sb: thor isn’t made of sunshine and rainbows, and is actually a complicated guy who’s done some bad shit, and shouldn’t be treated as an innocent teddy bear
thor stans: is this character hate?
thor stans: thor isn’t perfect but he’s not malicious and sure as shit didn’t try to commit genocide
sb: wow such a flat outlook on character. thor stans just can’t see thor as anything but perfect. sad.
As a fan of both Loki and Thor who finds Loki more interesting as a character but certainly does not deny that he has more moral problems than Thor, I have to point out that that’s a peculiarly bad example. Kid Thor saying “When I’m king, I’ll hunt the monsters down and slay them all” can be dismissed as little-boy careless bravado. Young man Thor, after starting a destructive battle on Jotunheim, shouting “Father! We’ll finish them together!”… harder to dismiss. Maybe he just means “defeat them definitively”; maybe it’s just the rage of battle talking. Or maybe he meant what he said when he was a kid.
Loki certainly has a more effective plan to commit genocide, and probably comes closer to succeeding. It’s indirect and technological rather than direct and warrior-like; that’s part of the difference between their characters. Loki’s attempt also has the complexity of being undertaken after finding out that he’s a member of the group he’s trying to wipe out. Does that make it morally better? Not exactly, but it does add an element of twisted pathos. In both cases, Odin’s miseducation deserves a large share of the blame.
exactly, they both have done wrong things, Thor changed and realised genocide isn’t the answer while Loki went the other way. And yet….they were both raised by a conqueror, someone who taught them their history in which it obviously shows that wiping out entire civilizations was alright cause they were inferior.
Thor says that you can’t kill an entire race while Loki answers: Why not? And what is this newfound love for the frost giants?You, could have killed them all with your bare hands!
It did surprise me that when Loki had the throne, he chose to stay put, and only care for Asgard, the Loki in Thor and Avengers would’ve turned into Hela, and he knows it.
Problem is, Thor is always painted as the Hero™ and that means that he can do or has done nothing wrong, and is not that simple.
Egh, I actually don’t agree that Loki really hated the Frost Giants and wanted to kill them. I think that was a panicked response to a situation he’d already escalated to fuck, and was very much prompted by self-loathing – barely ten minutes after attacking the Jötnar he tried to kill HIMSELF, and I think it was all to do with his hatred of himself that he wanted to attack Jötunheimr. A mix of hating himself and wanting desperately to make Odin proud.
Attempted Genocide round two. The invasion of Muspelhiem, the assassination of Surtr. The slaughter of its people. Thor was under the evil influence of Thanos after being tortured by him, wait that was wrong. Thor had just found out that he was a fire giant and his father told him his destiny was to die, and his brother had just gone off and tried to kill all the fire giants. No wait that’s wrong too. Umm.. Three fire giants sneaked into Asgard and tried to steal the cask of summer?? No.. Oh I remember. Thor was attacked by the Scarlet Witch and she had him hallucinate about Ragnarok. He became so obsessed by his hallucination, even though every other hero had experienced a similar attack he decided to drop all his obligations and race off across the nine realms trying to stop his hallucination from becoming reality. That was his reasoning. Sorry dude I’ve dropped acid in my time. I don’t go around cutting down trees because of the one bad trip where I hallucinated a tree was following me around all night, to eat me. You only had a 20 minute spell. I call bullshit on his heroism.
Ok so I wasn’t gonna get into this because I haven’t seen the first movie in awhile and I’m not even in the headspace to discuss character motivations right now, but I think I’m gonna have a go.
The problem with this whole thing, in my opinion, is that- to most normal audience members who aren’t obsessed with all the intricacies of these films (*cough* not nerds)- it seems that Thor is constantly in the right, not because he’s never tried to commit genocide or expressed disturbing bigoted ideals and flawed morals, but because every time he has done these things, the film makers have made it out to seem like he’s doing them for all the right reasons.
It’s like: He hates jotuns and sees them as nothing more than monsters to be slain? Well that’s just because they attacked Midgard long ago, so technically he’s right. Oh, he wants to kill all of the jotuns? Well, they did ruin his coronation and they do seem like cold cruel people, so he’s just doing the universe a favor, probably.
More examples: What, Thor chooses to strangle Tony instead of talking like a civilized individual? Well, Tony did just accidentally create a murder robot so he deserves to be physically threatened by a being much stronger than him. Oh, Thor runs off to assuage his paranoia over the hallucinations instead of staying and protecting Midgard (like he said he’d do) or returning and checking on Asgard? Well, it ultimately led him back to Asgard, so it’s cool.
I have a ton more examples, but I can’t add them right now because I’m posting this on my phone and mobile gets glitchy once you’ve typed so much.
But yeah, the issue isn’t that people don’t acknowledge his wrongdoings. It’s that they brush them aside simply because Thor is made out to be this heroic honorable awesome Good Guy, and they assume that means every single one of his dick moves are justified.
And it’s not just Thor. Almost every single one of the Avenegers gets the same hypocritical treatment from fans. Steve started an entire war and was a complete arrogant fuckface while doing it? Oh, he was protecting his friend so we can argue that all of that was the right move and even congratulate him for it. Natasha, Clint, Tony, and Bruce all killed lots of people in their pasts? It’s fine, they’re heroes now. Wanda literally messed with everyone’s minds and she and Pietro fought against the Avengers to achieve the goals of their evil leader? It’s ok, he manipulated them and they were heroes in the end so it’s totally fine.
I mean, I love all of the people I just mentioned. They’re great and they absolutely are heroes, but it’s extremely irritating when people don’t hold them accountable for their past actions simply because they “meant well” or because “they’re heroes now”. Because how much do you wanna bet that those fans are the same ones shitting on Loki and Odin and others for their flaws and mistakes and refusing to acknowledge their heroic traits.
I think @musclesandhammering is quite right about the interpretive pattern. Framing is powerful, and framing certain characters as “heroes” (i.e., we root for these ones) and others as “villains” (we boo them) primes us to read their actions in predetermined ways.
Loki is the Philosopher King 