professional shitposter

I initially posted this essay on Quora way back in April, in response to the above question. It doesn’t particularly contain anything I haven’t said a dozen times before, but I was reminded of it recently, so I figured I’d finally copy it over here for organization’s sake if nothing else. No point having my ramblings scattered across half the internet. Lol

* * * * *

You mean he killed people while wearing the wrong team colours, right? Because the “heroes” of the MCU undeniably have a higher kill count than Loki does. Thor killed 145 Frost Giants in 10 minutes because one called him a princess. Tony Stark made a living selling weapons of mass destruction. Clint and Natasha are literally paid to kill people. That’s their job. Wanda and Pietro allied themselves with a killer robot that intended to wipe out all of humanity. Gamora was an assassin who worked for a guy who went around slaughtering whole planets and intended to ultimately extinguish literally half the universe.

The reason you care about the “innocent” lives (interesting term, let’s come back to it) Loki has taken and not the ones taken by our heroes™ comes down to Hero/Villain coding. The narrative tells people Loki is a villain; therefore, any good he does is of no consequence. The narrative tells people that characters like Thor are heroes; therefore, any bad he does is at worst, justifiable and at best, can be easily forgiven.

Not only is Loki’s overall kill count lower than that of most heroes™, but he has quite literally saved the universe on multiple occasions. In Avengers Assemble, even as he’s wearing the “bad guy” jersey, he brings together the team of superheroes who will go on to defeat both him and Thanos. In The Dark World, he sneaks Jane and Thor off of Asgard, tricks Malekith (the deception would not have worked without Loki) and risks his life to save them both (two times over where Jane is concerned, I’ll add). Since Malekith could not have been stopped without both Thor and Jane and Loki is responsible for their survival, Loki in effect saved the universe. In Ragnarok, he releases Surtur, thus stopping Hela who had every intention of continuing Odin’s legacy of violent conquest, with no way of knowing if he could escape the destruction in time to save himself.

But what about those lives Loki has taken? The first thing to understand about Loki’s actions is that, genocide is a family tradition. Asgard is a warrior culture that prizes strength in combat (hence why Loki, whose gifts tend toward agility, intellect and magic, was a misfit there). Nothing he did, either on Jötunheim or on Earth, was particularly out of line with what he was raised to believe was appropriate. The second thing to understand is that, when Loki turned the Bifröst against the Frost Giants, he was experiencing a psychotic break (one which ended in a failed suicide attempt, I’ll add). While this doesn’t absolve him of responsibility, it goes a long way toward explaining his actions. Especially when one considers that he was raised to view this particular race of beings as subhuman. Or, in his own words, as “monsters”. Things get even murkier when it comes to attacking Earth, because it’s made clear throughout Avengers Assemble that his “partnership” with Thanos is not a friendly one. It’s heavily implied that he’s been tortured and brainwashed prior to his arrival on Earth (he appears to be suffering from heat exhaustion at a minimum, which seems especially significant because, you know… he’s a Frost Giant). It is also explicitly shown through his interactions with The Other that he’s working under duress, and Marvel’s own website confirmed (in either 2017 or 2018, IIRC) that he himself was being influenced by the mind stone.

But I promised we’d get back to that concept of “innocent” lives, didn’t I? Unlike with the Frost Giants, we have at least a rough estimate of how many lives Loki took on Earth. In Captain America: Civil War, the death toll for the Battle of New York is reported to be 74 people. Which is tragic, certainly, and not okay. On the other hand, it is, again, less even than the number of Frost Giants Thor killed for the grave crime of emasculating him in front of his friends—and nobody asks why people like Thor. Prior to the Battle of New York, Natasha famously claims that Loki killed 80 people in two days. But unless a whole lot of that happened off-screen, her numbers are a little suspect. It’s reasonable, based on the evidence, to assume she’s pinning all deaths from the collapse of the PEGASUS facility on Loki—which is weird, because that was not even Loki’s doing. He took out a couple handfuls of SHIELD agents who were attempting to capture or kill him, so I’d hardly call those folks “innocent”. So I would argue that Natasha’s estimate of Loki’s murder count is both misleading and extremely liberal. But she is a spy, so manipulation is kind of her thing, huh? We probably shouldn’t be looking to her for an objective assessment of Loki’s wrongdoing to begin with.

Skulduggery Pleasant:

Michael Fassbender

China Sorrows:

Katie McGrath

Nefarian Serpine:

Andrew Scott

Tanith Low:

Natalie Dormer

Ghastly Bespoke:

Idris Elba

Solomon Wreath:

Cillian Murphy

Erskine Ravel:

Tom Hiddleston

Finbar Wrong:

Joe Gilgun

Me:

Jonathan Crane and his beautiful face // Batman Begins