i'm up all night to get Loki

[fannishliss]

Now I am mainlining Loki fic.   So good.  :D  But -- Why Loki?

My patron "god" has been one of the tricksters forever.  Back when I was a teenager, I wondered which god or goddess represented me in the pantheon, as one does.  It was Hermes, clearly the best of all the gods.  Little wings on his feet, the aesclepius for a staff, a messenger, a musician, a clever thief, a good story teller, and the inventor of the alphabet. Awesome everything.  Hermes it is.  So I adopted the alchemical symbol of Mercury as my personal symbol.  My husband, whom I hadn't met yet, had also done the same thing -- a follower of Coyote.  Our son is named after the Raven.  So I take the Tricksters pretty seriously.

I think you can just look at the Hiddleston casting and it tells you everything you need to know.  If you look back into the history of the Marvel universe, at Kirby and the New Gods and the original conception of the Avengers as Heroes, you will find Loki there, hideous and evil.  He was not Hiddleston, not at all. The genius of the movieverse  was that they hired Kenneth Branagh to direct, and he cast  an accomplished British stage actor (who is currently onstage as Coriolanus) and say to him -- this character has been grievously wronged.  He's transforming from a Trickster, a god of mischief and creative chaos, into a full-on hard core villain. Make us care. So he did. Yes, his beautiful face and lithe form and actor magic to make us want him -- as my husband says, pretty people who look sad.  All that, but so much more!

It's interesting to watch as we take what we need from the movie and make it into fictions that tell our stories for us.  Astolat's stories about Loki on AO3 are pure gold.  Wow! And she's not alone. The most recent story I read by Cavaleira was simply brilliant as it moved us through Loki's battle with Thor for his own redemption.  IDEAL.

In the first essay below, the essayist argues that the Trickster urges us to take what we want, lie cheat and steal to satisfy our desires.  But it's not that simple.   One of the most important things about Loki is how he moves our compassion.  Even as he falls to evil, committing dire crimes, we care about him.  Along with Thor, we remember the beloved in him and want our brother back.  There is potential for great good in Loki, potential we can easily see, and we feel horrible every time he casts it aside.  We come back because there is something so shining about him that we hope every time that this time, he will be a force for good.

I'm reading a fun little comic book: Loki: Agent of Asgard, where Loki is working for the All-Mother (!!!) and is a new, happier god.  What is waiting in the wings for him? Something awful!  I am really looking forward to this book, light though it seems.

I made some icons: Loki's sad eyes, Loki in the cell with Thor outside, Loki's pure evil grin, Loki so posh, Loki muzzled, Loki frowning.  He is a panoply of frustration.  But so resilient!  He goes down hard, and he doesn't stay down.  He will always be back with a new, more cunning plan.  :)

I could say more about how I see Loki as a figure for us as women in the patriarchy...  but not today.  :D

and  a link spatter:

This is the essay that got me started. I strongly disagree:
http://www.niramisaweiss.com/2013/11/fear-addiction-loki-coyote.html

This is a cute bunch of gifs:
http://www.hypable.com/2013/11/07/why-we-cant-help-but-love-loki/

Critics praise Hiddleston as Loki
http://www.vulture.com/2013/11/critics-love-loki-tom-hiddleston-thor.html

Some dude with a blog gets it pretty well....
http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic/39300-nostalgia-critic-why-is-loki-so-hot

Comments

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

I must admit, I struggle with this modern romanticizing of Loki.

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

Oh, and there's this -

http://archiveofourown.org/works/938639

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

A really interesting piece! I'll need to spend more time with it. Your Loki is tragic, which is probably pretty accurate. He is determined to prove a Villain. (My husband is in Richard III again, but still not playing the King, rats!)

I'm also interested in the ways in which Loki is imagined to be redeemed, looking closely at when that works and when it doesn't.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

You probably know a LOT more about the Norse God than I do.... I never followed the Norse pantheon that much. I was more about the Greeks and Romans, and then later, the Goddesses here and there and their consorts and sons etc.

To me, my kind of take on Loki, is that the Gods and their stories were just much harsher in the North -- so that even the Trickster becomes deadlier than he usually is.

But I do find it interesting reading these stories and trying to see where the Trickster is in them, to what extent the writers are incorporating the Trickster into what they are telling. :)

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

It's a funny thing. I RAIL like a fucken crazed rabid animal when the Great God Pan or the Horned God are demonized. It makes me want to slit people's throats and throw them into Viking sacrificial pits. (And there's some muddled mythos for you!) But....Loki really is so much more than "trickster god". Coyote he ain't. Although he does possess a wicked sense of humour and that counts for some softening...

Myth is/has to be organic. And if we are evolutionizing our way into worshipping the darker gods, then there surely must be reason. Look at Pullman and his Satanic Verses...for children. ;)

I find it fascinating that both you and your man self-identify with Tricksters!

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

My husband, as an Actor, really does identify with the Tricksters. That assuming of the illusion, living into the story. As a musician I do that to a certain extent, and as a poet -- the way you weave a world out of the art. It's very much a Trickster thing, a Dionysian thing.

And watching our son grow up, we get to see all our wacky ways come to light in him. He is another Trickster for sure. :D

[maraceles.livejournal.com]

I blame Astolat.

More seriously, for my own part, movie!Loki represents the ultimate revenge and redemption fantasy. As a kid, I experienced a lot of racism and all the self-hatred and rebound arrogance that can come with it, and Loki's realization of himself as "a monster," his realization of the unfairness in his life, the recognition that he will never be judged accurately, and his ultimate decision to respond with well, then, fuck you, I'll burn the world--there's a lot in his story that resonates with me. He is the angry, twisted, dark side of myself taken to comic-book level extremes. It's cathartic, I guess.

And then on the other side of things, there's Thor, who still loves Loki, who never really gives up on him, who sees the best in him. Who, in a lot of fanfic, is the mechanism by which Loki finds his place in society, where Loki's "monstrous" nature becomes essential to saving the world, where Loki is finally recognized, if not as a hero, then at least as someone valuable.

Tl;dr: Yep, I still blame astolat. :D

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

Yes, Astolat's stories are incredible. One after another!!

I def. agree with you re Loki's self-image as a monster and his cathartic refusal to be tamed. I think he represents an othered self on a variety of levels -- both racially, as resonates with you, and also what I was hinting at above, he stands in for women's place in patriarchy in so many ways. ... but I need to write a ton more about that, so again I'll just leave it for the time being. ... I guess in a nutshell, what I'm reaching for, is Loki's justified anger vs. the ways he goes too far and has to be slapped down. It's a bit of a conservative paradigm in some ways?

tl:dr = yay Loki !