foundlingmother:

philosopherking1887:

buckeed:

Thor: The Dark World || Thor: Ragnarok

#this is an interesting difference between the brothers#thor refuses the even give loki an answer#and only comes to loki because he needs him for the plan#loki comes and shares their grief#and offers to help thor#despite him being unnecessary for loki’s plan#thor loves loki#i don’t dispute it#i think he works really hard to stay mad at loki#and he tries really hard in avengers to bring loki back#but he also sometimes acts like a massive thoughtless dick to loki#and i think it’s that same malformed view of loki that i’ve spoken of#thor conceptualizes loki as a bad person who needs to be fixed or managed#and it’s much more complicated than that#and he’s going to feel horrible about everything#when he realizes that (via @foundlingmother)

I think the relevant difference between these two scenes is that in the first, Thor is still hurt and bewildered and angry at Loki over what happened in The Avengers (and probably toward the end of Thor 1, too), while in the second, Loki isn’t shown as having any particular reason to be mad at Thor. (He probably should be mad at Thor for blowing his cover and potentially allowing Thanos to discover where he is, but the movie doesn’t even acknowledge that as a reason why Loki was pretending to be Odin. Or any reason other than “mischief, hur hur.”)

Maybe there is more continuity between Thor’s thoughtlessness toward Loki in earlier movies and in Ragnarok than I’ve acknowledged, but earlier on it seems more complex and well-motivated.

I don’t think I would say that Thor consistently “conceptualizes Loki as a bad person who needs to be fixed or managed” before Ragnarok.

Thor’s callousness in TDW seems put-on, deliberate, and painful even for him; in Ragnarok it’s just a matter of course.

In my experience hurt doesn’t work that way. They’ve never dealt with their issues, so I’m pretty sure it’s all festering. I think they’d both still be holding on to a lot of pain that relates to one another (and Odin, that gets attached to one another unfairly). 

You know, I think that brings up something I hadn’t considered. Maybe the problem with how Thor acts towards Loki in Ragnarok isn’t the actions (at least most of the time *glances at that one scene that is too ooc*) or words themselves, but the feeling behind it. See, what I mean when I say that Thor sees Loki as a bad person, I think it’s, 1. pretty forced on his part and something he has to keep reminding himself of, and 2. something he sees as a new and hopefully temporary (though he tries not to hope) insanity Loki’s experiencing. It’s painful for him how far he feels Loki’s fallen, and he wants his brother back.

Ragnarok just kind of makes him mad at Loki, and you don’t feel the love that’s tangible even under the anger in the previous Thor movies and Avengers. 

Honestly, I don’t feel like I can take any of Loki’s (or Thor’s) actions in Ragnarok to shed light on preexisting aspects of their character. Would Loki share Thor’s grief even while being (justifiably) mad at him? I think so, but Ragnarok is just so blatantly OOC all the time that I don’t think it counts as evidence in favor. Rather, the evidence is that throughout his three movies, Loki never disregards or dismisses Thor’s feelings. He’s very attentive to them, whether he wants to flatter him, soothe him, provoke him, or outright wound him.

Of course I think Loki has a lot of reasons to still be pissed at Thor, but Ragnarok doesn’t frame it that way. It presents all of Loki’s grudges and resentments as childish and insignificant, things he just needs to grow up and get over. So the scene doesn’t present him as comforting Thor in spite of his hurt and anger; it presents him as trying to mend fences when Thor is still (justifiably, yes, but not as righteously as the movie makes out) pissed at him.

Your last point – “Ragnarok just kind of makes him mad at Loki, and you don’t feel the love that’s tangible even under the anger in the previous Thor movies and Avengers” – seems exactly right. Some of it surely is the words and actions themselves (it’s hard to believe he would say or do some of those things to someone he loves), but a lot of it is also the affect. Thor consistently has an air of “done with Loki’s shit” that’s supposed to show that he’s wised up, he has Loki’s number, he’s nobody’s fool anymore (pick your cliché), but all it says to me is that he’s given up on understanding Loki as a person and now just wants to control/manage him (as you said). And this might make sense if we were to accept Ragnarok’s retcon of Loki’s character as a capricious trickster who does bad shit just for the hell of it… but in light of the complexity of Loki’s emotions and motivations as shown in previous films, it just seems inexcusably cruel and obtuse (which also serves as an apt description for the entirety of Thor’s character in TR…).

P.S., on the subject of Thor figuring out how complicated Loki actually is, have you read my fic Starting Over, which is basically my fantasy version of Thor and Loki’s post-AOU reunion conversation (+ sex)?