Meta: I believe there's a hero in all of us.

[rokhal]

I recently saw Thor and The Avengers and got pressganged into Loki's legions of fangirls. And I've been wondering why. Sure, Tom Hiddleston is cute and engaging and funny and so happy with his role and his fandom that he makes me feel a little less silly about being a fan. The actor's a cool guy.

Loki's a whiner.

But it's Loki who holds my

Comments

[claudiapriscus]

I don't know. He was sure willing to zap that old dude in Germany. And he did very nearly send the helicarrier to the ocean via minion attack. And he unleashed the Hulk for shits and giggles. And he stabbed Thor, when Thor suggested they fight together against the Chitauri. And he stabbed Coulson in the back- he wasn't in any danger, he was behind him and hidden. What I mean to say is that I don't think he was afraid and had a moment of weakness. I think he was having a temper tantrum.

I enjoy movie Loki, but I only fangirl comics!kid!loki, because he's awesome. And I love redemption stories.

ETA: There's something very Richard III about Loki. You know:
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.

[rokhal]

He was going to make an example of the old man, he had it all planned out, it was just basic rhetoric-in-action! And he only stabbed Thor a tiny bit.

But seriously, temper tantrum sounds like as good an explanation as any for all the puzzle pieces that just don't fit any other motive. The whole mess kept nagging at me. Thanks.

That monologue is spooky-spot on. I love fandom. I hope we get to see the conniving plotter side of Loki more in Thor II, but until then, there's always AO3. In Thor there was too much ambiguity to tell whether he was plotting against Thor or for Asgard, and in Avengers, he was on a leash.

I guess what I'm trying to say with this whole thing is, here's a scenario where it would take an act of incredible fortitude, creativity, humility, imagination, intelligence, forgiveness, and self-restraint just to not star in a movie where Hulk uses you as a whack-a-mole mallet and everybody cheers. Life smacked Loki down and said, "You've got two ways to play this, only two, choose now who you're going to be in this story: John McClane or Hitler?"

I think we've all got to watch for those moments. It's very easy to go through life in a rut, not questioning the makeup of our personalities and morals, because little of what we do every day seems important. But when injustice is all around us, so thick as to seem normal or so overwhelming as to seem inevitable, then complying with the way things are is important to the people we hurt, and upholding basic human decency can be so difficult that it takes a radical self-transformation to do so. Sometimes life does us favors by being impossibly hard.

Sorry, rambling. Thanks for reading!

[claudiapriscus]

Rambling is the fun of fandom! (The audience cheering in every screening of the Avengers I went to when Loki got smashed was the best part).

Thinking of conniving, let me pimp the comics kid!Loki again (if you haven't already read it), because he is really great and sneaky and plotty, though it does have a tendency to get away from him. (He's kid!loki because he realized that he was getting predictable by being treacherous all the time. So he decided the hell with it and died dramatically. Then Thor got lonely and tried to bring him back to life. But he ended up with the child-sized version instead. Who only remembers his life up to a certain point, and is horrified by the monster he became.) And it leads to such scenes like these: http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/3957046.html

Which really combines too of my favorite things: heartwarming violence,and brother hugs!

[rokhal]

Aw, man, I wish I wasn't so cheap. Everyone keeps raving about how awesome JiM is.

Heartwarming violence, indeed.

[claudiapriscus]

There are other ways....by which I mean the library, of course. *whistles and looks shifty*

But you can also get a lot of the gist of it by going through the scans_daily archives. That's how I got hooked.