Loki Laufreyson

[Video clicks on, and it's Loki! Hi Loki! The bruises he got in the port have all gone down by now, and he's wearing his fancy gazelle helmet. Apparently he's feeling flamboyant today.]

Sad, really. Seeing humanity being exterminated like that. Set upon, and wiped out by alien powers infinitely more powerful, and advanced than it could ever have hoped to have been. Apparently, the distant eyes of Odin and Thor, and any other absent protectors of you Midgardians fell shut in your hour of need. [He gives a woeful little sigh.]

If only there had been someone... some being who might have known how to compete with such a threat. Some watchful ruler, who could have summoned armies from the air in your defense. Who could have spent the many long eons before this tragedy befell mankind, advancing your civilization to the point where you were a world that would stand unassailable.

[He gives a helpless, sympathetic shrug.]

Mistake it not, Mortals, you were made to be ruled. It just so happens that some rulers are more benevolent than others...

[Then he grins, and clicks the feed off.]

[When Pepper posts, Loki uses his brain and figures out that THE JIG IS KIND OF UP. Unfortunately for one and all, he is a little shit. His voice is delicate, and deliberately blank, when he sends this message. It's possessed of a kind of tension, like he's honestly not certain how this conversation will end.]

Mr. Stark... I have something to tell you. A truth, to replace a lie which I have told.

[This is a tentative post, and Loki's voice has the faltering quality of a man who suspects he may be talking to himself:]

Admiral? There are questions I have which I do not believe anyone else here is qualified to answer.

First among which may be the most futile of them:

Are you listening?

[EDITED IN LATER: Public]

[Hey Barge, Loki is just going to make this conversation with the Admiral, fully public.]

I must indeed be becoming tiresome with my questioning today, because I have one more. This one for the wardens, for those of you serving this man willingly:

Why?

Yes, I have asked before, and yes I've heard answers. For your deal, for your inmate, for the sake of doing some good in the universe, but I wonder how you justify it to yourselves. To serve an entity who not only is little known, but actively refuses to surrender his intentions, the masters which he serves, or even the reward which he will reap for his work in controlling all of us.

I have been told by many among you that he is not a God, but what other beings deal in secrecy and souls?

Why are you content with this?

Prey tell me, that I might lay to rest my fears about what more this place is, than just a prison.

User Name/Nick: CATHERINE
User DW: BLARGH
AIM/IM: stoptheworld26
E-mail: michael heroin at gee mail dot com
Other Characters: Prefect, Valmont

Character Name:Loki Laufreyson
Series: The Avengers
Age: GOOD QUESTION. Suffice to say that he is over 18.
From When?: Near the end of the Avengers when the hulk smashed him around a whole bunch. Apparently that can kill a god.

Inmate/Warden: Inmaaaaaaate. Loki's problems largely stem from horribly mismanaged anger, with a generous dash of self hatred, a hint of delicious entitlement, and a light seasoning of the desire to prove himself. He really honestly just needs to be sat down and taught how to manage his multitudinous feelings.

Abilities/Powers:
Superhuman strength and durability
Reduced to what would be normal for a human of his size
Genius-level intelligence
Not reduced
Shapeshifting
If possible I would really like to have Loki keep this, for plotting and lulz purposes. My suggested restrictions would be that he can't hold another form for over 24 hours without becoming utterly exhausted, and that he can't become a perfect copy of anyone on the Barge.
Longevity
TEE HEE COMPLETELY INSIGNIFICANT ON THE BARGE.
Mystical powers

~Illusions~ - Loki can use illusions to change his clothes, and to create illusory versions of himself to scamper around and distract people. Again, I would like Loki to be able to keep this, because... it makes me laugh, and it's not technically an offensive magic, it's just sneaky tomfoolery.

MAGIC MISSILE! - Loki can fire magic energy stuff at people? NOT ANYMORE HE CAN'T!

Transformation - Loki can turn one thing into something else! Like delicious mead into nasty snakes! Maybe this can be reduced so he can still turn X THING into X OTHER THING, but with normal restrictions on what an inmate would be allowed to have. For example, he can't turn sausages into knives, but he could possibly turn sausages into bacon, or a delicious cheese sandwich into a bunch of mice!

Mainly this power will only be useful for trolling, so I think I should be allowed to keep it.

Also, while this is technically not a power, give this man a staff and he will twirl his legs around it in a sexy dance of death.

Personality:

In many ways, Loki is almost consciously forged as an oppositional entity to his brother. It's likely that he grew up the way he did out of a kind of sibling rivalry. It must have been clear from an early age, that Thor was growing up to be a bold and demanding warrior, and since Loki couldn't match him when it came to size and strength, he looked for other ways to excel. Loki took the exact opposite of all the things that made Thor strong, and by these things he defined his own strengths. Just as Thor was bombastic and commanded attention? Loki was quiet enough to slip by unnoticed, while Thor was straightforward, and clear about what he wanted? Loki became adept at talking people into giving him what he wanted, and making it feel like their idea. Thor fought, Loki did magic. Some do battle, others just do tricks.

It's pretty normal for siblings who are close in age to define themselves in how they're different from one another, and the rivalry shouldn't be mistaken for dislike. From the way Loki talks to Thor about growing up with him, it sounds as if he had a touch of resentful hero worship for his brother. Despite the fact that his natural strength with magic, and his decision to model himself as the anti-Thor combined to make him a powerful sorcerer in his own right, when he talks about his life back on Asgard with Thor, he calls himself "a shadow", constantly belittled in comparison to Thor's greatness. While it is easy to put this down as jealousy of Thor for being handsome/popular/the next king/the favorite son, on some level, Loki honestly believes that it's just the truth. He underrates the value of his own accomplishments, and has a deeply rooted inferiority complex which is what he's trying to overcome (or overcompensate for) in both Thor and The Avengers.

This inferiority complex runs deeper than just not being the prettiest princess in the palaces of Asgard, however. It was exasperated and militarized by his discovery that he was one of the Jotuns. During the events of Thor, his motivation is very much to try and set him apart from this lineage, and to put himself above his brother as one of the Sons of Odin. He wants to rule Asgard, save the day, and prove himself by doing what neither Odin nor Thor could do, and wiping out the frost giants while murdering his biological father in the process. Interestingly, these exact same ambitions are the ones that Thor pursues early on in the film. He's going to be crowned king of Asgard, wants to protect his kingdom, and goes to Jotunheim to try and kill the frost giants, the difference is that while Thor does it in his way, bombastically and with brute force, Loki sticks to his own methods, or lying and trickery.

I think his attempt to KILL ALL FROST GIANTS, speaks to a real self loathing that emerged in him since he found out what he was, and combined with the anger towards his family (from being lied too for his whole life, and in part for the way he perceives them as thinking of him) this has served to guide him down a path which is really just a grandiose mismanagement of his anger.

In the interim between Thor and the Avengers, he allowed his idea about how his family thought of him to become increasingly distorted, until he remembers the moment at the end of Thor (where he allows himself to fall into the void rather than have to face his family after his string of failures) as his brother casting him out into darkness. He has become somewhat delusional, and his decision to overtake earth is a heady combination of a continuing desire to break away from the failures he sees himself as having suffered on Asgard, a continuing desire to play with all of Thor's toys, and on some level, a genuine desire to prove himself as a ruler, and a belief that he can do so by bringing an enforced, totalitarian peace to earth.

There is a point, where I believe between the chaos he'd already unleashed, and the threat of what would happen to him if he failed, where Loki did begin to regret his actions (the moment where he tells Thor that it's too late to undo it now, before stabbing him with the smallest knife in the history of ever.), but instead of trying to undo it, he gives up on himself, and throws himself even deeper into a future that he doesn't even want. I think this speaks a lot to the choices that Loki makes in The Avengers. What he wants (among other things) is to be loved and respected by his family, but he can't reconcile the possibility of getting that with the events of the previous film, so instead of trying to go back, he commits himself to being evil, declares that he's not Thor's brother (a far cry from the end of Thor where he tells Laufrey that his death comes from "the Son of Odin"), and again, gives up on himself.

One of the problems with writing a personality for Loki, is that the narrative of the two films don't always spell out for us when he is and isn't genuinely affected by something, and when he is and isn't lying. There are certain scenes which can be read one of two ways, so I'm just going to clarify how I interpret one of the more controversial ones (ahaha, tw for rape threats ahead?).

Loki's scene with Black Widow, where he implies that he's going to make Clint rape her? I honestly do not think that this is a threat he ever would have gone through with. I don't want this to come across as me trying to make an evil character look less evil, or trying to just subtract something from his personality that I find problematic. I just think that while making that horrible threat, while he's actively working to get all of the avengers on edge so that they'll fight amongst themselves and unleash the hulk? Makes perfect sense and is perfectly in character? Actually carrying it out just doesn't fit in with his agenda or with his personality.

It's not that I think he wouldn't do it out of a moral objection, I just don't think that he would have enough personal investment in Black Widow (beyond wanting to make her cry and cause dissent in the ranks) to really care about whether or not she was tortured. The idea that after taking over the world, he'd take a little break to make sure that someone he'd only ever had one conversation with got tortured and raped? Is just a kind of cartoonish, nonsensical villainy that I don't think fits in with his motivations. Would he take a break to gloat and possibly torture Thor? Yes sir he probably would, since that would tie in with his massive pile of family issues, but in the case of his conversation with Black Widow, I sincerely think it was an exercise in searching for her vulnerabilities, followed by making the most hideous idle threats he could think of.

Finally, since I feel like I've spent a lot of time addressing Loki's inner pain in this app, I should make it clear that none of this undoes the fact that on some levels he's just a bit of an unpleasant person. He likes feeling as if he's smarter than people, and he really enjoys bickering and putting other people down. He tries to compensate for being the crappiest Asgardian by pointing out that he's way better than you stinky useless humans, and he lies like a champion. He might have a lot of inner pain, but his inner pain killed hundreds of people, and he straight up does not care about that.

I think in a contained environment like the Barge, Loki would probably find himself in the same cycle of depression and rage that he's constructed for himself in the real world. I do feel like he'd use the opportunity for introspection, but in Loki's case this isn't necessarily a good thing. While he might come to terms with feeling some guilt and regret for what he's done and what he's lost fairly quickly, I think that dwelling on his relationship with his family would lead to either reminding himself of all the things they did to him, and his jealousy of his brother, or it would lead him to a level of guilt and unhappiness that he would send him actively looking for an excuse for his actions. Either of these outcomes would lead him back towards resentment, and anger, and the need to assert himself over others or lash out.

I think the way Loki develops on the barge would be very dependent on what kind of involvement his warden had with him, and how involved he became with other inhabitants. It's entirely possible that this thought process could be interrupted or redirected, or that he could just be distracted from it, leading to a completely different outcome. Left to his own devices however, depression and trolling are likely.


Path to Redemption: Loki has always been a bit of a dick. Where Thor's weapon has always been his strength, Loki's is his cunning and his magic, and trying to stop him from being a sneaky jerk is kind of like trying to turn the tide.

However, just as Thor can still be a super strong badass and not use his powers to beat up innocent friends, so too can Loki be a sneaky trickster mage, without trying to take over the earth and rule all of humanity. The biggest obstacle that his warden will face will be breaking down the ideas that he's internalized about himself from his childhood. He was raised knowing that the Jotun were terrible, evil monsters (in his words, the story mothers tell to frighten their children at night), that his father had crushed in battle, and that doing had been a glorious and just victory. Even as an adult, his brother had wanted to follow in Odin's footsteps and kill the Jotuns, and it was right on the heels of this attempt that he found out he was one of them.

Obviously, this is a PRETTY BIG DEAL when it comes to him being evil. Even setting aside the obvious 'you are the monster that your whole family want dead' problem, this means that for his entire life he has been lied too by the people he loves. It also means that the differences in how he and his brother were treated when growing up are suddenly intensified in his mind. It's no longer just that Thor was the better/favorite son, but that he never had any possibility of being his equal.

(Incidentally, I don't think Loki had it particularly bad growing up, but I think he's right when he says that there's no way Odin would put a frost giant on the throne after him. I suspect Thor was raised being groomed to be king, while Loki kind of never got a straight answer as to why he wasn't. It also seems a that at least from what we see of the heroes in Thor, magic and cunning are definitely less valued than being able to hit things super hard with a hammer, so I do think that when Loki talks about living in Thor's shadow, he's not necessarily reading too deeply into things)

SO YEAH, the main thing that a warden would need to get through to him would be to make him understand that his family aren't his enemies, and that he doesn't have to be a monster just because of his daddy's gift for propaganda.

History:Thor Wiki and Avengers Wiki.

Sample Journal Entry: [He takes his time before introducing himself, establishing the purpose of this place, the fact that his magic definitely was depleted and not coming back by any means known to him, and weighing up the odds of his escaping by the usual means, before deigning to make his first journal entry:]

My my, is this not an ambitious effort? Certainly, a more elaborate one than the last chamber in which I was imprisoned. To whose hospitality do I owe my gratitude, may I ask? Which one-eyed wolf has clamped these strange jaws around my throat?

[He smiles, but it's unconvincing. His eyes look strangely pained.]

Or perhaps I expect too much in assuming this a prison, rather than an arsenal of purloined weapons, or a vault to hold the spoils of war?

[A slight pause, before he decides he's giving away far too much, and clicks the communicator off.]

Sample RP:

Loki snapped the communicator off with a brisk click, inhaling deeply through his nose. Too much, and too public. Whoever it was that had brought him here he'd just shown his unguarded flank too, and one way or another he suspected he'd feel a dagger there in payment for his lack of foresight. What had he been thinking? To dive so quickly and so willingly into his own sorry past? If it was the All Father that had stolen him again, he hoped that the barb had stung the old fool just as sharply as it had his pride to have revealed so much so quickly.

There was, he decided, a gap in his memory. A void somewhere between his being beaten into the ground by the oaf that Earth had harnessed, and where he was now. His last memory was of the cold floor of Stark Tower slamming into him, harder and faster than he could stand. His lungs emptied by the force of the blow, and then before he could even begin to drag the next breath of air into them, the world would twist, and he'd be on the floor and empty again.

That isn't entirely true though. His last memory, his real last memory, is one of surprise. He hadn't known the beast could talk.

Puny God.

He swallowed, and looked down at the communicator again. Replies buzzed at his hastily spoken words. Inquisitive fellow prisoners chirping away, even as he searched through their number for a familiar face. There was no Odin there though (and if he felt a twang of disappointment at that, he was at least not surprised by it) and no Nick Fury either. Just strange, lost children. Weapons disarmed. The losses of war.

Special Notes: