#that feeling when you spent years planning a revenge plot to avenge your dead brother who was your only living family

[cloud-hymn]

Thinking about Nie Huaisang post-canon quite frankly haunts me

[9worldstales]

MCU: Is Loki a serial betrayal or not?

So one of the things I see often discussed in the MCU is the long, long history of deceit and betrayal that goes on between Thor and Loki that got mentioned in “Thor – Ragnarok”.

As various MCU movies and comics get mentioned, I made a list of the sources referenced so you’ll know if they might end up spoiling you. Consider yourself warned (or feel free to skip the list if it bores you).

SOURCES MENTIONED:

Movies: “Thor” (2011), “The Avengers” (2012), “Thor – The Dark World” (2013), “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (2015), “Thor – Ragnark” (2017), “The Avengers – Infinity War” (2018), “The Avengers – Endgame” (2019), “WandaVision” (2021)

Comics: “Thor: Son of Asgard” (2004) “Marvel's The Avengers Prelude: Fury's Big Week” (2012)

Direct-to-video animated film: “Thor - Tales of Asgard” (2011)

Motion comics: None mentioned

Books: “Thor: heroes and villains” (2011), “Marvel Studios The first 10 years” (2018)

Novels: “Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase One: Thor” by Alex Irvine (2015), “Thor: The Dark World Junior Novelization” by Michael Siglain (2013), “Loki – Where mischief lies” by Mackenzi Lee (2019), “The pirate angel, the talking tree and captain rabbit” by Steve Behling (2019)

Webs: None mentioned

Others: Interview “A Talk With THOR: RAGNAROK’s Eric Pearson”, interview “Joss Whedon told Comic-Con the question he doesn’t want us to ask ever again”, Interview “Chris Hemsworth (Thor: The Dark World)”, Interview “Tom Hiddleston Talks the Love-Hate of Loki and ‘Thor’”, Interview “Chris Hemsworth Talks Expanding Beyond Asgard, Interview “Building to THE AVENGERS 2, and More on the Set of THOR: THE DARK WORLD”, Interview “Chris Hemsworth ‘Thor: Ragnarok’, Embracing the Comedy, the Thor/Loki Relationship and More”, Interview “Avengers 4 Endgame: Is Loki ALIVE? Chris Hemsworth gave a massive hint at London fan event”, Interview “Avengers stars reveal one big downside to the job”, “How Taika Waititi Made Thor: Ragnarok So Damn Funny”, Interview “How 'Thor: Ragnarok' Honors & Deviates from Its Comics Foundation”, Interview “Empire Podcast Spoiler Special: Thor: Ragnarok with Taika Waititi”, interview “Kevin Fiege Talks Iron Man 2, The Avengers and More”

So now, let’s start with a quote from Eric Pearson, one of the guys responsible for the script of “Thor - Ragnarok”.

“Thor and Loki have had so many interactions, and alliances, and betrayals. They’ve been each others’ nemesis for so long that even they’re a little exhausted by themselves. It’s almost like the fatigue of dealing with each other allows this terminator like force of Hela to just walk in. They’re divided so she conquers.” [A Talk With THOR: RAGNAROK’s Eric Pearson]

So, since math is an awesome thing and “Marvel Studios The first 10 years” gave us an official timeline let’s do some math.

For start the official timeline.

965: Odin adopts Loki

2011: Thor

2012: The Avengers

2013: Thor: The Dark World

2015: Avengers: Age of Ultron

2017: Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Infinity War

2022: Avengers: Endgame (actually not mentioned in the timeline but it takes place 5 years after “Avengers: Infinity War”)

Loki is adopted in 965 so he and Thor are adopted brothers by 1052 years in “Thor - Ragnarok”.

So… “Thor” takes place in 2011 and overall covers three days and, in 2 of them, Thor and Loki are on opposing sides. At the end of “Thor” Loki is believed to be dead.

In 2012 Loki shows up again in “Avengers”. Thor arrives on Earth by night and spend there what, a day? before going back to Asgard with Loki, who then spends a year in jail with Thor never visiting him before he is freed in “Thor: The Dark World”, which takes place in 2013.

It’s worth to mention in “Thor: The Dark World” Thor and Loki are allied against Malekit before Loki is believed dead again and instead rules Asgard up until 2017, when “Thor – Ragnarok” takes place.

Anyway this means that in those 1052 years they spent together Loki and Thor had been on opposing sides for 6 years… during which only 1 year was spent with Thor knowing Loki was alive and only 4 days were spent with them actively fighting each other.

But maybe those days were days of intense betrayal… so let’s sum them up.

For start let’s remember everyone that betrayal is a deliberate break of trust, of faith.

“Thor” is the one which contain most betrayal, even though some things weren’t meant to be as such at the time in which it was filmed but whatever, let’s be strict.

- Loki ruined Thor’s coronation

- Loki had Odin warned they were going to Jotunheim so that Odin came saving their lives

- Loki lied about Odin being dead and Frigga not wanting Thor back.

- After making clear he was Thor’s enemy (I mean he sent the Destroyer to ‘Ensure his brother does not return’, could he have been more explicit?) he tricked him into helping him making him believe he was dangling on the edge of the Bifrost and needed his help.

Okay, that’s a total of 4, one of which done to save everyone’s live (and it saved everyone’s life but, as I said, I’ll be strict and still count 4).

“The Avengers” despite painting Loki as the villain, has no betrayal. Loki doesn’t make any attempt to paint himself as Thor’s friend, he doesn’t even call Thor ‘brother’, he makes clear he wants Earth’s crown and he has made clear in “Thor” he wouldn’t hesitate to kill him. Yes, he lies to him about sending the Tesseract away, uses an illusion to trick Thor into ending up in the cage and drop the cage on the ground and stabs Thor on surprise as they’re fighting. He however never let Thor believe they’re on the same side, I’ll say with dropping the cage he remarked how he wasn’t on Thor’s side since he wondered if the fall could kill Thor. If Thor didn’t want to get the message, this was not Loki betraying him, this was Thor refusing to listen. As for Loki surviving to a fall into the void and not warning Thor about it, that’s not betrayal either. When Loki let himself fall in the void it was a suicide attempt. His survival is a plot hole for whom Whedon didn’t really bother making up an explanation.

“Well, I can’t tell you exactly what went on because it’s this dark, dark secret that I didn’t make up yet. But, the other day, I had trouble with that because he had this very passionate Shakespearean tragedy thing going on in Thor and then I needed a villain who’s not only capable, but ready and willing and anxious to take on all these heroes. For me, he just basically went on some horrible walkabout… That was pretty much as far as I got.” [Joss Whedon told Comic-Con the question he doesn’t want us to ask ever again ]

“Avengers: Infinity War” suggested Thanos resurrected him, how is up to speculation. I wonder if it has to do with the mind stone, which somehow resurrected his mind in a way similar to how Wanda resurrected Vision. But I’m not sure Marvel really tried to figure this out beyond ‘it just happened’. Anyway Loki didn’t plan to fake his death, his survival/resurrection was accidental and he didn’t own to his family to send them a note saying ‘I’m alive’.

So we’ve a total of 0.

“Thor: The Dark World” has merely the fact that Loki again didn’t die when he was supposed to. Mind you, he was supposed to die (or if he were to survive this was meant to be a secret as the movie’s ending was meant to be very different), but then they decided to keep him alive and on the throne of Asgard for “Thor: Ragnarok”. So, he clearly was stabbed and let Thor believe the wound was fatal, then went back to Asgard, took Odin’s place, offered Thor the throne and when the latter refused, took it for himself. We can’t count the fact he told Kurse ‘You might want to take the stairs to the left’ as betrayal because, again, being jailed, he’s clearly not on Thor’s same side nor trusted. Betrayal is a break of trust from someone you believed on your side. An enemy doesn’t betray you, a friend does, and Thor stated he doesn’t view anymore Loki as his brother. We also know the action was a miscalculation on his part, he thought Kurse was merely a Marauder, a pirate, not a Dark Elf part of a Dark Elves’ invasion, and he didn’t think it would end up causing Frigga’s death, just some troubles for his father and brother who cast him in that cell and, according to the novelization, he was meant to end up regretting it short after doing it.

“The east stairs lead to the barraks. You’ll find them mostly unguarded.” Loki said and Kurse nodded, then continued on, glad for the inside information. Loki wanted revenge against Thor and Odin – he just hoped that he wasn’t getting more than he hoped for. [“Thor: The Dark World Junior Novelization”]

More explosions occurred aboveground and Loki glanced upward. “Don’t you think you ought to look into that?” he said. Thor scowled at his brother, then strode off toward the stairs. Loki watched his brother leave, a hint of guilt in his eyes. What had he done? [“Thor: The Dark World Junior Novelization”]

So okay, if we count the fact he let Thor believe him he died, and that he was Odin, we’ve a total of 2.

Which leads us to the amazing number of 6.

Now okay, betraying 1 time is 1 time too much but this is not a pattern that pervaded his whole life, this is 2 days in which Loki was not in his right mind due to pain (“Thor”) and a day in which he wanted to avoid being jailed for life as Thor has promised him he would be once they were to get back (“Thor: The Dark World”).

But, but, but, didn’t Loki betrayed and attempted to murder Thor PRIOR to “Thor”? And why aren’t I considering “Thor: Ragnarok” at all?

I mean, in addition to Loki betraying Thor for money, there’s this bit in “Thor: Ragnarok”:

Banner: Okay, can I just... A quick FYI, I was just talking to him just a couple minutes ago and he was totally ready to kill any of us.

Valkyrie: He did try to kill me.

Thor: Yes, me too. On many, many occasions. There was one time when we were children, he transformed himself into a snake, and he knows that I love snakes. So, I went to pick up the snake to admire it and he transformed back into himself and he was like, "Yeah, it's me!" And he stabbed me. We were eight at the time. [“Thor – Ragnarok”]

But the problem is to quote Wanda in“WandaVision” when her ‘brother’ talks about their shared childhood, this sort of relationship, well, ‘That’s not exactly how I remember it.’ From the previous movies, interviews, books, novels and extra material, I mean.

But let’s start with order.

So “Thor: Ragnarok”.

Remember Eric Pearson, the guy whose quote I used to start all this?

For start this guy never worked on a script with Thor and Loki previously.

The most he did was to be involved in the “Marvel's The Avengers Prelude: Fury's Big Week” in which Thor and Loki have some cameo appearances.

So let’s hear what he has to say about Thor and Loki’s relation.

“For introductions, working on Thor’s voice was really great just because Hemsworth is great with the script. He actually pulled me aside one morning to talk to me about the Thor and Loki scenes. He pointed out, correctly so, that what I had was retreading a bit of what had already happened in Thor, Thor: The Dark World and The Avengers. We needed to have their relationship exhibit the amount of awareness that it should have after the audience spent so much time with them on screen. So, the Thor and Loki stuff is also some of my favorite.” [A Talk With THOR: RAGNAROK’s Eric Pearson]

So Hemsworth informed his opinion and which opinion has Chris Hemsworth of the whole matter?

Well, his opinion on Thor’s relationship with Loki evolved as time went by… but FIRST let’s focus on how he believed it was their relationship during or prior the “Thor” movie.

“In the very first film Loki and Thor as brothers had a friendship where there was less hatred involved.” [Chris Hemsworth (Thor: The Dark World)]

It’s not terribly explicative but let’s say that they were more or less friends? So his brother wasn’t trying to murder him from childhood? He wasn’t betraying him from childhood?

According to Thom Hiddleston definitely not.

“I think Loki grows up with an older brother who he loves and respects. They play, they banter and they bash each other about, but there is a latent jealousy. Craig Kyle ‐ one of our producers ‐ always used to talk about the analogy of the quarterback and the artist. Thor is the quarterback. He’s a chip off the old block and he’s just like his dad. Loki’s problem is, maybe not his problem, but [that] he’s more drawn to the powers of intellect, magic, and the dark arts. He’s not going to be out in the fields throwing a hammer around. That’s just not where his passion lies. There’s a disconnect with Odin and there’s a disconnect with Thor. He loves them very much, but he’s not just made of the same stalk. In the course of the film there’s a big reveal both for Loki and the audience about the truth of Loki’s true lineage and who his real parents are. I think that begets any jealous that was within him towards Thor develops into a dark, cancerous rage that then becomes a destructive rage.” [“Tom Hiddleston Talks the Love-Hate of Loki and ‘Thor’”]

And the ruining of the coronation? As the movie itself said it was done because he didn’t believe his brother was ready to rule… but let’s also read this bit always from Tom Hiddleston.

“He’s certainly not an anarchist who wants to burn the house down. I think he has an inner conviction. He loves a practical joke, he loves mischief and he loves playing around. He loves starting a bonfire in the next room and hearing people scream, but nobody would be killed.” [“Tom Hiddleston Talks the Love-Hate of Loki and ‘Thor’”]

In short it wasn’t meant to cause any serious harm... same as warning his father was meant to save them. Of the 4 times in “Thor” in which Loki betrays Thor, 2 are not done with evil intentions in mind.

But maybe it’s just Tom Hiddleston?

Nope, we’ve the booklet “Thor: heroes and villains” agree with this.

“Loki is often the voice of reason to Thor’s impulsiveness and is usually relied on to talk his older brother out of sticky situation.” [“Thor: heroes and villains”]

“As Odin’s younger son, Loki has always known the throne of Asgard will never belong to him. He has, however, tried his best to be a good brother to Thor and a son Odin could be proud of.” [“Thor: heroes and villains”]

Then we’ve this in the “Thor” movie:

Sif: He may speak of the good of Asgard, but he's always been jealous of Thor.

Volstagg: We should be grateful to him, he saved our lives.

Hogun: Laufey said there were traitors in the House of Odin. A master of magic could bring three Jotuns into Asgard.

Fandral: Loki's always been one for mischief, but you're talking about something else entirely. [“Thor”]

The group suspects Loki wants to hand Asgard to the Jotuns, but up till the end of the movie Loki will have Asgard’s best interests in mind. His way to pursue them though, by destroying the Jotuns, is beyond ruthless but it’s not traitorous toward Asgard.

Also they’ve nothing against him beyond the fact he was jealous of Thor. They mention no stabbing episode, no murdering attempt no previous betrayal. Loki was jealous and they fear this had caused him to do something extreme. NOW. They’ve nothing they can use against him from the past, their suspects are based on Loki’s jealousy, the fact he’s a wizard and Laufey’s words.

Even the “Thor” novelization, which discusses their relation, doesn’t mention murder attempts prior to the Destroyer thing.

From Thor’s point of view:

“His younger brother has always been something of a mystery to him. While Thor had been eager to spread his wings, fight in battles, and go off on grand adventures, Loki had always been more hesitant. True, he had Thor’s back, but it was often only out of necessity.” [“Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase One: Thor”]

From Loki’s point of view:

“Why did he always seem to get into trouble because of his older brother? Wasn’t he supposed to be the wiser one? Odin has expressly forbidden that they enter Jotunheim. Yet it wasn’t the first time Thor had done something reckless. And it wouldn’t be the first time Loki was powerless to stop him.” [“Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase One: Thor”]

Loki had Thor’s back, albeit he wasn’t happy about it, Thor is the one who causes troubles, everyone knows and in the novel Loki is regularly sent by Sif and the Warriors Three to calm Thor down and make him think.

Long story short Thor and Loki seemed to be originally planned to have a relationship similar to the one they had in “Thor - Tales of Asgard” direct-to-video animated superhero film which came out in the same year as “Thor”.

So, why somehow in “Thor: Ragnarok” it morphed into the one they have in the comics “Thor: Son of Asgard” (2004) if not worse?

Well, somehow Hemsworth’s feelings shifted along the way between “Thor: The Dark World” and “Thor: Ragnarok”. He was aware of how Loki and Thor’s relationship was portrayed in the comics and this bits fits with how in “Thor: Ragnarok” he just wants to tell Loki he didn’t care anymore.

I mean I can’t say too much but I think in the comic books, you kind of roll your eyes sometimes at the amount of times that they’re back to being best friends so we wanted to keep in mind that he did just try to kill you for the seventh time, and Earth and millions of people and what have you, so… [Chris Hemsworth Talks Expanding Beyond Asgard, Building to THE AVENGERS 2, and More on the Set of THOR: THE DARK WORLD]

Without giving too much away, I didn't want to repeat that relationship either. And Tom felt the same. All of us were like, ‘What can we do again here?’ There’s a bit of reversal as far as... In the first films, a lot of the time you’re seeing Thor going, 'Come back Loki, and da-da-da-da.' [But now] there’s a feeling from Thor that’s just like, 'You know what, kid? Do what you want. You’re a screw up. So whatever. Do your thing.' [Chris Hemsworth ‘Thor: Ragnarok’, Embracing the Comedy, the Thor/Loki Relationship and More]

"Ahhh, he's like the girlfriend you break up with and they don't get the message. Like, 'You're dead, sorry, it's over,' and they're coming round to hang the new drapes. "The most poignant moments (of Thor's movies) have been with Loki." [Avengers 4 Endgame: Is Loki ALIVE? Chris Hemsworth gave a massive hint at London fan event]

Until we get to “Avengers: Infinity War” in which he makes clear he believes Loki fooled him time and time again so that he doesn’t want him back…

While the cast share an obvious camaraderie, a void remains after Tom Hiddleston’s Loki died in Infinity War. Would Hemsworth bring back his troublesome onscreen brother if he could? “No. Why would I do that?” he answers, blankly. “He fooled me time and time again. But on the personal side, I was with Tom since the beginning of this journey and I learned a lot from him.” Hemsworth pauses. “If you’re asking if Thor would bring him back, I think if he could have done he would have. But for me, I don’t know.” [Avengers stars reveal one big downside to the job]

…even if Thor would have (and of course he would have if we’ve to believe Thor’s tears in “Avengers: Infinity War” and his depression in “Avengers: Endgame” are due to Loki’s death and it’s not merely due to how ‘fun’ it is to have a depressed Thor who ends up neglecting his health by drinking too much and getting fat… because being a source of amusement isn’t really a reason why you should introduce a depressed character in a story).

So yes, maybe Pearson didn’t go to the right source of info for Thor and Loki’s relationship.

However, credits when it’s due, the scene about Loki wanting to kill Thor from childhood is not so much due to Pearson or Hemsworth but due to Waititi.

Hewitt: You know, there’s another moment I love, when they have the little huddle about Loki, and he tells the story about how Loki turned into a snake.

Waititi: Yeah, yeah.

Hewitt: And that felt improv’d.

Waititi: Yeah, there was basically- what we did about six different versions of that story, and that was just us standing around, while the cameras are rolling, while I would just feed them lines, and feed Chris ideas for some stories. I was, “Oh, do one, this one, um, say, “I was walking through a field, and I saw a lovely Turkish rug in the middle of the grass, and I love Turkish rugs, so I went to stand on it, and it was Loki, and he turned back into Loki, and it was a hole, and I fell through the hole, and was impaled in the hole, full of spikes”.”

Hewitt: *laughs*

Waititi: As I did all versions of that and I just kept going with- Yeah, the one with the snake just turned out to be the one we used. [Taika Waititi On Screenwriting: An Empire 30th Anniversary Special]

And so how did Waititi envisioned the Thor-Loki dynamics? This is how Waititi describes Thor’s live:

“To be perfectly honest, he’s a rich kid who lives in a castle in outer space. I don’t know any of those people, but I do know people who come from dysfunctional families. He barely talks to his parents — well, his mom’s dead now — his brother is trying to kill him his entire life, and he’s supposed to be king, and he doesn’t want to be a king. A lot of it is also this father-son relationship stuff of him trying to prove himself, or trying to find his own identity, and I really relate to that. My dad was a very big personality in New Zealand and in our area, and I’ve always been trying to do my own thing to separate from him, while at the same time trying to impress him. Which is the story of pretty much all guys, and probably most girls, who are choosing a parent to impress. That was my way in with him.” [“How Taika Waititi Made Thor: Ragnarok So Damn Funny”]

Why Waititi came up with such an idea for their dynamics is up to everyone’s speculation because in itself it’s not important if he actually got told about it by Hemsworth, Pearson or by Brad Winderbaum, who admitted taking inspiration from the comics for “Thor – Ragnarok”…

“I'll tell you the three things we looked at the most. We're pulling a lot stylistically from Kirby [but] we're also looking at the Walt Simonson Ragnarok arc [and]… God of Thunder, the Jason Aaron book.” [How 'Thor: Ragnarok' Honors & Deviates from Its Comics Foundation]

… if this is the result of that 1 short comic he read…

“That’s a thing about me, guys, I did not do my research.” … “I read one issue of Thor as my research. Not even a graphic novel, it was one of the thin-thin ones.” … “And by the end of it, “Hm, well, we’re not doing that”. [Empire Podcast Spoiler Special: Thor: Ragnarok with Taika Waititi]

Waititi wanted to do his own story, not a continuation of the previous movies.

“I was lucky enough they didn’t force me to acknowledge things- there were certain things in the film, like the play, which makes fun of the scene in The Dark World where Loki dies, but there’s a point to that play, sort of to recap what happened, but also to tell the audience, “This is not what you think it’s going to be, this film is not going to be a continuation of that. It’s its own thing, and what you think you expect from this film ends at this play.”” [Empire Podcast Spoiler Special: Thor: Ragnarok with Taika Waititi]

This is not the point where I discuss what I think of this idea of stepping all over the previous movies to create a ‘new Thor’ that the Russo brothers proceeded to dismantle in the next movie.

In 2010 Feige was already on board with the idea ‘the movie comes first’ and the ‘connective tissue’ is fun and very important if you want it to be.

“It's never been done before and that's kind of the spirit everybody's taking it in. The other filmmakers aren't used to getting actors from other movies that other filmmakers have cast, certain plot lines that are connected or certain locations that are connected but I think for the most part, in fact, entirely everyone was on board for it and thinks that its fun. Primarily because we've always remained consistent saying that the movie that we are making comes first. All of the connective tissue, all of that stuff is fun and is going to be very important if you want it to be. If the fans want to look further and find connections than they're there. There are a few big ones obviously, that hopefully the mainstream audience will able to follow as well. But the most important thing and I think the reason that all the filmmakers are on board is that their movies need to stand on their own. They need to have a fresh vision, a unique tone and the fact that they can interconnect if you want to follow those breadcrumbs is a bonus.” [Kevin Fiege Talks Iron Man 2, The Avengers and More]

“Thor – Ragnarok” merely took it to an extreme, retconning a lot from the original to the point some feel “Thor – Ragnarok” is a parallel universe compared to the previous 4 movies, with its own canon.

So when they needed a joke they didn’t bother checking the previous canon, they just needed a joke and so they added that scene, and it somehow got so popular it got referenced in two novels, sorta, even if in both gets ‘adapted’.

Once he was in the room, the servant girl would likely go unnoticed enough to eavesdrop – certainly less noticed than a snake, which had been his initial plan, and which was easier to imitate than an Asgardian. But snakes tended to gather attention – Thor would pick up any serpent to admire it. [“Loki- Where mischief lies”]

In “Loki – Where mischief lies” by Mackenzi Lee the stabbing isn’t included, the book only keep Thor’s fascination for snakes and his habit to pick them up… but the scene couldn’t have happened when they were children as Loki is a teen in the book and has learnt only recently to use shapeshifting magic.

In “The pirate angel, the talking tree and captain rabbit” by Steve Behling the scene is partially retconned as well.

Where in the movie is played as a clear murder attempt in the book we’ve the same story but in a different contest.

“Hey, what did I tell you about insulting our guest?” Rocket scolded, shaking his head. “If anyone’s gonna do any insulting around here, it’s gonna be me.”

Groot looked at Rocket, and enacted an impressive-albeit obnoxious-imitation of the same sneet that Rocket used on Thor just few second earlier.

“I am-“

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Rocket warned.

“Gr-“

“I mean it! You wanna have tablet privileges revocked for a week, you go right ahead and finish that though.”

If Groot had pockets, he would have showed his limbs stubbornly into them, turned around grumbling, and walked away. As it was, he didn’t, so after a moment’s stare-off with Rocket he simply muttered, “I am Groot,” then ambled away.

“He’s in an awkward phase,” Rocket said to Thor by way of explanation, turning his attention to the master control panel.

“Adolescence is never easy,” Thor said looking over Rocket’s shoulder. “I remember when Loki and I were children. Loki transformed himself into a snake, and because I really, really love snake, I went to pick it up. But the moment I did, the snake transformed back into Loki, and then he stabbed me.”

It was at least ten second before Rocket spoke. And when he finally did, he sighed and said, “Why do I have the feeling you tell this story a lot? Like, A LOT.”

Thor smiled wanly. “Maybe a few times,” he acknowledged.

“I bet this Loki gets a big kick out of it every time you tell it,” Rocket said, chuckling.

The thin smile on Thor’s face quickly fell.

“Not anymore,” were the only words Thor could manage before he turned away. [“The pirate angel, the talking tree and captain rabbit”]

While in “Thor: Ragnarok” this story seems to be a proof Loki is an homicidal maniac because it’s compared to him wanting to kill Banner and Valkyrie and therefore, despite the idea this is a joke, make the whole matter a serious business, here Loki’s actions are compared to the ones of a teenager tree wanting to insult someone else and being told not to. It seems one of those stupid things little kids do in anger, or thinking it’s just a game, without really understanding the consequences they could have (=killing someone). Thor seems to almost brag about it, as if it was a funny childhood tale about the idiotic things they did as kids, not a cautious tale against his brother and the risks of trusting him.

It’s still a story that’s clearly out of character for how Loki was meant to be PRIOR to “Thor”, but at least now it’s better inserted in the contest and can fit vaguely more with the previous canon.

But whatever, that’s it.

So, in a way, we’ve two universes, one is the Pre-Ragnarok one, in which Loki prior to Thor loved his brother and had a good relation with him, and the other is the Ragnarok one, in which Loki wanted him dead from childhood.

Both exist.

It’s something a part of the fandom is well aware of, but also something another part of the fandom is ABSOLUTELY unaware of.

I’m not going to tell you which universe you’ve to favour, if the one in which Loki loved Thor or the one in which he wanted him dead, that’s up to your personal preference.

But if you’re among the many who’re still confused about why the fandom has split opinions about the relationship between the brothers… well, that’s a summary of the history behind it all.

Honestly, with the incoming “Thor – Love and Thunder” and “Loki” series, I’ve no idea what will be the future of it all. Waititi will probably want to go back to his “Thor – Ragnarok” continuity… unless he wants to reinvent Thor all over again so we’ll get another additional universe for Strange to enjoy in his upcoming “Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness”… in addition to the universes created in “Avengers – Endgame” when the characters changed the past and the ones Loki will be creating in “Loki”.

Sorry, Doctor Strange, I guess you’ll have your hands full.

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Admin note: I’m very excited for the future plotting! - Admin J

IC INFORMATION — CHARACTER DESIRED Amelina Martinez DESCRIBE THE CHARACTER IN YOUR OWN WORDS I think the word that stood out to me most in Amelina’s bio is 'obsessed’. Her obsession with avenging Luis and her obsession with bagging Morgan seem to stem from the same unexpressed need. She’s stuck always being that 14 year old girl, never able to move on from seeing her brother selling drugs and then later finding out he was dead. The two events are sort of locked into her head, and after that, she stopped growing up so much as simply getting older. Other people can move on from grief, but there’s this block there for her, and I think it’s surrounding the fact that they weren’t actually that close, that he’d already been to prison by the time she was starting high school, that it embarrassed her in front of her friends to see her brother like that. I think there was a ton of shame for her with this screw-up of a brother of hers, and not just a little anger. Why couldn’t he just get his shit together and get a real job and be a real man? Maybe she even said that to him, and then later, he was dead, and she never really got to know him, or take back her words, or realize she should have told her parents. That getting him sent back to prison on a parole violation, which her extremely Catholic and law-abiding family would’ve done, would’ve been better than dying on the street like a dog. I don’t think her parents ever got over his death either. Him going to prison was hard enough, but then their eldest son dying before he was 25 just broke them. So there’s this house with three broken people, and they all handle their grief differently. To me, Amelina is Inigo Montoya, preparing to take out the whole damn Costello gang. What’s ironic is that she hasn’t done the math on Luis getting shot and realized he was probably shot by a Sinclair. In another life, Ameline became a cop and worked a gang detail, maybe working undercover. In another life, she became a community organizer and worked at a youth centre helping to keep other kids from ending up like her brother. In another life, she got married too young to a boy a lot like Luis and got sucked into a shitty life because she felt like she deserved it, as some sort of punishment. In this world, she swore revenge. She became a spy from the beginning, learning about a world that she had no doorway into by sheer will. She spent 15 years figuring out how to get access to a gang, when she could’ve just joined up. But she isn’t interested in being her brother and owned by someone else. She wants to own them. Which leads me to her interest in Morgan. Now, Morgan has a lot of animal magnetism and is obviously gorgeous, but I don’t really think if he were just a man, Amelina would look twice. I don’t even think it’s the power and the privilege he has, though she probably thinks that’s what it is, that drives her to him. She tells herself she wants to be his wife, to supplant Penny, to satisfy him on some level that he no longer feels, but I think those are just surface thoughts. What Morgan actually is for her, is death. Her death drive is jacked all the way up, not to the point of suicide, but to the point where death seems like an acceptable outcome if the result is revenge. She’s had this need for so long, she can’t plan for the future anymore. She can’t have dreams, she can’t have plans, she only has this one thing, and Morgan will use her to get it, and he won’t care if he breaks her to do it, and she wants that so badly. Everyone else in her life looks at her and wants to protect her or love her or just views her as unimportant. Only Morgan looks at her and sees a weapon. And that’s what she’s turned herself into. She can run a half-marathon in an hour and forty five minutes, she’s learned Krav Maga, she has killer aim, and most of all, she can lie so well that even she believes it sometimes. All she needs is for someone to just pull the trigger and fire her at the enemy. What was she up to in those fifteen years? Can you get experience in revenge? She couldn’t exactly go out and find a swordmaster to train her or something. She got a series of jobs that she hated and never got a promotion because she couldn’t care less. She went to school but never finished that accounting degree, or information management diploma, or even that administrative assistant certificate, because the idea of being anything for the rest of her life seems impossible to imagine. She made friends she couldn’t hold onto, and had relationships she didn’t care about, and she just … absorbed information. She went to Costello clubs, she hung with Costello people, she learned about them, and by doing so, learned about the Sinclairs. It actually took her a while to realize the Sinclairs were useful, because at first she thought she could do it all on her own, like people in the movies. After years of collecting evidence, only to realize it was useless because no one was going to prosecute them, and punishment meant nothing to people who owned the system, she finally turned her attention to the Sinclairs, under the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. WRITING SAMPLE Her target, Luca Costello, was drunk as shit and just turned 18. Spending money like it had an expiration date and begging girls to help him celebrate. She wondered if he even knew what his family did for a living. On the one hand, how could he not, when he was surrounded by it all the time? But on the other, how could he really understand what they did and still throw bills around like the world was a game and he’d already won? “Hi.” “Hey. You’re … pretty. You wanna get married?” This wasn’t what she’d imagined. Was it really this easy? “I wanna go back to your place. Take me home.” “Okay. Yeah, let’s do that, we can totally … I have coke at home. And like, every booze. All the booze. I’ll even order pizza if you want!” He smiled and touched her hair. She let him. It didn’t matter what he did. None of it mattered. It was all just research.               *** He lay on the bed, passed out after she’d fed him three more drinks and listened to him tell her about some girl named Juliet and how she’d broken his heart again. He’d done a few lines of coke and that had pretty much made him tell her everything she could’ve ever wanted to know, and several things that she didn’t, about his life. It was kind of sad how little there was of it. His beloved twin sister, who sounded like a little bitch, his parents who were equal parts proud and disappointed in him, his friends who sounded like the worst sort of entitled pricks, his older siblings who seemed barely aware of him and who were embedded in the business enough to be soaked in blood. Climbing off him, her t-shirt left back in the living room, since breasts seemed to make men more chatty, and her pants by the side of the bed, to give him hope that they might actually fuck, she sat on the bed and just breathed. What the fuck did she do now? She’d thought this part would be the complicated part, that she’d have to jump through hoops, talk her way in, be so smooth that no one suspected anything. She hadn’t really let herself consider what happened next. Mostly all she could think about was the other Costellos. It was obvious Luca wasn’t really involved in the business, but they were. The oldest ones might even have been a part of the business when Luis was still alive. Had they put him on that street corner where he died? Was he just a scratched out line for them in some notebook somewhere? Did they even care? How could they not realize that their choices had left a fucking cemetary worth of bodies in their wake? Did they look in the mirror and see a monster? She was up and pacing and hadn’t even noticed. No one had ever taken anything from them. No one had ever made them face the cost of 'doing business’ before. They were all pampered, precious little vampires sucking the blood out of Chicago’s poor and desperate. She was back on the bed now, straddling him, staring down at his sleeping face that had never known real pain. What did he have to grieve? A girl who didn’t fall at his feet? He was a stupid little boy, a waste of education and opportunity. He’d had everything that she and Luis hadn’t, and he hadn’t become anything more than they had. It was hard to look at him. He was a boy, younger than Luis, his hair curling at the edges. He was a Costello, his very existence an insult to her own loss. She had a pillow in her hand and pressed it against his face. He didn’t even struggle. He could die like this, and maybe his family would think it was just some sort of freak accident. They would know just a fraction of what she felt, with their money insulating them from anything real. They’d know something, even if they didn’t even know her brother’s fucking name. He was moving a little under her, trying to push her off, when she heard a noise. A door opening. Was someone else home? Had someone come in and she hadn’t heard them? Was it the police? The rest of the Costellos? Did they somehow all know what she was doing? Lifting the pillow away, Lina froze and Luca took a breath. He coughed and his hand reflexively grabbed her bare thigh where it pressed against his. She was straddling Luca Costello’s thighs in a mismatched bra and panties, clutching her murder weapon to her chest like she was about to start a pillow fight. There was a man standing in the doorway looking at her. He didn’t look embarrassed, which was the part that confused her. They both looked at each other for a moment, and Lina needed to think of a lie. Nothing stuck in her head, everything was blank. She knew, on some level, she was panicking. She managed to choke out a gasp, and hopped off of Luca and onto the floor. Stumbling, the blood rushing away from her head where it had been pounding moments before, her feet numb from kneeling on them, she moved like a drunk co-ed. Yes, drunk. She was drunk. She was just another drunk girl, probably one of dozens that Luca brought home. “Oh my God, what’re you doing here?” Her voice was unsteady and breathy, but that was normal, right? Was anything normal? “My cousin texted me that he’d just proposed to his future wife. You two aren’t married, are you?” The question was so unexpected that Lina just automatically shook her head and held out her left hand, as if showing that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring was the normal response in these situations. “Good. His mother would kill me if he got married the day he turned legal.” The man, Luca’s cousin, didn’t even seem to be really talking to her, he wasn’t even looking at her directly. “Could you … maybe put something on?” Snatching the sheet off the bed, Lina wrapped herself in it and sank to the floor, so much adrenaline in her system that she couldn’t breathe and could taste her own heartbeat. “I’m feeling … woozy. Can you find my shirt?” She just needed him to leave, to go away. He’d seen her face, but what were the odds he’d be able to ever recognize her again? If he would just leave, she could … Luca made a noise like a sad puppy on the bed and fell off of it onto the floor. He didn’t wake up, but was now curled up like a baby. Why had the cousin come home? Why was he here? What kind of fucked up family were they? “I don’t think I know you. What’s your name?” Oh fuck. He knew. He knew she wasn’t one of Luca’s friends, he knew something was up. Someone at the club had warned him, maybe? She didn’t know. But he didn’t know what she didn’t know, did he? She was just a dumb drunk girl. “I’m Lina. Luca told me he had coke. He asked me to marry him but I didn’t say yes … can you see my pants?” Why had she said her real name? She was a fucking idiot. Grabbing her pants, she went to stand up and fell into the bed, knocking herself into the arms of the cousin. She was pressed against his body, and he had a gun, it felt like a bad joke, is that a gun I feel or are you just happy to see me? Only it was a gun, it really was. And he was looking at her now, and she did the only thing she could think of. She passed out, dead dropping in his arms. He carried her. That was the crazy part. He carried her to the living room like something out of a romance movie, only it wasn’t romantic at all, and then just stared at her for a moment. Even with her eyes closed, she could tell somehow, that he was watching her. Trying not to shake, or even breathe too hard, she lay there and wondered if this was the part where he shot her. Was he going to press the muzzle to her head, or just pull the trigger? Would she hear it coming before she died? Christ, was this how it had felt to be Luis? She couldn’t even cry, weirdly calm, like there was a wall and all her fear was behind it, waiting to crash over her, but she couldn’t quite feel it yet. “Amelina Belinda Pilar Martinez. Where do you live?” Oh Christ, he knew she was awake, he was talking to her, oh God, she was going to die now. But then she realized what she was hearing. He was going through her wallet. The wallet that had been in the pants she was holding when she pretended to pass out. Oh fuck, this was even worse. He knew who she was. He knew her name. He had her goddamn driver’s license. “Mike, can you bring the car around? Yes, Luca’s. Just a girl. They’re both passed out, I don’t want her getting into more of his nose candy and OD'ing. Yeah, exactly. I’ll stay with him, make sure he doesn’t choke on his own vomit. Yes, well, it is his birthday. See you soon.” Lying there, a cold certainty hit her. She wasn’t prepared for this. She didn’t know what the fuck she was doing. She didn’t even know which fucking cousin this guy was. She’d made all these lists, all these observations, all these half-baked plans, but she hadn’t done anything about them. Here she was, lying on Luca Costello’s floor, and she had no idea what to do. What if anything had gone wrong before this? What if Luca had woken up while she’d been smothering him? Christ, what if Luca had been playing music and she hadn’t heard his cousin come in? She could just give up. Admit that it had all been stupid. Go back to her pointless life and just keep living, day in and day out, and eventually die, having accomplished nothing. Fuck that. She would just have to figure out how to be better. She would. And then next time, she’d know what to do. And she’d never feel like this again. EXTRAS She reads the tabloids religiously to keep up with the Costello siblings. Not necessarily a playlist, but pretty much the new album from Billie Eilish is Lina’s soundtrack right now, with a lot of Lana Del Rey thrown in and the Kill Bill soundtrack on top (just because she loves that movie and has seen it 10 times).

Her favourite book is the Count of Monte Cristo.

[mailorderfictionalcharacter]

a list of semi coherent thoughts I’ve had about mcu wanda maximoff

0.5 this post is open to discourse. if u are unwilling to see viewpoints that are pro wanda or anti wanda this is not the post 4 u.

1. wanda runs off of very powerful emotions and that’s an a + character trait. her rage fueled grief and power is just fascinating to watch.

2. ew whitewashing why do you do this to me mcu. stop. enough.

3. yeah it’s kind of ridiculous to kill the ex-ceo of a weapons company that killed your parents as compared to whoever fired the missiles or whoever ordered said military action but it’s not that ridiculous if you apply the barest modicum of generous interpretation to it.

Tony Stark was emblematic of the very destructive American ideal of we’re great and right and coming with guns. Going off of IM2, even as he was doing great things (”I’ve successfully privatized world peace”) his performance was still very um American (”no one’s man enough to go [against me]”). Like as audience members we get it but I could see how that sort of look-at-me attitude would not ring like redemption to someone in that much emotional pain. Like, you could easily read their actions as being about attacking every American/foreign influence figure head, which is sort of supported by the fact that the twins wanted the avengers down not just Tony Stark.

If the weapons were illegally sold there’s no guarantee the twins knew that Tony wasn’t responsible. It’s possible Tony leaked the truth about Obadiah after the “I Am Iron Man” press conference, but the original plan was a SHIELD coverup.

I’m not inclined to conflate profiting of our wrongs or moral ambiguities on the same moral level as instigating wrongs, but it’s also up in the air whether or not Stark Industries cared about collateral damage in the design of their weapons and that’s something the twins could legitimately blame them for. IM1 canon is a mixed bag - we have intellicrops (concern for philanthropy) but we also have, y’know the Jericho (the weapon that levels mountains)

(read more under the cut)

tl;dr: wanda is a fascinating flawed character who suffers from writing problems but she’s also wearing the name of a jewish/romani woman even though marvel studios is too much of a coward to translate that to film & i’m perpetually bitter and indecisive about everything.

4. the twins had enormous social factors encouraging them to hate the avengers/america. even american media was questioning the avengers; shield had fell; people were putting up anti avengers graffiti

5. considering the twins spent their formative years in a country at war and lost their parents I’m assuming they went through quite a few economic hardships.

6. what sort of access did the twins have to media or education?

7. I’m not inclined to blame the twins for their desire to get revenge but it is worth noting that they seemed to have very little concern for collateral damage even though the only thing we as an audience knows for certain is that the whole reason they’re seeking revenge is because of collateral damage.

8. there’s a gap of 8-12 years between the death of their parents and their attack on the avengers. no matter what mitigating circumstances there were (and I think there were a lot) that’s a premeditated crime

9. there’s a lot of parallels between wanda maximoff and kira nerys except the writers on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine actually cared about Kira Nerys.

10. both of Wanda’s major fuck ups (willingly unleashing the Hulk on Johannesburg and failing to protect everyone in Lagos) happened in African countries. I believe in some suspension of belief for superhero movies but I’m not sure it’s entirely appropriate to be like hey! look at Wanda! the whitewashed character who fucks things up in African countries! such girl power! great anti-imperialism message!

(I mean, the same disregard applies to all the avengers though. I’m pretty sure the safest interpretation of Lagos is “the avengers could have done better by not fighting in proximity with a bunch of civilians” which is on Steve. And unless I fever dreamed this Steve tosses his cowl at the feet of anti-avengers graffiti in the beginning of aou and there is nothing appropriate about that).

11. Wanda was introduced in AOU, a movie with sub par dialogue and tbh I have a feeling Whedon et.al never thought through the implications of Johannesburg bc he just wanted a convenient way to introduce a hulkbuster fight.

12. tbh I really want a scarlet witch movie to fix all of this but I also really want a recast and I know I won’t get either (fanon wanda is the best because we can fix all of this with a hammer).

13. CA:CW seemed to draw on a lot of Wanda’s comic history (specifically in the oppression metaphors) but since it followed the clusterfuck that was AOU I can’t exactly give them a standing ovation for that.

14. ca:cw did a very bad job following through wanda’s plot threads from aou. tbh I’m not even team we need to stretch Wanda’s redemption arc further but idk, it might be nice if she mentioned her dead brother or tied the Lagos incident/Sokovia accords to, idk, her past living in a war zone.

15. ca:cw could’ve given me wanda wryly commenting on how luxurious the compound was compared to sokovia but instead it gave the should-be-jewish character a cross in her bedroom and fuck that marvel why don’t you just stake me through the heart so I don’t have to deal with your bullshit

16. I wish wanda in the airport scene was more about her desire to do good (go stop the supersoldiers) than the awkward oppression metaphor

17. although push come to shove I would’ve focused on poverty/american foreign intervention over calling the powers she volunteered for the source of her oppression the whole raft scene does demonstrate that people whose powers (or even training) cannot be separated like say Sam and the Falcon or Tony and the suits face a special criminal justice risk.

but this isn’t really relevant to the accords, which are not the SHRA and honestly the same ethical problem of how to incarcerate enhanced people exists whether or not someone is acting as a superhero (is it ethical to put a psychic murderer in solitary confinement if that’s the only way to prevent them from using their powers to escape or assault guards?)

18. according to beta canon/film subtext wanda & pietro did not willingly sign up to work with hydra. Just good to remember.

19. I will forever be attached to the idea of wanda liking Vision’s company because he is both practically invulnerable (not going to get shot 7 times on a floating city) and emotionally dependent on her support (just like Pietro). (this is not implying twincest btw)

20. I think wanda’s house arrest in ca:cw is not completely unreasonable (she’s probably awaiting investigation & is at risk of being hurt/hurting others from mob violence) but definitely steve (and probably natasha & sam) should be under house arrest as well. but they aren’t, and I think it’s fair to say that in universe that’s xenophobia/anti-immigrant sentiment. why be afraid of the american icon when you can be afraid of the poor sokovian woman?

21. antis make way too much of the whole “she’s just a kid line”. like steve was responding to tony calling her, a human being, a weapon of mass destruction. like, he was just trying to humanize her and calling the youngest person in a group a kid even when they’re an adult isn’t that strange.

22. in lagos wanda was trying so damn hard to stop that bomb and yes she didn’t manage it but blaming her instead of steve? uh gross.

23. how much experience does she have? yes tony stark throwing himself into superheroics worked out surprisingly well but superheroes need training

24. I insist marvel release a 22 page dissertation on wanda’s mind powers but also if I don’t like it I’ll call it not canon. (my initial theory was that she produces ptsd symptoms - even if the person normally doesn’t suffer from ptsd - but something in the confidence that she can manipulate tony before entering his mind makes me think she has slight suggestive abilities beyond fear and also thor’s vision arguably followed a different vein)

25. antis like to argue that the maximoffs only turned on ultron because it benefited them but let’s be clear the maximoffs fought ultron because they thought he was wrong and wanted to personally help. they could’ve just tipped off the avengers and left or left ultron to do whatever ultron was going to do and only fought him if he directly came after them okay the twins had options and they chose the most altruistic option.

26. ppl who say wanda isn’t really whitewashed because marvel’s decades of retcons have whitewashed her at past points are pretty much using a two-wrongs argumentative fallacy.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Revenge is Not So Great Acktually

by Wardog

Monday, 06 July 2009

Wardog gets typically epic and ambivalent on Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold.~

Damn you, Joe Abercrombie, damn you. I was fully intending to wait until Best Served Cold came out in paperback but I made the mistake of “perusing” it in Borders coffee shop while waiting for a friend. Well, one thing led to another and, what can I say, less than an hour later I'd bought the thing. My attitude to Joe Abercrombie is probably best described as ambiguous; I found The First Law trilogy

exciting

but also

frustrating

and ultimately, I ditheringly concluded,

unsatisfying.

As with The First Law trilogy, I started Best Served Cold in a paroxysm of wild enthusiasm that got more and more complicated as the book progressed. By the end I wasn’t entirely sure what I thought, although the fact I got there at the speed I did proves one thing at least: the man can write a gripping story. And, even though I have yet to fully establish whether I actually like what he writes, I’m still hopelessly intrigued by his books.

Best Served Cold is one of those rare, under-appreciated jewels: a fantasy one shot. It’s also, as the title indicates, a revenge-tale, with all the attendant heritage. The heroine is a member of a deadly assassin squad but when she tries to leave the group, their leader finds her and shoots her. But she doesn’t die, she just goes into a coma and when she wakes up she vows to get even on all the people who tried to murder her … oh wait that’s something else. Let me try again. The heroine is the leader of a mercenary army but when she gets too powerful, the man she is working for arranges to have her murdered. But she doesn’t die, she just horribly scarred and broken and when she wakes up she vows to get even on all the people who tried to murder her.

Okay, my plot summary is now unhelpfully crap because I wanted to make a cheap point about revenge stories. The heroine is called Monzcarro (Monza) Murcatto. Her nemesis is Grand Duke Orso, although her hit list totals an ambitious seven, all of whom were in some way involved in the brutal attempt on her life that led to the death of her beloved brother. Along way to vengeance she assembles the expected motley crew, a distinctly unmagnificent seven. What starts out a relatively simple slaughterfest soon spirals out of control in a way that cannot fail to affect not only those caught up its immediate vicinity but a battle-torn kingdom. The cast encompasses some familiar faces from the First Law trilogy, the Northman Caul Shivers, Glokta’s assistant Vitari, and, of course, the famed soldier of fortune, Nicomo Cosca, but they’re joined by an array of new and original misfits, including Morveer the self-proclaimed master poisoner, his pretty assistant Day and Friendly, the number-obsessed, borderline autistic murderer.

The main problem with revenge stories is that you have to suspend your disbelief over the premise itself. So you have this Duke, right. Who’s so totally ruthless he spent the last eight years subduing Styria so he can be King on’t. Who’s so totally ruthless he’s willing to murder his Captain General for fear of betrayal. Who’s so totally ruthless he gets five guys to carry it out while he and a random banker look on. But who’s not quite ruthless enough to ensure he’s done the deed probably before flinging the body down a cliff.

As Dan would say, that’s a very specific level of ruthlessness.

If that doesn’t bug the crap out of you from the get go, I suspect you’ll do all right with Best Served Cold.

It should go without saying but: there’s gonna be spoilers okay but nothing too catastrophic

Like The First Law trilogy, there’s an extent to which Best Served Cold is an act of deconstruction, aimed both at the fantasy genre and at the tropes of the revenge plot as well. One of Abercrombie’s strengths was a writer is the way he constantly forces his reader to evaluate her own expectations by refusing to fulfill them. Best Served Cold, which is presented in a rather episodic way, is a succession of misdirections and wrong-turnings. This is reflected in the chaotic way the events unfold, repeatedly defying even the most meticulous planning, and in the flawed, inadequate interactions of the characters, for example the spiraling tension between Morveer and his assistant, and the abortive love affair between Monza and Shivers. Revenge piles upon revenge, betrayal upon betrayal, and the personal and the political become hopelessly entangled. The problem, however, with the revenge story is that, deconstructed or not, Abercrombie doesn’t seem to have much to say on the subject beyond “is not so great acktually.”

Although I did it primarily for laughs, the comparison between Kill Bill and Best Served Cold has slightly more thought behind it than I initially indicated. If I was feeling particularly glib I might be inclined to say Joe Abercrombie is the Quentin Tarantino of fantasy fiction. He’s obsessed with genre conventions, he’s extremely stylish, violent and action-orientated, but when you stop and think about it for a moment it’s all just a little bit shallow. Here’s one of Monza’s victims on the subject of revenge:

"If you could get even what good would it do you? All this expenditure of effort, pain, treasure, blood for what. Who is ever left better off for it ... not the avenged dead, certainly. They rot on regardless. Not those who are avenged upon, of course. Corpses all. And what of the those who take vengeance what of them? Do they sleep easier, do you suppose, once they have heaped murder on murder, sown the bloody seeds of a hundred other retributions?”

It’s all been said, and shown, a thousand times before. What Abercrombie does accomplish, however, alongside standard meditations on the futility of revenge, is its diminution to something banal. Everyone’s got something against someone, and the nested sequences of betrayals and retributions are very effective. Ultimately, Best Served Cold is well worth a read. If you’re a supporter of stand-alone fantasy, you enjoyed The First Law trilogy or you like your fantasy low and nasty, I’d heartily recommend it. Abercrombie writes well, especially his action sequences. He’s one of the few fantasy authors I’ve encountered whose battle scenes I can read without glazing over. I don’t know how he does it but not only do I understand what’s going on in them, I’m actually interested:

“The Baolish were breaking through in earnest, boiling out of the widening gaps in Rogont's shattered right wing like the rising tide through a wall of sand. Monza could hear their shrill cries as they streamed up the slope, see their tattered banners waving, the glitter of metal on the move. The lines of archers above them dissolved all at once, men tossing away their bows and running for the city...”

He’s also very funny, in a grim kind of way. Here’s Nicomo Cosca (famed soldier of fortune) hiring some violent scumbags who claim to be entertainers:

Their eyes darted about, narrow and suspicious, dirty hands clutching a set of stained instruments. They shuffled up in front of the table, one of them scratching his groin, another prodding at a nostril with his drumstick “And you are,” asked Cosca. “We're a band,” the nearest said. “And has your band a name?” They looked at each other. “No, why would it?” “Your own names then, if you please and your specialities, both as entertainer and fighter.” “My name's Solter, I play the drum and the mace.” Flicking his greasy coat back to show the dull glint of iron. “I'm better with the mace if I'm honest.” “I'm Morc,” said the next in line, “pipe and cutlass.” “Olopin. Horn and hammer.” “Olopin as well.” Jerking a thumb sideways. “Brother to this article. Fiddle and blades.” Whipping a pair of long knives from his sleeves and spinning 'em round his fingers The last one had the most broken nose Shivers had ever seen and he'd seen some bad ones. “Gurpie. Lute and lute.” “You fight with your lute?” asked Cosca “I hits 'em with it just so.” The man showed off a sideways swipe, then flashed two rows of shit coloured teeth. “There's a great axe hidden in the body.”

The other big advantage of reading Abercrombie is that he ruthlessly cuts through all the crap I hate about fantasy fiction. I still remember the dizzy joy I felt when, after a small amount of build up regarding the invasion of the Gurkish in Before They Are Hanged, the Gurkish did, in fact, invade. Instead of waiting obligingly until the climax of book three. In Best Served Cold, the first vengeance-killing occurs within the 50 pages, and the next about 50 pages after that. Words cannot express how much I adore the way Abercrombie has things happen in his books. And it’s refreshing to see the usual conventions of fantasy get torn down around you – people break under torture and the damage is permanent, love and sex aren’t redemptive, if you go up against a superior swordsman you will lose.

The characters are your usual Abercrombie Bag of irredeemable, flawed but somehow weirdly sympathetic arseholes. Because there’s a significantly larger major cast than in The First Law Trilogy, I found Abercrombie’s handle on them a little less assured. Unlike The First Law trilogy in which changes of perspective were, for the most part, limited to chapters, the POV jumps around quite a lot and it’s easy to lose track of whose head you’re supposed to be in. They mostly have distinctive voices – Shivers says ain’t and ‘em, Friendly thinks in numbers, Morveer is florid – but it feels like linguistic frosting. Possibly I’m just wearing my Nostalgia Glasses but to read the First Law trilogy is to be completely saturated in the thoughts and worldview of Glokta, Jezel and Logen, whereas Best Served Cold seems to offer only the tourist highlights of personality. Furthermore, juggling such a large cast means there are some characters who barely register – Vitari, doting mother and torturer, is sidelined (again) and I have no idea what Abercrombie was trying to do with Morveer’s assistant, Day.

I had trouble with Monza, as well. She’s not designed to be a sympathetic character but, I suspect, she’s meant to be understandable and even attractive. She’s certainly a more successful attempt at a strong woman than Ferro was. I usually find there’s a point in vengeance narratives in which I lose all ability to empathise with the main character, the moment when Dantes becomes Monte Cristo; a deliberate device, on the part of authors, I’m sure, to show the de-humanising affects of an obsession with revenge. However, I never lost touch with Monza in that way, which, again, contributed to the way revenge functions in the text: not as something alien and outlandish, but as something common to all. The problem was, I didn’t really manage to invest her in the first place. One of the main reasons Monza retains her humanity is that her revenge is as much for her brother as for herself. This taps into yet another convention of the genre: the idea that vengeance for others has an inherent nobility, compared to vengeance for oneself. As the story unfolds, we learn that Monza’s brother is a traitorous, avaricious waste of space, which, I suspect, is meant to problematise Monza’s crusade, and undermine any nobility we might have attributed to her. Unfortunately, since her brother is practically introduced as Bastard McBastard of the Principality of Bastardry and everyone, I mean everyone, is constantly going on about what a bastard he was, the overall effect of this is to make Monza look like a total idiot. And I can’t imagine that was deliberate.

On the other hand I did really like the way her relationship with Shivers developed and then fell apart. At first it seems that Shivers, clinging to his vow to be a better man and characterised by by an innate sense of decency, might serve as a redemptive influence upon her. And there’s a nice gender-reversal to it at as well: he is both materially dependent upon and emotionally vulnerable to her. Shivers, in his way, wants to find hope in the world. Monza believes there is none. Watching them ruin and break each other, each at times denying the other salvation, and Shivers’ eventual transformation into Monza’s creature entirely (albeit not in any way she would want) is deeply unpleasant but also strangely satisfying. It is a tale not so often told, and rarely done well.

The other stand-out character of Best Served Cold (I’m deliberately not mentioning Nicomo Cosca, famed solider of fortune, of whom Abercrombie is blatantly far too fond) is Castor Morveer, master poisoner. Again, he is deconstructed over the course of the novel from leet poisoner stereotype to self-deluding fool whose dedication to science and maxims of caution offer no protection against the cruel whimsicality of the world in which he lives.

He was beyond doubt the greatest poisoner ever and had become, indisputably, a great man of history. How it galled him that he could never truly share his grand achievement with the world, never enjoy the adulation his triumph undoubtedly deserved. Oh, if the doubting headmaster of the orphanage could have only witnessed this happy day, he would have been forced to concede that Castor Morveer was indeed prize-winning material. If his wife could have seen it, she would have finally understood him and never complained about his unusual habits!

Yes, he’s a messed up little bunny and so utterly broken, hopeless and thwarted it’s hard not to feel a certain pity for him although he’s also a masterpiece of irritation. Although they have little in common on the surface, he reminded me a great deal of Jezel in the sense that both are characters who exist to have their illusions of themselves utterly shattered. As with Jezel, the presentation of Morveer made me faintly uncomfortable, not so much because of who he was or what happened to him, but because of an ill-defined extra-textual element. I remember finding Jezel as much as the victim of authorial malice as anything and, again, I rather felt that Abercrombie wanted to condemn Morveer for his hypocrisy. This is pure speculation of the kind that would get me thrown out of any lit class in the land, but I think one of Abercrombie’s personal bugbears (and one he shares with Dan, actually) is “people who are more shit than they think they are” and that he takes a grim pleasure in having such people come face to face with irrefutable evidence of their own shitness (there’s even a brief cameo from Jezel, suitably cowed). Unfortunately it’s very difficult to communicate the subtleties of that effectively, and the result is characters like Jezel and Morveer, who come face to face with their own shitness primarily because the author wants to show it to them.

They are presented as characters whose self-perceptions are flawed but they are flawed primarily insofar as they differ from the author’s. The result of this is to highlight their artificiality in that you’re always aware of them as an authorial creations, and the only possible perspective you can take is the one prescribed by the author. I didn’t like Jezel but I did sympathise with him greatly (I think, perhaps, his shitness resonated with my shitness), but I felt there was no room for that within the text, because the author had nothing but contempt for him. Essentially, when constructing self-deluding characters, there must be a distinction drawn between “this character thinks they’re great but they’re not necessarily as great as they think they are” and “this character thinks he’s awesome, I (the author) think they’re a dick, therefore they’re a dick.” And that, for me, is the problem with Abercrombie’s Jezel/Morveer archetypes.

There’s something Chaucerian about Abercrombie’s work, not just in a shared relish of jokes about poo, but in the sense that the primary virtue espoused by both writers is not necessarily moral good but a kind of animalistic cleverness. Rewards, such as they are, come to those who are smart enough to know when they are beaten (Glokta) and those with the wit to see themselves as they truly are (Cosca). For everybody else, there is merely destruction, self-destruction and death, as they become helpless slaves to the cruelty of others, their own needs and the vagaries of fate.

There’s a lot to like about Best Served Cold. A well designed world, snappy dialogue, some great writing, colourful characters and lashings of ultraviolence. It bogs down a little about 3/5s of the way through but finishes nicely. But there’s also a certain sense that Abercrombie may be a one-trick pony. It’s set in the same world, it has a similar approach, similar characters and, hell, even the same damn cover. It has the comparable strengths and weaknesses of The First Law Trilogy, except the weaknesses bothered me less and the strengths seemed more pronounced. In short, if Joe Abercrombie is a one trick pony, it’ll be a fucking stallion by the time he’s done.Themes:

Books

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Joe Abercrombie

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Sci-fi / Fantasy

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http://fintinobrien.livejournal.com/

at 21:32 on 2009-07-07I've always had a certain fondness for fantasy settings, despite hating most fantasy tropes with a passion, so it sounds like I should like Abercrombie. Would you recommend starting with this or the First Law trilogy?

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Wardog

at 23:05 on 2009-07-07Oh gosh, that's a rather difficult question actually. Given what you've said about your attitude fantasy, I think you might really dig Abercrombie - I know I do, when I'm not feeling ambivalent :) This has the benefit of being a one-shot so it's less of an investment but ... it's set in the same world as The First Trilogy and it does have characters and settings in common. I don't think it would necessarily interfere with your enjoyment of the book but it might be slightly bewildered.

I'd actually start with The Blade Itself - firstly it's in paperback (hehe) but I remember thinking it was one of the most interesting, exciting fantasy books I'd ever read when I began it. And even thought I'm personally not sure the second and third books live up to the potential of the first, at least you'll know whether his style grabs you. Also I think his grip on his characters is better in The First Law trilogy, maybe just because he has more time to establish them.

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http://fintinobrien.livejournal.com/

at 20:51 on 2009-07-08I was thinking I could just flip a coin, but you make a good case for The Blade Itself. (Actually, you had me at "it's in paperback.") :)

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Michal

at 03:10 on 2011-07-30I'll always remember this book as "that one with the most disappointing sword fight ever." (I'm sure you remember the one)

Not to say that I didn't like the book as a whole, but I also disliked a good many things about it, and it hasn't convinced me to pick up any more Abercrombie.