I: PLAYER INFO
Name (or internet handle): Mara
Age: 22
Contact: ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cerebel, fishicopter on AIM
Current characters in Road of 'Trode: None
II: CHARACTER INFO
Name: Loki
Dreamwidth Username: sorcerousFandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Image: http://www.dreamwidth.org/userpic/3246091/1151423Age/Appearance: between 1000 and 1100 years old; appears in his thirties. Dark hair worn slicked-back, green eyes, slender, tall.
Wiki Links: http://marvel.wikia.com/Lokihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki_(comicsPersonality: Loki is a strange creature. He's born of the Frost Giants, but he's not like them; he's a runt, a weakling, more powerful in magic than they usually are. He's raised in Asgard, but he's not quite like them either: he is a dark, fey little thing, clever and tricky and playful, and with entirely too honed a sense of self-preservation. Asgard is left with a prince who prefers thinking to acting, speaking to thinking. He's a lawyer in a room full of Vikings. Even the ones who know his bravery and who fight alongside him don't really trust him.
Still, when he was young, this didn't seem to matter. He played tricks; he was one for mischief, for providing comeuppance to those with what he viewed as too much hubris. He was sweet and he loved his brother Thor (who was everything that Asgard wished a prince could be) and it was a long time before this began to sour.
But when it did sour, it soured hard.
Loki learned to detest his own position in Asgard. Some of the loathing turned internal: was it his fault that he wasn't good enough? That he was feminine, in a world that worshipped masculinity? That he favored illusion more than blunt force? -- And then that loathing turned outward, at Asgard, at his brother, his father. It didn't diminish the love. No, on the contrary; Loki became more determined than ever to love his family even as his self- and outward-loathing pushed him away. His tricks became more malicious and less fun. And he watched his brother with new, disillusioned eyes and decided that he was not the man that Asgard needed as a king. No, it needed someone like Loki.
Not that Loki wanted to be a figurehead. He didn't. Thor was perfect for leading battle, for holding celebrations, for being the beautiful, golden god. Loki, on the other hand, thought things through. He learned actions and consequences. And he couldn't let Thor get on the throne.
Thus he sabotaged Thor's chance. And thus he learned a terrible, terrible thing about himself: his lineage, his nature as a Frost Giant, which Odin had covered up for so many centuries.
This knowledge sent Loki into shock. He began to wonder if his own treasonous thoughts and tendencies were because he was a monster, because he had always been something inferior and twisted and horrible. At the same time, he blamed Odin, blamed Frigga and Thor and anyone who had never treated him the same, because now he knew the truth, and now his life took on a sinister bent. They had never treated him equally because he wasn't equal.
Caught between horrific, tempestuous hatred of what he was and what others had done to him, Loki sprang into action. He pushed Thor out of the way, concocted an elaborate scheme to prove his worth and save Odin's life, and attempted to destroy Jotunheim itself. Wiping it out felt to Loki as though it was wiping out the impurities in his own blood, in his own self. Saving Odin proved that he was a loyal son. Getting rid of Thor meant -- well, that was the most difficult part of the whole plan. Thor was a convenient outlet for Loki's rage. But striking against Thor was what damned him the most, in the end, because Thor was not the one who had done him wrong, and he knew it. He struck against Thor because there was a part of him that wanted to be that monster. If he couldn't be respected, if he couldn't be loved, then he would be feared.
In the end, Loki could have neither respect, nor love, nor fear. All he had was pity, from Odin, and from Thor, some desperate wish to save him.
Loki did not want to be saved.
And so he let go of the Bifrost, dropped away into the vastness of space. It's unclear whether or not it's an attempt at suicide. Most likely, even Loki didn't truly know what he wanted -- he only knew what he couldn't want, and that was his family.
That's a bit about what influences Loki psychologically. Now I'd like to talk about what that means for Loki, as a god and as a being of many different influences. Marvel uses a reboot of the Thor universe, in comics, to talk about how the gods aren't necessarily beings separate from humans, how humans dream the gods into existence, how gods are a part of the human psyche. Because of this dreaming, even after Ragnarok Thor was able to find the gods hidden in different mortals and free them. So I would submit that Loki, in this case, shares a great many things with the Loki of myth (and not just because Marvel ties in myth events occasionally).
Loki in myth is a peculiar figure. He's not of the Asgard gods, but he is tolerated by them, needed by them. Where they are constrained by civilized methods, by honor and law and procedure, he has no such compunctions. He wins by whatever means necessary. He is the one that the inhabitants of Asgard turn to when they have no other option. He is a visceral, primal survival instinct, pre-civilization, a Darwinian impulse that pushes to preserve the self above all else. This makes sense; Frost Giants are a very primal group, and Loki has a lot of instinct and biology from them. Loki is not one of the golden gods. He is a thing of ice and violence, raised among the gods. It makes it ironic, then, that he is such a good speaker: the Aesir are honest, and they overcome their baser instincts to be so honest, so honorable, but Loki speaks words that cut straight to the quick. He is such a good liar and such a silver-tongued orator because he knows what the Aesir do not say. He knows what is in their hearts.
This isn't to say that Loki is entirely unconstrained by civilization. His instincts and his genetics all pull him in that direction, making him markedly and clearly different from the other gods. But he was raised among them, in a warrior culture, and there is a part of him that feels he should value the things that he does not. He wishes that he could be a part of the Aesir as fully as the others are, but he is not.
With Loki's added psychology of betrayal, this force of survival that goes against civilization's lines becomes an active force of sabotage. He exists as a foil to Thor, the upright and direct warrior (how much more direct can you get than a hammer to the face?). Loki, then, becomes a story about how living with hatred, with betrayal, living only for yourself will always lose against living for another, as a hero, for love. What makes Loki so complicated is that he isn't just that anti-civilization force. He loves Thor just as much as he hates him. He is never sure about the fights he undertakes, and, in fact, often expects to lose. (I would say that in the movie, when Thor defeats him on the Bifrost, the look on his face is just this inevitable dread -- it seems as though he never expected to truly win in the first place.) This is what makes Loki such a tragic figure, especially in movie-verse.
Outwardly, Loki is a tempestuous, inscrutable, sweet-tongued lying son of a bitch. Inwardly, what he truly wants is to be loved, accepted, given a chance. But he has a great deal of issues to overcome before he could ever even remotely get to that point. He has a twisted sense of responsibility and duty that lends itself better to necessity than honor, and a poetic and ironic way of looking at others, both of which lead to him taking action that seems inexplicable and bewildering. He fancies himself capricious and unpredictable, but, in fact, often self-sabotages in highly predictable ways. He has a slightly sociopathic, Loki-centric view of the universe, and any possible chance at redemption is pretty far away on the horizon.
Reason for playing: First off, as far as Loki goes, he hits so many of my character kinks. I love his speech patterns, I love how much of a petty bitch he is, and I love that he legitimately kicks ass and has incredibly deep emotional problems. All my favorites.
Second, as far as this game goes, part of it is that I'm modding the game and I need someone to play here and Loki is my main muse at the moment. Beyond that, I'm interested in playing with Loki outside of his canon context, with something of a different emotional mindset. I think he really fits in a world as thoroughly weird as the one of the Ark. I would also like to avoid the 'OH GOD I'M STUCK IN A JAMJAR' thing, and get Loki really into some plotting and some villainy, with some actual emotional investment into it, and this seems a good way to do that.
III. AU INFO
Name: Still Loki. He goes by a lot of false names, however.
Age/Appearance: Same, only now he's actually 27 years of age.
History: Loki was born to mother Narissa and father Cender, the chieftains in a tribal society living on a remote area of the Ark, far from the Capitol's reach. Unfortunately, it was also far from the Capitol's beneficent weather control, making it a cold desert landscape, windblown and icy. Survival was a matter of skill, stamina, luck and the occasional hex and charm from the tribe's thaumaturges. Thaumaturgy often made the difference between life and death in this hard-scrabble life, and children born with gifts for it were preserved carefully. Loki was one such child, born small and sickly and with the potential for great power.
But Loki, unlike most sorcerers, was a complete and utter disaster. The reverence with which he was raised gave him not respect for the environment around him, for the circumstances of his birth, but disdain for it. His power made him feel superior to those he was meant to serve. He did not want to serve them. The demands on his time and power were such that he learned to detest his tribal culture, and spent his time hungrily jacked in, devouring images of faraway life. He turned out an eternal disappointment for his royal parents, and eventually, knowing that the throne would probably go to one of his younger brothers, Loki ran away to make his fortune.
Loki's goal was to make himself a Capitol citizen, and make himself a rich and powerful man in the Twin City. He wanted
everything that his former life couldn't give him. He found himself at a huge library in the Twin City, and he lost himself in the distant stacks, going through data, reverently paging through the few unrecycled hard copies of books remaining. He learned how to control his gifts, the gifts he had already half-mastered in the arctic wastes. He learned more about the codes he surfed. His ambition and his intelligence were both endless, and he became one of the best code-witches on the Ark.
First he helped a few well-off families immigrate to the Capitol. He erased the identity of a wanted criminal. He performed a few hacking jobs, until he was sure of his own ability to get into the Capitol's computer. And then he stepped in, delicately, and wrote himself a new identity from scratch. And another. Now, he is relatively well-known (under the hacker name Loki, an obscure reference to a long-forgotten god of tricks). In real life, he tends to pretend to be an unassuming young man, one who has a job that requires regular commuting from the Capitol to the Twin City. A diplomat, of some sort.
Like canon Loki, this Loki sets himself against the lines of civilization and justifies it by saying it is necessary for survival. He has issues with family, detests the primitiveness that he came from, and always strives to be the most powerful. He is complicated, and lonely, and deeply intelligent, gifted in arcane matters beyond most of those that he knows. He takes advantage of the weak because it makes him feel strong. When he remembers his canon life, he will use it as a spur: he will believe himself even more entitled to power, to strength. Something of a god complex, really. He'll also resent that he
failed, in his canon life, and will strive not to let the same thing happen to him ever again. But, as ever, with Loki, he'll be irresistibly drawn towards the very things that will lead to his downfall.
The addition of his canon memories will actually not be as disorienting as it seems it should be. Loki has always considered himself
better than those around him; experiencing a thousand years of memory will enhance that natural trait. He will believe the memory is real, though he won't be willing to admit it to himself quite yet, and though he has no explanation for it. It will feel
right to him, up until the point where canon Loki's life falls apart. That will make him rage. He'll feel as though he has been done a wrong, and that he needs to right it, that he needs to fix his life or defeat someone else in the process. It might, in fact, push him from being a criminal and hacker to an outright villain.
It's worth mentioning that I play canon Loki as intersexed, or functionally hermaphroditic. Ark Loki, however, will be biologically male. His sexual experience consists, for the most part, of taking advantage of people. Using. He doesn't go for long-term relationships. The difference in sex between one body and the other will disorient him at first, and then be justified away by, in his mind, as a manifestation of his personal discomfort with intimacy of any kind.
Residence/Job: In the Capitol: warehouse and associated basements, registered officially as the location for Loki's coding business. In the Twin City: he has the top of a skyscraper basically made into a refuge for him.
Loki sells his own coding skills to make a living. Often, he sells them in illegal ways for deeply illegal amounts of money.
Skills/Powers: Loki is a technomancer, a code-witch. He is where extraordinary computer talent and magical power intersect, leaving a caster adept at cyber-spells. He can break into computer systems while under an invisibility-hex and slip out without leaving evidence of his transgressions; he can curse a firewall to overload the systems that manage to break through it.
He can also cast small jinxes and charms apart from cyberspace, the most powerful of which involve changing his own appearance for short periods of time.
Physically, he's hardy and strong, thanks to the genetics from his native land. He can also tolerate extreme cold, though 80+ degree Fahrenheit temperatures put him at risk of dehydration and heatstroke. He's also decent at fighting, a quick hand with a knife, and unafraid to be brutal, though he doesn't have any real formal training.
What nullifies Loki's strengths, and his power, is his loneliness. Loneliness accentuated by self-hatred, which means he avoids people and yet he's drawn to them, the same way he'll often try to dominate or conquer but self-sabotage because he can't emotionally handle success. He's made to be defeated, and he's never all that surprised when his plans go wrong.
I'm willing to do a dice-roll every couple weeks or something, to see if Loki's fortunes change (police seize assets, warehouse gets raided, etc); I also plan to make sure that if/when he tries anything against PCs or NPCs, he does enough to get some good plot rolling and then he gets stopped. I would also like him to cultivate some close personal relationships, so that he feels tied to people and reluctant to hurt groups associated with them. This will also cripple his ability to really act like a villain, even if it's what he wants.
Resources: Rich. He scams people to an absurd extent, milking them of every last penny they have in order to get his help. But if he's ever discovered, he faces jail, exile or execution.
IV. SAMPLE
Arrival: Long walk home, from the intercity station. He could have taken a smaller train to the right region, but he likes the walk. The memory of the icelands fills him with distaste, but, all the same, city life is too idle for him. The people here, they grow soft and thin; they let rules bind them and they think it civic duty, or responsibility, or necessity, and they take it with good cheer. Loki disdains them.
Across a park, oxygenating grass dotted with fruit trees, the upper branches dotted with monitors to ensure no theft while the trees are in season. Theft forbidden, but not climbing; he watches a little boy hoist himself up in the tree, and reach higher, higher, as his mother calls his name. Children; the few, here, who have not yet become so enamored with regulation that they are beyond saving. Children, who turn adults into simpering messes: there, a dark-coated man pinches bits of mud into a golem that jumps and bows for a pair of infants, who giggle and clap. Unauthorized use of magic, and Loki’s hand twitches towards his pocket as he considers reporting it. Breaking the scene up with a drone, forcing the man to forego his month’s credits for rule violation.
It would bring him some pleasure, but he does not. He walks on.
His legs are pleasantly tired when he reaches his warehouse. He palms it open and slips inside, sliding off the coat, dropping the bag, sighing out a breath as he steps into the main area. It’s entirely open, from the banks of computers on his right to the spotless steel kitchen, the pristine bedroom. Even the toilet, shower, bath -- though there is a screen that may be extended, if Loki ever finds reason.
He usually does not find reason.
He lies back on the couch next to the computer banks, and picks up the jack. Manual, of course, like any good hacker. Wireless gives you a millisecond of delay, and that can be fatal, especially if the ice you’re cracking is military grade. He plugs it in, just behind his ear, and he closes his eyes.
And his mind explodes.
Or at least that’s what it feels like. As though every cell in his brain is stretched out and blasted apart and then stuffed into a space much too small.
He remembers. The snow, and -- Asgard --
Thor. A boy, gripping his father’s hand, and a young man changing shape and running from a stallion. He remembers touching curved horns, sliding a helmet on his head. He remembers
falling --
Loki awakens with an alarm blaring in his skull and an empty needle in his chest. A hoarse intake of breath, and he lands off of the couch, trembling. He can’t stop trembling. He fell for so long. He fell forever. His mouth tastes like metal, and he can’t focus, his throat is tight, and he can’t breathe.
A thousand years later, his muscles unclench, and he drags himself back onto the couch and he yanks the jack out of his neck and he sleeps.
He dreams.
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eswareinmal, 
