Scene from ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ (2017) // This is such an important moment for Loki. A LOT of Ragnarok posts coming up over the week people.
I have such a love/hate relationship with the trope of a father figure announcing a blanket “I love you” to a formerly estranged child. Because really? It brings nothing, solves nothing and helps nothing after decades of conflict that the parental figure was mostly directly responsible for. And yet I know I’m supposed to have warm feelings about it because I’m being fed the standard shortcut trope to insta-family love and it’s an improvement over “your birthright was to die” -which was the last conversation Odin had with Loki prior to this gifset.
“You came back,” Thor said dully. He’d been sitting on the edge of his bed staring at the floor between his feet for the last hour, unmoving, while the sun went down and the darkness crept across the floorboards.
Loki clicked the lamp on and Thor flinched away.
“Who gave you that- did HE give you that black eye?” Loki said, taking a step closer, his arm outstretched.
“Don’t touch me!” Thor snapped. “Of course he did.”
“I waited until I saw his car leave,” Loki whispered. “I couldn’t-”
Thor’s stomach twisted. “Mom told him to get out before she called the cops.” He finally looked up at Loki’s face, all pinched and drawn in on itself, his eyes way too big. They stared at each other for a long moment until Thor broke the silence. “Why?”
Why what? He didn’t even know what he was asking. Why had they been so careless? Why did Loki run? Why did Thor stay to defend them? Why had Odin reacted with such violence?
Why had they thought that loving each other could ever be anything less than heartbreaking?
“I don’t know.”
The answer to every question, really.
“Thor,” Loki said, his voice snagging, his face crumpling. Thor felt the world start to go sideways, spinning away into the abyss. He held out his arm. Loki came to him and wrapped his arms around Thor’s middle and they wet each other’s hair with their tears.
I was reading the Thor: the movie kids novel and it was like “Thor was like Odin but Loki was much closer to his mother” AND I ASDFK;AJLSDGJKL;ASDKFGJSLD
❤
OH OH OH and let me take this opportunity to add to my many excessive thoughts about Asgardian royal family values re: Odin Is The Worst Dad.
I know that a lot of people take Odin at face value wrt his feelings for Loki, I guess, and go OH HE REALLY DIDN’T TELL LOKI BECAUSE HE JUST LOVED HIM and LOKI WAS JUST TWISTING HIS WORDS LIKE HE SAID despite the meaningful repetition of “He always does things for a reason,” even though he tried initially to deny it to Loki by calling him son, even while Loki demanded to know WHAT MORE THAN THAT because there had to be more than that and they both knew it.
But, you guys, like you understand what he did right? You understand what his plan was?
He stole a baby, not just any baby, but the King of Jotunheim’s son, and raised it as Asgardian with the intention of “making a permanent peace” through Loki and he would have done it, if not for Thor and company’s trip to Jotunheim that shattered the truce.
Let that sink in.
The only way Loki is valuable for making permanent peace is if Odin reveals him as Laufey’s lost heir. (Which is why btw I call UNRELIABLE NARRATOR BULLSHIT on ~abandoned~ and ~left to die~ because YOU CANNOT MAKE PEACE THROUGH A BABY THEY DIDN’T FUCKING WANT.) He was making Thor king, so obviously, the time for the fruition of this plan was near.
And what was this plan exactly for permanent peace through Loki? IT COULD ONLY BE TO DEPOSE LAUFEY AND THEN PUT LOKI, LAUFEY’S RIGHTFUL HEIR, IN HIS PLACE.
~making a permanent peace~
with a King of Jotunheim Odin raised away from his home because he thought that they were too cruel or barbaric or wtfever for any other kind of diplomacy.
~making a permanent peace~
with a King of Jotunheim who would hate his own people and think them monsters that needed to be controlled and contained and feared because that’s all he’s ever known and no one ever bothered to try to get him to think otherwise.
~making a permanent peace~
by having stolen
and raised
a King of Jotunheim that would bow to Asgard.
MAN THAT ODIN SURE IS A KEEPER, ISN’T HE?
This post is beautiful and perfect. When I was considering Loki’s role as stolen relic, I was also thinking of him as a kind of trans-racial adoptee, being adopted into a culture where he is Other, and he discovers this, that like all the other things in the chamber, he’s been stripped of his original context, has nowhere to turn to but the space where he remains Othered, like how many TRAs were stripped of their original culture so they “fit in better” with the adopted one.
So the next time I watch this movie and watch Loki scream “JUST ANOTHER STOLEN RELIC” I might cry.
find myself shouting terrible things at the screen every time I watch Thor
am no longer allowed to watch Thor in the company or general vicinity of normal people
should never watch Thor while handling a steam iron
I swear, even when I’m 80, every time I watch Thor I will be like this:
In the comments to Loki: An Allegory About Internalized Racism (link above), there’s this comment by Thor writer Zack Stentz to prove that We Haven’t Just Imagined This™:
Loki is the Philosopher King 