Everyone is upset that we didn’t get a Thorki hug, but what about The Neck Thing™? That’s way more intimate to me than a hug because it’s a personal thing between them that Thor does to express his love for Loki without speaking. Why didn’t we get that? I would have taken that over a hug any day. :( Or if not that, why not have Thor mention that Loki finally came home, or Loki saying it? That was all Thor asked him to do in The Avengers.

philosopherking1887:

To be honest, I kind of suspect that The Neck Thing™ was one of the things Chris Hemsworth was tired of. It does seem oddly antiquated, characteristic of an ancient warrior culture (though lord knows why it strikes me that way, since I’ve never been in an ancient warrior culture), and they were going for a more modern Thor this time (which sometimes annoyed me). It also reflects a particular kind of dynamic between Thor and Loki: a protective, almost possessive or controlling big-brotherly affection, whereas in Ragnarok Thor was taking a more hands-off approach, both literally and metaphorically. Many of us here in Thorki-land like the possessive dynamic and the ancient-warrior-culture vibe, so we’re into The Neck Thing, but other viewers might find it weird.

@darklittlestories, you missed my Discourse on The Neck Thing™.

(Reply to The Neck Thing) I get why you would see it that way, that the gesture scared him because it threatened the mission. I always interpreted the longing look in his eyes to mean that the nostalgia of the touch made him consider taking up Thor’s offer: to stop everything and come home. That little laugh and head shake he does afterward always made me think that he was pushing the thought from his mind because he feels he can’t stop, because he feared Thanos or whatever reason he had.

Oh, absolutely. As I’m sure you know, because I talk about it a lot on my blog (it’s easier for me to point people to it than rewrite it on Tumblr as meta, but people usually aren’t interested…), I have written a fic, The Abyss Gazes Also, speculating about how exactly Thanos got Loki to the point where he was willing to go to Earth to fetch the Tesseract for him. It’s now reached the events of The Avengers, which I’m telling from Loki’s POV, and the most recent chapter deals with that conversation with Thor, including Loki’s conflicted feelings about Thor trying The Neck Thing on him (twice!).

As for The Neck Thing™ I see what you mean about it having an old culture feel. It’s very intimate, and nowadays men don’t show affection like that (usually). With that being said, they did The Neck Thing in The Avengers, and I really feel like it worked there. I didn’t ship Thorki when I first saw that movie, and I was really touched by how the gesture affected Loki – you could see it in his eyes how much it meant to him, probably because it reminded him of their bond and made him feel safe.

I would say it made him feel the opposite of safe, because the re-emergence of affectionate feelings toward Thor was a threat to his ability to carry out his mission! But yes, you could really see how the gesture called up strong associations and memories of their relationship over the centuries.

Everyone is upset that we didn’t get a Thorki hug, but what about The Neck Thing™? That’s way more intimate to me than a hug because it’s a personal thing between them that Thor does to express his love for Loki without speaking. Why didn’t we get that? I would have taken that over a hug any day. :( Or if not that, why not have Thor mention that Loki finally came home, or Loki saying it? That was all Thor asked him to do in The Avengers.

To be honest, I kind of suspect that The Neck Thing™ was one of the things Chris Hemsworth was tired of. It does seem oddly antiquated, characteristic of an ancient warrior culture (though lord knows why it strikes me that way, since I’ve never been in an ancient warrior culture), and they were going for a more modern Thor this time (which sometimes annoyed me). It also reflects a particular kind of dynamic between Thor and Loki: a protective, almost possessive or controlling big-brotherly affection, whereas in Ragnarok Thor was taking a more hands-off approach, both literally and metaphorically. Many of us here in Thorki-land like the possessive dynamic and the ancient-warrior-culture vibe, so we’re into The Neck Thing, but other viewers might find it weird.