Yessssssssss…..
Tag: Loki
i cannot BELIEVE how much more significant the final scene in tdw is after having watched that deleted scene. yeah, i know loki wouldn’t have been able to lift it and the jig would have been up, but thor is literally handing him the one thing he wants most in this world and loki tells him to keep it, he’s worthy and he’s proud of him and my god i just have so many brodinson feelings rn
But Mjölnir isn’t the one thing Loki wants most in the world. Nor is it ‘being King’. Loki was King, legitimately, in ‘Thor’, and what does he fantasize over in the ‘fur scene’? Not ‘being King’not ‘sitting on the Throne’, but being adored and respected by Asgard, having the people cheer him as they did for Thor but not for him, having Sif and the Four loyally and respectfully bow to him, as they did for Thor but not for him.
Lifting Mjölnir is not about having Mjölnir but being able to lift it, ie: ‘being worthy’. Of course, ‘being worthy to lift Mjölnir’ has nothing to do with true inner worth (as we would measure it), or else Thor and Odin would not been able to lift her (being tamtrum-throwing mass-murderders both), but it is the embodiment of what Loki has been taunted with all his long life and never got: the approval and ‘love’ of Odin.
That’s the tragedy of Loki: no matter how much he tries to distance himself from Odin, he was raised to value Odin’s approval and he will never get it. Because Loki is the Jew who was adopted and raised by Adolf Hitler, the African-American who was adopted and raised by the leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Raised to their ideals and values, hating himself for what he is, wanting to be what he was raised to love but knowing that no matter how hard he tries he will never obtain it, for the simple reason that he was born Jotun. The very fact that a Jotun has dared to try to imitate the deeds of ‘his betters’ is apparantly reason for affront, as nothing Loki does is even half as bad as the things that Odin or Thor do to great acclaim. When Loki attempts to do (without succeeding, I might add) the same things to the Jotnar and Midgardians as Odin or Thor did to the Jotnar, to Dark Elves or to ‘rebels’, both Odin and Thor act shocked; apparantly it’s not just about who does the deed, but also to whom it is done. A Midgardian and Aesir life is apparantly worth infinately more than a Jotun or a ‘creature’, no matter how sentient.
This is exactly the kind of meta that goes on in my head when it comes to Loki. It is truly what his tragedy is-raised by a tyrant, made to hate his own race, never got the said tyrant’s approval… and lastly, he craves respect, never gets that either.
Aaaand my dam of Loki feels bursts…
It’s fascinating the change in expressions from the two gifs. In the first one he’s determined and sets out to help Thor.
In the second, he realizes that his act of heroism didn’t matter: Kursed lived. Then there’s that look of resignation, bordering on despair, as he realizes what’s coming next.
Loki knows he’s going to die. Just when he made the choice to fight to live (you can see when Thor saves him from that mini void explosion that he’s started hoping -even wanting- to live through this) it’s gone.Yes. This.
It’s kind of even worse when you consider that Thor saved him from death so that he could die to save Thor. You can totally see Loki playing it that way in his head. He’s always secondary to Thor. Even when it’s his own choice, he makes it that way. Always.
we were raised together, we played together, we fought together, do you remember none of that?
Loki and Volstagg between ‘Thor’ and ‘Thor 2’
Look at his reactions, how much Loki has changed since Thor.
EXACTLY.
From a certain kind of emotional fragility that is born of a desperation to please and a lack of assurance about his place in Asgardian society and his validity among the ranks of people for whom he cares….
….to a hardened certitude and miserly self-serving myopic focus to win, to triumph over these people who never took him seriously, to NOT GIVE THEM THE SATISFACTION of seeing him upset, because Loki now knows the only role he can play among the Aesir is to be their downfall, their change, their chaos, their demise.
Self. Fulfilling. Prophecy.
Aided in large part by the “harmless,” callous disregard of “friends.”
And I am certainly not saying the Warriors Three, Sif, Thor or even Odin is to blame for Loki DOING what loki DID. Do I think they CONTRIBUTED to him going off the deep end? Yes.
Do I think he’s different because he’s made damned certain he’ll never be that vulnerable to the opinion of another person again?
Yes.
New Loki: Exhibit A.
Loki basically grew up and lived most of his life in an environment that was toxic for him. Not deliberately made so, at least not for him specifically, but it worked against him for a very long time until he got to the point of just always being on guard.
Imagine if you knew someone who was adjusted for breathing a different concentration of, say, oxygen than everybody else. They can breathe the same air as people around them, but it’s not right for them. They have to gasp. They have to struggle. They’re always ill. Nobody deliberately set this up, it’s just how it is. But the problem is that no one else seems to notice. They don’t bother to watch long enough to note the gasping and the illness, because the person does their best to cover it up – and for good reason. Whenever it IS noticed, they’re blamed for it. “Why can’t you just breathe like we do? It’s not that hard.” So they try not to let it show. And slowly they’re being poisoned, and it’s ignored, because surely it’s their fault if they can’t fit in just like everyone else. And they get the guilt and shame of that added on top, of being too weak and weird to handle it, while at the same time they KNOW they can’t help it, and so resentment builds equally alongside self-loathing.
That’s Loki. It’s funny and sad that, as Hemsworth put it, this “came out of nowhere” for Thor. Thor really must not have been paying attention. Because Loki’s been gasping and struggling for a long time now, and the person closest to him still manages to be surprised that a toxic life bred an equally toxic personality.
There’s also what he’s presumed to have gone through after falling into the Void, the stuff he’s seen, the torture we know he’s endured (because we see it in The Avengers). Likely he no longer cares about Volstagg’s threats here, because he has firsthand experience with so much worse. Nothing the W4 can do to him is even scary anymore… and all that is on top of no longer giving a shit about the approval of people who he now knows were never his friends in the first place.
Both physically and emotionally, Volstagg and his pals simply can’t even touch Loki anymore.
“I thought we could unite our kingdoms one day. Bring about an alliance, bring about a permanent peace – through you.”
From the first time I saw the movie Thor in the theater, something about this line from Odin bugged me. Something about it just was not right. Lately I’ve gotten back into Wars of the Roses history and all the monarchical politics, the scheming and maneuvering, and tonight I was thinking about that line and it hit me what Odin really planned.
Odin took a baby that he knew to be Laufey’s son. He raised him among people who are racist against Frost Giants, and it’s fairly obvious from Thor’s attitude at the beginning of the film that Odin didn’t make much effort to teach his sons differently. Why take a frost giant baby and raise him not knowing what he is and hating his own people?
He told them that they both had a chance at the throne – “Only one of you can ascend the throne, but both of you were born to be kings.” Yet it was obvious that he had chosen Thor from early on. So why make Loki think he had a chance at the throne Odin never meant to give him?
He emotionally neglected Loki, made the boy (and later man) desperate to please him, to get some kind of parental approval that he never quite got.
Loki was the son of the jotun king, yet he hates frost giants and even the story Odin told him about how he came to have Loki seems calculated to make Loki hate and resent the Jotun even more – especially Laufey.
Now how exactly could Loki have been any kind of binding factor between Asgard and Jotunheimr when despite his own jotun blood he considered himself Asgardian and scorned the jotun – hated them, in fact? How could a boy who hated the jotun become some symbol of peace, son of their king or not?
He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. That’s not what Odin took him for. Odin wasn’t thinking alliance. He groomed Loki to overthrow Laufey and take the throne of Jotunheimr. The fact that Loki is the son of Laufey might settle some of the resentment of the jotun, but let’s face it, we know they would never really accept him. Laufey wouldn’t take him back, son or not. No, the only way Loki would be safe in Jotunheimr or be able to create or enforce any kind of ‘peace’ was with an Aesir army at his back.
I think that’s exactly what Odin intended.
Odin didn’t take Loki as some common binding or symbol of peace. He made Loki hate the Jotun, made him hunger for a throne and for Odin’s approval, all because he intended Loki to be his puppet king to rule over Jotunheimr yet still be obedient to Odin. He made Loki hate Laufey so he would be willing – eager – to kill him in revenge. He made Loki hate the Jotun so Loki would feel no qualms about ruling them with an iron fist to please Odin.
Maybe, just maybe, with old age and some measure of unexpected paternal caring, Odin rethought those plans. Nonetheless, at one time that has to be what he planned. And really, if he had adopted Loki out of mercy and nothing more, why not try to soften the blow? Why not teach his sons that the frost giants were onetime enemies but are not monsters?
Is it really surprising that Loki ended up killing Laufey and attacking Jotunheimr when you take into account that’s what Odin was grooming him to do? He just didn’t do it the way Odin planned – instead of killing Laufey to take his throne, he killed him and then tried to destroy Jotunheimr. That ensured Loki would never rule there because even if there was anything left worth ruling, the survivors would rise up as one against the man who’d committed genocide against them.
Maybe that’s why Odin was so pissed off when Loki was brought back to Asgard – because Loki had (unknowingly) screwed up the plans Odin had for him. It does rather explain the choice of “Laufeyson” as insult, doesn’t it?
Slutty Yorick 