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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
I think most people can agree with that including nonshippers, but there was quite a lot of hate towards Hawkeye's family as well, including accusations of Whedon being a Heteronormative Crusader who believed women should Stay in the Kitchen because of it.
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As someone who’s been active on tumblr since 2012, I have seen literally none of those things. I saw a TON of angry comments from Loki fangirls about Loki being OOC or mind controlled, and I saw people bitch that Clint’s Ao U family made no sense, and I saw a lot of people who hated Brucetasha for being a crappy ship and insulting to Nat, but I saw none of the things you described.
Didn’t really see that either.
Edited by wisewillow on Nov 27th 2018 at 9:02:28 AM
Now I don't have a problem with Hawkeye's family but I do admit I find them a bit limiting to Clint cause he can't have his Fraction adventures with them in toe.
I've accepted them though because I'm not the kind of guy who wants his entire family dead for that. That's just mean.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
x5 Different circles then, as I rarely ever see Avengers Loki discourse appear on my own dash. One particularly bonkers theory I saw about Clint's family was that they were SHIELD agents pretending to be his family to help him maintain his sanity after the trauma of being mindcontrolled by the scepter.
Edited by AlleyOop on Nov 27th 2018 at 9:06:10 AM
"We're all monsters" always felt forced, like trying to fit the Avengers into a scene from the X-Men — and not even the current movie X-Men, but Whedon's own Astonishing X-Men, which has been accused of some character derailment of its own.
I still like Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, but at some point, probably back around the time of Dollhouse, he needed to admit he had a definite pattern, and if he really can't teach his pony another trick, well, then maybe it's time for some therapy.
There's even something about the idea that Hawkeye, an assassin, seemingly has the happiest, most stable home life out of everyone that feeds into that same mentality.
Edited by Unsung on Nov 27th 2018 at 7:23:07 AM
Whedon was very attached to the team being a bunch of freaks and misfits who could barely function on their own or as a team, but once they did they are unstoppable.
Which worked decently enough for the movie where they all learn to stop being lone wolves and come together, but really shouldn’t have been kept going into Age of Ultron. It led to a lot of missteps.
With regards to the Loki brainwashing theory, I feel like the agendas surrounding the issue are twofold.
On the one hand, you have the Leather Pantsers who want Loki to be a poor, victimized Woobie that never meant anyone any harm.
On the other, you have the tunnel visioners who want Loki to be the definitive Big Bad of the first Avengers film. To them, everything from start to finish was Loki's doing and Loki's alone. It was Loki's master plan to conquer the Earth in the name of Loki, using Loki's scepter and Loki's invasion force.
Both of these are disingenuous towards Loki's role in the film: to serve as The Heavy in place of Greater-Scope Villain Thanos. Loki is both the film's villain and also a mere vanguard of a greater threat, carrying out a plan not his own under influence of powers beyond him.
Loki is a bad guy caught in the grip of and forced to obey a much badder guy. This context was present in the film even without the scepter influencing him; Loki behaves irrationally, pursuing a plan that doesn't really have much benefit to him, which every protagonist comments on at some point. He's chasing a goal he does not and never has cared about in obedient service to a master who tortures him onscreen just 'cause, and he's brutal and cruel in his methods of chasing that goal because he's a shitty person.
That's who Avengers 1 Loki is.
I understand that Leather Pantsing is an obnoxious agenda. But it is equally obnoxious to draw a line in the sand and refuse to even consider canonical details because you zealously despise a particular agenda that happens to like those details. When an interpretation of the media begins in, "So F*CK THOSE PEOPLE," that interpretation is not being formed in good faith.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 27th 2018 at 7:44:42 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.That seems like a rhetorical Bothsideism on your part where you just invented a faction of people (i.e this hypothetical group obsessed with making Loki the master villain) to suit your argument. I'm pretty sure no significant group of people ever went with that and certainly not in this thread.
Edited by Gaon on Nov 27th 2018 at 7:10:22 AM
"All you Fascists bound to lose."I made a ridiculous comparison once that boiled down to "cruise control on a car already driving down Evil Boulevard".
Leather pantsing is obnoxious but this particular revelation doesn't absolve Loki of his actions, it just confirms a theory and gives more context to his somewhat OOC hammy speeches and more forwardly-ruthless behavior.
Dunno if it was Whedon's intentions with Loki or if they're just retroactively justifying it now, but it was my theory for a long time simply because I thought it was a cool interpretation and subtle detail, not because I want to excuse Loki's actions.
Edited by Anomalocaris20 on Nov 27th 2018 at 10:15:08 AM
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!The Mind Stone theory is a popular one to explain Loki's behavior, but another one I saw thrown around was that Thanos tortured him into serving him. I don't think the hints there are as valid, but I could see it happening.
Now that I think about it, I wonder if this means Thanos intended for the Mind Stone to affect Loki the way it did. If it made him more susceptible to his cause, it would explain why he would give his only Infinity Stone to him. Then again, it's because of Loki's irrational behavior that he ended up losing it for so many years.
Man, remember when people were making jokes that Thanos was the Trix Rabbit of supervillains? Good times.
Gotta say, I don't really care much if people are leather pantsing him. In my experience (and I know this is just anecdotal), when it comes to attractive villains like Loki it's usually teenage girls that are the ones writing essays trying to earnestly absolve him of all crime as an innocent cinnamon roll. It's a phase that they'll grow out of when they mature into adults.
Kids grow up and start interacting with fiction in a more complicated way with a greater understanding of characters, their actions and their motivations. They'll go to college, get a job, pay bills, etc. and proving that Hot Fictional Villain Did Nothing Wrong!! will no longer be their top priority, and they'll likely have a more complex understanding of their favorite characters (and not obsess over them).
Edited by Zanthype on Nov 27th 2018 at 9:21:47 AM
"In 900 years of time and space I've never met anyone who wasn't important."I like the confirmation, and NOT because I think that Loki is a poor, misunderstood woobie. I was always FOR the theory of Loki being under the influence of the sceptre, because it made the most sense.
It made the most sense for Thanos, because it would explain why he gave the mind stone out of his hand in the first place. Who would give something like this to someone like Loki if you can't be sure that you'll get it back from Loki whenever you want?
It made the most sense for Loki because while Loki is a maniac who has little regard for life which isn't Asgardian, he never really wanted to be king for the sake of being king, he wanted to be king because in his mind that would make him Odin's favoured son. Loki has always been all about his daddy issues. Mind control would also explain why Loki misremembered what happened on the Bi-Frost.
And it made sense for Ultron, because if the mind stone was programmed with a mixture of using Loki's daddy issues against him and the order to conquer the world, and that program clashed with Tony's order to protect the world, well, Ultron's action make so much sense then.
One should reject a good idea just because some obsessed fangirls jumped on it at one point.
Also if anything Ragnarok already did the job to put Loki in friendly villian territory since it reveal Odin was being a dick the whole thign with is imperalist and genocider the whole time.
In fact, I REALLY hate Odin in ragnarok, in how it reveal is dark past after he have the emocional scene with is sons, the fact is both sons who have to fit is screw up and suddenly he saying "no, it is ok if asgard got blew up" like.....really?.
I dont know it feels "and then the imperalist colonialist go quickly and gently into the go night"
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"My thoughts too. It's my opinion that Draco in Leather Pants is a lot like Mary Sue; it's lost most if not all meaning it ever had and is pretty much just used to shut down discussions now.
I've been a part of a lot of Loki discussions in this thread since the first Avengers movie came out, and I can't honestly say that I've ever seen anyone in any of them actually try to claim that Loki is innocent. I'm sure those fanfics exist, but so do rape fics 'cause, like, people write fics of awful things all the time. But I've certainly never seen a comprehensive argument attempt to be posed to this thread about it.
I see way more accusations of Leather Pantsing on this board than actual instances of Leather Pantsing.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 28th 2018 at 7:17:45 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.There are quite a "Loki is an innocent victim" fics, though nowadays less common then they used to be (currently the big trend is "Steve the Death Eater"). You can recognize those Loki apologists mostly by the way Odin is portrayed.
But just because those apologists are go waaaaaaay over the top with portraying Loki as nothing but a beat up innocent victim of circumstances, the interesting aspect about Loki actually is the fact that some of his grievances aren't exactly unwarranted. Some of the best stories I have read are about exploring of what exactly is "excusable" and where Loki's responsibility starts. You know, stories like "Ask me no question", which is a story about, well, resocializing Loki, or the time travel story which name currently escapes me in which Loki goes back after Thor dies in order to rewrite history, and then discovers that due to him taking different actions, he gets treated differently. The special twist in this one is that it turns out that in the original time-line, Loki himself killed Thor by accident and went back because once he did it, he just wanted to change it.

I don't particularly ship anyone in this franchise that I recall but I did find the whole Hulk/Widow thing rather without substance or much of anything really.
Edited by slimcoder on Nov 27th 2018 at 6:00:46 AM
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."