Loki Blog Now

"I am burdened with glorious purpose". "Burdened". He even highlights this word, he makes a pause after saying it. He wants someone to understand: he didn't choose this purpose. Someone else burdened him with it.

(This makes Waldron's s$%tty script even worse)

...The double-meaning of Loki's words in this movie is impressive.

The only other time I can recall him saying the word "monster" was in T1, talking about HIMSELF. Mind you, when he gives Natasha the "so much red" speech, we see her through the glass, the glass that is showing us HIS reflection.

THE BEST USE

OK LOKI’S BITCH FACE

I am going to ramble extensively because I have been thinking a lot about Thor of late and I want to write it down. This is not anti Thor, but if you are super pro the TR depiction of Thor and can’t take a different viewpoint, then this might give you a stomach ulcer.

This happens at the end of each Thor film. Thor will somehow crawl back to Odin, hand over his identity to him, and beg his acknowledgement:

Thor 2011 - as seen in the scene above. Remember that Thor managed to regain his hammer only because Odin, who was watching, cried a tear. Therefore Thor only regains his identity when Odin allows it. 

Thor TDW - when Thor offers Odin (who is actually Loki thankfully) his hammer, which is his symbol of worth; thus acknowledging that Odin still controls his identity.

Thor Ragnarok - when at the end he cries to Odin about him being inferior in strength to Odin himself, and then Odin re-gifts him his identity, rebranded now as it is without the hammer. 

(”Are you Thor, the God of Hammers?” honestly just shut up Odin, its you who shaped him to be dependent upon it in the first place, so you could control him…)

Thor is not written to draw his identity from himself or his own life experience, instead he always draws it from Odin. This is a major failure in my opinion - Thor has had plenty of opportunities to develop separately from Odin, take leadership and think for himself. But because Marvel is blind to the dysfunction between Thor and Odin, they never realize they should rectify it. 

Marvel seeks to mindlessly venerate and glorify this old white guy, regardless of what evil he has done, which he has never acknowledged himself let alone faced justice for. Other characters face their sins and face punishment. Thor got exiled, both Loki and Hela got a mental break down and imprisonment, both Thor and Loki recognized what they did was wrong. It’s only Odin who gets to say “sorry lol your problem now” and then poop off in a cloud of sparkles. 

They mismanage Thor as a hero and leave him trapped. This is the reason some people considered Thor to be “boring” and Loki to be more interesting in the first two films. Not because Thor is an idiot, but because we never really see him struggle with who he is and reach a new conclusion on his own. We do however see this a lot with Loki, often for the worst, which is more interesting to watch. If they bothered to give Thor the same complexity from the get go, we would not have had to deal with the inane character-reset that was TR.

Repetitively making Thor grovel to the most immoral character in the Thor series is the epitome of the lack of solid, complex emotional character growth for Thor. The treated Thor like he was “perfect” after he learnt that genocide was wrong, and while I enjoyed the growth in Thor 2011, that was really not all I needed to see from him. Thor was never allowed to become independent of Odin and form his own moral foundation as his motivation. This is maybe why he was forced into the vengeance motivation in IW; there was nothing else left for Thor at that point. 

And that failed, so what is left of Thor now? 

Not much. It’s not tragic writing which has happened to Thor, its daft writing. Purposefully stupid writing, purposefully stripping and ruining Thor.

There is plenty of opportunity to give Thor depth, just as his character was from the first two movies, without needing to reset his character. There is a lot of complexity there to flesh out. A writer with some intellect and a brain could have done it, and restored confidence in Thor for Thor Ragnarok, without resetting him and “messing him up as much as possible.”

One of the major hangups seems to be that people think Thor is dumb, and this is a place for complexity to be fleshed out. Let me give an example that I’ve thought of, its a bit of a reach, but… Take for instance a character like Naruto - who is really not a very bright spark of a character, but the guy struggles through moral dilemmas, builds a foundation of motivation for his heroism, and eventually you begin to respect him for it. Thor did not struggle through moral dilemmas like that at all, because “the right thing” is defined by the movie as automatically “the thing that Thor wants” which leaves Thor no room to think. Thor is not written to be dumb like Naruto is either, he is just written badly, so people sometimes perceive him as such.

Another issue people seem to have that I have noticed (particularly big Loki stans) is that Thor was the favourite child and therefore he should have just automatically known better because he “wasn’t abused.” Here is more room for complexity to be added to Thor. I am myself a big Loki stan, and I empathize with the anger of our position, as well as the often more personal side of identifying with Loki. But it’s not accurate to think that being the golden child is not abuse. Think for instance Azula from ATLA. She had no identity of her own outside of Ozai and eventually it drove her completely over the edge. 

This aspect of Thor is never addressed because Marvel never let Thor realize that he is the favourite and Loki is the scapegoat. They never allow the brothers the most obvious route to team up; based on the mutual recognition of their dysfunctional upbringing, and acknowledgement of how it has negatively affected both them and their relationship. On the contrary, they rather disgustingly write Thor to scapegoat Loki himself (obedience disk scene) and blindly continue the mess that their family is. It’s a huge loss of complexity which ABSOLUTELY SHOULD have been added to Thor’s character.

It's even funnier when it's a pre Thor 1 fic. (Like why is the Asgardian prince being addressed by the name that suggests he's the son of the Jotun king, who's Asgard's long time enemy? He should be called Odinson not Laufeyson.) He most certainly won't call himself Laufeyson, or let anyone else call him by that name in a setting where his Jotun origins aren't common knowledge.

Moreover, post Thor 1, it's a pretty big deal for Loki, to be called by the name of the father he has no connection with, who, as far as he knows, abandoned him as a baby, who he killed himself, and lastly, who belonged to a people he was taught to hate. He may learn to accept that heritage, slowly, over the course of time, but he most certainly won't call himself Laufeyson. Even in The Dark World, he called himself "Loki of Jotunheim" and not Laufeyson when he was trying to lure the dark elves into trusting him with handing over Jane.

To some extent, the same logic applies to the name Odinson as well. But Loki uses it based on convenience. Plus it's the name everyone knows him by in Asgard, and there's no reason for him to reject it pre Thor 1, or even afterwards. Unless it's someone really close to him or someone who understands his strained relationship with Odin, he won't bring it up.

What he usually goes by, post Thor 1, is Loki of Asgard, even though, in his perspective, he doesn't belong there either. But it's a connection that most people know of, hence he uses it based on that.

Now tell me Odin himself isn't an in-universe racist.

(You can't, he insisted they should leave Jane to die from Aether and compared her to an animal because she was human)

Odin basically had two choices after kidnapping Loki: Make the Jotuns out to be monsters and try to make Loki look inferior to Thor and to Asgardians in general, thus making Odin's past actions look more like pest control than like a genocide - or admit that the Jotuns are just people like themselves, and Loki is a lovely person and a good son and brother, thus admitting that what Odin did to Loki was monstrous. That Odin is the monster.

Odin wanted to protect himself from the truth of how little Loki deserved any of what Odin did to him and his people. Because to Odin specifically, that truth is damaging enough to need protection from. So badly that he can't even say directly that he's trying to avoid it.

Loki’s choice of clothing.

From what we’ve seen in Loki’s earlier portrayals, he’s always attempted to blend in with his surroundings. Established by all his visits to earth. But Loki doesn’t stay in his Midgardian garb for long, he goes right back to his Asgardian armor. 

In Ragnarok, we see Loki sport several slightly varied clothing. This is not out of character, especially since he’s trying to belong on Sakaar. (Though I would argue, that he’d wear something more intricate than the same getup with varying colors.) What I find out of character, is that he didn’t go back into his Asgardian clothing when returning to Asgard or after everyone leaves on the ship.

There is no way, what he was wearing from Sakaar was as protective as anything he owned from Asgard. 

And after a thousand years of being a prince there, those tastes don’t exactly change. 

THE BEST USE

OK LOKI’S BITCH FACE

I am going to ramble extensively because I have been thinking a lot about Thor of late and I want to write it down. This is not anti Thor, but if you are super pro the TR depiction of Thor and can’t take a different viewpoint, then this might give you a stomach ulcer.

This happens at the end of each Thor film. Thor will somehow crawl back to Odin, hand over his identity to him, and beg his acknowledgement:

Thor 2011 - as seen in the scene above. Remember that Thor managed to regain his hammer only because Odin, who was watching, cried a tear. Therefore Thor only regains his identity when Odin allows it. 

Thor TDW - when Thor offers Odin (who is actually Loki thankfully) his hammer, which is his symbol of worth; thus acknowledging that Odin still controls his identity.

Thor Ragnarok - when at the end he cries to Odin about him being inferior in strength to Odin himself, and then Odin re-gifts him his identity, rebranded now as it is without the hammer. 

(”Are you Thor, the God of Hammers?” honestly just shut up Odin, its you who shaped him to be dependent upon it in the first place, so you could control him…)

Thor is not written to draw his identity from himself or his own life experience, instead he always draws it from Odin. This is a major failure in my opinion - Thor has had plenty of opportunities to develop separately from Odin, take leadership and think for himself. But because Marvel is blind to the dysfunction between Thor and Odin, they never realize they should rectify it. 

Marvel seeks to mindlessly venerate and glorify this old white guy, regardless of what evil he has done, which he has never acknowledged himself let alone faced justice for. Other characters face their sins and face punishment. Thor got exiled, both Loki and Hela got a mental break down and imprisonment, both Thor and Loki recognized what they did was wrong. It’s only Odin who gets to say “sorry lol your problem now” and then poop off in a cloud of sparkles. 

They mismanage Thor as a hero and leave him trapped. This is the reason some people considered Thor to be “boring” and Loki to be more interesting in the first two films. Not because Thor is an idiot, but because we never really see him struggle with who he is and reach a new conclusion on his own. We do however see this a lot with Loki, often for the worst, which is more interesting to watch. If they bothered to give Thor the same complexity from the get go, we would not have had to deal with the inane character-reset that was TR.

Repetitively making Thor grovel to the most immoral character in the Thor series is the epitome of the lack of solid, complex emotional character growth for Thor. The treated Thor like he was “perfect” after he learnt that genocide was wrong, and while I enjoyed the growth in Thor 2011, that was really not all I needed to see from him. Thor was never allowed to become independent of Odin and form his own moral foundation as his motivation. This is maybe why he was forced into the vengeance motivation in IW; there was nothing else left for Thor at that point. 

And that failed, so what is left of Thor now? 

Not much. It’s not tragic writing which has happened to Thor, its daft writing. Purposefully stupid writing, purposefully stripping and ruining Thor.

There is plenty of opportunity to give Thor depth, just as his character was from the first two movies, without needing to reset his character. There is a lot of complexity there to flesh out. A writer with some intellect and a brain could have done it, and restored confidence in Thor for Thor Ragnarok, without resetting him and “messing him up as much as possible.”

One of the major hangups seems to be that people think Thor is dumb, and this is a place for complexity to be fleshed out. Let me give an example that I’ve thought of, its a bit of a reach, but… Take for instance a character like Naruto - who is really not a very bright spark of a character, but the guy struggles through moral dilemmas, builds a foundation of motivation for his heroism, and eventually you begin to respect him for it. Thor did not struggle through moral dilemmas like that at all, because “the right thing” is defined by the movie as automatically “the thing that Thor wants” which leaves Thor no room to think. Thor is not written to be dumb like Naruto is either, he is just written badly, so people sometimes perceive him as such.

Another issue people seem to have that I have noticed (particularly big Loki stans) is that Thor was the favourite child and therefore he should have just automatically known better because he “wasn’t abused.” Here is more room for complexity to be added to Thor. I am myself a big Loki stan, and I empathize with the anger of our position, as well as the often more personal side of identifying with Loki. But it’s not accurate to think that being the golden child is not abuse. Think for instance Azula from ATLA. She had no identity of her own outside of Ozai and eventually it drove her completely over the edge. 

This aspect of Thor is never addressed because Marvel never let Thor realize that he is the favourite and Loki is the scapegoat. They never allow the brothers the most obvious route to team up; based on the mutual recognition of their dysfunctional upbringing, and acknowledgement of how it has negatively affected both them and their relationship. On the contrary, they rather disgustingly write Thor to scapegoat Loki himself (obedience disk scene) and blindly continue the mess that their family is. It’s a huge loss of complexity which ABSOLUTELY SHOULD have been added to Thor’s character.

He's my friend.