Dude. I don’t want Loki to be unhappy. I just want him to be happy for a reason that makes sense. I want to see him figure out his own happiness because its compelling and fulfilling to watch.
If a character undergoes character growth off-screen, it is not satisfying “growth.” Rather, it seems like they just teleport the character to a new place for the convenience of lazy writing.
IMO that is what’s going on with cheery Loki in TR. His own dismissal of his own issues in the previous movies is exactly that; dismissal. It’s the writers disregarding it. We never get to actively see him get acknowledgement for all his very apparent suffering, and we never get to see how he figures out how to heal. Everything just vaporizes. The people behind the movie are too dumb, lazy, or callous to address and fix it on screen, so they sweep it under the carpet and make the character get over it so it will just go away.
If the pain, yelling, crying, snot and tears are all introduced on-screen, I want to see it resolved on-screen as well, with the same emotional intensity with which it was initially introduced. Telling me that all that was resolved while Loki hid behind the face of Odin-the-asshole, sucking on hand-peeled grapes and being (apparently) a dirty lazy moron… Well I don’t buy it.
I read a pro-Ragnarok meta (in particular, it’s pro-Thor and Loki’s “reconciliation”). I don’t want to annoy the person, but I want to talk through some of the things it made me think about, so here’s some word vomit under the cut.
Thiiiiiis. I read that same meta, and you’ve laid out exactly why that interpretation will never work for me. That was maybe a reconciliation for a completely different Thor and Loki, though I personally don’t find it a very compelling one. But it definitely makes no sense for the characters we knew before.
Also I want to pull this out, the idea that it is being interpreted that way due to a belief
that Loki’s betrayal of Thor is a pattern intrinsic to Loki’s personality, and not a deviation from a thousand year norm of loyalty stemming from Loki’s various traumas
because that is a fuckin good observation.
It is at the very least a lot more complicated than “loki betrays, as a matter of course, because ¯_(ツ)_/¯” and it is in fact not in the nature of trickster figures in general or Loki in particular to betray their (very few) loved ones reflexively, for no reason, just for shits and giggles. Even at his most flippant and devil-may-care (e.g., some of the early comics), he has comprehensible (if uncomfortable) motivations: he may turn cars into ice cream because it’s amusing, but he wouldn’t be coming up with hilarious ways to be a shit-stirrer in that context if it weren’t for his resentments, his jealousies, his broken relationship with his brother. And you don’t fix that by having Thor throw up his hands and say “well, you do you, catch ya on the flipside”
I think there’s a level of mischief Loki’s always going to possess. Turning cars into ice cream is something I can see Loki doing for a laugh before their falling out/after their reconciliation, though you’re correct that in that context in the comics he’s being a shit-stirrer due to resentment and jealousy. I find myself more frustrated when people attribute Loki dropping Thor out of the sky in Avengers or backhanding Thor in Thor or, if Ragnarok’s to be taken seriously, attempting to kill Thor many times throughout their childhood (Valkyrie: He did try to kill me. Thor:
Yes, me too. On many, many
occasions. There was one time when
we were children…) to “lol mischief!” That’s not mischief. That’s trying to kill someone that you love. Less extreme, more common, and still very annoying to me, is attributing Loki not telling Thor he survived in TDW or his plot in the beginning of Thor to Loki’s mischievous nature (though I think there’s an element of it in Thor because Loki’s chaotic, but it’s not even close to the main purpose–I don’t believe that Loki commits treason, gets a person killed, and does something that he knows will hurt Thor solely for shits and giggles, mainly because the movie makes it pretty explicit that wasn’t really the point).
I read a pro-Ragnarok meta (in particular, it’s pro-Thor and Loki’s “reconciliation”). I don’t want to annoy the person, but I want to talk through some of the things it made me think about, so here’s some word vomit under the cut.
Thiiiiiis. I read that same meta, and you’ve laid out exactly why that interpretation will never work for me. That was maybe a reconciliation for a completely different Thor and Loki, though I personally don’t find it a very compelling one. But it definitely makes no sense for the characters we knew before.
Also I want to pull this out, the idea that it is being interpreted that way due to a belief
that Loki’s betrayal of Thor is a pattern intrinsic to Loki’s personality, and not a deviation from a thousand year norm of loyalty stemming from Loki’s various traumas
because that is a fuckin good observation.
It is at the very least a lot more complicated than “loki betrays, as a matter of course, because ¯_(ツ)_/¯” and it is in fact not in the nature of trickster figures in general or Loki in particular to betray their (very few) loved ones reflexively, for no reason, just for shits and giggles. Even at his most flippant and devil-may-care (e.g., some of the early comics), he has comprehensible (if uncomfortable) motivations: he may turn cars into ice cream because it’s amusing, but he wouldn’t be coming up with hilarious ways to be a shit-stirrer in that context if it weren’t for his resentments, his jealousies, his broken relationship with his brother. And you don’t fix that by having Thor throw up his hands and say “well, you do you, catch ya on the flipside”
it is in fact not in the nature of trickster figures in general or Loki in particular to betray their (very few) loved ones reflexively, for no reason, just for shits and giggles.
Thank you for saying that – and I know that you’ve done more thorough research and contemplation of the cross-mythology trickster archetype than I have (or probably anyone else in this godsforsaken fandom). I’m so tired of hearing people insist that Ragnarok was a welcome return to Loki’s “canonical” (in comics? myths? what is “canon” here?) characterization as “a trickster” rather than a Shakespearean tragic villain. It’s a pretty simplistic, cartoonish version of a trickster… and that might be insulting to cartoons.
I don’t understand why people assume Loki stripped Odin of his powers. Odin says he broke Loki’s spell. What did he break it with if not his own magic? The power of a senior bingo night win? Pudding? His new friend Martha’s dentures? The weight of the enormous expense senior care in the United States is?
And then he just dicks about on Midgard, waiting to die, instead of utilizing Strange’s magic or his own to go back to Asgard. Strange literally says that he chose to stay put. CHOSE. That’s… not on Loki. Why do people continue to say Loki’s in any way at fault for Ragnarok? *buries head in hands*
Pretty obviously, Loki cast the Asgardian version on a Confundus Charm. We know he has some power over memories (which I still think he got through exposure to the Mind Stone). If Odin still had his powers but no memories, for a while he wouldn’t remember how to *use* his powers, but those powers themselves might start to break through the memory spell without his conscious control.
do you make grandiose speeches and perform a series of supernatural feats that result in a massive death toll, or do you… wait
Oh c’mon that’s not fair I mean Loki was recruited to carry out the bidding of a hitherto unknown supernatural bei —- wait.
Moses and Loki, there’s one comparison I never saw coming.
Once you see it, you will never listen to All I Ever Wanted the same way again.
His story was like Moses in Thor 1(and Avengers?). But now another comparison can be made too. In Ragnarok, Loki comes with a spaceship to rescue Asgardians who are standing on a bridge on a see. And when their home is destroyed, they survive in the ship. Sounds familiar? Yeah, that’s the story of Noah.
Here’s @darthxerik’s amazing fanvid of Loki clips set to “All I Ever Wanted” from The Prince of Egypt, and here are Thor and Loki doing “The Plagues.” And here are a longish discourse and a really weird fic I wrote inspired by this comparison.
Thor was a victim of Odin’s abuse and brainwashing too, so maybe try not to blame him for thinking Loki was beyond hope because when a parent you’ve been raised to trust tells you that, you’re inclined to believe them
“Thor was a victim of Odin’s abuse and brainwashing too”
AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Yeah, because being the golden child that everyone loves totally isthe same as being the scapegoat outcast whose father literally said his birthright was to die and then locked him in the dungeons for what was meant to be the rest of his life with no content with the outside world.
*snort*
Sure, Thor was totally abused too xD
Not all abuse follows the same pattern and no one is saying Thor was abused to the same degree as Loki was.
Let’s look at the 3rd child, Hela, because her abuse has most in common with Thor. Odin seemed to treat her well and judging from the friezes she uncovered, they seem to show she was respected by Asgard, ruling at Odin’s side. She was given the same weapon as Thor and raised to be a warmonger than Odin could unleash on his enemies.
But he had moulded her into a mass murderer. Do you doubt that doing that to a child is abusive?
It doesn’t excuse what she did, just as Loki’s abuse doesn’t excuse what he did, but it does help you understand why these things happened.
As for Thor, he basically got the Hela-lite treatment. He was raised to love war and fighting, he was even raised to be a cold-blooded killer (just look what he did on Jotunheim), just not to the same degree that Hela was.
Neither Thor and Hela were raised to have introspection, given the ability to question their actions, thoughts, or beliefs.
And when they did what they had been raised to do (wage war) but without Odin’s permission, both were banished.
None of his children were raised with their best interests at heart. Rather, they were turned into what Odin wanted them to be. He viewed them as extensions of himself that he could do what he wanted with, rather than as people in their own right.
Nothing about this is healthy parenting. Nothing about this raises well-rounded adults. He has damaged all his children via the emotional abuse used to turn them into what he wanted them to be.
Thor was able to overcome his abuse and become a wise, rounded adult (well, ish. He succeeded as long as you ignore the BS that was Ragnarok).
Although it wasn’t shown onscreen, Loki seems to have taken strides too, not to overcome the abuse perse, but to become his own person, who he wants to be rather than who Odin wanted him to be, or a rebellion against who Odin wanted him to be.
Some of Odin’s children received different kinds and different levels of abuse, but they were all abused.
I’m going to point it out again: Another genius moment in acting/directing. Look at his expression. He feels nothing. Nothing at all.
There’s no one to put on a show for here. There’s no need for posturing when he doesn’t have an audience. And what do we get when he’s basically alone? Nothing. He feels nothing.
Like I said in a previous post (when he dropped Thor from the helocarrier), this is not a lack of sympathy or regret necessarily. This is not a lack of the normal spectrum of emotions. This is a lack of resolution. He went into this mad plan with expectations. Expectations of feeling powerful. Of finally being equal to Thor—maybe even more. Of revenge. None of those expectations are fulfilled (long before he gets Hulk-smashed).
I’m going to put forth an unusual speculation here. His actions, particularly in these moments, speak less of being a sociopath or psychopath, and more of severe depression. I’m not talking about the blues when you’re having a bad day or a bad week. Severe depression is not being sad all the time.
It’s being numb. All. The. Time. It’s feeling nothing when you know you should feel something. It’s not caring. About anything.
Severe depression messes with your moral center (and I don’t mean religious morals). It’s very difficult to differentiate between right or wrong because you feel no guilt, no shame, no elation. The quest becomes less about finding happiness (while in the throes of such an acute depression, happiness is not only impossible, the notion is utterly unbelievable—a fiction without any truth). The quest is merely to feel better. To feel at all.
Think about it. Despite his act of insincerity, Loki was probably prone to brooding even before his world fell apart. He probably experienced bouts of mild to moderate depression throughout his life. (The mischief might have helped to alleviate that.) Then he finds out what he is—not the son of Odin (whose approval he desperately wanted)—but one of very enemy he was raised to hate. Fast forward through his botched attempt at genocide, fratricide and successful patricide—then a fall through the vortex of the dying Bifrost (who knows what happened there?), and finally he was held captive by Thanos.
How is he not depressed? (If not suffering from a complete psychosis.) And I doubt he is not cognizant enough to realize the severity of his mental illness.
And so he pursues these things, thinking that he’ll feel better (that he’ll feel something) and in the end, he still feels nothing.
You’ll never convince me that Loki’s look of blankness as he lets go of Gungnir, that that was a suicide attempt, is not part of some severe depression issues and that everything just gets magnified to about a thousand times worse and twisted up when he goes through the Void.
“Loki is often the voice of reason to Thor’s impulsiveness and is usually relied on to talk his older brother out of sticky situation. ”
“As Odin’s younger son, Loki has always known the throne of Asgard will never belong to him. He has, however, tried his best to be a good brother to Thor and a son Odin could be proud of.”
BONUS:
Interesting.
Teleport is canon!
This irritates me…… a lot.
He can teleport.
Why the hell wasn’t this used in any of the other movies?
This is so important.
The argument could be made that he did teleport in the first Avengers. Loki cast an illusion of himself/became invisible and teleported behind Coulson to stab him with his staff.
Also he may have teleported himself into the room Thor was being kept in by S.H.I.E.L.D. in the first Thor movie and we just didn’t get to see it.
Honestly, I just ignore the teleportation thing in my fic writing. There’s a lot of stuff in canon that wouldn’t make sense if he could teleport.
The fact that Loki can teleport makes a LOT of canon stuff make no sense. The first 5 minutes of Infinity War especially.
Loki’s teleporting is definitely worth discussing, but can we talk about what they listed as Frigga’s “abilities”? Like … what even lol.
I should clarify: by “canon” (involving Loki) I mean Thor (2011), The Avengers (2012), and Thor: The Dark World (2013).
Yeah, they kind of forgot about Frigga’s illusion magic and swordfighting skills… or maybe they didn’t decide to put those in until TDW.
Re: @angryowlet‘s speculation, I don’t think any teleportation was involved in killing Coulson. I think Loki made two illusory copies of himself: one to lure Thor into the cage, and one to taunt Thor while the actual Loki was off retrieving the scepter.
The main reason I think teleportation would mess with canon logic is that Thor probably would have known that Loki could teleport, and that would be an extremely clear indication that he had gotten himself captured on purpose in The Avengers. He also could have teleported away to keep himself from being apprehended and imprisoned at the end, though I suppose he might have had reasons to want to place himself under Asgardian protection. Also (and this is mostly kind of silly), he wouldn’t have needed to ride a horse from the palace to the Bifrost observatory toward the end of Thor.
they’ve both been though a lot actually–the difference is in the way they respond to it. loki is definitely the more emotional of the two and tends to wear his heart on his sleeve. when he is faced with something like his true parentage, his response is passionate and violent, bordering on unhinged. it’s so obvious, through his expressions and his actions, that the revelation absolutely crushed him. thor is such a positive personality that when life-shattering events happen he is still able to move forward with a smile on his face, even if he may be hurting inside, perfectly exemplified when thanos kills half his people, his brother, and his best friend and and hour later thor is taking on the full force of a star to forge a weapon that will kill the bastard. in that way, i think people tend to focus more on loki’s pain because he expresses it so freely and–dare i say–dramatically at times. i believe we don’t often get to see the depth of thor’s anguish because he hides it so well, because he know he has to be strong in order to fight and be a hero. say you had two children and both of them got hurt somehow. who would you go to first? the one who is crying and begging for help or the one who stands back and takes care of the injury himself? i mean, i can see where you’re coming from even if i don’t agree. just because the fandom seems to focus more on loki’s pain doesn’t lessen all that thor has been through, and i’m not trying to downplay either of their struggles. i just think it’s human tendency to look towards the person who screams the loudest.
I think the difference is that Thor is not mentally ill and has always had a solid support system. You know he’ll get through it and be alright, because he’s mentally healthy and there’s always been and always will be people on his side willing to listen and help. Loki doesn’t have that. Has never had that, in all likelihood. Even before his fall, the person closest to him, arguably his mother, was concerned primarily with defending Odin’s choices, his brother was too self absorbed to care about anybody overmuch (I’m not just putting down Thor, this was his characterization before his exile), his friends were really Thor’s friends and willing to betray him with zero actual evidence of wrong doing… and when he came back, having last been seen in the midst of a psychotic break that ended in attempted suicide, his brother literally greets him with violence, asks him just once who was controlling him, then drops the subject and as far as we can tell, no one bothers to again. Then he’s put in solitary for a year, his father and brother don’t visit at all, and his mother is again primarily concerned with defending Odin’s bad decisions. His family doesn’t bother to tell him themselves when his mother dies or allow him to attend her funeral. Thor, upon seeing his grief, refuses to even tell Loki how she died. And so it goes.
Yes, Thor has suffered many trials, and deserves sympathy for them, but he’s never been so alone in them as Loki has, under the weight of mental illness and with not one soul close to him willing to simply listen and be there without judgement or demand.
honestly, guys, thor and loki have been told all their lives that they are equals, but there’s no point in saying “you kids are equal” when all of your behaviour exhbits the contrary.
of course thor thinks loki’s “place” is beneath him. of course he assumes the worst of him – that’s what he’s learned to do, all his life, from odin. of course he doesn’t know how to communicate with his brother, or ask questions about his feelings – where would he learn that behaviour? who would teach him? of course he’s arrogant: he grew up knowing he would be king, and being told it was his right.
of course loki feels trapped on asgard. of course he wants to show up the hypocrisy that surrounds him. of course he wants to be seen, at the most basic level, as a person of equal value to his brother, who he’s been told all his life he is equal to, and who has been shown all his life he is not. of course he’s terrified to be revealed as a jotunn, when he is already plagued by a sense of inexplicable rejection. of course he’s scared, and of course he lies. how can you do anything but lie, when everybody around you does nothing but lie to you?
healthy, stable relationships with strong communication do not, in fact, just spring from the ether, ready-formed. if you have been taught your whole life to act a certain way, and have no conception of an alternative, it’s going to be impossible for you to break out of it until somebody else, outside that cycle, points it out to you – whether sb close to you, or whether you read like, an article or hear a radio snippet about building good relationships.
thor and loki exist with a big chasm between them, and they both want a bridge, but neither of them have the tools to build it. these things are not instinctive! they are hard!
Loki is the Philosopher King 