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.
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.
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)
This is such an interesting contrast in reactions between Loki and Thor with the context of Odin’s quote, because you can tell that while Loki is taken aback, shocked, and even saddened by these words, Thor is still reeling from the revelation of Hela and impending Ragnarok and it doesn’t seem like Odin’s words even really register to him.He knows and has always known that Odin loves him; he’s never been made to doubt it and he has no reason to react with anything other than the barest acknowledgement while his head is still spinning with this new truth he must face.
Loki, however, is much more preoccupied and consumed with the verbal acknowledgement of Odin’s love, and the issue of Hela is little more than a footnote to the conversation for him. He knows much better than Thor how deceptive Odin is, and while initially he’s somewhat surprised by the reveal of Hela, he’s not bowled over in astonished shock the way Thor is.
Loki expects Odin’s lies and is far more bewildered by Odin’s love, while Thor expects Odin’s love and is stunned by Odin’s lies. There’s something incredibly straightforward in that, expressed in each of their reactions, that really just drives home the dichotomy between Thor and Loki in general.
The lowering of the gaze – the difference between the two.
This whole comparison reads like a John Mulaney joke.
“So I could never understand how someone would want to take over a planet. Like how could someone just go to someone else’s planet and try to rule it. And then I met his dad and I was like, “Oh, okay. I’m not going to do it, but I totally get it now.”
The one thing good that came out of Loki discovering the truth about being Jotunn? No more lowering his gaze when Odin speaks. It still hurts, but Odin saying that validates every thought Loki’s had about how Odin screwed him over. Compare “Your birthright was to die!” to “You were both born to be kings.” Daddy dearest lost all authority over Loki.
The same thing happens to Thor after Ragnarok. Hela and Odin’s past reveal that there’s no worthiness to be gained in respecting Odin’s authority or leadership example. Thor’s free to be a good man and a king. Those no longer need be necessarily at odds to facilitate idolizing his father.
You’re right about Loki in TDW. I wish you were right about Thor in Ragnarok, but the movie isn’t that deep or even self-consistent: Odin still appears to Thor in a vision to offer him wisdom and Thor says that he’s not as strong as Odin was. I think Ragnarok was just ignoring that “good man vs. great king” line the way it ignored most of the rest of the previous films.
i love how hilariously evil Loki looks in the first gif… I imagine the mural painter painting him normally and Odin being like “no, that doesn’t really… capture his personality”
what’s interesting is that the mural is clearly of post-avengers loki, unless he, at some point, wore his hair longer in the past. but his armor looks very avengers/tdw.
my theory: either loki-as-odin had this commissioned, OR – odin had it commissioned even after loki was sentenced and imprisoned. the family, together. always.
food for thought.
nah it auto-updates from the family photo album every decade or so. woulda got really awkward if loki hadn’t remembered to shut that feature off just in time before it gives him away and deletes frigga
Loki is the Philosopher King 