My main issue in getting into Avengers fandom

[liliaeth]

Now I'm not saying I hate Loki or anything. He's a great villain and all that. But, I'm just so sick and tired of seeing Loki the woobie. I'm tired of seeing him written as the poor misunderstood sweetie, who just wants his daddy to love him. I'm tired of seeing Odin written as this horrible father and Thor as this brute, which imo just doesn't fit with canon at all.

I'm sick and tired of all the Loki pairings that completely ignore Loki's canon personality and actions and that excuse all his crimes, including mass-murder, because he's just so 'misunderstood'.

And I really really want to read more Thor fic that's about Thor, instead of about Loki. Because I find Thor far more fascinating than I do Loki.

Comments

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Agreed!

The biggest part of my sympathy is with Thor, not Loki.

[liliaeth]

Mine too, I just love Thors's unwavering belief in his brother, even after Loki tried to murder him. It's just so Dean like.

And maybe it's part of growing up in a monarchy. But I've never seen this whole Thor as the favored son and Loki as the one cast aside.

The basic fact of most monarchies, is that only one of the king's children can inherit the throne, and the fact is that in most cases, that heir is the oldest son, aka Thor. It's what they call the heir and the spare system.

They both get raised to rule, just in case, but only one of them actually does so. And in modern days, most of the socalled 'spares' tend to be incredibly grateful not to have to carry the responsibility that their older sibling is forced to deal with .

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Once again, agreed! From what I could see in the movie Thor, Loki seemed fine with the idea of Thor becoming King, until he found out that he was adopted - and then he just assumed that he had never had the chance to be King...but Odin never said that did he?

People play it up like it's the Edgar/Edmund relationship in King Lear, but it's not, because Loki was still treated equally to Thor his entire life - that's why he didn't have the faintest clue that he wasn't actually Odin's son. So, he really doesn't have it so bad.

But yeah, I doubt like...Prince Harry...is losing much sleep over probably not ever becoming King. :P

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

The reason people say this is that in Thor, Odin shows off Asgard and says to young Thor and Loki "One of you will be King." I took that to mean that Thor, the elder son, will be King and Asgard will need Loki there with Thor, but a lot of people took it to mean that Odin chose between them. Technically, both interpretations could be correct, but I suppose living with a monarchy makes us both go for the first one!

[liliaeth]

Hell, the first interpretation is even supported by the fact that when Thor is banished and Odin goes into the Odin sleep that no one protests that Loki takes on the throne instead.

[liliaeth]

Apparantly not. Most fics I've seen are of the poor woobie Loki variety instead

[eruvadhril.livejournal.com]

Loki wasn't entirely happy for Thor to take the thone. He engineered the frost giants' break-in at the beginning of the film to show Odin that Thor wasn't ready to become king. Of course, if Loki had just used his words like a damn adult, a lot of trouble could have been avoided...

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Oh right. Stupidly forgot that part. :P

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

The woobification of Loki has pretty much been taking place in bits and pieces in the comics for a while. The movie just amped up the process because Tom Hiddleston makes himself so damned vulnerable-looking and is constantly crying. Because he is a trickster god (and because Branagh made the decision to take Hiddleston doing the same scene in different emotional states and splicing them together, usually picking the crying ones, Loki's motivation appears to be a mystery in some parts of Thor, even to the god himself). I would say that Loki is misunderstood... by his own brain. It's obvious that movie!Loki seems to have forgotten that he had a seemingly loving mother (thank you, deleted scenes). I think sometimes the fans who go easier on Loki have a hard time explaining that his acts, which are done by his own choices and no one else's, are evil but that they do not believe Loki to be the epitome of evil (calling him such dismisses his humanity and the interesting parts of his character). It's like Dr. Doom or Angelus or Spike or Darth Vader. They are monsters, but in some of their incarnations, they're at least a relatable monsters, and sometimes they are likeable monsters. When they are likable, sometimes it's easier to just look passed all the ookiness of their characters and go straight for the woobie. Depending upon the writer or storyline, there's plenty to work with on occasion. Kid!Loki is currently breaking my heart and my feels at every opportunity in Journey into Mystery, and he is very much woobie material.

Movie!Thor is adorable to me in the second half of the film, but I would have liked to have seen more development between brash, brutish Thor and the hero that was inside of him all along. It's like the audience knew that that's where Thor would wind up but the story skipped a few pages. Did Natalie Portman's sorta-kinda-maybe-love fix him? Was he truly that humbled? Hard to tell.

Also, people are very quick to jump down Odin's throat, but they don't know how much of a dick he can be in the comics (especially to Thor). Movie!Odin is like a bastion of fatherhood compared to comics!Odin. I keep seeing people complain about his "No, Loki" when Loki was crying, "I could have done it, Father!" To some, it was a "No, you're never going to be good enough," but I felt that Odin was saying, "No, why can't you see that you didn't have to do this? You're my son."

[liliaeth]

Oh definitely, I've always found that a redemption story is more interesting, if the person trying to redeem themselves has actually done something wrong.

The thing with someone like Spike though, is that we genuinely saw him change, make an effort to keep himself from falling back in the old patterns and showed genuine remorse. It's why he's got one of the best redemption stories around.

Loki on the other hand only seems to feel sorry for himself. He has no genuine remorse over risking Asgard, over trying to murder his brother, or pretty much any of the crimes he's done. (counting movie Loki here, comic Loki is an entirely different char all together, for one thing their past is different) All of which makes it really hard for me to feel sorry for him, just because he found out he was adopted.

[liliaeth]

Hell, if he'd just stuck to showing himself as a good ruler while Thor was banished, allowed Thor's friends to go help him and then let Thor return when he'd learned his lesson. Odin might very well have considered him as the better choice for his successor.
And knowing what we know of Thor, if that had been the case, he probably would have supported Loki, become his trusted right hand man, and Thor and his friends would have been Loki's loyal supporters and friends.

Instead Loki sent a killer robot after Thor, risking the lives of dozens to hundreds innocent civilians from an alien culture, just to try and murder his brother. And when Thor got rid of his pride, instead of accepting his brother's apology, Loki still went on and tried to murder Thor.

In other words, for all that his fans like to call Loki the smart one, I've got to say that for an intelligent guy, be behaves pretty damn stupid.

[eruvadhril.livejournal.com]

Sadly for Loki, he is the Bad Guy, and must therefore act like a moron when the plot requires.

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

One point that I think that "Thor" missed out on was explaining that Loki's brain is not quite right; it's quite literally a box of cats. He plays "tricks" (which aren't really tricks, but rather quite risky and dangerous and foolish things) for reasons that sometimes he doesn't understand, changing motivations when it suits him... but they're usually out of spite. The whole thing with letting frickin' Frost Giants into Asgard to spoil Thor's big day? That's like wanting to spoil a sibling's birthday party by putting dynamite in the cake. Why would he do that? It seems like more than simple jealousy; it's more like he's been building falsities in his head to the point where he believes them. And he calls Thor reckless! However, I think this is why it's very easy for people to project upon him. If they want to imagine Loki as constantly starved of parental affection his whole life and that Thor and his friends were always assholes to him, then the movie provides enough wriggle room to slide those thoughts right in. However, there's nothing to say that Odin didn't try the best that he could (though his reasoning for never telling Loki about his true parentage is shaky... and I don't think Thor's ever going to learn the truth of his either), and that Loki has taken mere sibling rivalry to an unmitigated evil extreme, where sudden hatred of his own race, a boatload of pent-up rage, and confusion of what he really desires have deranged him. In either instance, Loki's actions remain his own, and he must answer for them. Redemption, for him, must be hard-earned in some way just as Thor earned his.

I'm guessing the Avengers goes with more crazy, more evil, less crying Loki though. XD I haven't seen it, but I've seen a number of GIFs. Tom Hiddleston believes that Loki will have a redemption plot in Thor 2. I'm thinking that, if that's true, that they'll go with Loki sacrificing himself to save all of Asgard and then getting reincarnated as Kid!Loki or Ikol later. Hopefully, they won't go with Lady Loki. A movie based on "Loki: Blood Brothers" would make me happy though.

[liliaeth]

Well they do have Thor defending Loki, by saying his brother has gone insane, in the Avengers

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

Oh, Thor, no! That lovable thunderhead is going to get himself killed by his brother... again.

This little image has been floating around Tumblr ALOT...



If Loki had just stopped for a few moments to realize this, we would have been saved a film. XD

[coronasunrise.livejournal.com]

At the beginning of ”Thor”, I do see Loki as a bit of a woobie, Odin as a bad father, and Thor not as a brute instead more like an entitled frat boy.

That does not excuse Loki. While Thor realized his mistakes and grew from them, Loki is bent on defeating Thor. Why? My guess is at first it was to prove he was right. Now, he just wants revenge on Thor.

What I want is Loki to see that what he is doing is wrong and try to redeem himself.

[liliaeth]

Me too, unfortunately most fic writers seem to prefer the option of having Thor apologize to Loki for being a bad brother.