melannen | Because apparently this needs to be repeated every so often

Because apparently this needs to be repeated every so often

Dear Avengers Fandom,

I have a fairly high tolerance for woobie!Loki - in fact I am pretty easy to convince that he spent most of that movie in over his head and wishing he was anywhere else - and I get that it can be difficult, with a near-godlike character, to hurt him sufficiently to do the good hurt/comfort -

But can you fucking stop having SHIELD torture him for information? PLEASE? Nothing throws me out of an Avengers fic faster than Fury torturing somebody for information.

...because Fury, above all else, is good at his job, and therefore he knows that TORTURE DOESN'T WORK to get information. Torture is good for two things: hurting people, and getting them to tell you whatever you want to hear. (if you're really good at it, you can sometimes break them entirely to your will, but that requires substantially more finesse than just hurting them a lot - and still won't necessarily get them telling you the truth rather than what you want to hear.) There are much, much better ways to get information from people. Several of them were demonstrated by Natasha in the movie!

And Tony, of all people, knows that torture doesn't work. Because hey! He was tortured! At length! And what happened? He told them exactly what they wanted to hear, and then did the opposite! And his fellow prisoner did the same thing! The lying under torture wasn't even the hard part!

So STOP setting up false moral conflict by having Tony reluctantly acquiesce to Fury torturing people for information, okay? THEY ARE BOTH SMARTER THAN THAT.

If you want Fury to use morally questionable methods of educing information, there are some of these that might actually give useful results; peeling someone's skin off is not one of them. If you just want to see your favorite character tortured, there are plenty of ways to manage that without requiring all of SHIELD and the Avengers to be bad at their jobs.

kisses, melannen.

PS: I just want to read one Tony/Loki longfic that doesn't involve Tony rescuing him from a SHIELD torture chamber. Is that so much to ask? At the very least, can I have one where he breaks into Loki's 'enhanced interrogation chamber' in a rage only to find Loki having cookies and milk with Natasha? (Cookies and milk being an interrogation method that is known to actually work on hardened terrorists. UNLIKE TORTURE.)

ETA: Here, fandom, have five reasons why Fury might decide it's a good idea to torture Loki: 1) In order to manipulate Thor or Asgard into doing something; 2) In order to manipulate the Avengers into rescuing him so he'll trust them enough to talk; 3) because he actively doesn't want intel from Loki, but he has to be seen to be doing something or he'll lose custody; 4) because Loki has already voluntarily given him information, but they need some way to make it look coerced, and the two of them have pre-agreed that torture is the best way to do this; 5) because Loki clearly let himself be captured because he wanted to be tortured, and Fury decided going along with it was the fastest way to find out why. (Notice that none of these are because "torture is a good way to get reliable intel from someone.")

ETA2: AUGH I WAS JUST READING SOME PERFECTLY lovely Clint/Bruce BDSM and suddenly "If I were torturing him for real I would have all the information I needed by now!" NO. NO. BAD FANDOM, NO COOKIES, DAMMIT THAT WAS THE MIDDLE OF A SCENE WHERE ELSE AM I GOING TO FIND CLINT/BRUCE KINKFIC??

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At the very least, can I have one where he breaks into Loki's 'enhanced interrogation chamber' in a rage only to find Loki having cookies and milk with Natasha?

I would read this so hard. Especially if Loki knows how cookies and milk work on hardened terrorists and is all cocky because dude is a trickster god and Natasha is a lowly Midgardian, and through all the double- and triple- and quadruple-bluffing gives Natasha precisely the information she wants. Which was her plan the entire time.

I know, right? One of the best things about that movie was all the twisty interrogation and information-gathering methods they were using on each other! Natasha is the world expert on getting people to admit to things without realizing it, Loki is the God of Lies and Trickery, Tony is Tony, Steve found Fury's secret weapons more quickly than Tony and JARVIS combined, Bruce is surprisingly good at getting people to give away information, and then there is Coulson, and Hill, and Fury - all of whom know enough about people and about interrogation to know that cookies work way, way better than pain, if you actually care about getting the truth.

(Although really as much as I love Natasha and her methods, the best way to get information out of Loki would probably be to put Pepper in charge of the case.)

Edited 2012-11-18 01:58 (UTC)

YES PLEASE THIS!

Is there Tony/Loki longfic that is...good? Where is it?

Also I really want that cookies and milk story now. Because Natasha would, and it would be BRILLIANT.

...there is some that is sufficiently well-written for someone already jonesing for Tony/Loki, and willing to accept characterization that is a bit off-canon in exchange for her pairing, to enjoy. Until I inevitably get to the part with the SHIELD torture chambers. >:|

(if you are in that condition, there's a fair amount on AO3, I just sort by hits whenever I suddenly feel the need for the pairing, some of it is even good without most of the caveats. It's too much of a guilty pleasure for me to have kept a recs list, though.)

The one I was really enjoying was good up until the SHIELD torture bit, and then I started to lose interest.

But yes, I will totally exchange much for decently written Tony/Loki, because I'm not guilty about it at all.

Somehow I have internalized that there is something shameful about Tony/Loki fic, I don't know why(probably partly because I am willing to read fic in that pairing that totally doesn't meet my standards for fic in any other pairing.)

And yeah, this post was precipitated by the fact that I was reading one that I was really enjoying and then it suddenly became about SHIELD torture, and then the repercussions of the torture, and I couldn't keep going. I will buy frost giants and supersoldiers and Doombots and whatever else, I will buy Tony and Loki confessing their soft, mushy feelings for each other and the rest of the Avengers cheering them on, but I just can't buy Fury being that bad at his job.

Heh, I wonder if we were reading the same story.

I kind of think of Tony/Loki as something...unlikely to work out terribly well long-term, since they're too much alike, but in the short term it can be awfully fun. I've just had trouble finding stuff that's even readable.

If I were at all capable of writing Loki fic, I would write that fic for you. Other suspicious methods they might use would be warm blankets and reasonably good food.

The problem with Natasha's style of interrogation is that it's much trickier to write well. :) Warm blankets, good food, a sympathetic ear, your choice of music, interesting books to read... I have read a few fics that went that direction, come to think of it, way back right after the movie (although I don't think any of them precisely shaped it as an interrogation technique), I should go try to find them again.

But... in the movie itself, Fury suggests that Thor torture Loki for information about where the cube is?

Thor brings up using pain as interrogation, Fury then asks Thor how far he'd be willing to go ... and then immediately sends in Natasha, who gets the information she needs from him in a quick and effective and non-torture way.

(yeah, you're right, the straight read of that scene is Fury advocating pain as interrogation, I just am incapable of reading anything Fury says as straight. And there are far more interesting ways to read what's going on in that scene. Especially given the fact that, hey, torture doesn't work!)

(I am totally willing to buy the Asgardian elite believing that torture works. The Asgardian elite are very invested in people telling them only what they want to hear, which is what torture is best for.)

Edited 2012-11-18 03:21 (UTC)

Well, actually, *Fury* is the one who brings up torture. Thor is just talking to Coulson about how he regrets bringing his and Loki's fight to Earth. Fury joins the conversation by saying "You think you could *make* Loki tell us where the Tesseract is?"

Yeah, Thor does assume he means pain, but... what else could that question possibly mean? What other ways are there to "make" someone tell you things against their will? (I mean, besides Natasha's way, which is "be smarter," but I don't think Fury is asking Thor that.)

Thor actually goes right to the *anti* torture argument-- or at least, that it's not as easy as all that. Loki isn't some minor henchman with no emotional investment who will crumble at the threat of pain and immediately give up the plan. But Fury argues "A lot of guys think that, until the pain starts." So he's actually arguing to Thor that torture does work.

Then Thor is the one who objects that Loki is a prisoner. (So presumably Asgardians have some cultural taboo against harming/torturing a prisoner.) Fury is the one who basically says "So what, he could still be plotting against us even though he's technically our prisoner... that's not a reason not to torture him."

Now, I think it's totally believable that Fury is just testing Thor here to find out what kind of guy he is and where his deepest loyalties are. However, I think it's also plausible that he's testing Thor in order to find out if he *will* torture Loki, just in case Natasha's kind of interrogation doesn't work.

Also, let's not forget that SHIELD employs *assassins*. Clint was ordered by Fury to go out and kill Natasha. So, they're not an entirely un-shady organization.

(I mean, I agree with you about post-movie fic where Loki is tortured-- most of it is just torture for the sake of torture, and Fury at least is smarter than *that*. Plus, obviously, I don't buy any story where Tony stands by while *anyone* is being tortured, Bruce and Steve definitely wouldn't, and judging by his conversation with Fury here, I don't think Thor would accept it either. I'm just saying, it's not like it comes out of nowhere in fic.)

Oh, I am not arguing that SHIELD is a non-shady organization! SHIELD is a deeply shady organization (and in fact I find some of the non-torture interrogation methods even shadier). I just think they're a competent shady organization.

As for Fury's question - I didn't think 'torture' was what he meant there at all. If it's torture he's thinking, why would he need to ask Thor? He's asking the guy with the cultural and personal connections who presumably knows all of the target's psychological weak points. And, yeah, he's also asking if Thor would be willing to do whatever needs to be done, despite his relationship with Loki - but there are plenty of things Thor might balk at that aren't physical torture (like, say, swearing oaths to Loki that he knows are false, which is exactly the sort of thing Fury might ask for.)

(Honestly, if Fury asked me if I could "make" my sibling do something, physical torture wouldn't even be on the top ten list of things to try - but honestly I don't think I'd even make it down that top ten list, either. Telling her about how she'd made Mom cry would probably up there, for example. That Thor (and many movie watchers) jumps right to pain tells us more about him, and the culture he learned from, than about Fury.)

And Thor is saying "Torture might work on some people, but it wouldn't work on Loki, because he's special," which is something that comes up a lot in fictional narratives that use torture - torture works on the little people and the weak, but not on people like us, and I probably don't have to explain why I find that distasteful (while completely IC for Thor.)

But in a fictional world where people take their cue from that scene, where Fury's comment is right - where everyone does eventually tell the truth, with enough pain - I don't even mind the trope that much? Like, I've read at least one fic where SHIELD tortures Loki, and Loki does eventually break and give them correct information, and that didn't actually bother me (at least not on a worldbuilding/characterization/storytelling level). It's a world with space whales and mind control, it's also a world where torture works, fine, I will buy into it for the course of this fic.

The thing is, MCU (like Earth 1218) isn't that world - every time torture, or something approaching it, actually happens in MCU, it fails, usually spectacularly; it's methods like Natasha's that work. And in 90% of the stories where SHIELD uses torture, it doesn't work in the fic either. The problem hits when you're writing in a world where torture doesn't work, and doesn't work in pretty spectacular and obvious ways, and you have Nick Fury depend on it anyway.

(also, yes, definitely, even if you buy that Fury thinks torture works sometimes, he certainly wouldn't use it except as the very last resort, and nearly all these fics have him jump to it first thing.)

(Honestly, if Fury asked me if I could "make" my sibling do something, physical torture wouldn't even be on the top ten list of things to try - but honestly I don't think I'd even make it down that top ten list, either. Telling her about how she'd made Mom cry would probably up there, for example.

Yeah, but... presumably your sister isn't a mass murderer actively in the process of invading and conquering the planet with an alien army? And if you did find yourself in that situation, maybe "could you MAKE her tell us where the cube is" might have a slightly different connotation than, you know, "Would you make Sis give up her secret cake recipe already?"

That Thor (and many movie watchers) jumps right to pain tells us more about him, and the culture he learned from, than about Fury.)

Well, *I* also assumed he meant torture, and I wasn't raised by Asgardians. I assumed it because Fury is a shady character and the head of a shady paramilitary group, and in shady movies where secret government organizations capture people and talk about "making them tell" some key piece of information, usually that means torture. I mean, I think your interpretation makes a lot of sense both on a Watsonian and Doylist level, and I actually like it a lot better than my interpretation, but it honestly didn't occur to me before-- I thought Fury was honestly arranging a back-up plan in case Natasha's ploy didn't work.

And Thor is saying "Torture might work on some people, but it wouldn't work on Loki, because he's special," which is something that comes up a lot in fictional narratives that use torture - torture works on the little people and the weak, but not on people like us, and I probably don't have to explain why I find that distasteful (while completely IC for Thor.)

Huh, I didn't read it that way at all.

But, yeah, I don't buy stories where (1) they go for torture first thing, and (2) I don't really know how to say this, but for some reason it's more offensive to me when it's the kind of angsty, dramatic, bloody movie torture as opposed to the kind of banal real life stuff like sleep deprivation.

Well, the question is this: is there any other place, in movie-verse canon, where Fury does give a straight answer? To anybody, even his own agents? Which, let us remember, Thor is most definitely not. Thor is a loose canon from a completely unknown warrior culture, at that point. If dude doesn't play straight with his own people, ain't gonna play straight with people he doesn't know.

Yeah, I totally read that question as 'how far are you willing to go/are you actually on my side?' I didn't think torture was really even part of it.

Here, here!

Now, I can see the World Security Council (i.e. the same yahoos who thought it was a good idea to start throwing around nukes in a densely-populated city before even trying conventional warfare methods--and apparently didn't even bother trying to aim that sucker) thinking torture was a great idea. And Fury et al then pwning them.

Fury ... not so much. This is not a man who is confined by the stereotypical military-industrial-intelligence mindset, yo.

Oh, man, there are plenty of people you could have torturing Loki! I'd go-to General Ross, personally, but then there's the Council, yeah, and various other world security organizations (you know, the ones SHIELD is supposed to be better than), and Asgard. And there's Thanos and the Chitauri, as well as a variety of people Loki pissed off personally, who would probably do it for fun or vengeance even if they didn't need any info.

If you need a reason for Tony to break with SHIELD over Loki-torture, and have to make a lone heroic rescue, I can even see Fury throwing up his hands, under certain circumstances, and letting those other agencies do it (it being no skin off his back, even if it is off Loki's, and possibly creating a situation he could leverage for SHIELD's benefit later.)

But Fury himself? Well, possibly he might, but it would be part of a fifteen-level shell game of double bluff and twistiness where the pain wasn't even the point. That is not what usually happens in fic, though.

AMEN. I have failed hard out of fic at the "torture works". Can't we please debunk this? It's not exactly debunked in popular discourse (coughBushadministrationcough), but at least let us debunk it in entertainment.

I think it's one of those things where we'll have to debunk it in entertainment first. (General cultural perception aside, the extent to which the governments of first-world countries have sometimes appeared to do sketchy things because they saw them in TV shows or action movies and thought they were cool is kind of terrifying. I mean, literally all the way to the CIA using 24 as a motivation for torture.)

And while maybe we personally can't get it out of Hollywood, surely we can at least try to stop fic writers from buying into it wholesale.

Fury is not running the Spanish Inquisition, he has an Organization to run! >:/

Yeah, that is a very salient point that needs to be out there. I like the Tony/Loki fics where Tony and Loki run circles around SHIELD together... but I as a result end up not reading that much fic.

Yes, this. But I also like stories where SHIELD runs circles around Tony and Loki together, ngl. Just, you know, you have to make it believable.

Indeed! But coming across competent!SHIELD fics is hard and most of them focus pre-canon, I've found.

It is possible to get usable information via torture, but you have be a) incredibly good at discerning lies from truth, and b) incredibly good at hurting people without letting them die. These are rare skills. (99.9% of the time, the interrogator isn't good enough and you get nothing, all lies, or an indecipherable splatter of truth and lies.) SHIELD has ... Natasha, for this. She has the knowledge and the finesse, and is ruthless enough to have used them in the past. Would she torture someone to get, say, information of a kidnapped friend's whereabouts? Sure. But given her background, I suspect if someone ordered her to torture, she'd slit his throat. Because that's what she was aiming to leave behind.

Occam's Razor indicates that there are much simpler and more plausible ways to put a god through a blender. I mean, sheesh, the Chitauri are a gimmie.

I think my favorites are the stories where the Avengers find out how much of Norse mythology is true, and go apeshit over Asgard's barbaric practices. I've actually read that background material so I know what a short end he got. I like to point to Ragnarok and say, "This is why you don't alienate your Trickster."

If you have a 100% reliable way of immediately checking the information to see if it's true, then I can buy that sometimes a very skilled interrogator combined with torture can help, although I don't think I've seen any verified non-fictional examples of that, and it would stop being useful as soon as you stopped being able to cross-check the info. (And if you have a 100% reliable way of immediately checking the information, and a very skilled interrogator, then yeah, there are definitely better and faster ways of doing it.)

I don't know that I even buy Natasha as someone who can/would do this? I mean, we know so little about her canon backstory in movieverse that it's hard to say, but comics-based fanon shows her having a huge amount of experience with brainwashing, abuse, and torture as used on herself, so she probably knows intimately exactly how little "torture" has to do with "truth" (and we see her being utterly contemptuous of it in her first scene) - beside, what we see her doing in canon is being very good at using non-physical methods to educe information, which is almost certainly what she was specifically trained for.

She would totally be willing to use torture if she thought she had to, but it would be for purposes other than getting reliable intel.

But yeah Norse myth has plenty of scope for Loki h/c! Use that! (although honestly I've seen that poorly done too. Particularly cases where Fury knows enough myth to let the stories start happening without ever, you know, noticing that Loki torture = Ragnarok.)

Questions prompted by seeing an Iron Man toy in the store today and seeing it labeled "the Mark IV" and musing about the image from the IM3 trailer of Tony in his hall of old suits, and how that's a hugely classic image from the comics...

-Are there any decent Tony Stark is a Hermit Crab AUs?

-Are there any decent fics that deal with the fact that Tony Stark is Iron Man and Iron Man is Tony Stark, so when he discards an old suit it's like throwing away an identity, and because Tony is a technological innovator he does this ALL THE TIME?

1. I am not aware of any hermit crab AUs, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. Although I think I see him as more of a caddisfly, really? :P

2. I don't know of any of these either but ARRGH I really want some now.

AO3 had an 8k XMFC crab AU where Erik is a hermit crab and Tony Stark is some other kind of crab, but as I started reading it I remembered I don't actually usually like that particular kind of cracky AU, and also I don't read XMFC fic unless I reeeeeeeeeally trust the author or the reccer that the fic won't have Holocaust fail, so I stopped reading. I mostly just want to be reassured that the Tony Stark hermit crab AU exists, because it makes disturbing sense.

About 2, yeah, that one really hits my Tony Stark narrative kinks hard, and I'm disappointed you don't know of any.

Meanwhile, I did make some progress on my Team!Science fic this weekend, writing some Tony/Jane banter.

Hi! I'm loving this post, and your journal in general seems interesting, so I'm adding you! So. Nice to meet you!

Hello! Nice to meet you too! :D

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Because apparently this needs to be repeated every so often

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Well...

Re: Well...

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