth. And actually, he does perfectly well with Laufey: he would have gotten them out of the situation at the beginning if Thor hadn’t had a violent reaction to being called “little princess,” and he successfully talked Laufey into doing what he wanted him to do later on. He also demonstrates the power of his words in The Avengers, not by winning people over to his side, but by sowing doubts among them, hitting them where it hurts.

Congratulations, all the people who have chimed in to say that they didn’t like the characterization of Thor, either: we’re all racists!! We’re just Too White to understand the genius of the Maori people that Taika Waititi channels, straight from the Volksgeist itself, with no admixture of his own peculiar sensibility; any objection to his work is therefore an objection to the entire Maori culture. Kenneth Branagh didn’t do the “high brought low” trope correctly in Thor, because he, too, was Too White. Screwing up and learning from your mistakes isn’t enough, making a fool of yourself in an unfamiliar environment isn’t enough if you maintain your basic poise, dignity, and decency; you have to be made into an actual, honest-to-God dumbass.

I don’t deny that TW was familiar with the Marvel comics, and he must have watched the other movies before he made Ragnarok (though maybe not before he took the job…). And yeah, I guess he was “passionate” about something (maybe creating the 80s aesthetic of Sakaar, which was pretty cool). But it wasn’t doing justice to the characters he inherited from the rest of the trilogy.

wafflediaries replied to your post “wafflediaries replied to your post “You know, it wasn’t until I was…”

Also, I wasn’t accusing you of writing fan fiction, I was noting that fandom generally has a perception of Loki that is not congruent with any canon portrayals of him. It is canon from previous films that MCU Loki loves attention, is terrible at long term planning but can quickly adapt to new situations, and is manipulative and enjoys playing cruel tricks (which is detrimental to his love for attention). These traits were all demonstrated in Thor Ragnarok.

Erm, actually, @wafflediaries, you said (and I quote), “Please stop being bitter just because he wasn’t lifted from your OOC Loki-centric fanfic.” Perhaps (as you seem to have confirmed in your later reply) that wasn’t aimed at me specifically, but as the originator of the post I did receive an e-mail notification with that reply in it, so you can understand why I might have thought that it was aimed at me.

Yes, all the traits you mention are part of Loki’s portrayal in earlier MCU films. But his love of attention is more complicated and subtle than shown in Ragnarok. In the first Thor film, he’s shown as being soft-spoken, almost retiring; it seems that we see him discover that he enjoys power and attention once he gets it for the first time. In the deleted scene in which he’s granted the throne by Frigga and some sort of prime minister guy, he hesitates to take Gungnir, and he looks to Frigga for reassurance, but a transformation seems to come over him when he realizes that yes, this power is really his by right.

Ragnarok seemed to make Loki’s insecurity out to be that of the Trumpian narcissist who’s constantly demanding attention and praise and deeply believes that he deserves it, but also feels threatened and lashes out when it’s withheld. That’s not the Loki we saw in Thor, who had genuine doubts about his worth and felt he needed to go to extreme (indeed, genocidal) lengths to prove it. Narcissists like Trump don’t feel like they have to do anything to prove their worth; they think the adulation is simply their due and something is profoundly wrong with the world if they don’t get it. Ragnarok also gave extremely short shrift to the issue that prompted Loki’s crisis in Thor, namely, the discovery that he belongs to a people that have historically been the enemies of Asgard. And it did not really acknowledge the other reasons for Loki’s long-standing insecurity, which were demonstrated in the first film: the fact that Asgardians don’t really respect his talents as a sorcerer who uses magic on the battlefield, or as a (sometimes devious and dishonest) diplomat who’d rather talk than punch his way out of problems. I’ve seen other people dispute that this was part of his characterization (I’m not tagging them, @foundlingmother; behold my self-restraint!), but it seems pretty clear that they missed the point of the deleted scene in which Thor says “Some do battle, others just do tricks” and a servant laughs at the quip (and by extension, at Loki), as well as Vostagg’s “What happened, silver tongue turned to lead?”, which the script explicitly describes as “needling” him, not good-natured ribbing.

So no, the complaint is not that Ragnarok introduced characteristics that were not present in earlier movies; it’s that it reduced Loki to those characteristics, thereby depriving him of depth and understandable motivation.

wafflediaries replied to your post “wafflediaries replied to your post “You know, it wasn’t until I was…”

Sorry, I was responding to an entire train of thoughts by various people that I was completely baffled by. It was late at night and my feathers were very ruffled because a lot of the posts were giving me uncomfortably racist and classist vibes (like seriously, people were offended that Taika joked about them as rich boys?).

@wafflediaries, I was using the “rich boys” comment as an especially flagrant representation of the low esteem in which Taika appears to hold the Thor franchise as a whole. There’s a lot of other evidence in his interviews (not to mention the film itself) that he doesn’t care about the characters or the world with which he was entrusted; that was particularly dismissive and easy to use as a symbol for the rest.

I don’t think it’s classist to be annoyed by that kind of attitude, considering that people of all classes have enjoyed literature about royalty, knights, gods, and other “rich kids” for millennia. I couldn’t find any context for the “we shouldn’t really give a shit about what their problems are” quote, but I did find a video where he claims that making Thor into “a buffoon” (his word) was the only way to make him relatable. That just seems inaccurate, considering that people have been interested in the problems of gods and heroes, and found their struggles relatable (albeit writ large), for so long; I take it that it’s the normative claim, that we shouldn’t care unless he’s brought down to ground level, that really motivates the characterization. Wonder Woman got along just fine without debasing or ridiculing its exceptional, quasi-immortal princess heroine; I don’t think it’s classist to prefer that approach.

I also hope you’re not suggesting that it’s racist to criticize any of Taika Waititi’s work. Saying that he wasn’t well-suited to contribute to the Thor series because he wasn’t invested in it, and that he ended up making a Taika Waititi movie rather than a Thor movie, doesn’t strike me as a racist attitude. (Even saying he’s a crap director – which I’m not, but some people very well might – isn’t inherently racist, though I wouldn’t be surprised if people on Tumblr claimed it was.) If you’re saying that my long discourse on the treatment of race in the Thor franchise, exploring the issue of Loki’s internalized racism in the first Thor movie and the critique of imperialism in Thor: Ragnarok, was racist… well, sorry; I tried to be as respectful to all parties as I could, but it’s a delicate issue and we can always offend people despite our best efforts.

wafflediaries replied to your post “You know, it wasn’t until I was talking to someone in person about…”

Thor Ragnarok was the best portrayal of Loki we have ever seen in the MCU. Please stop being bitter just because he wasn’t lifted from your OOC Loki-centric fanfic. Taika Waititi did a fantastic job.

LOL, @wafflediaries, have you actually read any of my fanfiction? (Or were you talking to @studiokawaii, whose reblog of the post I gather you were directly replying to?) I can’t control who reblogs and adds to the original post (short of blocking everyone I disagree with, which is emphatically NOT my M.O.), and I’m sure many of the rebloggers are who you think I am: unconditional Loki justifiers (also known as “apologists,” which is a misleading use of the term) who claim that he is a pure, blameless cinnamon roll, all of whose apparently immoral actions in canon can be excused on the grounds of his victimization by various other characters, and many of whom also ship Loki with themselves and/or write fanfiction pairing him with the reader or a self-insert OFC. (Not that there’s anything in principle wrong with character/reader fic or self-insert OFCs; it’s just not my bag, and tends to be associated with the mischaracterization of Loki described above.)

It’s easy to dismiss criticism of Loki’s portrayal in Ragnarok if you dismiss all the critics as a particular type of uncreditable person. I have never been accused of writing an OOC Loki, and since I am also a Thor/Loki shipper, many of my readers consider themselves Thor fans in the first instance and usually defend Thor against the attacks launched by the Loki-justifiers (sometimes to the also unjustified extreme of claiming that Thor is a blameless cinnamon roll who has no flaws and has never done anything wrong in his life, but that’s another story…). Then again, perhaps the reason no one has called my Loki OOC is simply the very strong norm against any form of criticism of fanfiction, even constructive criticism, and even when it is explicitly solicited (as I do).