I liked and felt a connection with both AoA Loki and Kid Loki, now we’re just said to accept this new Loki and move forward.
Fine, he’s dangerous and badass, but he feels hollow of everything else. One of the reasons MCU Loki is so popular it because of how emotionally complex he is and we can identify with his reasons and emotions.
New Loki as yet to show any of this.
He dismisses Verity’s worries about her friend and just tells her he’s not coming back and that they learn and move forward. This isn’t Doctor Who, we don’t just move forward from one version to the other.
This issue left me with a issue sense of loss and I can’t seem to connect with New Loki at all. He may be Loki, but he feels like a stranger.
Okay, I am gonna share a little secret about myself, actually not so much a secret as something i just don’t discuss much. I am autistic. High functioning, obviously, what most people would probably call Aspergers (though that’s technically not a thing any more) and it’s not some self diagnosed thing, I have been diagnosed by a doctor, go to support groups, the works. And you know what? in real life situations, I act a LOT like Loki here in a lot of ways. I am very bad about picking up on the social cues that I am supposed to ask about a person right then, and when I do, i may do it in a kind of bizarre way, I also do not like sharing things about myself, and a lot of times people dismiss me as cold and uncaring because of it, but that is not the case. I also get obsessive about certain things. I often get stuck in self-destructive routines and patterns. My emotions and reactions to things tend to be described as ‘extreme’ and not very nuanced, which can result in me flipping out over minor things, and holding grudges waaaay too long. Does any of this remind you of a certain character? A lot of these same traits are also shared with psychopathy, many of the diagnosis criteria are similar, but one of the key differences is that ASD people do care about others and empathize with them, just have trouble expressing it appropriately, and psychopaths don’t care about others, or at least not very much, but are able to fake it more easily in order to get what they want. So sometimes a psychopath, who has complete disregard for others, can come across as more caring than a person with ASD who DOES care, but doesn’t know how to express it. In the past, Loki was a psychopath. Even in Agent of Asgard, just… not an evil one. He wanted to be better for selfish reasons, and acted in a way that he thought would get him what he wanted. He was faking the warmth. I am not saying he didn’t care at all about Verity or Thor, but… it didn’t prevent him from acting in a shitty way towards them and disregarding their wants to get what he wanted. Look how he manipulated Verity into helping him when he knew she would not want to. Now, I see him as moving more towards ASD by changing that one thing. But it may result in some odd behaviour.
He asked about Verity’s history. Something King Loki pointed out to her as something Loki never did before. He may have done it in a strange way, and thrown in a lot of rambling about himself and other oddness, but he asked.
Basically, you are coming across as saying he is not behaving in a neurotypical way, and that you can’t wrap your head around it. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any depth to him, he is just not displaying it in a ‘normal’ way. Not everyone forms relationships in the same way. Also, the whole point was that he had to change, or he would end up just becoming evil yet again. Of course he’s acting differently. If he was acting the same, then he failed.
Being normal is overated.
But I do think AoA Loki was really trying to be a better person, not just pretending for the sake of being perceived as one. He was flawed and lacked social skills after centuries of being a cruel, selfish villain. He didn’t have friend’s and for the first time he was trying to be one with Verity. Him never asking about her life was selfish and self centered, but he was flawed and tried to do better and that’s what made him so engaging to me.
I’m going a bit personal now as well, but not to dismiss anything that you’ve said, I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to share it here. I just hope you can see my point of view as well.
I’ve always been sickly. My childhood was basically spent on hospitals. My refuge were books, cartoons, movies, the fictional realm. I’m also unbelievably shy and lack a lot of social skills. The kids and teens were I grew up weren’t kind to a bookish, sickly girl who wasn’t cool at all or sexy. I was bullied and ignored, I felt like a freak. I stopped talking all together so they would stop making fun of and then I was labled as a snob. My cousin and best friend was bullied into not talking to me. Even the adults asked me what was wrong with me and why I couldn’t be like everyone else.
I started to hate them all. Remind you of someone?
The first time I made real friends was when I left for college. Even then and even now I’m never sure if they like me or what I did or said was right. I’m trying to become someone better and also be myself, a huge dork, who can be accepted. That’s why Loki’s journey felt so close to home and I guess that’s why this ending made me so sad.
I do think his desire to change was genuine, and do think he was making some progress. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t being selfish. He still lied to and manipulated those around him and treated them badly, he just did it in a charming way. It also apparently wasn’t the right way to go about things, based on how King Loki ended up.
When I described Loki as a psychopath, even as was shown in Agent of Asgard, (Even KID Loki did a lot of things that would put him in that category) it was reading this article that really cemented it for me, when I read it last year: http://ift.tt/1fXbUp7
In particular this bit:
“I started reacting (to being diagnosed as a psychopath) with narcissism, saying, “Okay, I bet I can beat this. Watch me and I’ll be better.” Then I realized my own narcissism was driving that response. If you knew me, you’d probably say, “Oh, he’s a fun guy"–or maybe, "He’s a big-mouth and a blowhard narcissist"—but I also think you’d say, "All in all, he’s interesting, and smart, and okay.” But here’s the thing—the closer to me you are, the worse it gets. Even though I have a number of very good friends, they have all ultimately told me over the past two years when I asked them—and they were consistent even though they hadn’t talked to each other—that I do things that are quite irresponsible. It’s not like I say, Go get into trouble. I say, Jump in the water with me.“
This is EXACTLY how Loki was behaving in Agent of Asgard. His desire to change, his conviction that he could, was completely genuine, though perhaps driven by narcissism, which is a trait I don’t think anyone would deny is part of his makeup. But his fundamental makeup made that impossible in the end without taking more drastic action to redefine himself, steps real people don’t have available to them.
Now he’s erratic, he’s talking to Verity while looking everywhere but AT her, let alone meeting her gaze, BUT he does ask about her. He cares about her now as more than someone that’s useful to him and is nice to him when others aren’t. He may be odd, but I think aside from fuzzy memories due to the change making him forget some things about her, his affection towards her is more genuine now than it was before.
Imported from Tumblr: http://ift.tt/1PZtjKj
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