//Oh, bless you for asking. ❤ I used to write a lot of fanfiction, during my undergraduate years, but when I went to grad school and then started teaching at university, I lost the time (and honestly the mental energy) for full blown multi chapter stories. Maybe one of these days I’ll get an account somewhere and write a one-shot? I do rp here though! ❤
a) I’ve asked for synopses from trusted friends and I gathered the bare bones of the plot, but I feel, as a PhD, that good research into a character and the world built around that character involves an “eyewitness” understanding of the material.
b) Closely related, I genuinely believe that the film is irresponsibly timed, given the current state of the world, and egregiously graphically disturbing and violent, and if I’m going to protest its contents effectively, I need to understand those contents firsthand. These are easy, cliched ways to emphasize the stakes that are involved for the heroes’ final battle. There are other ways to do it, and superior writers would have.
c)I feel like I owe it to Loki to “be there” for his death. He is almost like a friend to me. I have been his advocate in many ways for nearly a decade.
2) I’m emphasizing my hatred of Thanos because:
a) yes, you would THINK he was made to be hated, wouldn’t you, BUT on more than one occasion the Russo Brothers have actually, explicitly stated that Infinity War is meant to CENTER on Thanos as a SYMPATHETIC figure. A good part of me believes that this statement was a calculated effort to troll the audience into a fury and earn more revenue from the film, because CONTROVERSY always draws a crowd–as I have stated also on numerous occasions, this is why I didn’t go see the movie, and am not purchasing it, but spent a buck to rent it, and want to give Marvel no more support than that. Nevertheless, there’s knowing something intellectually, and then there’s reacting viscerally and firsthand to the product, and to the avowed intentions of its directors and writers.
b) I am only human, and I love Loki with all my heart, and Thanos is the one who graphically killed him (in case the blog doesn’t give it away 😉 ), and watching a character you’ve loved for almost eight consecutive real-life years be slaughtered in the first five minutes of a film as a shock-value device is, again, viscerally speaking, upsetting, even if you are intellectually prepared.
c) I can personally relate to Gamora’s issues with her father. And I would rather not elaborate on this particular point.
I hope that suffices. If you are not a fan of my Infinity War liveblog, I invite you to block the following tags: #Infinity War spoilers #Infinity War liveblog #Infinity War Critical //
A bit of friendly advice: not everyone will respond to questions like this as civilly as I have, because they come across as a demand that someone justify their own blog’s content. As I am a teacher, I didn’t mind. But you might want to be be careful in the future.
Thank you for your compliment on my characterization of Loki!
//Hot take but if you think Ebony Maw, a sorcerer who is proficient at torture and brainwashing, the vanguard of Thanos’s Piece of Shit Brigade, didn’t torture Loki–who visibly recognized him in the beginning of Infinity War–in the same ways that he tortured Dr. Strange, to get something Thanos wanted (maybe “is there something in Asgard’s Vault that the Great Thanos could use?”), before handing him off to the Other and giving him the “consolation prize” of the Mind Stone with which to conquer earth, then youuuuuu haven’t watched the same movie I have.
I now have a concrete face to put to the name of Loki’s torturers while he was under Thanos’s control. The reason why he looked like this
at the end of Thor 1. The reason why he stumbled and fell and suffered from heat exhaustion in Avengers Assemble, and looked like a living corpse. It wasn’t just the effects of traveling through the Tesseract. Tom Hiddleston said Loki was put through physical and psychological abuse (and my meta tag is full of essays that more thoroughly deconstruct this theory), but he didn’t yet know who the characters were that exacted these methods; they hadn’t been written yet. Now it’s clear it’s Ebony Maw.
Yes that look Loki gave him said it all.
Not to mention the way Ebony talks sounded a lot like Loki did in Avengers when giving his speech in Stuttgart and at the beginning. Like someone who had been indoctrinated.
“Thea,” Loki greets his witchling, retracting his proverbial claws with his cubs, as ever. He magicks the mouse he was in the process of transforming into a salmon into a large tank; as a result there’s a furry gilled and finned chimera happily bubbling about within. The rest of the magic he waves away in an iridescent, dissipating cloud, for Thea is right: he is delighted.
He leans down to lift her into his lap, and when he does, he takes the colorful chaos from her hands and examines it, rotating it every way.
“It is most beautiful, lamb, it reminds me of how magic feels.” A breath of laughter through his nose. “So. What is the best way to look at it, hm?”
Asgard, finally settling in Norway to repopulate: So, what are the Nordic lands famous for since we were last here? Swordsmanship? Hunting parties? Bloodbaths?!?!
Millenial sipping iced coffee: Abba
Asgard: ???
Asgard, twenty minutes later bopping to Dancing Queen:
icyxmischief 