One thing I find to be extremely unnerving (and heartbreaking) about Thor’s (unsuccessful) attack of Thanos is the sheer joy he took in inflicting pain on the Titan.
The act was also terribly intimate, especially with the way he cradled Thanos’s neck as he plunged the Stormbreaker into his heart.
Some people said it mirrored his way of cradling Loki’s in the past. I, however, disagree.
After rewatching it, however, I realize the intimacy was done to mirror a much earlier death…
Loki’s.
Notice the parallel in terms of camera angles?
❌I will not put the direct shot of Loki’s face here. 😭 We all know he was suffering there.
When Thanos was torturing Loki, notice how his gaze shifted from Loki to Thor. He was flaunting his victory there, mocking Thor for being trapped and powerless as his brother was slowly drained of his life. He took pleasure from watching both brothers suffer, one physically and one emotionally. This seemed to be a favourite kink of his, look at Nebula and Gamora/Vision and Wanda.
And here, It is time for Thor to return the favour.
Thanos’s way of dispatching Loki clearly showed his sadistic joy in watching another suffer.
Thanos seemed to have unleashed a side of Thor that we have never seen before. He gloated because of the suffering of his enemy, and took his time savouring every single second of it.
If I were Thor, I would have done the same.
Some people argued that Thor had tried to avenge Heimdall, since he told Thanos right after Heimdall’s death, “you will die for that”.I do agree that plunging the Stormbreaker into Thanos’s heart was for Heimdall and the dead Asgardians. Giving Thanos a fatal wound was for Heimdall and his people.
However, the way Thor took pleasure in observing Thanos’s demise, was for Loki. After all, his brother died a long drawn out death and he made sure Thanos wouldn’t die a swift one. The camera angles also have the impression that Thor was mirroring Thanos in that scene.
Thor also made sure that Thanos could not look at anything other than his face of hate when he perished, like Loki who was forced to look at Thanos’s face as his neck was snapped.
The Russos seem to believe that Thor’s failure to kill Thanos and save the Earth is because of his refusal to “aim for the head” and give Thanos a swift death. He let his emotions get in the way.
We wouldn’t blame him though, would we?
Well said! Thank you!
Well, I think there’s another layer here actually.
Because yes, it was for Loki, and yes, Thor wanted to mirror Loki’s pain unto Thanos while he died. But while watching the movie, it’s very clear that Thor didn’t enjoy doing this.
Maybe he thought he would enjoy it, maybe he thought it would make him feel better to get this specific kind of revenge. And that’s why it’s so heartbreaking to see this scene–because Thor obviously doesn’t feel better by making Thanos suffer. He just looks tired… 😦 Bc getting revenge doesn’t bring Loki back to life.
But he still goes through the motions. He forces himself to summon that anger for Loki’s sake. Even though he’s getting no satisfaction from it, even though it’s against his nature to draw out a killing blow, he’s doing this on behalf of his brother and on behalf of his brother only.
There’s no fun in it for him. There’s nothing in it for him.
Getting exactly what he wants only to feel nothing is that familiar portrayal of a severely depressed person, and this time, it’s Thor
hurts T___T
fun fact, Thanos’s clear enjoyment of others’ pain is what prompted my fix-it fic! the Russos are now saying some bullshit about how Thanos changes after the Statesman because now that he has a couple Infinity Stones, he’s no longer killing indiscriminately, just relentlessly pursuing his goal and only killing people who strike him as serious threats (which means: yes, Tony, because everything always comes back to Tony somehow), and somehow that’s symbolized by him taking off his armor buuuuuut
he took off his armor before he killed Loki, for starters, and also he did not have to kill Loki, he easily could have just smacked him aside and left but instead he took the time to do it like that and to make very sure Thor was watching and if that wasn’t enough, he walked over to dump Loki’s body right in front of him just to make even more sure to rub it in. so I guess the Russos theoretically mean after that Thanos set aside his obvious sadistic pleasure in watching other people suffer so he could focus on his ~noble goal~?
OH BUT WAIT, I guess we’ve just decided to forget about Knowhere? “but we didn’t actually see him kill anybody there” right well I think it’s highly unlikely that he basically destroyed the entire place and was careful not to kill anyone but sure, for the sake of argument let’s go with that, so HOW THE FUCK DO YOU EXPLAIN THE BIT WHERE HE PRETENDS HE’S GOING TO LET PETER KILL GAMORA. just like on the Statesman where he wasted time making Thor and Loki (but mostly Thor, arguably, without actually-for-sure killing him to remove an enemy so that justification is still bullshit) suffer, he had what he wanted. there was absolutely no reason for him to wait around just so Gamora could beg Peter to kill her and Peter could finally make the horrible decision to do it, unless Thanos was waiting deliberately because he likes making people suffer. hell, he even pushes Gamora closer to Peter but doesn’t otherwise interrupt, making extremely sure they both have time for this awful, awful moment that ended up not accomplishing anything anyway. so as much as the part with Thor and Loki stands out to me for obvious reasons, that’s just the first time his sadism is on full display in IW, not the only time.
in conclusion Thanos is fucking lying to himself because he pretends to be pragmatically, ruthlessly pursuing his ~very noble goal~ but in fact he is a punk bitch who gets off on others’ suffering and I hate him for all the wrong reasons, okay thanks for coming to my TED talk
the thing about the idea that the portrayal of Loki in Avengers was somehow character assassination or “incorrect” really bothers me, because it…ignores the idea that Loki might have possibly gone through character development. if Loki went straight from the Loki of Thor to the Loki of Ragnarok, it wouldn’t make any sense at all – and frankly, there’s some part of me that kind of feels like I want to see the development from Loki of The Dark World to Ragnarok, but…I can still believe it.
I can believe that Loki could have moved from the angry, bitter, resentful way he was in TDW to something lighter and more at ease – because between TDW and Ragnarok he’s had time where he’s not imprisoned, he’s not fighting for his life, he hasn’t just gone from a major breakdown only to end up in basically the worst possible place for his mental health (which is where he was in The Avengers). as of Ragnarok, for the first time since Thor Loki’s had time to relax, to exist in a state where he’s not in danger and constantly under threat.
he’s returned to the state he was in at the beginning of Thor, more or less. healed, at least a little, and therefore is in more of a position to recover some of the shattered sense of self and state of anger he was in before.
I’ve always maintained that part of what Loki needs to get his feet back under him is some time away from his family, and after the end of The Dark World he actually gets that. Thor’s gone and Odin’s out of the picture – the two biggest Issues with Loki prior to that. it gives him space to relax for the first time since 2011, for a full three years. I have to imagine that helps.
Loki of The Avengers does make sense, in context of his state of mind at the end of Thor and what he clearly goes through in between. and since then he’s been inching slowly forward. the arc in between, including The Dark World (for all its flaws), is necessary in order to make his arc in Ragnarok in any way rewarding.
and I’m getting really tired of the seeming need to tear down Loki’s characterization in other movies in order to prop up Ragnarok, which should be able to stand on its own merits.
I agree. In the previous movies, we saw Loki in the context of a building psychotic break, of torture and brainwashing, of profound bitterness and grief. In Ragnarok, he’s been given some time and space to heal to a degree, to find some emotional equilibrium, to come to terms with many of his traumas and put his own spin on them. Looking at the whole picture, his character arc makes perfect sense.
I’m going to point it out again: Another genius moment in acting/directing. Look at his expression. He feels nothing. Nothing at all.
There’s no one to put on a show for here. There’s no need for posturing when he doesn’t have an audience. And what do we get when he’s basically alone? Nothing. He feels nothing.
Like I said in a previous post (when he dropped Thor from the helocarrier), this is not a lack of sympathy or regret necessarily. This is not a lack of the normal spectrum of emotions. This is a lack of resolution. He went into this mad plan with expectations. Expectations of feeling powerful. Of finally being equal to Thor—maybe even more. Of revenge. None of those expectations are fulfilled (long before he gets Hulk-smashed).
I’m going to put forth an unusual speculation here. His actions, particularly in these moments, speak less of being a sociopath or psychopath, and more of severe depression. I’m not talking about the blues when you’re having a bad day or a bad week. Severe depression is not being sad all the time.
It’s being numb. All. The. Time. It’s feeling nothing when you know you should feel something. It’s not caring. About anything.
Severe depression messes with your moral center (and I don’t mean religious morals). It’s very difficult to differentiate between right or wrong because you feel no guilt, no shame, no elation. The quest becomes less about finding happiness (while in the throes of such an acute depression, happiness is not only impossible, the notion is utterly unbelievable—a fiction without any truth). The quest is merely to feel better. To feel at all.
Think about it. Despite his act of insincerity, Loki was probably prone to brooding even before his world fell apart. He probably experienced bouts of mild to moderate depression throughout his life. (The mischief might have helped to alleviate that.) Then he finds out what he is—not the son of Odin (whose approval he desperately wanted)—but one of very enemy he was raised to hate. Fast forward through his botched attempt at genocide, fratricide and successful patricide—then a fall through the vortex of the dying Bifrost (who knows what happened there?), and finally he was held captive by Thanos.
How is he not depressed? (If not suffering from a complete psychosis.) And I doubt he is not cognizant enough to realize the severity of his mental illness.
And so he pursues these things, thinking that he’ll feel better (that he’ll feel something) and in the end, he still feels nothing.
You’ll never convince me that Loki’s look of blankness as he lets go of Gungnir, that that was a suicide attempt, is not part of some severe depression issues and that everything just gets magnified to about a thousand times worse and twisted up when he goes through the Void.
Because, like. On the one hand it’s just fun and funny and silly in the way we want Spidey to be- him being young and naive enough to take a command (like “You’re an adult in the Jewish community now” farther than it’s maybe intended.
But on the other hand, this is exactly what’s intended. Superheroes- at least, the best ones- are basically the living embodiment of “If not me, then who?” They’re trying to make the world a better place than it was. And that is the responsibility of any Jewish adult. Peter getting bit by a radioactive spider and saying “Well, shit, looks like my only option is tikkun olam” is SUCH A FUCKING RIDICULOUSLY JEWISH CHOICE.
Like- if Peter was already comfortably Spidey in Civil War, in the MCU he had to be pretty close to his Bar Mitzvah when he became Spider-man. Which means that it happened right in that time where you’re taking the idea of what b’nai mitzvot means super seriously. You’re suddenly expected to view the world as something you can fix. You’re considering what it means that you’re suddenly an adult, and that you have these new responsibilities, and how can you live up to them.
In that context, with great power comes great responsibility isn’t just about being a superhero, it’s also about being called to the bimah, and permission to read the Torah, and the ability to join a minyan. In that context, developing fucking spider powers must feel like a sign of how being a Jewish adult encompasses so much more than you could ever imagine, both in terms of pivilege and in terms of obligations.
Maybe “Spider-boy” could walk past someone who needs help, but “Spider-man” could not. In choosing that name, Peter is unequivocally embracing the power and burden of Jewish adulthood.
NO BUT GUYS.
Consider:
Peter’s congregation does not, officially, know that he’s Spider-man. It is definitely his secret identity and that has not been breached, he is VERY SECRETIVE, etc.
Except.
Except that they’re a community and they all know about the tragedy that took his parents, and then to lose his Uncle Ben (z’’l) on top of that.
When he started acting odd, they all thought it was grief, made it a point to keep an eye on him.
When he started asking questions about the morality of certain things- they took notice.
The way he disappeared some afternoons, even if there was a youth group meeting (and he used to be pretty good about attending those when he didn’t have clubs after school), and those always happened to be the same day Spidey footage showed up on YouTube.
The way he’s always offering to run errands and just happens to be able to do things faster than anyone else can.
The way Spider-man doesn’t seem to work on Shabbas unless there is something that really cannot be solved without him.
They see the Bugle articles about him and, as a community, reject them. The rabbi says it in his sermon: Spider-man is not a menace, he is a mensch.
In the pews, Peter Parker’s sigh of relief is loud, and everyone pretends not to hear it.
Peter asking his religious school teacher REALLY BIZARRELY POINTED QUESTIONS. Peter bringing up weird fringe Jewish theories he found on Reddit and YouTube and being like “Is this true though? IF I GOT BITTEN BY A SNAKE-” “Peter, did you get bitten by a snake? Forget religious concerns, do we need to take you to the hospital?” “DO NOT TAKE ME TO THE HOSPITAL”
Man, but this is actually a really interesting question! Because health and well-being takes priority over basically everything else in Jewish tradition, how does developing superpowers factor into that? Are they enhancing health and well-being, or compromising it? If it’s the former, would doing things to support superpowers be considered not just good because helping people is a mitzvah but also because it is using his body the way it was intended? By biting Peter, did the radioactive spider inadvertently perform a great service in more ways than one?
“Do aliens count as life? Would killing them bring repercussions upon me? Hypothetically speaking.”
“Am I a bad Jew if I teamed up with a non-Jew, like a…a spider or a gentile god or a sentient raccoon or something in order to fight said aliens? Hypothetically speaking.”
“Could non-kosher animals that perform a good service for a Jew be rewarded? In what ways?”
“Is it Jewish of me to get the urge to crawl into a ceiling corner and wait for flies?”
“What if I could help people, but the way in which I helped them didn’t match up with Judaism? I could follow Jewish teachings, but then I’d be helping less people…”
I think what I love most about this is that so many of these questions have halachic precedent, some even in our world, but ESPECIALLY in the MCU.
Because you know that the second Tony Stark stepped up to that mic in 2008 and said “I am Iron Man,” Jewish scholars started EXPLODING with discussions and hypotheticals about this new world they were suddenly occupying.
Plus, by the time Pete was bitten by the spider, the Chitauri attack already happened, which means rabbis in New York were at the FOREFRONT of figuring out what the shit is going on with their world and how that intersects with Jewish custom.
I’m unclear if SHIELD being infiltrated by Hydra ended up known or if they covered at least some of it up, but if it was public knowledge, that is such a huge additional thing for Jews- that this group historically associated with the Nazis is not just still around, but infiltrating the highest aspects of government. I think that would fundamentally change how Jews approach superheroes and superpowers. In fact, I think that would be a pretty big topic in youth groups and in religious classes, both dealing with kids’ fears and figuring out how to make the ones who AREN’T scared realize how deadly serious the whole situation is. And that, in and of itself, would probably change Peter’s response to becoming Spider-man; the great responsibility of it takes on new resonance in that climate.
… I need to look up that midrash or folktale or whatever it was about King David (before he was king, I’m pretty sure) asking God why He created spiders and scorpions because they seem so useless and harmful, and God doesn’t answer but before the week is out David gets his life saved by a spider and a scorpion in quick succession
because somebody needs to tell Peter that midrash at some point
thought about this before but thinking about it again: Loki/Grandmaster and the way that Loki is very vulnerable to people taking physical advantage of him/convincing himself it doesn’t matter because between the physical disjunction between his self-identity and his Jotun form and then the experience of being twisted into both a mental and physical pretzel by Thanos means that Loki has basically no sense of physical autonomy whatsoever
at this point it’s almost expectation that people are going to ignore his boundaries and do what they want with his body so like he almost might as well lean into that because at least then he has the illusion of choice
Yeahhhh, this. I feel like Loki does a lot of things to give himself the illusion of control and choice.
I’ve seen this particular issue/dynamic of him not feeling entitled to his own physical limits/space/boundaries explored in a few different places and Loki-pairings, especially in stories where he’s meant to be entering into a bdsm scenario but isn’t setting proper boundaries and is oblivious as to how that might affect the others around him who actually don’t mean to cause him harm or manipulate him (I know you did some great stuff with this much earlier on in RTC, @veliseraptor and it just made me hurt)
But yeah with the Grandmaster involved that’s suddenly a whole world of potential clusterfuck waiting to happen…
Plus, not like we actually see it in the MCU (only alluded to by Thor) but the fact that Loki’s a shapeshifter would no doubt add to the massive tangle of confusion as to where his boundaries truly lie— especially since he’d have to be hyperaware of his changing form’s limits, and he’d likely have a greater sense of proprioception than most. But at the same time, even if he keeps a fairly static Asgardian form, his body is constantly full of the potential to change, through his own will or by surprise.
Which makes it all the more cruel that Loki can’t feel true ownership over it— it should be vital for him even more than the average person but he’s denied that sense of security in his own skin— and why he keeps himself clothed and wrapped in so many layers, as if that will provide enough of a buffer between him and the world (it doesn’t.)
Honestly the Grandmaster instigating the change in Loki’s clothes is one of the biggest examples of this for me— exerting ownership over that extension of Loki’s body/personhood— and the idea that Loki may have convinced himself he was changing his look to manipulate the GM, because the truth that he wasn’t even in control of his personal presentation was too large a pill to swallow. The fact that he switches back to his colors once he lands in Asgard? Not changes outfits, just the colours— so you know it’s intentional— says everything to me.
So the Russos said that Thanos hurting his arm balances out murdering half of the universe and I just found out about this? Nobody’s mentioning it? Dudes are actually, literally saying that any inconvenience an oppressor suffers is morally equivalent to mass murder.
Fuck it. That’s it, I’m done. I’ve weathered a lot of shit, but I will be damned if one cent more of any money I’m ever in control of makes its way into their fucking pockets.
Okay, my source wasn’t clear. As it turns out, all they said was that he was “balancing the universe,” and his arm boo-boo is the cost of that. You know, the cost of half the lives in the universe. Like… all those lives on one side of the scale, his arm on the other… ehh, looks even. So… the implication is there, but they didn’t say it outright.
After all, that would require them to actually commit to something.
Wait, what
I am so glad I refused to see the movie because what??
I looked this up myself and oh my g-d, this is actually true
Oh man, you’re gonna be so pissed when you see the part where they describe Thanos, the character they rewrote to buy into Malthusian implicitly-racist bullshit, as being on a “hero’s journey.”
im no comic expert but wasent thanos motive in the comics “is a giant fuckboy that things omincide will impress death into boneing him instead of deadpool” you know the perfect guy to have heroic goals
Yep. Yes he was. And they changed it to the racist bullshit for the sole purpose of “we wanna be different than the comics!” While doing an iconic storyline from the comics.
HEY RUSSOS, WHY WAS WANDA/VISION SO IMPORTANT IN YOUR NOT-LIKE-THE-COMICS MOVIE?
But Thanos is the villain? I mean, he’s practically a Villain Protagonist here, with how the movie follows him, I suppose in part because they decided that was the best way to balance a movie with so many heroes, but he’s never implied to be right, morally? Hell,I’m pretty sure he’s implied to even be wrong factually about what his actions will accomplish–wasn’t it implied somewhere before that Gamora’s home planet is dead? And weren’t there, like, crashing planes and stuff in the post credits sequence?
If I read the same source as you (https://www.cbr.com/avengers-infinity-war-russos-thanos-arm/), they never said it was a fair cost, just that it was a cost. He probably thinks it’s a fair cost, because he thinks he’s doing the whole Hero’s Journey Tough Choices thing, but he’s also a stupid asshole who can only see the rest of the universe as an extension of his own personal experiences with no respect for anyone else’s, and every single character we’ve been expected to find particularly sympathetic is against him, so …
(They still should have probably just kept his comics motive. It’s less stupid in-universe, and a villain who is willing to put his personal feelings over the well being of the entire universe fits better with the rest of the MCU’s themes thematically WAY better than an idiot who thinks he’s Making The Hard Choices based on shitty logic and a complete lack of respect for anyone else’s agency.)
You’re giving them way too much credit here. Like, Thanos isn’t the one who thinks he’s on a hero’s journey – that’s literally a Russo quote. They’re the ones who think that. They are explicitly and deliberately portraying him as a sympathetic figure, just a Hard Man Making Hard Choices for the good of all of us, except the ones who are dead.
The fact that they made him kinda dumb and wildly inconsistent is… well, it’s just lazy writing from the same people who never bothered noticing that Dr. Strange’s characterization had shifted away from “I wanna be Tony Stark but I’m a worse person in literally every conceivable way” by the end of his movie, the same people who thought that Wakanda – an African nation with the most advanced technology on the planet – would fight for the survival of all of reality by charging the bad guys with spears even though their weapons have already been established as having blasters. (Go ahead, find an explanation for that that isn’t some combination of “lazy writing” and “racism.” I’ll wait.)
Thanos being poorly written is frankly expected given that kind of context. What’s boggling is that anybody got a good character beat at all.
A big part of the problem is how they did it, yeah. Like…I have zero interest in Thanos as a character so I was never excited about him essentially being the protagonist, but it could have worked. Instead they fell all over themselves trying to humanize Thanos in the mistaken belief that they were making him a better villain, and they did that first by giving him a worldview that is disturbingly fucking close to real worldviews that harm real people…AND THEN THEY NEVER LET ANYONE CALL HIM OUT ON HIS BULLSHIT.
I mean, obviously, he’s supposed to be the Big Bad, we’re supposed to take that as a given. But if you want to make somebody like Thanos understandable without backing off the evil, you can’t just figure it’s self-evident that he’s a bad guy when the movie itself validates his point of view. He tells Gamora her planet is a paradise now because he wiped out half the population (which is a lazy retcon for new characterization in the first place, given that GotG included Gamora’s rap sheet explicitly calling her the last survivor of her race), and…apparently, we’re all supposed to accept that. None of the good guys are given the opportunity to contradict him. You can’t depend on the directors’ commentary to clarify that oh yeah, of course he’s a bad dude and of course he’s wrong, his driving purpose isn’t really altruism but his fucked-up savior complexwithout actually pointing that out in the movie. This is not the sort of thing where you can just assume audiences are smart and they’ll get it, because a) they’re not going to get it if you didn’t do the work and b) there are already loads of people who will say “well you gotta admit, Thanos had a point” unless you actually show that no he fucking didn’t.
I neither can nor want to read this tbh. Anyone else can give general heads-up as to how atrocious this is re: general vilifying, powers / intelligence erasure, backstory and so on?
@shine-of-asgard Its honestly fine if you want to read— that first page is just brief interview questions. Mostly Tom just talking about wearing his costume, getting into character, his acting relationship with Hemsworth (this part is quite sweet), his love of Branagh’s approach to Thor and his excitement/observation that people have latched onto the characters and seem to enjoy having real emotions in their blockbuster superhero movies. The “bad boy” bit in the title isn’t followed-up except for where Tom (probably jokingly) says the horns give Loki a bit of the devil about him.
What did catch my eye was the blurb about the Mind Stone on the next page— and the claim that Thanos didn’t know what it was when he gave it to Loki in the scepter. I’m sorry, what?!?! This is news to me.
WTF, Marvel? How do you keep making your big bad scary new villain sound like such a dipshit? At this point I believe my own account of what happened with Thanos more than I believe anything coming from these ass-clowns.
Also I just caught that it says “[Thanos] granted use of the stone to Loki to help him in hisproposedconquest of Earth”
So like, not to take this too seriously because honestly, who knows how closely this kind of collateral print stuff is proofread by the higher ups…
But that sounds like it was Loki’s idea to target Earth— which is something that’s often been debated. Loki has a few lines in Avengers that sound like he’s doubtful of Thanos’ ability to deliver an army. The Other says something like “you’ll have your war, Asgardian” — doesn’t he? (I can’t pull up a video at the moment to see.)
I always thought that was a bit funny because Loki was clearly being threatened/coerced/tortured on some level and clearly under Thanos’ control. So why did it sound so much like he was trying to bargain, as if he were an equal partner in the venture? I always figured those comments were merely Loki trying to reassert his regal bearing and pull his pride together, trying to hide his fear before going off to “conquer.”
But… if Loki was the one who first suggested going to Earth (perhaps offering his services in order to save his own skin) his comments would make even more sense, because then of course he’d want to act as though he actually gave a shit about conquering Midgard as a general of Thanos. He’d have to make Thanos and The Other believe he was dedicated to not just Thanos’ cause, but his own selfish goals of ruling Earth— which of course, wouldn’t possibly compete with Thano’s goal of attaining the Stones.
Btw— if Thanos didn’t even know he already had the fucking Mind Stone in his thot little hands, how the hell did he know the Tesseract was on Earth? (Remind me— Do they say in any of the movies/deleted scenes specifically why Thanos knows about the Tesseract being found/reawakened on Earth? I forget if it’s explicitly mentioned that the energy signature calls to him or to the Mind Stone, etc. If that’s ever mentioned on screen, then something really doesn’t add up and this book is talking nonsense. But if it’s only a vague reference, perhaps we can deduce that Loki knew what the Mind Stone was, and/or told him about the Tesseract in order to entice Thanos into working with his plan.)
Either way… Loki probably knew if he played his cards right, there was a decent chance of Thor and Co. or even Odin himself preventing him from taking the Tesseract. So it makes me wonder if Loki purposefully leapt at the chance to also snag the Mind Stone from Thanos (getting caught and allowing the Avengers to analyze it, then later tossing it aside for Natasha to find— he practically giftwraps it for them) as well as botching the invasion and making sure the Tesseract would land in Thor/Asgard’s hands. Maybe he didn’t know which Stone would end up where, but he knew that anywhere was better than with Thanos, and not having either Stone would significantly hinder Thano’s ability to reach the Nine Realms.
Whew. So yes…
I always thought Loki purposefully pulled quite the fast one on Thanos by losing on purpose— but this would be potential proof that he pulled a double fast-one, knowing what the Mind Stone was before Thanos did.
Now I just want to know if Thanos was like, hmm you’ll need a weapon, how about this long piece of junk— and Loki saw the Mind Stone and was like YES I mean sure, I guess that’ll do, you’re the boss *shrug*
For my storytelling benefit, I’m going to bullet point my (subjective) thoughts on how this goes down (excluding the nonsense about Thanos not knowing he’s got the Mind Stone–I can’t abide that):
Thanos and the Black Order capture and torture Loki. Using the Mind Stone, Ebony Maw fucks with Loki’s memories and thoughts. (He does not mind control Loki, however. There’s a difference.)
Thanos somehow discovers the Space Stone on Earth.
Loki, with his mind in disarray, tries to find ways to escape the torture. He proposes that he be the one to go to Earth and retrieve it. He knows the realm, knows Asgard, and can invade Earth without Odin’s attention being drawn to Thanos. In return, Thanos will allow him to conquer the planet using the Chitauri. There is a part of him that, due to all the memory fuckery, wants Thor to suffer by seeing his precious mortals under siege. Another part hopes to keep the Infinity Stones away from Thanos. Mostly, he just wants to get the fuck away from Thanos and the Black Order by any means necessary.
Thanos agrees, believing that all the torture broke Loki.
Loki plays the part. Not every moment of it is horrible. He’s free, after all (at least relative to what he was before). But he’s not disappointed when he loses and Thanos is thwarted. He did ultimately lack the conviction to succeed in conquering Earth.
@foundlingmother I meant to reply to this earlier then accidentally posted a half-finished response, then deleted it? Where is my mind.
I was going to say that I think that’s a pretty believable interpretation— I always go back and forth on how much to give credit Loki for deliberately, sneakily self-sabotaging his own invasion, versus how much might have just been him being like, oh dear, I appear to be losing to the humans after all, I suppose I should be upset but honestly, fuck it.
I think any reasonable explanation is going to have to take into account the many, many different levels of Loki’s motivations (and where they intersect with Thanos’ motivations) as well as his less than stable physical and mental state. And I think you’ve done that. Especially given what we now know of Ebony Maw.
That’s a good point that Loki may have especially learned on the fact that Thanos would no doubt consider it a bonus for Odin to remain unaware of Thanos’ presence (what’s funny is that Thor clearly suspects right from the get-go that someone else is putting Loki up to this— he either evidently doesn’t believe Loki could/would make such a move on his own, or Odin put the speculation into his head — but Odin never follows up on this line of questioning so I presume it was Thor’s own instincts. Too bad that was never followed up on.)
Honestly, Thanos probably didn’t take much convincing. He likely thought it was a pretty decent stroke of luck for Loki to land into his orbit— as a prince of Asgard and a manipulative illusionist and sorcerer who had just been disgraced after having a mental breakdown, he was the perfect fall guy. The only one who could believably come back from certain death to invade Earth, lead an army, carry himself with the poise of a would-be dictator and make it convincingly appear to be the result of madman’s desire for power he’s long been denied and his grudge against his brother, who just happens to be the sworn defender of Earth. A perfect cover for Thanos’ aims, allowing him to evade detection by Odin. And what’s more, Thanos clearly believed that through his manipulation of existing wounds, Loki’s grudge against Thor and Asgard was now deep and genuine enough to make Loki completely, utterly loyal to him.
Thanos underestimated not only Loki’s love for Thor (Loki probably underestimated this as well) but his chaotic scrapper survival skills, his hatred of chains and the fact that Loki’s ability to hold a grudge cuts in all directions. Loki does what he wants. Even when he doesn’t know what he wants (especially when he doesn’t know what he wants.)
I still really want to know the answer to my question here, because if they did say “disobey,” that would be the most solid evidence yet that Loki was never willingly working with Thanos, with a strong implication that he did sabotage his invasion.
Thanos not knowing about the Mind Stone though, that’s…come on. Like, yes, you gotta say something to explain the plot hole created when you don’t have all 10+ years planned from the jump, but that’s what you pick? That is suuuuuper bullshit and I don’t accept it for a second.
How long do you think it took Steve Rogers to realize that his ‘look, son’ tone of voice was like an instant ticket to getting maybe 70% of people to immediately do whatever he was telling them to?
Because let’s be real here, Steve’s in his twenties. The only people he should be even remotely inclined to address that way are actual kids. But then he does the Captain America thing and is all Public Service Announcement-y and suddenly people have actual stars in their eyes and are just like ‘yes sir Captain America sir’, because for decades after he got frozen, the US government pretty much just used him as a propaganda tool and trained the entire population to see him as a moral compass and embodiment of goodness.
Only now that’s a tool in Steve’s own hands, and wow did that backfire on some of them lmao.
But yeah. Imagine Steve watching some weird video about himself from the 70′s maybe and he’s making fun of it and just trying to joke with some SHIELD secretary or something, going ‘son I’m going to need you to keep this off the books’ but then the next thing he knows this person who’s like, maybe four years younger than him at most is glancing covertly around the room and carefully deleting that day’s surveillance footage of the gym or whatever. Nodding once before going back to the sunny receptionist mannerisms.
And Steve’s just like ‘…huh’.
Please imagine with me Steve getting invited on some awful Fox News show pretty early on when conservative pundits still thought he was their guy, and busting out this tone of voice to absolutely school them on whatever flavor of bigotry they’re confidently expecting him to support
I keep thinking about Silent Hill 2 and 3, now that I’ve finished both of them (and I was, uh, semi-unspoiled for both), and it’s such a weird thing because I really don’t know if I could say which one I prefer because they’re so different. I mean…obviously they’re part of the same series and there are a lot of similarities, but they’re all things like…the setting is mostly the same, of course, even reusing some maps, and the atmosphere is similar even in different locations. The engine’s the same. The gameplay is the same, aside from slightly improved inventory management in 3. You look at a screenshot from either game, you’d say oh yeah, that’s a Silent Hill game.
But narratively, they’re just…SO different, to the extent that it would make more sense if they weren’t part of the same series. Silent Hill 2 is almost entirely psychological horror, and it does some SUPER INCREDIBLY COOL stuff with layers and layers of symbolism, and I like how the plot beats successively deepen your understanding of James and the nature of Silent Hill itself, so that once you get to the final reveal it’s a concrete thing that makes you see everything that came before it in a new light. (Silent Hill 3 kiiiiind of has a similar late-stage twist of sorts but it’s not the same kind of “OH SHIT THAT’S WHAT THAT MEANT” realization, it’s more like “wait, so…she was…and then…yeah no I can’t keep this straight and my head hurts, I’m looking up a synopsis”.) Oh and then there’s the whole thing where Silent Hill seems to be semi-sentient and it draws people into itself and feeds off their guilt and fear to manifest all kinds of creepy shit because like, WOW THAT IS MY JAM. (It maybe helps that a lot of what I understand about the town comes from @mikkeneko‘s amazing MCU/Silent Hill fic Labyrinth, which expanded on this concept in some very cool ways that made even more sense to me after I played 2.)
Silent Hill 3, for the most part, doesn’t do that last part at all–like, I guess there are hints, but it’s…really not the point? Despite how convoluted it is at times, 3 has a much more straightforward structure in general, with strong elements of psychological horror but relatively conventional enemies. Like…in Silent Hill 2, the enemies are all real but they’re also highly symbolic, so with only a couple exceptions, James’ greatest enemy is essentially himself, as represented by the semi-sentient, super-spooky, diffuse force that is the town. In 3, the real enemies are pretty much all humans (more or less) in a weird cult, which also makes them less meaningful and interesting. AND the game’s use of Otherworld locations outside of Silent Hill kind of confuses the issue of how much is the town itself and how much is…I don’t even know, honestly, general creepiness that exists because horror games I guess. (Just in general, 2 makes more sense than 3 does, in both its narrative and worldbuilding as well as the marriage of the two…which is funny, because it offers way less of an explanation of any kind for why Silent Hill is the way it is, but honestly I prefer it that way.)
So that part is kind of a disappointment, because see above re: MY JAM, but the weird thing for me is that all of this still doesn’t actually add up to an overall preference for Silent Hill 2. Because like…3 has a female protagonist, for one thing, and call me shallow or desperate or something but that one thing makes me about 500 times more interested in any game regardless of other factors. If you go for the good ending, too, it’s ultimately a story about a teenage girl reclaiming her agency and her very self from people who were perfectly willing to hurt and kill her to get what they want, which…is also extremely much my jam…so even though I find all the symbolism with the enemies in 2 more interesting, and honestly my reaction to “the enemies in 3 are humans in a creepy-ass cult” was a big eyeroll, that still doesn’t actually translate into me liking one better. Plus some of the setpieces unique to 3 are really cool (abandoned mall, subway station, abandoned amusement park), and it does do some fun things with increasingly hellish Otherworld versions of earlier locations, and also I don’t remember ever having to escort anybody which was frankly a relief.
I guess what this all boils down to is, I like both games a lot in different ways and for different reasons, and I can’t really pick a favorite between them. (The other question is, why did I write all this out, and the answer is, I have no idea.)
Right around the same time I got that previous message about Gamora, megashadowdragon (who doesn’t follow me and has never interacted with me before, so this is all completely random) sent me this as a private message, which is not the sort of thing I would ordinarily post publicly, but–okay, look:
you know I found this on tv tropes what are your thoughts This is a very technical entry as it requires a bit of research. Nonetheless, it also contains some heavy fridge horror. Much ado has been made over “why didn’t Thanos just make more resources for everyone” and there’s more of an answer than “because there wouldn’t be a movie”. If you look up the experiments by John B. Calhoun on mice and rat population, we’ve been able to scale the results of his experiments and reach numerous conclusions regarding population sizes in proportion to resource availability. However, there’s an important aspect to consider, which is the difference between total population and population density. In his experiments, Calhoun had enough food and living space for all the rodents, but they would group together in dense social groups. He noted that twelve rats is the maximum number that can live harmoniously in a natural group, beyond which stress and psychological effects function as group break-up forces. It was a different number in mice, but the principle still applies. Among the aberrations in behavior were the following: expulsion of young before weaning was complete, wounding of young, inability of dominant males to maintain the defense of their territory and females, aggressive behavior of females, passivity of non-dominant males with increased attacks on each other which were not defended against. Why didn’t Thanos just make more food-producing industries? Because “hunger” is just the simplest explanation he could offer in a movie with a time constraint. The more technical reasoning is there were too many people living in densely populated areas, being forcibly oversocialized, leading to societal deterioration. Aggressive men fighting for no reason, mutilating random people, and possibly cannibalizing the young even when food was available. It’s not as simple as creating more living space for people, because social creatures are naturally inclined to live together which naturally leads to population density overfill. What horrors did Thanos witness in his youth to conclude that a galactic culling was the most positive outcome? Probably more than he’ll ever talk about.
To further add to the Fridge Horror, considering that he is said to have been born and considered a “freak” on Titan, who knows if many, if not all of those aforementioned horrors were directed at Thanos himself?
again, this is 100% out of nowhere, from someone I don’t know, who doesn’t follow me and has never interacted with me before, when I don’t think I’d even talked about this really recently, so it’s weird to begin with, right? (I mean…at the time I’m posting this, I guess I have, but because it took me so damn long to drag together the brain cells to respond, it was a few weeks ago that I got both messages.)
obviously I didn’t intend to wait so long to scrape my
thoughts together but, well, here we are. My first impulse, if I was going to
respond to this at all (which I was always going to do publicly, because…I
mean, this is a weird,
out-of-the-blue message, considering I hadn’t posted about my frustrations
with IW Thanos in a bit and this person doesn’t follow me, so I have no idea
why they decided to message me in the first place), was to say, basically, “I
don’t care about Thanos so I don’t care what might or might not have happened
to him, and anyway hurt feelings and a potentially tragic past are no excuse
for genocide,” and then I felt like a total hypocrite because…well, looking at
it that way, my defenses of Loki kind of boil down to that “You don’t have all
the facts” screencap from The Office? Except I thought about it some more and
realized no, of course Loki trying to wipe out Jotunheim was terrible but it’s
not the same as what Thanos wanted to do, and here’s why: there’s a solid
argument to be made from the text
that Loki went the direction he did (in the middle of what was probably a
psychotic break, but that’s not quite as relevant here) in part because he was a product of a society
that was founded on bloody conquest, still seemed to view death on a massive
scale as a necessary evil at the very worst, and definitely viewed many other
sentient species as lesser and Jotnar in particular as monsters. Thanos, on the
other hand, explicitly went against what his society viewed as normal or
acceptable, considering he went “hey let’s fix all our problems by killing half
the population” and everybody else’s response was pretty much “hey what the fuck”.
Thus bolstered by the knowledge that I did in fact have an
argument against potential charges of hypocrisy in this particular case, I
thought about refuting the rest of the arguments in this pretty damn weird
message, at least by linking to the links I added to my fix-it fic because most
of those posts explain the issue better than I can, because this was a weird
random message but it’s probably still important to push back on this kind of
thinking, right? (If anyone who happens to be reading this also thinks the
message has a point, please do check out those links.)
But I figured I’d check the person’s blog just to see if,
you know, there was anything at all
to explain why they might be messaging me, like mutuals in common or something
else normal, and the first thing I see is a reblog equating Black Lives Matter
with the fucking KKK. It didn’t get
any better from there—generally a lot of anti-feminist, anti-liberal,
anti-trans, anti-SJW, anti-LGBT+, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, etc. etc.
reblogs interspersed with the occasional innocuous post about games—and, you
know, that pretty drastically shifted the message from “random and weird but
not that weird if it’s being sent in
good faith” to “FFS Marvel this is what
we meant, this is the real-life shit
your garbage Thanos characterization is supporting, how did you not see this coming”
Here’s the thing, okay. Fandom isn’t reality. Of course it’s not. But my god, were
you really not paying attention to the world around you? Did you really not
realize that people who already blame immigrants and poor people for the
problems rich people cause would latch onto this bullshit that you uncritically
presented in a pointless attempt to make your villain “sympathetic” without
giving a single hero the chance to go “hang on just a second, your motives are
bullshit and here’s why”? Did you somehow not
notice that far-right internet trolls have become a legitimately powerful
political force and that pop culture is demonstrably an effective gateway to
getting people there?
Because, you know, I would still think this is a dumb
argument (with little to no textual evidence, I might add) for Thanos and his
motives in general, even if it was clearly a good-faith argument strictly
limited to a fictional situation (in which case I would just have to point out, his goal is to acquire something that can fucking reshape reality, you cannot possibly make me believe population density is somehow an insurmountable problem for the fucking Infinity Gauntlet). But it’s not. You know what these attitudes
lead to in the real world? This attitude that scarcity is natural and
inevitable, and overpopulation is what’s really killing us and our planet
instead of a handful of exploitative rich people who could fix virtually
everything and don’t? It looks like this. It looks like all the awful shit that’s constantly in the news these days. It looks like telling black people to
get over it and stop asking for handouts without considering that just maybe the effects of generations of
chattel slavery can’t just be brushed off or fixed with a good tug on the
bootstraps (and oh by the way bootstraps have been taxed out of your price
range but that’s still not our fault). It looks like causing the situations that create refugees and then
refusing or even criminalizing the people who try to get help because somehow
they’re dirty and dangerous, they want to take resources they didn’t earn,
they’re an infestation of parasites, and we don’t have room for them—so we’re
going to do whatever we can to send them back where they came from or keep them
there in the first place, and if that means most of them die, that’s not on us,
right? It looks like putting people in camps because we can’t deter enough of
them or get rid of them fast enough and then maybe not paying too much
attention when some of them just start disappearing because there are too many
of them to begin with and it’s better for everyone, really, if the masses get
thinned out a little. Scarcity and overpopulation, man. We’re full and our
borders are sacrosanct for some reason. It sucks but that’s how it is and if
you wanted a better life you should’ve been born into one but also it’s still
your fault somehow and doing what you can to get a better life makes you a lazy
parasite.
So no, I don’t have any sympathy for Thanos. I don’t think
any part of his argument holds even the slightest bit of merit. I don’t think this weird speculation on his argument, which seems to hinge on the idea that it’s possible to draw totally reasonable conclusions about human society from experiments with animals, has any merit either. And I’m
definitely not going to enter a debate about Thanos and his motives with people
who say “sure, Thanos was a bad dude, but maybe he had a point” and really mean
“well, wouldn’t it make things better
if a lot of real people just stopped existing?” No. Fuck you, fuck Thanos, and fuck the Powers That Be at Marvel that didn’t realize or didn’t care what their movie was saying.
I'm a defeatist but I don't have to be 