I've Been Loki'd
So, after reading my fic The High Priest of Loki, 
vorquellyn messaged me to ask if I wanted to exchange Loki thoughts, and I said sure, but let’s do that in an actual discussion post, because LJ is dumb and eats most of my PMs these days.
Thus, context. You have it now. Welcome to our Loki discussion, feel free to jump in if you like. My initial thoughts are behind the cut.
As far as canon goes, most of my Marvel Universe!Loki knowledge comes from the live action movies and pretty much every Marvel cartoon ever. No really, if it’s on Netflix or Hulu, or came on during Saturday mornings any time in the late 80s through the 90s, I’ve seen it. As far as the comics go, I only have incidental Loki knowledge, because I’ve always been more a Spiderman and X-Men comic reader. The only issues of The Avengers I have under my belt are the ones where Wolverine was the leader of the team.
But, as anyone who has read my LotS fic can tell you, I am super into Norse Mythology, so any characterization of Loki that I come up with is going to be heavily influenced by that.
I’ve only really gotten into Avengers fic recently, and that was because I was watching the cartoon on Netflix and I got a hankering for more Tony Stark. I love Tony Stark, and I will read Tony/anything. Also, people don’t seem to write a lot of fic for the cartoons, but the movies have 2349823423423 fics, so I figured “screw it, they’re basically the same characters” and here we are. I started out reading Tony/Steve, just because it’s the most popular Tony pairing, and that somehow led me down a rabbit hole of Darcy/Clint, then Tony/Bruce, and finally, Tony/Loki. Which in turn, made me go “what’s up with Loki anyway?”
Unpopular opinion time: I know Loki, and by extension, Hiddles, has an army of fangirls. Quite frankly, I don’t get it. I want to get it, I really do, but I just don’t. I didn’t like The Avengers movie as much as your average bear. I didn’t find Loki to be menacing enough, smart enough just… he just wasn’t enough in any way, shape, or form, and if you can’t sell me your villain, I’m just not going to like your movie. So I never really gave Loki a second thought until I started reading Tony/Loki. If I thought about him at all, it was somewhere along the lines of “fail villain fails.”
Which, in the end, is why I wound up writing Loki fic. I don’t get him (though I think I'm starting to), and I’m going to take him apart and put him back together in different ways until I do.
So, keeping all that in mind, here’s what I’ve carved out about Loki so far (these are just my opinions/headcanons):
I don’t think Loki wants power just for power’s sake - as evidenced by the line “I am burdened with glorious purpose.” He recognizes that to rule is a burden, something that it takes Thor a while to figure out.
Loki tells the truth more often than not. At least in Thor. He doesn't lie just to lie, only when a purpose can be served by it. And the whole point of being Loki Liesmith/Loki Silvertongue is that he tells the truth often enough that you can never be sure when he's lying. I also think he lies with the truth as often as possible.
Loki's behavior in the latter half of Thor is out of character in regards to viciousness/evil. He's the cool headed brother, the one who would be a good king but will never be given that chance, but once he realizes he’s really a Frost Giant, he suffers a psychotic break because hey, finding out you’re a member of a race you’ve been taught to hate. A++ parenting there, Odin. (Though, I don’t think Odin had malicious intent. I think he always meant to use Loki to bring a permanent peace with the Frost Giants, but he’s kind of an idiot for a God of Wisdom and doesn’t realize it’s a bad idea to teach a baby Frost Giant that Frost Giants are monsters and expect that to work out okay.)
Loki's behavior, when viewed objectively without family loyalties and etc., is not really much worse than Thor's before Thor gets his head out of his ass. They both kind of suck, Loki is just unfortunate enough to be painted as the villain because he's the nerdy magic kid that no one likes and also a Frost Giant. At least as far as Thor goes.
Loki is jealous of Thor, but not nearly as much as everyone seems to think he is. His whole disrupting Thor's coronation thing is about what's best for Asgard, but if he happens to get to stick it to Thor at the same time, that's just gravy.
When Loki falls off the rainbow bridge, I think something has to happen to drive him crazy. Because as he appears in The Avengers, he's just... lost something. In Thor you can see the calculation and the ways in which his plans get away from him, and most importantly, that he's trying to do what he thinks is right. In The Avengers he's, to put it succinctly, "bag of cats." There's no real rhyme or reason to what he's doing or why he does it, and that strikes me as being very out of character for Loki if we take in his characterization in Thor and all other source that aren't The Avengers movie.
The scepter/Tesseract/Thanos is/are heavily influencing Loki's behavior in The Avengers. It doesn't absolve him of responsibility, and he probably enjoys getting to fuck up the realm that Thor suddenly loves just because FUK U THOR, but he is definitely not on his A game. I refuse to believe The Avengers is his A game, because otherwise I am just deeply disappointed in what the writers have done with the character.
Loki is not human. Human morality and sanity can’t be applied to him. Stories from his POV should reflect this.
In mythology Loki is married to Sigyn, and has at least 6 children: Fenrir, Jormungundr, Hel, Vali, Nari, Sleipnir. I'm not sure about Marvel!Loki, but any fanfic!Loki that I write is going to have been married to Sigyn at some point, and have at least Fenrir, Hel, and Nari as children. My headcanons for that are that Loki and Sigyn have been estranged for a while (which is why we don't see her in Thor), but stayed married because Sigyn wanted to remain a princess of Asgard. However, once it comes out that Loki is a Frost Giant, she divorces him out of disgust/shame, and his children likewise disown him, depending on how they're characterized. As far as I know, Fenrir, Hel, and Nari don't have Marvel counterparts, so I bend their characterization and interpretations whichever way I want to make the story work. For example, straight up myth!Fenrir and Hel probably wouldn't disown Loki because in the myths their mothers are giants too. But Nari is Sigyn's son, so he probably would. But for the fic series I'm writing right now, I'm interpreting Fenrir, Hel, and Nari all to be Sigyn's children and handwaving the myth as "Midgardians got it wrong." That said, "Midgardians got it wrong" can be used to pick and choose any pieces of the lore you want to apply to fanfics.
Ultimately, all a sane Loki wants is a place to call his own.
Um, that's all I got so far.
p.s. sldkjfsd f LJ formatting (or lack there of, really) is super frustrating. I wound up deleting this twice and then crossposting it from DW.
vorquellyn messaged me to ask if I wanted to exchange Loki thoughts, and I said sure, but let’s do that in an actual discussion post, because LJ is dumb and eats most of my PMs these days.
Thus, context. You have it now. Welcome to our Loki discussion, feel free to jump in if you like. My initial thoughts are behind the cut.
As far as canon goes, most of my Marvel Universe!Loki knowledge comes from the live action movies and pretty much every Marvel cartoon ever. No really, if it’s on Netflix or Hulu, or came on during Saturday mornings any time in the late 80s through the 90s, I’ve seen it. As far as the comics go, I only have incidental Loki knowledge, because I’ve always been more a Spiderman and X-Men comic reader. The only issues of The Avengers I have under my belt are the ones where Wolverine was the leader of the team.
But, as anyone who has read my LotS fic can tell you, I am super into Norse Mythology, so any characterization of Loki that I come up with is going to be heavily influenced by that.
I’ve only really gotten into Avengers fic recently, and that was because I was watching the cartoon on Netflix and I got a hankering for more Tony Stark. I love Tony Stark, and I will read Tony/anything. Also, people don’t seem to write a lot of fic for the cartoons, but the movies have 2349823423423 fics, so I figured “screw it, they’re basically the same characters” and here we are. I started out reading Tony/Steve, just because it’s the most popular Tony pairing, and that somehow led me down a rabbit hole of Darcy/Clint, then Tony/Bruce, and finally, Tony/Loki. Which in turn, made me go “what’s up with Loki anyway?”
Unpopular opinion time: I know Loki, and by extension, Hiddles, has an army of fangirls. Quite frankly, I don’t get it. I want to get it, I really do, but I just don’t. I didn’t like The Avengers movie as much as your average bear. I didn’t find Loki to be menacing enough, smart enough just… he just wasn’t enough in any way, shape, or form, and if you can’t sell me your villain, I’m just not going to like your movie. So I never really gave Loki a second thought until I started reading Tony/Loki. If I thought about him at all, it was somewhere along the lines of “fail villain fails.”
Which, in the end, is why I wound up writing Loki fic. I don’t get him (though I think I'm starting to), and I’m going to take him apart and put him back together in different ways until I do.
So, keeping all that in mind, here’s what I’ve carved out about Loki so far (these are just my opinions/headcanons):
I don’t think Loki wants power just for power’s sake - as evidenced by the line “I am burdened with glorious purpose.” He recognizes that to rule is a burden, something that it takes Thor a while to figure out.
Loki tells the truth more often than not. At least in Thor. He doesn't lie just to lie, only when a purpose can be served by it. And the whole point of being Loki Liesmith/Loki Silvertongue is that he tells the truth often enough that you can never be sure when he's lying. I also think he lies with the truth as often as possible.
Loki's behavior in the latter half of Thor is out of character in regards to viciousness/evil. He's the cool headed brother, the one who would be a good king but will never be given that chance, but once he realizes he’s really a Frost Giant, he suffers a psychotic break because hey, finding out you’re a member of a race you’ve been taught to hate. A++ parenting there, Odin. (Though, I don’t think Odin had malicious intent. I think he always meant to use Loki to bring a permanent peace with the Frost Giants, but he’s kind of an idiot for a God of Wisdom and doesn’t realize it’s a bad idea to teach a baby Frost Giant that Frost Giants are monsters and expect that to work out okay.)
Loki's behavior, when viewed objectively without family loyalties and etc., is not really much worse than Thor's before Thor gets his head out of his ass. They both kind of suck, Loki is just unfortunate enough to be painted as the villain because he's the nerdy magic kid that no one likes and also a Frost Giant. At least as far as Thor goes.
Loki is jealous of Thor, but not nearly as much as everyone seems to think he is. His whole disrupting Thor's coronation thing is about what's best for Asgard, but if he happens to get to stick it to Thor at the same time, that's just gravy.
When Loki falls off the rainbow bridge, I think something has to happen to drive him crazy. Because as he appears in The Avengers, he's just... lost something. In Thor you can see the calculation and the ways in which his plans get away from him, and most importantly, that he's trying to do what he thinks is right. In The Avengers he's, to put it succinctly, "bag of cats." There's no real rhyme or reason to what he's doing or why he does it, and that strikes me as being very out of character for Loki if we take in his characterization in Thor and all other source that aren't The Avengers movie.
The scepter/Tesseract/Thanos is/are heavily influencing Loki's behavior in The Avengers. It doesn't absolve him of responsibility, and he probably enjoys getting to fuck up the realm that Thor suddenly loves just because FUK U THOR, but he is definitely not on his A game. I refuse to believe The Avengers is his A game, because otherwise I am just deeply disappointed in what the writers have done with the character.
Loki is not human. Human morality and sanity can’t be applied to him. Stories from his POV should reflect this.
In mythology Loki is married to Sigyn, and has at least 6 children: Fenrir, Jormungundr, Hel, Vali, Nari, Sleipnir. I'm not sure about Marvel!Loki, but any fanfic!Loki that I write is going to have been married to Sigyn at some point, and have at least Fenrir, Hel, and Nari as children. My headcanons for that are that Loki and Sigyn have been estranged for a while (which is why we don't see her in Thor), but stayed married because Sigyn wanted to remain a princess of Asgard. However, once it comes out that Loki is a Frost Giant, she divorces him out of disgust/shame, and his children likewise disown him, depending on how they're characterized. As far as I know, Fenrir, Hel, and Nari don't have Marvel counterparts, so I bend their characterization and interpretations whichever way I want to make the story work. For example, straight up myth!Fenrir and Hel probably wouldn't disown Loki because in the myths their mothers are giants too. But Nari is Sigyn's son, so he probably would. But for the fic series I'm writing right now, I'm interpreting Fenrir, Hel, and Nari all to be Sigyn's children and handwaving the myth as "Midgardians got it wrong." That said, "Midgardians got it wrong" can be used to pick and choose any pieces of the lore you want to apply to fanfics.
Ultimately, all a sane Loki wants is a place to call his own.
Um, that's all I got so far.
p.s. sldkjfsd f LJ formatting (or lack there of, really) is super frustrating. I wound up deleting this twice and then crossposting it from DW.