This is not something we’ve seen him do before. Not that he would have had any occasion to in previous movies, but this is kind of in a different category from other things he does with magic: mostly illusions, shapeshifting, and moving things around.
This is some wild-ass, blatantly self-interested speculation, but… what if the power to draw out other people’s memories is a relatively new ability that he gained from his interaction with the Mind Stone? Scarlet Witch got her powers from experimentation with the Mind Stone, and one of the things we’ve seen her do is get into people’s heads and make them experience things based on their worst fears and most painful memories.
This at least suggests that forcing people to re-experience memories is one of the things that the Mind Stone can do, in addition to co-opting their will to make them serve the aims of the wielder. I think everyone I know has dismissed the idea that Thanos was controlling Loki the way Loki controlled Barton and Selvig; that’s probably not something you can do to a magically powerful being like Loki. BUT Scarlet Witch was able to do the fear-exploiting thing with Thor, and Loki simultaneously experienced and forced the Valkyrie to re-experience her worst memory – that is something you can do to more powerful beings.
So… this provides some circumstantial evidence in favor of the theory I explore in my fic The Abyss Gazes Also about what happened between Thanos and Loki: that Thanos exploited Loki’s own fears, resentments, and insecurities and forced him to re-experience his most traumatic memories involving his family (especially Thor and Odin) to manipulate him into invading Earth on Thanos’s behalf and fighting against his adoptive family.
@philosopherking1887 Honestly, my inclination as well. It’s not exactly like Loki would have been around to experience this happening so he couldn’t project something that he knew or witnessed, he had to have reached into her mind.
I further thought that Loki may have also been able to blend some of these new powers into whatever the hell he did to Odin because Odin would not have known or expected his son to come at him with these abilities.
(Sidenote, my ‘funny’ head canon is that Odin regaining his mind is what caused the actual destruction of that Shady Acres old folks home, take that or leave it :p)
Oh, interesting point about Odin. That actually suggests that the Mind Stone allows someone to delete or alter memories, or maybe even implant false ones. I was resisting the idea that that was something Thanos could have done to Loki – even though it’s a much neater explanation of the “I remember you tossing me into an abyss” line – because I thought it would be more interesting, poignant, and ultimately fucked-up if he was able to get Loki to the point he was at in “The Avengers” using only Loki’s own memories and emotions as raw material…
I think it’s two things – first of all, I do think Loki just genuinely likes dressing up and looking nice. I mean, in Thor we see him change clothes a few times where others (if I recall) don’t, and in this movie he had at least two thematic costume changes (not including the black suit). it’s part of his Aesthetic, and Loki is very much about the Aesthetic.
(more seriously: he’s very appearance-conscious in basically every way and that includes, of course, clothing.)
so then on Earth – Thor can dress down, I think because Thor is more comfortable on Earth generally (where for Loki it’s not a place he particularly wants to be) and also because Thor doesn’t feel the same need Loki does to project a specific image – an image, like you say, of authority, control, and status. three things Loki is never going to want to relinquish.
and it does fit in with what we’ve seen Loki wear when he comes toEarth before, which. it definitely is a lot of style choice. (and it’s such a good style.)
Costume meta!!!! YESSSS.
Loki is always as *covered* and buttoned up as possible, with which I’m obsessed. (It shows up in a lot of fanfiction and meta, so it’s not just me.) It reflects his closed off wariness and it’s always a sort of emotional armor, I think.
He’s so, so insecure, our Loki, that he hides behind this armor and yes, it absolutely projects an air of authority and confidence that he needs desperately to perform. I could talk for HOURS about his costuming.
I felt actually punched in the face when the first trailers were released and we saw him *not* wearing his signature green and black and gold.
That outfit, though, is in the Grandmaster’s colors. It reinforces the “ownership” of people the Grandmaster assumes on Sakaar. It’s a very Sakaar ensemble and in context I love it. Loki’s ingratiated himself to the most powerful being and his schemes have schemes.
Thor, of course, is often seen half-naked, sleeveless, and in casual clothing on Midgard. He’s more open, egregious, and straightforward. The contrast is beautiful between the brothers’ attire.
(Luna I keep forgetting to ask you what you thought of the costuming after seeing the movie!)
Amazing points about Loki’s attire.
Ah, well they are definitely not just my observations. I’m sure part of this comes from @philosopherking1887 (OMG her story The Abyss Gazes Also has an incredible cool explanation for Loki’s Avengers outfit) and there are SO many others who’ve written great observations about Loki’s clothing.
Clearly I’m falling down on my costume-obsessing job, because I didn’t notice that somehow, between when Loki leaves Sakaar and when he shows up on Asgard, he changes into a costume with the same design but different colors (basically blue –> black and yellow –> green, with a few detail exceptions). Did he have a change of clothes stashed in a pocket dimension, or does he have the power to just change the color of his clothing, like the fairies in the Disney Sleeping Beauty fighting over whether the dress should be pink or blue…?
I’m not sure I agree that for Loki Earth is “not a place he particularly wants to be.” For silly reasons peculiar to me, I write Loki in fic as visiting Earth once or twice a century to check out the cultural development… but aside from that, it’s not unreasonable to think that before the first Thor movie, Loki actually knows more about Earth than Thor does. Thor is confused by pretty much everything, but when Loki comes down to tell Thor that Odin is dead, he’s impeccably and fashionably dressed in a suit, coat, and scarf. This doesn’t even seem to be necessary, because he keeps himself invisible to everyone except Thor (though maybe he was taking precautions in case the invisibility spell slipped?); it seems he dressed in Western Midgardian style because he felt like it. And then in The Avengers, after he’s spent a year off in the wilds of the universe but probably not on Earth (depending on what was going on in the tag scene to Thor), he puts on (or glamours himself?) another elegant Midgardian-style suit and scarf. So he seems to have acquired some Earth fashion sense prior to the events of Thor.
But yeah, I definitely agree that Loki’s clothing is armor in more ways than one. (More things he has in common with Tony Stark…) He hides himself behind it; he allows it to project the confidence, “authority, control, and status” that he doesn’t have, or doesn’t feel that he has, in his own right. It’s yet another layer of deception. And the fact that he changes costume so often is another sign of his character: he’s a bit of a chameleon, projecting a different face for different people or in different circumstances. He cares a lot about appearances, both for instrumental reasons and, I suspect along with OP, for their own sake. I think he and Oscar Wilde would agree about a lot of things…
Thor got buzzed by that disk thing how many times in this movie. At least four if not more. Yet I keep seeing posts about thor torturing loki by setting it off on him so he could get back to asgard? Like I don’t get it and I love Loki. Thor didn’t do anything wrong, cruel or mean. And he knew damn well that loki would get out of it. There is like a list a mile long of things loki has done to thor so I just don’t get the thor bashing. They had a great sibling interaction in this movie. And I think it was made clearer than ever that no matter how they might fight or annoy each other, they are brothers and they love each other as such.
Exactly! I don’t see the big deal. But I’m not one to talk, I nearly electrocuted my sister when I was a teenager, not on purpose but I rather enjoyed it.
Here are my problems with it (and note that I don’t hate Thor; I’m just troubled by this specific action):
1) Thor didn’t know how long it would take for someone to happen along, and it did seem to take a while. Thor got shocked several times, but only for a few seconds each time. Loki was being shocked continuously for at least 10 minutes.
2) Thor also didn’t know who would be the first to come along. Luckily it was Korg and he’s a humanitarian, so of course he’s going to turn the thing off. If it had been the Grandmaster, he probably would have turned it off to give Loki a chance to explain himself, and Loki could almost certainly handle him. But what if it had been Topaz? She might have killed Loki while he was still incapacitated. So Thor was taking a major gamble with Loki’s life, in a way that Loki wasn’t when he dropped Thor out of the Helicarrier in The Avengers – he knew Thor could use Mjolnir to get out.
I really loved Thor Ragnarok and I’m not tired of drawing fan stuff yet so I chose Loki for today’s animation practice. I actually wanted to animate Thor doing something stupid as a counterpart but ran out of time; maybe later 😀
A thing I’ve noticed that might be helpful for some other people who animate:
What I’ve learned in the last couple of weeks is that it’s really important to spend time around the storytelling drawings. Meaning when planning it’s important to know that you should spend a couple of frames very close to them in order to make them noticeable. I used to think that moving holds are somehow “lazy” and that you’d always have to have some body part following through while hitting an important pose in order to make it look natural, but I was wrong. My animations have improved a huge deal since I’ve started not doing crazy hand movements etc while hitting an important pose. You can do all of that with the frames that go from one storytelling part to the next. Not saying you should ALWAYS avoid big overlapping actions while having important poses, but I’ve just realized that it OFTEN works better when you’re hitting the pose hard and keep the big overlapping stuff for the breakdowns. Hope this helps someone out there(and also that I’m making sense), just bear in mind I’m just learning and everyone has to see what works best for them and the specific action. Just felt like sharing some of the thought process with you, someone might have the same struggles.
Loki is the Philosopher King 
