Why do you think Tom went dark for so long and now he's suddenly back? He's his old self again
Not to sound snarky, but I’ve actually thought about this quite a bit because it started to become such a big topic in the fandom lately. It just starts to feel like a cause for unnecessary drama. Ummmmm have you ever heard of the availability heuristic?
Availability heuristic: a mental shortcut that leads us to draw conclusions based on what comes to mind immediately; relies on immediate examples that come to a given person’s mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision.
“Just because something looms large in your memory does not necessarily mean that it is more common.”
What comes to mind immediately/ immediate examples in this case would be -Tom’s most watched videos/ the height of his popularity / things that made him go viral AKA Thor the Dark World Press tour-Tom AKA 2013-2014-Tom. So yea, sometimes we tend to think of extremities as being representative of a person as a whole. And I’ve seen people only really start referring to old vs new Tom when it came to IW press tour, which, if you’re looking at it this way, wouldn’t be true. He’s been IW promo level of calm since Crimson Peak promo AND before Dark World promo, you know, a natural state of being, except with all his Tomnosity. Here’s my ugly, not drawn to scale graph of what I see when people say “old Tom”:
Leaving the Tom that existed before so-called “old Tom” and the one that exists after out of the equation, because you know, that’s just not Tom if he’s not being super duper outwardly happy all the time.
I mean, think of it this way .. Its 2013 and here’s this still sort of a newcomer Tom and he’s high of off all this happiness and excitement coming off his success in The Avengers and now going into Dark World with all these millions of Loki fans and the spotlight is on him and now they’re really interested in Tom because of it all and he’s trending here and there. It was a period of his first full-on exposure of what it means to be famous and he was enjoying himself and sharing his happiness and gratitude with all his fans.
Fans demanding that sort of newcomer energy from Tom constantly, to me, is like those jerks who expect you to be smiling all the damn time .. or something like that idk there are better examples probably but I’m clearly inept. He’s not a performing monkey; he’ll do these little dorky things we love about him WHEN he wants to IF he wants to. AND HE’S STILL A DORK DON’T EVER UNDERESTIMATE THAT ABOUT HIM. HAVE YOU EVEN WATCHED IW PRESS TOUR INTERVIEWS IF YOU DON’T SEE THAT? DORK MODE AND DAD JOKES GALORE. He loved to sing and dance and do impressions long before we were ever made aware of it as an audience and he’ll still loves those things long after. Tom isn’t “Tom in 2013” and it ends there. He shouldn’t be defined by one phase of his life. Tom is all of Tom all the years in all phases of his life. In any instance, all the wonderful essential “Tom things” about him have always been there and continue to be there so. As for going dark.. consider for a normal person (a non-celebrity) .. how would going through a break up make you feel? Now consider that some million or so people have something to say about your relationship AND your breakup and that it’s mostly negative. Then a couple month later, you win your first ever Golden Globe GREAT that’s a win that’s a BIG win and an honor, especially (but not specifically) after all those tabloids, after all that talk. Wait hold up, nope.. not so great… apparently you’ve offended a lot of people and now you’re making headlines for all the wrong reasons again. It’s as simple as that. I think as far as most celebrities go, Tom is one that you can truly say is down to earth and just tries to live normally rather than off of attention and the “wrong” kind of fame. He wants his work to garner the attention directed at him not his personal life (which seems obvious to say, seems like a given for any actor but it really really isn’t. There are TONS of celebrities who thrive off of attention. To them, gaining attention is STILL gaining attention whether positive or not).
“I don’t feel famous,” laughs Hiddleston. . Stardom was not what drew him to the profession — he explains later what actually did — but accepts that “fame is an essential corollary to actors being able to do the kind of work they want to do”. Talking movies leads to what drew him to acting in the first place — not the prospect of stardom but the collective experience of being in a theatre, and recognising oneself in what was happening on the stage or screen. As Hiddleston still remembers: “When I left the theatre, the humanity in those stories made me feel less alone.” (circa 2010)
“There are two types of fame in my mind, there is the very honest and ancient engagement of an artist and the audiences. I couldn’t call myself an actor if there is no audience to come and watch me, and I admire and respect the very sacred relationship between any artist and their audiences.[…] And there’s another type of fame which is sort of empty and dangerous, which is just fame. It’s not grounded in anything.” (circa 2013)
(and seems unchanged even now if you ask me).
So I don’t really think he’s hungry for fame for the sake of fame (I mean clearly he’s a classy actor and a classy guy) so it’s not incredibly surprising to me that he seemed so affected by this, that he openly said it did affect him or that he sort of took a break before he felt ready to get back out there (and this too, people tend to exaggerate because he was still out there doing promo for Skull island, Thor Ragnarok, Infinity War, and Early Man. It’s not like he was out hiding and sobbing and feeling sorry for himself) or that he’ll try to avoid partaking in things about him that the media finds “divisive”, as he put it in words at Ace. He’s been very honest about all that and he’s addressed it all. If it he’s taking his time to get over his pain or the backlash or both, then it only goes to show how truly human he is and it only makes me love him THAT much more. I’m not going to sit here judging him for taking a sort of break but I’ll also be incredibly happy when his next project is announced no matter when that may be. So it doesn’t really make sense to me when people refer to him as “new Tom” vs “old Tom” because that, to me, implies that he has changed at his core, which he hasn’t. And that whole month with all the IW press tour when everyone had something to say about how sure they were that Tom was depressed and “not himself” all I could think was “are we even watching the same interviews?” because he was answering everything in a Tom-like manner, he was smiling his tom smile, he was sometimes the only person in the room who actually gave a shit about the movie he was promoting, he was still doing that thing he does where he looks across at the interviewer or to the side at his costars to see if his story/ joke made them laugh. He’s the same Tom but now he’s been exposed to the uglier side of fame and what it’s like when the media turns on you, so naturally, he had some kind of reaction to it. And god forbid a famous person show signs of human emotion… ever.
baratheonpilled
janainaart
origamiaround
discoholicmusic
turnnoffyourmind
kianamaiart
dailybridgerton
izzy806
tangentwithtanner
