Hi! Thank
you for sending this interesting ask! š
I assume youāre referring to this:
No, I donāt
agree with it. This is the trope that TR was trying to maintain by retconning
all the previous canon in the franchise. Thor has never been a love martyr(except maybe once)
because:
1. Thor is
not the perfect and blameless angel who loves his completely evil brother. Thor
and Loki are both flawed characters and their relationship has been on the rocks because they both hurt each other and never actually talked about it.
2. Unlike
what Thor thinks, most of Lokiās horrible actions wasnāt about hurting Thor.
3. It didnāt
take a long time until Ragnarok for Thor to give up on Loki. Thor gave up on him
in Avengers.
Letās discuss
these points in more details:
Thor starts
his journey as an arrogant warmonger prince. He is the golden child of his
realm and Loki is his shadow. No one respects Loki or take him seriously the
way they respect Thor. Not guards, not Heimdall, not Thorsā friends and not
even servants. The way Thor treated Loki certainly had an effect on Lokiās
situation(aside from other cultural aspects). Thor doesnāt respect Loki: āEnough!ā,
āKnow your place brother!ā, āSome do battles, other do tricksā.
He doesnāt even look at Loki, when Loki speaks with him. The way Loki reacts
after these mistreatments doesnāt show his surprise, it shows that heās used to
them. Despite all of this, Loki still cares about Thor and Loves him: āYou are
my brother and my friend. Sometimes Iām envious but never doubt that I love youā.
Sabotaging
Thorās coronation was not a betrayal to Thor. Loki knew that Thor wasnāt fit to be a king yet, and
he tried to stop it. Just like Thor tried to take the throne from Hela, who was
the rightful heir, because she wasnāt suitable for the job.
I always
think the worst thing that Loki has ever done to Thor is lying to him when Thor
was in SHIELD when he was already down after failing to lift Mjolnir. Thorās āCan
I come home?ā and his tears always break my heart.
Now the
paragraph says that Loki tried to kill Thor at least twice! No, Loki almost
killed him once with the destroyer. But that was it. In their fight on the
Bifrost he only tried to stop Thor and stall him so he can destroy Jotunheim.
After that Loki never tried to kill Thor. He dropped Thor in the Hellicarrier
because he knew if Mjolnir could crack that glass, it could also break it. He
was never surprised that Thor showed up later. And donāt tell me him stabbing
Thor with that tiny dagger was an attempt on Thorās life.
Loki trying
to commit genocide on Jotunhim wasnāt about hurting Thor, it was about proving
his worthiness to Odin. Loki killed Coulson mostly because he was in his way
and he was threatening Loki with a destroyer gun. Ā But faking his death to usurp Odin? Really?
*sighs* Lokiās illusions are not solid unless itās on the person. So Loki
getting stabbed by Kursed wasnāt an illusion. He was really stabbed through
the chest to save Thor. He had no way of knowing what would happen when he attacked
Kursed. This wasnāt planned. And he couldnāt know that he would survive it. So
after he survived he didnāt tell Thor because Thor promised he would return
Loki to his cell. Usurping the throne from Odin had nothing to do with Thor.
Again it wasnāt about hurting Thor. It was about getting his revenge on Odin
for sentencing him to solitary confinement for life and all the other awful
things heād done. Then Loki as Odin offered the throne to Thor. Loki even asked him to confirm
that it was really what Thor wanted and wasnāt Janeās wish. None of the things
that the paragraph mentioned was an act of betrayal against Thor. So the line
that Thor says in TR: āI trust you, you betray me. Round and round in
circles we goā is not true.
Now letās
talk about Thor giving up on Loki and the only situation that love martyr trope can be applied to him. When he found Loki on Earth, first he asked
about Tesseract, then he said Lokiās grievances were imagined slights and then threatened
him. He once again tried to reason with Loki on the Stark Tower and was stabbed
for it. That was the last time Thor ever tried to talk to Loki. That was when
he gave up on Loki. It was obvious that Thor had forgiven Loki after everything Loki did to him in the first Thor movie and still wanted Loki to go home. He made mistakes when he was talking to Loki, but imo forgiving Loki after the way he lied to him and almost killed him was a big deal and that makes Thor a love martyr. But then Thor gives up on Loki after he is stabbed. And thatās the end of him being in the love martyr trope. He never visited Loki when Loki was imprisoned. Not even to
tell him that their mother was dead. Even when he went to Loki for help, Thor
treated Loki like a stolen relic(ālocked away here until you may have use of
meā): āI did not come here to share our griefā āI grant it to
you, vengeance, and after this cellā.
Thor and
Loki both loved and cared about each other despite the fact that the other one
hurt them. But Thor is not a love martyr. He never tried to talk to Loki and
understand him about his just grievances. He never asked Loki what happened to
him after he let go. He also made mistakes. He is not blameless in all of this.
And I just talked about the Thor we saw in every movie except TR. Because TR
Thor is very ooc and he constantly dismisses Loki and his pain. In other movies Thor simply doesnāt understand Loki. In TR he just doesnāt care to understand despite Loki trying to explain to him and trying to find a common ground with Thor. What Thor does in TR is a disgusting reverse psychology method, not giving up on Loki. Because āyouāre lateā implies that Thor knew Loki would come. So imo that paragraph in TV tropes page got it all wrong.
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 theyāre a fan of Ragnarok, which goes out of its way to point out how Lokiās 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!Ā
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 doesnāt always do exactly what he wants? What is that?
Iāve 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 theĀ āLoki apologists,ā so called, ofĀ āLokiās Resistance,ā who at the extreme end claim that Loki does not deserve blame for anything he has done, and instead lay all the blame on Odinās terrible parenting, Thorās bullying and alleged abuse, and Thanosās brainwashing and/or full-on mind control. The reaction of Thorās 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 Lokiās heritage and his attempted suicide. At a party on Sakaar, Loki tells a story that ends with him hanging over a rift in space, andĀ āat that moment I let go.ā Everyone laughs, including him. People have offered all kinds of explanations for why this isnāt 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 heās 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.
Now if thatās doesnāt spark a Loki movie, I donāt know what will.
I love you for saying this.
āNot enough Loki.ā -Rolling Stone
Just casually bringing this back in 2018
how the hell did Marvel manage to completely miss each and every one of these reviews, and even more just like them
YO MARVEL! DUHHHHHHHH! ALL TOGETHER NOW EVERYONEā¦.DUHHHHHHHHHH! IDIOTS! š
I will reblog this from here to eternity. ā>_<ā
Just a reminder of what was good in TDW and the best part of The Avengers. Marvel carelessly, or petulantly, threw away its greatest treasure because too many people valued it more highly than the cheap flashy toys they were trying to sell. (P.S. is it just me or does Jeannette Catsoulis of the New York Times seem to have a crush?)
Loki is the Philosopher King 