>>I have to wonder if JARVIS clocked Loki as a torture victim. It's possible. Tony was certainly pulling his punches. Like Steve and Hulk, he almost had Loki for a minute -- offering him a drink was brilliant. So if Tony is subtly signalling not to use maximum force, JARVIS would at least pick up on that, hence not activating the tower defenses.<<
I think seconds after the threat naming himself "Loki of Asgard" entered Tony's awareness, both he and Jarvis began looking at traditional myths. Thor was live-and-in-person evidence for those myths, and his behavior clocked with the "canon" for the Norse religious tales, at least with enough accuracy to be a starting framework.
Have you READ that stuff? Oy VEY, I'm so glad my kid didn't start on the older versions of that particular mythology until his teens! Sewing Loki's mouth shut? Binding him to a rock with the entrails of-- freakin' torture seemed to be the /default/ way to deal with Loki!
Also, much has been made in the fandom over the differences in Loki's eye color in various scenes. Me, I fall on the "mental breakdown due to the complete destruction of his perceived identity, attempted suicide, tortured by the Chitauri, cooks up this grand scheme which is designed to look good but fail spec-tac-u-lar-ly to buy him both time and a way to find Thor among his human playmates" scenario.
You pointed out the resource of opium sap being both easier to get and almost impossible to trace via technology, as opposed to iridium. Here's another sticky point-- once he had the iridium, WHY activate the Cube in New York City? Why not some random flyspeck of land in a Pacific atoll so overlooked that the one fisherman who used to hang out there hasn't bothered to tell the younger generation about it because THEY plan to get jobs far away from home? Why didn't Loki activate the Cube in the most remote Arctic regions of Russia? Or Canada? Sheer acres-per-person up there makes it unlikely to find him in time to DO anything, even in ideal weather!
Marvel canon is extremely unreliable when it comes to clocking the relative strength and endurance of Thor, Loki, Steve and Bucky. They're darn near completely invulnerable until some writer gets an "eye-dee-ah" which miraculously means that suddenly party A can kick party B's ass, but only if party C is under threat of death or it's Flannel Friday at work, y'know, whichever.
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dancing_serpent
Re: Loki, holding back maximum damage, subtlety
Date: 2014-04-19 08:09 am (UTC)I think seconds after the threat naming himself "Loki of Asgard" entered Tony's awareness, both he and Jarvis began looking at traditional myths. Thor was live-and-in-person evidence for those myths, and his behavior clocked with the "canon" for the Norse religious tales, at least with enough accuracy to be a starting framework.
Have you READ that stuff? Oy VEY, I'm so glad my kid didn't start on the older versions of that particular mythology until his teens! Sewing Loki's mouth shut? Binding him to a rock with the entrails of-- freakin' torture seemed to be the /default/ way to deal with Loki!
Also, much has been made in the fandom over the differences in Loki's eye color in various scenes. Me, I fall on the "mental breakdown due to the complete destruction of his perceived identity, attempted suicide, tortured by the Chitauri, cooks up this grand scheme which is designed to look good but fail spec-tac-u-lar-ly to buy him both time and a way to find Thor among his human playmates" scenario.
You pointed out the resource of opium sap being both easier to get and almost impossible to trace via technology, as opposed to iridium. Here's another sticky point-- once he had the iridium, WHY activate the Cube in New York City? Why not some random flyspeck of land in a Pacific atoll so overlooked that the one fisherman who used to hang out there hasn't bothered to tell the younger generation about it because THEY plan to get jobs far away from home? Why didn't Loki activate the Cube in the most remote Arctic regions of Russia? Or Canada? Sheer acres-per-person up there makes it unlikely to find him in time to DO anything, even in ideal weather!
Marvel canon is extremely unreliable when it comes to clocking the relative strength and endurance of Thor, Loki, Steve and Bucky. They're darn near completely invulnerable until some writer gets an "eye-dee-ah" which miraculously means that suddenly party A can kick party B's ass, but only if party C is under threat of death or it's Flannel Friday at work, y'know, whichever.