Sorry for not answering this sooner, I had to think about it, haha. I really enjoy the concept of pre-Thor Loki because there is just so much we don’t know about who Loki was before everything went to shit. We have a basic idea of his general personality, of course – the envious younger brother, the mischief-maker, the less-favored prince. Even despite these attributes, though, Loki clearly holds Thor in high regard (”sometimes I’m envious, but never doubt I love you”) and never meant for things to go as far as they did.
When I think about pre-Thor Loki, the quote I always come back to is when Kenneth Branagh states (in his commentary on the Vault scene): “This is the moment where the thin steel rod that’s been holding your brain together snaps.” Truly, this moment is life-altering and devastating for Loki, but Branagh implies that Loki’s mind was fractured to begin with. We don’t generally think of healthy brains as being “held together with thin steel rods,” and it begs the question, why was Loki so unstable in the first place? Certainly as a result of his upbringing, as far as I can guess. (Whether or not mental illness is inherent in his brain chemistry is a different question, but it bears mentioning that mental illness includes conditions like anxiety, depression, etc, and that these conditions can be a result of one’s upbringing.)
I (like so many others) take such issue with Thor calling Loki’s grievances imagined slights because they are very much not imagined and, if anything, they are the worst kind of slights because by nature they are designed to break a person down steadily over time. If you tell a dog it’s bad enough times, the dog will eventually believe it. In the first twenty or thirty minutes of Thor, if we include deleted scenes, we see Loki being openly laughed at by a servant (!!), admitting he’s envious but telling Thor he loves him anyway, only to get a “Thank you” in response (without any reassurance of Thor’s feelings in return), a nasty comment from Volstagg on the rainbow bridge about Loki’s silver tongue, and Thor snapping for Loki to “know your place” when Loki tries to talk Thor down from literally starting an intergalactic incident.
Furthermore, after Thor’s banishment, Loki admits that he told the guard of their plans. It’s important to note that he’s not being sneaky or underhanded – he straight up admitted, “yeah, I told them we were going, and I’m not sorry because Thor is out of control and his idea was fucking stupid.” And what’s his payback? As soon as he leaves, the Warriors 4 talk about him behind his back, say he’s always been jealous of Thor, and wonder out loud if Loki is the traitor Laufey spoke of. Why would they immediately assume that Loki is a traitor to his family and his kingdom? Like, that escalated really fucking quickly.
All of these things show us that Loki is treated as less than, for no real reason other than he’s very different from Thor. Different, in Asgard, seems to mean, not as good as. The narrative tells us we should just accept this treatment of Loki because he turns out to be the villain (although the argument has been made, many times, that his actions weren’t villanous at this point – but, I digress) so one can assume that the same is true of Asgard – everyone should just accept that this is how Loki is treated, everyone is used to Loki being the punching bag, and no one should feel badly about it.
I don’t even think I’m answering your question right, I’m sorry, but what I’m trying to get at is, if this is the sort of treatment we see Loki getting just in the beginning of the movie, imagine a (very, very long) lifetime of the same sort of treatment. Imagine how broken down someone would have to be after that. Even if Loki’s upbringing wasn’t bad, in that he was privileged with wealth and title and family and all of that, it was definitely emotionally abusive. And I think that it’s very possible to feel like you have a nice life, to feel like other people have it worse than you, to feel like you deserve all of the imagined slights heaped upon you, until you snap. This is why Loki was hanging onto mental stability by a thread. This is why he suffers a complete mental breakdown – because, in addition to this toxic environment and mindset he’s been conditioned into, now he learns that he is something he’s been taught to believe is savage and disgusting and inferior. He loses all hope of ever being worthy, which makes him double down on his efforts to attain that worthiness. In his heart, maybe he knows it’s a lost cause, and maybe that’s why he fights so hard for it, anyway.
So, did he have safe havens? Probably. He probably holed up in the library with his books and scrolls, or maybe he had a favorite reading spot in the gardens, or maybe he liked to lay in the grass and watch the stars. Did he have secrets, things that were only his? Most definitely, as Loki in general (I think) is a private person who wants things to keep for his own, things that he doesn’t have to share with Thor. Did he hang out with Thor’s friends for obligation? No, I think that at first, he really wanted to be a part of their group. They’re all shown to be so close in age and class (except Volstagg, who seems older) that it seems like these are the people he should be friends with, and would be friends with, were he just more like Thor. I’m sure, eventually, he realized that they didn’t like him (and he didn’t really like them, either) but it was probably also a situation where Loki didn’t have any other friends, so he might as well hang out with the ones who tolerated him, sometimes, sort of.
Sorry for babbling at you and I don’t know if that answered your question or not, but I have a lot of Feels about Loki’s treatment in the first movie, and also the implications it has on his life beforehand. Thank you for the ask!
//Absolutely not. I don’t think Thor consciously realizes it at all, and I doubt he ever will. It can be difficult for the child of abuse in any form to acknowledge as an adult that the parent figure they (and in this case their whole culture) admired (even in this case revered) was toxic. This often leads to misplaced feelings of shame, vulnerability, and guilt. Especially in Asgard, which has a no-tolerance policy for the “weakness” of mental illness (and no modern concept thereof). You literally battle away your feelings there; the lifespans are so long that certain social customs remain antiquated.
When I used to volunteer as a mentor-tutor for underprivileged children, and when I took developmental psychology courses, one of the most striking things I noticed was that children of abuse of varying forms, physical, sexual, or emotional/psychological, are often tremendously DEFENSIVE of the abusing parent. For instance, the children of parents who use corporal punishment are often, as adults, the people who fly into a genuine fury at child advocates who say that spanking is abusive.
For Thor to acknowledge Odin abused him, he must acknowledge that every value and principle for which he stands, that derived from Odin–even parts of Thor’s personality–were faulty. This would mean the exhausting work of reinventing HIMSELF, too.
This, I think, is exactly why Thor still refuses to fully acknowledge that Loki was also abused, and that Odin’s abuse is partially responsible for Loki’s wildly misguided behavior. Even as of Ragnarok, Thor sees Loki’s mistakes as 100% of Loki’s own volition, and while LOKI ALONE is to blame for Loki’s actions, it makes a great deal of difference when you acknowledge that Odin’s messed up parenting originates a lot of Thor and Loki’s misunderstandings, as well as Loki’s desperate attempt to emulate and please their father.
It’s, cognitively and emotionally speaking, easier to blame Loki, because Loki has always been something of a misfit in the family structure. Loki also has less emotional power over Thor as a sibling than Odin has as a father, both personal and cultural. It’s a horrible irony that Odin’s abuse of Loki is perpetuated by Thor’s unwillingness to see that abuse, IN GOOD PART BECAUSE ODIN HAS ALWAYS KEPT THOR SO CLOSELY IN ODIN’S SHADOW, AND DENIED THOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO THINK FOR HIMSELF. One of the best examples of this is in The Dark World, when Odin treats Jane Foster, Thor’s beloved, like a literal animal, and earlier, tells him he should marry Sif instead.
This only changes SLIGHTLY near the end of Ragnarok, with the “what are you, Thor, God of Hammers?” speech.
It’s all very sad. I wish Thor had been able to say, “You know, I loved our father, but he was fucked up, and SOME stuff wasn’t actually your fault” to Loki before Loki died. I thought for sure he would in The Dark World, when Odin literally ordered him KILLED for treason, but Thor remains way more willing to forgive Odin because Odin has Thor in an almost Stockholm Syndrome deadlock, even post-mortem.
Literally the only time Odin ever let Thor do what Thor wanted was when Odin was actually Loki in disguise.
Pinterest is a goldmine for seeing posts like this….
Sure. That’s why he spent 2 weeks secretly stealing acess codes to the ships to escape, andhad a plan to kill the psychotic leader, a plan that sounded like he had had for awhile, like 2 weeks. Sounds like he couldn’t wait to get the hell away from all that so called “love”, and was biding his time until the opportunity came.
The notion that Loki would feel at home on Sakaar because it is chaotic and lawless is based on Thor’s skewed perception of his brother. It is based on the premise that Loki is the god of mischief and thus, has had no deeper reasons for any of the things he’s done.
Which conflicts entirely with a huge chunk of the initial Thor film, that goes to a lot of trouble to set up Loki’s narrative, in which there is already an existing sibling rivalry and he is pushed over the edge by discovering that he was adopted.
Really he should be called the god of a lot of shitty things happened to me and I reacted badly…what can I say?
I’m not sure I agree Loki ever really wanted the/a throne, even after he discovered his entire life was a lie. The throne is more a symbol or a means to achieve what Loki actually wants at any given moment.
In the latter half of Thor, that’s acceptance and validation from Odin. He works so hard to keep Thor away because, as regent, Loki has the power to defeat the Frost Giants without costing Asgard anything. He thinks that defeating this enemy will prove he’s worthy, and that he belongs on Asgard. That he’s not one of those monsters…
In Avengers, Loki says he wants to rule Midgard, but it seems far more likely that he’s trying to hurt Thor, embarrass Odin, and above all free himself from Thanos. Others will argue that Loki’s trying to lose. Either way, he doesn’t actually want to rule Midgard. At the same time, this is when he begins repeating that he was the rightful King of Asgard, that he was promised a throne, etc. But, again, it’s not the throne Loki cares about, it’s the injustice of being promised something no one ever had any intention of giving him. Being promised his father’s approval, his people’s acceptance, worthiness (or the opportunity to receive it, at least), only to discover that what you are is entirely incompatible with everything you ever wanted. So he harps on about a throne–about that part of the lie–because it allows him to appear detached. He’s much less vulnerable demanding power than he is demanding acceptance, especially when he doesn’t even believe he’s worthy of that acceptance (internalized racism is a bitch).
The deleted scene from TDW contributes to that idea. The fantasy isn’t about ruling or holding power, it’s about the people celebrating him (the way they do Thor). It’s about being worthy. Loki does get the throne again at the end of TDW, but he usurps it because he wants freedom and safety, and he can get that by masquerading as Odin. And even then he offers it to Thor. He might have anticipated that Thor would reject, but he still offered the choice.
what else can loki lay claim to that thor doesn’t already have?
Oh, interesting.
Of course, for every secret there’s a reason. It’s irrelevant to Thor. It would burden Thor to know. It would only cause Thor pain. And there’s truth in all of those reasons.
But he also just wants the luxury of being the sole possessor of certain experiences or pieces of knowledge, particularly, I imagine, if those secrets are deeply personal.
There is something about first Thor film that struck me as rather odd, upon my first viewing. Although I admittedly didn’t ponder it too much upon further viewing. And that was the fact that Thor had
Mjölnir
. Thor has been gifted this amazing tool that was forged inside a dying star. The entire narrative revolves around his worthiness of possessing it.
His brother, Loki, has no such tool, and is subject to no such measurement of worthiness. Why? Why would you give one son this amazing thing and then give the other nothing even comparable to at least imply a superficial sort of equality between them? I find it baffling that this could be the case and Loki’s parents would be completely unaware that he might feel slighted in some way. Certainly the public would think of him as less, if he saw him being treated as such by his own family. They might even feel validated in their dislike or distrust of him, if they observed him being treated differently by his own parents.
Yes, Loki had his magic. But that was a craft that he had to work long and hard to perfect. It wasn’t a magic artifact that was just placed in his hands.
“This is my son, Thor! I have gifted him a magical hammer!”
“Who is that other kid?”
“Oh, that’s just Loki. His job is to stand next to Thor.”
“This is my son, Thor! I have gifted him a magical hammer!”
“Who is that other kid?”
“Oh, that’s just Loki. His job is to stand next to Thor.”
The thing that really strikes me about this picture is how it’s similar to this one:
Right before Thor’s coronation.
Odin used his own daughter as no more than a weapon for his bloody wars. He was the mastermind, the brain, and Hela was the brawn. And he brought up his two sons to fit this exact image. Thor was supposed to be the symbol of Asgard’s physical power and Loki the advisor, the strategist. Thor was the brawn and Loki was the brain. It’s interesting how Hela and Thor, who were the muscles, both hold Mjolnir, a hammer. Odin holds Gungnir, a scepter and we know one of Loki’s preferred weapons is a scepter.
The kings wear red, the weapons wear green.
The weapons are on the right side of the kings.
The kings have wings on their helmet, the weapons only have horns.(Another interesting detail is how Odin’s helmet is the combination of Thor and Loki’s. He gave his wings to Thor and his horns to Loki)
It’s also another parallel that when the weapons get out of the kings’ control, they were cast out.
(As a side note I think I should mention that when I say Thor and Hela are the brawn I don’t mean they are stupid. They both are quite intelligent. I mean they are the stronger fire power and physical fights are what they are best at. Odin and Loki are both physically strong too but they are best at mind games and planning. Remember Hela told Loki “You sound like him?”. Because he does. He learned those skills from Odin)
Forgive me for turning this into a long response, @foxhoundmemos, and @philosopherking1887 for restating a lot of what you wrote in response. I simply believe this an important enough point to make outside of comments.
@foundingmother, perhaps it’s because the text and framing of Whedon’s Avengers has him as just that, what with the kneel scene being in Germany, and one possibly two people who saw WWII right there, the nasty rape by proxy subtext in the ‘mewling quim’ scene and ramblings about ‘free will’ and his glorious purpose to rule this planet.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of Loki but it’s more to the presence Hiddleston puts toward the character than either Takkia’s buffon or Whedon’s horndog rapist takes on the character.
As for the scene with The Other or Loki’s trial explanation. Neither one of them have enough presence in the cannon to override the faschist bent that Loki has taken on between Thor and the Avengers. In Thor, Loki went extremes when put under pressure in the middle of a psychotic breakdown something that is not present in the Avengers. It’s clear that this is a Loki whose worst traits have been amplified and hardened while Loki’s issues and reasons no longer matter.
First and foremost, @philosopherking1887 is correct, fascism is not another word for authoritarianism. Ethnonationalism is a key component of fascism. While Loki 100% spouts despotic bullshit, he never says anything that could be consider specifically fascist. I know a lot of people aren’t going to care about this point, but I think it’s important that words mean something, especially when talking about an ideology that’s on the rise again. People who call Loki fascist in Avengers do not understand the actual meaning, only that a vague comparison is drawn between him and Hitler, who was fascist.
Whedon’s sexism is an issue, and there are certainly elements in his movies that are grossly sexist and unnecessary, including the “mewling quim” line and the implication within the lines about Barton killing Nat. Very gross. Two things, however. One, there’s another line of Loki’s that, to me, sounds pretty rape-y: “Perhaps when we’re finished here I’ll pay her a little visit myself.” This implication is a lazy shorthand a lot of writers use to get across how evil a character is. How deranged. It’s gross and dumb. Two, I have to disagree that Loki at any point in the movie feels like a horndog rapist. A sadistic, sexist despot, I can see an argument for, but not horndog rapist.
My counterargument for the idea that Loki literally is a sadistic, sexist despot (or fascist, as fandom refers to it) in Avengers is that the movie frames most of it as a performance masking anger, desperation, fear, loneliness, etc. The scene in Germany stands out more than the scene with the Other, but it’s important to note the purpose of both. They’re both canon, after all, and so both must be factored into an analysis of Loki’s characterization. Loki in Germany is literally performing. That’s the entire point. He’s drawing the crowd’s attention to him so that Barton can do what Loki needs him to, and so that SHIELD will send in its team. The scene with the Other is there to make it clear that Loki’s not 100% in control. That there’s someone watching, ready to torment him if he fails. And it’s far from the only thing in the movie that suggests this. Loki looks horrible when he first appears (and even more so in Thor’s foreshadowing after credits scene), he trips all over himself, he avoids Thor’s questions about who showed him the power of the Tesseract, Thor briefly gets through to him on Stark Tower, he cries, etc. Subtext. And if you want text… Coulson states outright that Loki isn’t going to win because he lacks conviction. So, the movie doesn’t frame Loki as a sadistic, sexist despot. It frames him as an angry, conflicted, traumatized, and dangerous individual who says very intense (and, in the case of the sexism, unnecessary) shit in moments where he’s attempting to manipulate, intimidate, self-aggrandize, etc.
Loki’s issues from Thor aren’t absent from or unimportant in Avengers. The moment he shows up, they are invoked. Selvig refers to Loki as Thor’s brother, earning a dirty look. @philosopherking1887 mentioned the line, “I remember a shadow,” but that entire sequence with Thor’s intended to give us a sense of how deeply hurt and alone Loki feels as a direct result of what happened to him in Thor, and the way that’s fueling his anger and grab for power on Midgard. This attack is still very much connected to the mental breakdown that occurred in Thor, just instead of trying to prove himself and be the hero, as he was trying to in Thor, now he’s trying to hurt his family (as much as they’ve hurt him).
One, there’s another line of Loki’s that, to me, sounds pretty rape-y: “Perhaps when we’re finished here I’ll pay her a little visit myself.” This implication is a lazy shorthand a lot of writers use to get across how evil a character is. How deranged. It’s gross and dumb.
That is entirely correct. What you did not note, however, is that that line is from Thor 1, written by Ashley Edward Miller & Zack Stentz, not from The Avengers, written by Joss Whedon. That bit of grossness cannot be laid at Whedon’s door.
Some of what’s cited as “sexism” in The Avengers is probably better classified as an outdated, i.e. Buffy-era, mode of feminism: the theme of Black Widow being underestimated because she’s a woman and using that underestimation, by both Loki and the Russian mobster at the beginning, to extract information. TVTropes.org calls this the “Wounded Gazelle Gambit”; it might be considered a variant of the honeytrap, except that the female spy uses the assumption of weakness, especially emotional weakness, rather than her sexuality. Maybe I’m less bothered by it than some people because I am still professionally underestimated because of my gender (and stature) and it’s still satisfying to see that subverted, even weaponized. But The Movement has decided that utopianism is the thing to do, so here we are.
I must be innocent or out-of-touch for not interpreting Loki’s threat to have Barton kill Natasha “slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear” as having anything to do with rape. Threatening someone with torture is, of course, horrible, but it doesn’t have to be either sexual or gender-specific. The word “intimate” doesn’t always have anything to do with sex, and it’s most powerful when it doesn’t. Killing someone “intimately,” to me, means killing them while looking into their eyes, having seen how they break down in response to severe pain with no end in sight. That’s an especially creepy thing to threaten her with given that Clint is her friend, and it should be creepy, since Loki is trying to unnerve her. But the only things that I read as gendered were (1) targeting her emotional vulnerability and (2) calling her a cunt.
None of the things you mentioned can be considered as torture. Loki dropped Thor with the glass cage right after he saw that Mjolnir could crack the glass. The reason Thor stopped attempting to break the glass wasn’t because the glass was unbreakable, but because the cage would fall if he continued. So Loki knewThor could free himself before the cage hit the ground. Yes, Loki lied to Thor about Odin’s death and he almost killed him with that backhand and IMO these are very horrible and
the worst things he ever did to Thor. Still they are not torture. He broke Thor with his lies but those lies showed Thor that the consequences of his actions can be very grave. Also an argument can be made that if Loki really wanted Thor dead, he would incinerate him with the destroyer not backhand him. The only time Loki really stabbed Thor was in The Avengers. They were fighting, and it was a stab to the gut not the chest and it was with a really small blade that didn’t harm Thor that much. The stab in TDW was an illusion(again that was a stab to the gut), because when he lifted the illusion Thor’s armor was intact while in The Avengers, Thor’s armor remained torn after the stab.
No one said Thor shouldn’t have stopped Loki from betraying him. But Thor could simply make Loki unconscious with the obedience disk(I explained in this post that the device has two settings). That would be acceptable. But Thor chose to leave Loki in constant pain with the device on for an infinite amount of time. Yes, Thor and Loki are called gods and they are more durable. But just because they can tolerate more pain, it doesn’t make it ok to inflict pain on them. It’s still pain and the obedience disc is a torture device. And no Thor had no way of knowing that Loki could get out of it. In fact he knew Loki couldn’t free himself. Thor with all his power, was paralyzed by the obedience disc. Even his lightning couldn’t get him free from it. Only the control device could free Loki. And he was unable to move.
What is torture?
“The action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or to force them to do or say something, or for the pleasure
of the person inflicting the pain.”
Thor didn’t just stopped Loki’s betrayal. He inflicted severe pain on him for an infinite amount of time
as punishment for his betrayal and then had the audacity to gleefully preach Loki about growth and change and laugh at his pain.
What Thor did in TR was torture and that makes him so much ooc that I don’t consider TR Thor, the real Thor.
I think it would be appropriate to reiterate what I said in the last post linked in the above (the one arguing that the obedience disc is a torture device), so here it is again for people who don’t bother to follow links:
< I’ve been seeing a lot of people try to justify Thor* by pointing out that Loki has done worse things to him; most commonly they will cite the incident in The Avengers where Loki drops Thor out of the Helicarrier in the Hulk cage. (This is such a common move that I feel like it’s got to be in some Thor* stan/ Ragnarok defense playbook.) Here is why that comparison doesn’t accomplish what they want it to accomplish:
It was entirely reasonable for Loki to think he was not endangering Thor’s life. He knew Thor could get out of the cage because he had Mjolnir with him. As far as we can tell, in Ragnarok, Thor* had no way of knowing that the first people who would happen along were Korg & co. as opposed to, e.g., Topaz, who probably would have just killed Loki while he was incapacitated. Maybe he did have some way of knowing, but this was not made at all clear in the film. So even if he didn’t think he was endangering Loki’s life, he was being culpably negligent.
In The Avengers, Loki was acting as an adversary, and everyone was completely aware of that. He was trying to hamper his opponents by scattering them, and possibly to demoralize Thor by showing that he wasn’t going to get his brother back. In Ragnarok, Thor* presented what he did as some kind of “tough love” – punishing Loki “for his own good,” with the aim of getting Loki back on his side rather than (as Loki was doing in The Avengers) turning him decisively against him. If you can’t see why that’s kind of fucked up, well…
Loki is clearly aware that what he’s doing in The Avengers is wrong. He hesitates before he hits the button to drop the cage, and hesitates again (with tears in his eyes, FFS!) before he stabs Thor later. He’s conflicted, and it’s not unreasonable to think he regrets hurting Thor when he’s no longer under direct threat from Thanos (his attempts at self-justification in TDW have a defensive air that make me think the lady doth protest too much). In Ragnarok, Thor* just looks smug and self-righteous about the electrocution thing, even though he’s very aware that Loki is in severe pain. >
And I’m sure I’ve said it somewhere else, but again, it doesn’t really make sense to compare the electrocution in Ragnarok to the things Loki did to Thor in Thor 1 and The Avengers because in both of the latter cases, it’s made pretty clear that Loki isn’t in his right mind. In Thor 1, Loki has pretty clearly been profoundly disturbed by the revelation that he actually belongs to a race that he has been taught all his life to hate and fear (and that Thor has twice vowed to “finish”). He is convinced that the reason Odin always favored Thor is because Loki is really Jotun, not Asgardian, so he’s desperate to prove how very Asgardian and not Jotun he really is. I agree that it’s not clear whether Loki meant to kill Thor with the Destroyer; he must have known that killing Odin’s other son wouldn’t be a great way of earning his favor. (Maybe he had it backhand rather than incinerate him so he could pass it off as an accident… or maybe he lacked commitment there too.) At any rate, he is very obviously emotionally and psychologically unwell for… over half of the movie, tbh, but it becomes increasingly obvious in the last third.
In The Avengers, Loki shows up looking like shit; his eyes are wild and hollow and he’s saying some really weird stuff. When they communicate through the scepter, the Other threatens him and he looks terrified. No, Loki wasn’t completely under Thanos’s control and maybe he bears some responsibility for getting himself into that position… but again, he’s clearly been through some shit and is under severe duress. And, as noted above, he’s conflicted about hurting Thor.
Thor* has no such excuse or explanation in Ragnarok. On the contrary; he’s presented as being fully in control, cool-headed, rational, oh-so-cleverly out-thinking his clever brother. He even thought up this scheme in advance, because he predicted that Loki would betray him (for no good reason other than it was needed as set-up for the “trickster tricked” scenario where Loki gets his painful, humiliating comeuppance). Thor*’s action is more blameworthy than anything Loki has done to him because he does it while in full possession of his faculties and shows sadistic glee at making Loki suffer.
And no, Loki has not been stabbing Thor or “trying to kill him” since they were children. Taika Waititi pulled that out of his ass. It should be obvious from Thor 1 that Thor trusts Loki, that they’ve been comrades in arms for centuries, and that Loki’s betrayal and his demand that Thor fight him come as an incredible shock. If you want to accept the stabbing-since-childhood BS as canon, then you’d better stop citing anything Loki does in Thor 1, including telling Thor their father is dead and striking him with the Destroyer, because clearly you’re ignoring what that movie established as the longtime dynamic between them. You want to pretend previous canon doesn’t exist? Then at least do it consistently.
The second most irritating thing a person can say in regards to Loki is that that he faked his sacrifice in TDW. Bonus points if they’re a fan of Ragnarok, which goes out of its way to point out how Loki’s illusions are not solid. THEY ARE NOT SOLID. They become distorted when touched. So how the fuck did Loki fake being stabbed? And when he nearly got sucked into a black hole grenade saving Jane, was that part of his master plan to take the throne of Asgard, too? What about offering said throne to Thor? Ugh!
The most irritating thing a person can say in regards to Loki is that he faked his death/suicide in Thor. I have no words for these people. They render me speechless.
Logic? Consistency? Attention to the content of previous canon? What are those?
Moral complexity? A person who loves the hero but doesn’t always do exactly what he wants? What is that?
I’ve been told that there were people who claimed even before Ragnarok came out that Loki threw himself into the black hole at the end of Thor to escape being held accountable for his actions. If there are such people, I suspect that they started advocating this view as part of the backlash against the “Loki apologists,” so called, of “Loki’s Resistance,” who at the extreme end claim that Loki does not deserve blame for anything he has done, and instead lay all the blame on Odin’s terrible parenting, Thor’s bullying and alleged abuse, and Thanos’s brainwashing and/or full-on mind control. The reaction of Thor’s defenders has been to insist that Loki deserves unmitigated blame for everything and to undercut anything that appears to make Loki deserve our sympathy – including his suicide attempt. You might *think* Loki suffers from severe mental illness and profound self-loathing, but no: he was planning genocide even before he learned that he was Jotun (I have seen people claim this), and what looks like a suicide attempt was just slithering out of punishment.
Ragnarok has exacerbated and given canon legitimization to this tendency by trivializing the issues of Loki’s heritage and his attempted suicide. At a party on Sakaar, Loki tells a story that ends with him hanging over a rift in space, and “at that moment I let go.” Everyone laughs, including him. People have offered all kinds of explanations for why this isn’t as unbelievably insensitive as it seems: we all make light of our trauma to keep it from overwhelming us, of course Loki would do the same; or maybe he’s gone through a course of therapy through theater and has recovered from all his issues and moved on. But the other obvious explanation for why Loki might be laughing about letting himself fall is that it was never a suicide attempt; it was just him being his incorrigible trickster self, cleverly faking his death to get away with mass murder.
Loki is the Philosopher King 